Must Read

No I'm not back, I'm still just lurking around.

But I think this post by Mader is pretty important. I was on the knee-jerk side of the fence, and the details as provided by Mader illustrate that things are not always what they seem.

Happy Canada Day

One Last Post

I hope to make it to this this year.

Resuming scheduled silence.

Self Imposed Silence

Due to my RL workload and my overall disinterest in the world in general at the moment, I am going to take break from blogging. I think, I hope. Maybe, who knows. Its hard for us opinionated assholes to keep things to ourselves, so we'll see if I can keep to my self imposed silence.

Over the last couple of months a general malaise has seeped into my consciousness. I just don't have it in me at the moment to debate stuff and make pithy comments. It is my hope that by taking this break my mental batteries will recharge, and I'll be able to resume posting with vigor and (hopefully) intelligence.

So for the next 2.5 months I will not be adding any entries, commenting on other people's posts and in general shall become invisible on the blogosphere.

Until then, fare thee well, and I'll see you all again September firstish!

For those that have my RL work e-mail, feel free to drop me a line if you have any other tech questions.

People Are Stupid - Rant

What would you do if you got the following e-mail?


From: Rita Gibbons [nonpluseseava72@sexnow.com]

Good evening
Dear Credit Card Holder:

The last transaction report on your credit card shows a number of transactions that have questionable background. That gives us reasons to believe that your credit card details have been stolen, and your card has been abused for making unauthorized payments.

Enclosed is the listing of transactions made with your credit card between 13.06.2009 and 15.06.2009. Please look through the enclosed document carefully and pay special attention to the last three of the listed transactions – they are the ones that we suspect to be fraudulent.

Please find time to review the enclosed account statement and confirm the transactions you have authorized in person. This would help us both to have this issue resolved as quickly as possible.

The Word-formatted copy of your transaction list:

http://scananida.com.pl/report_8977.exe

I cannot believe the number of people that have forwarded this message to me asking "Is this a scam?"

Of course it is you fucking morons!

You get an e-mail that doesn't mention your name, the company it represents, a means to verify the information or even a "legitimate Word-formatted copy of your transaction list" (the file is an EXE, a program, not a DOC). Look at the e-mail address! (A credit card company at sexnow.com????) Look at the link (What the hell is scananida.com?)

The whole message screams its a scam. There's not one damn thing that appears to be legit.

I'm sorry, but any idiot that actually clicks that link and downloads that program to their computer deserves to have their identity stolen, their home and car repossessed. Hell, their brain should be ripped out and replaced with another one. Anyone that clicks that link "is too stupid to possess a body" never mind own a computer!

(As an aside, that snopes.com story is an urban legend. I first saw that story back in 1995. In 1998 someone called me for support from home because their computer wasn't working. He asked if it would have anything to do with the power outage. His logic was that his phone was working, so his computer should too....)

This Seems Appropriate

Given the current online war over Canadian Cynic's Outing, a Peanut's cartoon sums it all up.

Ban the Chicken!

Sorry Saskboy, but I'm all for keeping chickens out of urban areas.

About 4-5 years ago, we came back from our summer vacation to learn our neighbours behind us had put in a chicken coop. From a health perspective I was concerned, as my yard is downhill from theirs, and the thought of chicken effluent running into my yard was not a happy one.

But what drove us nuts was the noise. They never, ever, ever shut up. From sunrise to sunset it was constant clucking. I couldn't sit and enjoy my backyard anymore.

We have a fenced in yard, so I can let my dog out to run freely. But I had to start tying him up in a fenced in yard because he would bolt for the fence to try to get to the chickens.

So I called bylaw enforcement, and the chickens got taken away. And its been a lot more peaceful ever since.

Ditto Part 2

What Raphael said:

But has the “stimulus” had anything to do with economic recovery? While the government makes a bold statement that it has, less than a month ago the Financial Post ran a story that showed only 5% of the stimulus money had even been released into the economy yet. Even with the most up-to-date statistics, there is no chance that recent stimulus spending could have any effect on economic indicators talked about in the Prime Minister’s speech. So the economy seems to have stabilized, and even turned around, all without the massive spending that has been so urged by the members of the opposition government.

....

So if economic indicators are positive, consumer confidence is growing, and unemployment is leveling off, why do we still need to spend billions of stimulus bucks? The answer is found at the tail end of a National Post editorial. Politicians of all stripes want credit for fixing the economy, and win praise from voters with local infrastructure programs that have nothing to do with economic recovery.

Yay for the appearance of action!

One thing I want to add to this. If the economy does start to recover slowly, government revenue will also rise. That would be the time to invest in our infrastructure. Instead, that increase in revenue will have to go to paying interest on debt accumulated for stimulus that didn't happen in time.

We've put ourselves into an ass backwards cycle. We increase spending when we don't have money, and reduce it when the resultant deficit gets out of control.

I expect whoever is PM will promise that its different this time. I won't be holding my breath.