mjm wired :: Internet

My Alumni Profile

Sun, 11 May 2008 11:47:15 -0400

I graduated from the University of Some School about X years ago. For the past several months, I have been receiving non-stop emails and post-cards in the mail to "update my Alumni profile" so that my information could be valid so people can contact me and know what I am doing. All the information would be updated into a big "Alumni Directory" or something like that. The thing that I find questionable is that both the emails and post-cards say that I can only do it over the phone - not email not postal mail. Additionally this service is being provided not by the University but by a third party commercial service. Reality check: if I can only update my address, my employment status and other very private tidbits of my life into a directory by a company, then I would think (I maybe wrong) that their sole purpose is to sell me access to this directory. Well, thanks, but no thanks.

I would think that these types of services are things of the past. If you open an account with Facebook, Friendster, Orkut or any of the million other "social networking" sites you can find almost everyone you ever knew. Only the "John Smith's" might be a little tricky. So for all the people who buy into this, I hope its worth your time.

I still believe that if people wanted to be in touch with me, then they would be. I don't need someone else to facilitate that for me.

New Dilbert Website

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:29:28 -0400

As part of my normal morning activities, I have to do a quick visit to Dilbert.com to figure out if I should laugh, cry or be depressed about my job. Today morning I visited the site to find some horribly broken Flash based website. I could not view the comic strip at all in Mozilla Firefox for whatever reason. Internet Explorer showed the strip, but the site was still a little quirky. I saw a "Save" button which I thought was pretty cool, until it told me I had to login to use that feature. Normally I could save the image with a right-click. The only slight positive was it showed in color, but I don't need Flash to do that, nor does it matter: the brilliance of Dilbert showed colorfully in black and white.

On the blog (which I can't see in Firefox) of Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, he gushes about the new site:

We spent most of the past year, and a small fortune, to unwrap all the pent up Dilbert goodness and provide it to you for free, embracing the new realities of intellectual property on the web.

It seems as if I might be able search old strips which might be cool? Maybe "interact" with the script? See the old strips for free? Perhaps take the good with the bad.

To be fair the site says "BETA", but still, it disturbed my morning routine which is quite unforgivable considering Scott Adam's supposedly understands the cubicle culture.

I Hate the Internet

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:56:04 -0400

I've been juggling quite a few different tasks and projects over the past few weeks. Some technical but most are just random personal things. I haven't had much time for blogging or even maintaining my website due to other priorities. But what adds insult to injury is having to keep up with the idiots on the internet.

In the past few weeks I've been slammed with spam email, spam blog comments, bot attacks, script kiddies and just plain stupid wannabe hackers. Someone used my private paid email address (which very few know) as the return address on some spam system. As a result I was getting hundreds of bounces and rejects from mail servers all across the world every flippin hour. Just a week ago some asian (I won't name the country, though you probably can guess) did some type of lame denial of service or bandwidth drain attempt and sucked up a few gigabytes of paid bandwidth in less than 24 hours before I noticed it. Then there are the idiot comment spammers. You know I might understand if they kept posting about Viagra and their useless stocks, but I have one who scripted some sort of scheduled junk comments. So I get crap like "ozdhs vksaznopm qbuap qujscawyr jegucfs dy" every couple of minutes. What purpose could that possibly serve other than just to annoy me? People need to get better hobbies.

And I feel bad for all the people emailing me asking for help and other requests. Often I can barely keep up with cleaning the above garbage, that I miss quite a few emails. People will never realize how much work it can be to run a simple website. And I regret I have not run a backup in a long time. My computer will be temporary without internet for the next few days.

So if you email PLEASE NOTE that I am unable to respond in a timely manner. I am doing my best.

10 Years of Email

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:16:42 -0400

It just occurred to me that I started using email almost exactly 10 yrs ago. Being the compulsive weirdo that I am, I actually have them all saved. Why? I have no clue. I guess I'm prepared for when my (future) child will ask me one day: "Dad when did you first have email?" ... Wow 10 yrs. Man have things ever changed.

Once upon a time, I would sit and wonder: "How come no one emails me?". That stage did not take long to pass.

Then some years later, I thought: "People sure rely on this email waaayyy too much. How annoying! Can't you just call me?". That took a little while longer to pass.

Then came the SPAM. And it came. And it hasn't stopped. So I started thinking: "Wow, how is it possible that this many super hot girls get my email???". Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have opened some of those. Goodbye "guaranteed organ growth", hello BULK MAIL folder!

Then came the goodies included in the mails. ... "I Love You?" - umm, not really ... "Code Red?" - should I be scared? ... Anna Kournikova - hmm, tempting, but I'll pass. I wish the rest of the computer users of the world passed too.

Then came the technical emails, the professional emails -- the important stuff. Sending stuff to people higher than you can be intimidating - and worse yet, they take forever to reply or sometimes never. Yeah, well, if they took forever to reply and demanded a quick response from me. Well, you know what I did, I ... well, I responded right away. And at the end of the day I could keep those emails somewhere and not have to mix them with my personal emails.

Which brings me back to all my personal emails. Thousands saved, none of them new. I can't help thinking - how come no one emails me anymore?.

Google Maps Across the Ocean

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:09:00 -0400

I saw this in the newspaper and I thought it was pretty funny. Go to Google Maps and get directions for 2 major cities that are separated by an ocean. Say for example New York and London.

Try it for yourself.

Pay close attention to how Google recommends you cross that ocean. And of course don't forget the disclaimer:

These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the map results.

In this case you might be missing your road.

Gmail Gets a Delete Button

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 21:00:04 -0500

Wow! How blog worthy! Google's email service finally gets a stupid delete button! Took you guys long enough.

Don't be fooled. You may think your email is being deleted however chances are it still sits in their system while their databases build a more accurate profile of you. Oh well!

Case of Mistaken Identity

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:13:52 -0400

Over the past two days I've been getting weird emails intended for somebody else. Now I wouldn't normally think too much of this, but these were unique. I think all 3 people who emailed me were looking for uniquely different persons.

The first one was an invitation to give an audition for a presentation on some sort of abstract skill for a Princeton Review session in Dallas, TX. Things like "cooking bread", "how to order food in french" or "finer points in annoying people". or Since it was only a mock session, I didn't need to have anything special prepared. ... Now, we all know how many abstract skills I can teach, but right now I'm not prepared to take time to visit Texas.

The second one was from someone in florida who wanted to make sure my kids and I had a good time in Germany. His interesting parenting recommendaion was to make sure they watch Pulp Fiction. Mmmm, I'm in the mood for a "Royale with Cheese". ... Achtung! You have the wrong email.

And the third (for now) was an aspiring Latina model from Chile who sent me her resume and some samples from her portfolio hoping for some work. Seriously! I'm NOT making this stuff up. Anyways, she was decently attractive. It took me sometime to translate the spanish, but in the end, my professional opinion was that modelling is NOT the way to go. ... I may tell her that someday, if I ever learn spanish.

So even if the email isn't for you, it doesn't make it spam. Sometimes reading someone else's mail might just give you that laugh you were looking for.

Temporary Credit Card Numbers

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:55:31 -0400

Not a week goes buy where I don't hear someone complain about having to give their credit card to some questionable merchant online or identity theft. Whenever I mention the concept of temporary credit card numbers, everyone always looks suprised and ask me "is there such thing?". Well yes, and I think more people should use them.

Basically the way it works is your credit card provider (Discover, American Express, etc.) must give you some sort of website or application to generate temporary numbers. Those new numbers will be restricted or limited in some way to the seller not the customer (you). The restrictions vary per service.

Say I purchase a $49.99 book from Amazon.com with my credit card, but I use a temporary/limited number. One possible restriction is preventing EVERYONE but Amazon from using that number. So if someone hacks into Amazon and steals it, it is of no use to the hacker. Also I can leave that card number with Amazon indefinitely. Another possibility is my service may allow me to create a credit card number that is only valid for 1 month, and has a spending limit of $50, which would be rendered useless well after Amazon makes the purchase for me. Both situations are in my favor.

Now services may vary, but speaking from experience I use this service with virtually every purchase I make online from both trustworthy sites and small sites. Furthermore, my credit cards allow me to do both of the above scenarios. I would stronly recommend people taking the time to see what protective services their credit cards provide. It won't be any harder than buying something online or paying your bills on the web. ... And it has been around a long time. I've had it for years.

Free Licenses for Opera 8

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 07:23:29 -0400

Okay, if you haven't heard already, Opera is giving out free licenses for their browser in celebration of their 10 year birthday. I didn't even know they were around for so long. Anyways, I went to their website yesterday and I got a free license. Now the absolute cooincidence is that back in April I heard that they would give out a free license for anyone who could refer 250 people to download their browser (hence the little ad on my site) -- which I thought would be very easy. Anyways, I got an email last night that I had finally referred the required 250 downloads and hence I got a free license. This was only hours after I got a free license from their birthday party website.

What timing. Anyways, I still stand by my original opinion, in that I hope this helps spread another browser into the marketplace and thusly producing a better WWW for all.

Opera 8

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:38:08 -0400

I normally don't do plugs but I am impressed with the latest version of Opera. In my honest opinion they really improved after version 7. And in the grand scheme of things I'd be happier if there were plenty of different web browsers accessing the world wide web. It would force the a lot of people to fix things. Anyways, I've yet to try it out on windows, I'm posting this with Opera on Linux. Works better than the last time I tried it, and as far as I can tell my entire website renders correctly (apology to IE users).

So I urge people to download and try it out, I may not be 100% ready to switch anytime soon but maybe some others might dump IE for it.

Oh yeah, with 250 unique clicks of the banner I'm supposed to get a free license. So far I've got ... ummm ... 1.