Good Morning all,
I haven’t been here at work for more than five minutes, when something very peculiar crossed my eyes. I figured it was interesting enough to share so…. here I am . Anyway, just like every morning the first few things I do when i get in is to unload my stuff, change my shoes and then begin checking my e-mail. Oh I also run my webcam when I’m not here and have it set up to pick up any motion. We had some one come into our suite here a few months ago and nabbed some memory from our student machines at the front desk. They didnt touch my computer but did manage to steal some of my oreos from my desk. Well since then I have been running my cam at nights. But nothing to report from that, I do check the captures from the cam everymorning though and usually the only excitement i get from that is a cleaning people and their backpack vacs. SO I’m reading through my email that goes to my work address, and I see I get one addressed from Ebay. Here is an excerpt.
“Dear eBay Member,
Our fraud prevention systems have detected unusual activity from your account, This has led us to believe that your password may be known by someone other than yourself, This may cause unwanted bills and many other implications. Our aim is to protect the integrity of our service, So we have suspended your account awaiting further identity verification. We require that you visit the link below and fill out all necessary fields so that we may verify these details with your bank to allow normal activity from your account again.
To confirm your identity with us click here:
https://www.ebay.com/account/fraudverification/verification.asp?xxxxxx=xxxx
We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you and we would like to thank you for your cooperation as we review this matter.
Respectfully,
Trust and Safety Department
eBay Inc. ”
Totally valid looking email with the ebay logos and copyright info etc, but one thing stuck out and made me wonder and that was the fact that ebay has no idea of the email address that this was sent to. It came to my work address which I only use for work. (*** Don’t Go to that Link Above ***) I x’ed out part of to make sure no one does anything stupid. Well, I needed to figure out if this was truly valid or not though I really had my doubts. I was off to www.ebay.com It didnt take me long to find some documentation that proved my hunch. (you can click that link) There was a decent amount of information on the site which you can go read fro your self but all I needed was the following:
“Only enter your eBay password on pages where the Web address (URL) begins with http://signin.ebay.com/. Even if the Web address contains the word “eBay”, it may not be an eBay Web page.
These fake Web sites (also called “spoof” Web sites) try to imitate eBay in order to obtain your eBay password and access to your account.”
I suppose that this my PSA for the day but if you see an email like that be careful. I must admit It looked pretty legit and hell if this would have come to the email account that I associate my ebay with I may have clicked that link entered the various information they were requiring and some cheating bastard would have had my ebay information. But as I looked closer at the email it had become more apparent The coding from the email was not ebayesque and the link was actually masked to some Ip address etc etc. Be Careful out there folks!
Its been busy… I got dragged to MotoCross at the Pepsi center last night. It was interesting to say the least Hit up my MoBlog for some pics I took with the camera phone. I some how managed to get up at 5:30 am to go skiing this morning. It was Awesome. Finally got the snow conditions and terrain ive been waiting for all year. Copper has some Amazing back Bowls and A few of them you can get to by a free snow cat ride. We took that and then had to hike quite a bit to have some awesome runs. I had a blast. Had knee deep powder and the mountain to our selves. Totally Warren Miller style! best sking all year by far.
Anyways… Big stuff coming up so stay tuned! I’m not gonna say much right now but keep an eye open.
This thing Rocks. Thanks Travis! I’m thinking I need to go into my Intellivision Collection and convert one of those.
Space Armada or Night Stalker?
Well the last week or so especially at work has kept me pretty busy. We had some fairly tight deadlines we were dealing with and of course the flu that attacked me didn’t make things any better. I think my body is still getting used to the climate here in Denver and I may be the first to complain about the Sun here. To me its almost too much. I like they grey dark days and we’re lucky to see a few here. I’ve noticed on those days I’m in some of my better moods. Anyway I feel like I have fallen behind on so many things not just work oriented but keeping up on news info etc. The worst being that we are guarenteed no hockey this year though I think we all kinda knew, it was just that ounce of hope that was getting in the way. I guess the real big news on my end is the hair cut. Its actually been driving me a little crazy as of late. Being as short as it is I don’t know what to do with it. And when I wake up in the morning its all sticking up in the back, My dad used to call it rooster hair. The only style I like is when I comb it back and to the side, very old school, any thing else at this point is a mess. As soon as I get a decent pic Ill post it.
I was eating breakfast and chatting with some friends yesterday morning and Cincinnati style Chili came up in the conversation. The one guy and I both knew of it and loved it. My experience was with Skyline Chili which in the last few years began expanding into central and northeast Ohio. A branch opened up a few miles from My old place in Cuyahogoa Falls. Anyways I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how much I missed it. I decided to see if I could find a recipie online and make some. Sure enough I found This Recipie which didn’t end up being half bad. it was certainly no Skyline but It’s was pretty good. One thing i nver knew until yesterday was that some of the main ingredients included Cocoa, Allspice and Cinnamon. The two firends that helped inspire the conversation came over last night for Dinner. I even made a Special version with Fake meat for Aileen. We all had it threeway style with Spaghetti! Loved it
It seems that alot has occured since my last entry but in all honesty I don’t think it is of much importance. Take for example this Killer cold have… Who really cares? Over the weekend I had a considerable amount of hair removed from my head. A nice new fresh do. I like it. Aileen and I celebrated the Vtines by spending the day skiing at winter park though it was a pretty crappy day and sure enough the very next day they get some fresh snow 
We hit Maggiano’s for dinner, that was nice. Today is the one year Anniversary of my first day of work at The University of Colorado at Denver. last Night Aileen made me a surprise dinner that included real pork chops. Pretty tasty too especially when prepared by a vegitarian. You see little things of minimal importance to anyone but myself, though I spose worth mentioning. Time for me to move on with my day.
Now so far (it’s been but a week) but I must say I dig my iPod alot. though I’m not 100% excited with the “random” option. I’ve read and heard about whether or not the songs are truly being selected at random and honestly I believe that they are. What bothers me is that in a 30 min walk to work I may hear 6-7 tracks and many times I’ll hear one artist two sometimes three times! The software does not look at the artist and or album just the song and if I have 5 or 6 albums by one artist on my device I have a higher chance at hearing songs by that artist more often. I was introduced to the smartplaylist in iTunes the other day and was hoping to come up with one that would solve this issue but have not seemed to figure that out yet. if anyone has developed a smartplaylist that does something like “don’t play a song by artist if artist was recently played” etc please let me know. In the quest to solve this issue I did find Smart playlists.com It’s a cool little resource where poeple post diffent types of smart playlists that they have come up with. For example Some one created a list that only played songs with baody parts in the song title. There are much more simplified ones and of course more detailed lists, Kinda cool though.
Had’nt posted anything totally work related in a while but I found this which is quite interesting Apparently The Great Jakob Nielsen Knows his teens What Websites Do to Turn On Teens
Bit by bit they seem to be eating up the competition. Their newsest, Google Maps had its Beta Release today. I’ve been messing with it a bit this morning. It’s Pretty sweet! Mapquest and Yahoo Maps are in trouble.
I Must admit I’m intrigued and confused about this whole “podcast” phenomenon. I heard about it months ago but the concept really didnt make much sense to me. Essentially people record some sort of audio based show (news, talk music etc) then create an mp3 andupload it to a server for people to download (usually to their iPod or similar device) At this point these people can listen to it at their own will. Now who is going to want wait for for such a (I’m assuming) fairly large audio file to download. Usually with mp3s we’re talking roughly a meg a min so 30minutes = 30mb
Anyway, 4-5 months later I’m reading this article and it turns out Adam Curry you know that old MTV personality from the late 80’s early 90’s c’mon the one that looked like Bon Jovi?!? well, he pretty much started this whole podcasting thing. In fact he taught him self the apple scripting language to write the ipodder software that helps you move podcasts to your device. I really like the concept I would just expect a smaller file format or something. But now that I have a high capicity digital audio player, I may explore this down the road. Hell, if I find a cast I dig I could see the worth.
I don’t know how I missed this but it looks like some of googles advertising practices have been challenged in France. It will be interesting to see how this pans out and if we see some sort of domino effect over here. Personally I could see the opposite ruling here in the states but my Law of Mass Comm class in college certainly doesn’t certify me an expert on this stuff.
A coworker came to my desk today and noted that he had 50 Gmail invites. We both assumed I did as well and sure enough when I logged in… 50 Invites. The guess is that the beta version of this early hyped and somewhat controversial e-mail system is ready for a public launch. I’m not sure it will make as big of an impression as I originally expected but we’ll have to just wait and see. in the mean time, if anyone wants a free Gmail account just let me know, I got plenty.
I was dreading opening up my browser this morning which is set to go to myYahoo to read of the anticipated cancellation of the 04/05 NHL season. When I scrolled through my set headlines to the “NHL Hockey news” section no such headline was posted. Instead were storys saying there is a bit of hope. So, all you Hockey fans cross your fingers. It looks like they have till the end of the weekend to figure this or time will have run out to start and finish a season. Let’s just hope both sides stop being idiots and the remember their Fans and the future of the sport is on the line here!
The One thing they don’t tell you is when you unsubscribe you lose all your music. Napster Unveils Portable Service, Anti-iPod Campaign
Additional details here
I had spent quite some time in the past few years researching and just trying to figure out which device would work best for me. I had figured that I would probably end up with something in the 20gb range. 4-5 was too small and 40+ was out of my price range. I had pretty much made a decison by xmas but was going to wait till Feb to purchase. I wanted to see if anything was going to come out of the CES. unfortunatly nothing did. so the top three products for me were The Creative Zen Touch, The Apple Ipod and The Jet Audio iAudio M3 They all had ups and down, and I know I’d probably have been happy with any of them. The jet Audio was by far the best bang for the buck. with several supported formats such as a line in, an FM recorder and it was the smallest in size. Perfect for the true Audio geek. My last Player (the 64mb Samsung Yepp) like the M3 had no display on the device it too was on the remote and it was the one feature that I hated. Like all the user reviews for the M3 said “if you can deal without haveing a disply on the Unit then this is it. ” unfortunatly I have been dealing with that for some time and was not going to again. The Zen touch for me was the first True competitor to the ipod. With similar looks and an attempt at their own single control interface, I thought it was going to win me out… but, the thing was larger than I really wanted. The smaller the more portable the better. So just like the other millions of people out there I ended up with an ipod. I cringed several times but I kept coming back to this device. But It was the all around best device. There are several reasons why the thing has sold as many as they have. For one it is still one of the cooler looking devices out there. Not only has apple devoted them selves to this thing (support upgrades etc) but so has the rest of the world spawning this “Ipod economy” With hundreds of add-ons and and accessories I could truly customize my Ipod and have exactly what I want. And as girly as it may sound, I love to customize and accesorize to give a more personal touch to things. How could I not pass up the oppertunity for the free engraving!
= More Skiing! Happy Groundhog Day!
Back When I was living in Kent I had this theory about Post Offices. Everytime I would go down to the local post office to mail something or buy stamps or what ever other things I do at the post office, I always noticed how dreary the place was. Now it wasn’t like it was an old run down building, it was just dreary… You were always stuck in a long line and the people at the counter always seemed like the most depressing people in the world. This wasn’t once in a while this was every time I went. I’ve always heard that working for the post offics was a good job. Hell it was a Govt job and those tend to have good pay and benefits. I always feard that these “tellers” were going to go crazy one day and bring down everyone in the building… In fact that happened several times… I remember hearing about it on the news etc. Isn’t that where the term “going Postal” came from? Anyway. I figured it was just that one office in Kent that was like that. that was until i had to go to the Ravenna Branch to sign up for an expedited Pass Port. ( i was leaving fro Ireland in a month) Same Thing! Everyone looked depressed and made it very unwelcoming. One thing i realized…. with the exception of the people discussing the transaction, the place was very silent. Public places like these you just tend to be used to some sort of ambient noise, whether its the hustle and bustle of the people or some sort of piped in music. That was it! There was no music playing at all! And from that day on would go into the post office and just wonder what a difference it would make if there was some music playing in the Back ground. When i moved to Cuyahoga Falls from Kent I was introduced to a new post office.. In fact the place was brand new and super modern but… No music and that same unwelcome feeling. Why is that? Why is there no music in post offices anyway. Is it against the law, is it some sort of security measure? Who knows, Things didn’t change when I moved to Denver. There was a local office a few blocks from my place. Another different post office yet the same dreary aura. Then several months ago, again needing to send some mail I had to head down to the Post Office. I was at work so the closest branch was yet a different one. I remember walking into the place i felt like I was heading into a dungeon. The place was located on the 16th Street mall in teh basment of some old office building. looking through the door windows I could see a line… hm nothing different. I walked in and merged into the line. After about a minute or two I was bored of looking at the displays and othe rpeople in line, I then turned my attention to the two tellers. “Mamn, your much better off using this rate you’ll save money and it should get there the same time.” “Thank you I will do that” “No problem and it’s beautiful outside or so I ve heard.. Enjoy the rest of the day Mamn.” What was going on here. This was the most cheerful post office teller I have ever encountered. that is except the teller next to him! They were both seeming to have the best day of their lives and doing what ever they could to pass the cheer on. He then started whistling… at that moment i realized the music on! He was whistling to the music being played out of a boombox behind the tellers. Next to the boom box looked to be a stack of about 30 or so cds. I couldn’t believe it! I wonder if they snuck the boombox in or if they asked to have in or what? None the less it was amazing. My transaction went smoothly (though the teller informed me to be careful when writing “see ID” on the back of my credit card because technically thats illegal. the card says authorized signature only.) Whqat a good thing to know…. Since then Ive been back probably 5 or 6 times each time music playing and each time the teller was extremely pleasant.. Does that Prove my theory? probably not but its a good start to proving it.
Saw this on the frontpage Today as i was walking to the post office… Kind of interesting.In iPod America, legions in tune
