Monitory Crimes Division

These people cannot even spell.


ATM CARD PAYMENT
...
Anti-Terrorist and Monitory Crimes Division.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation.
J. Edgar. Hoover Building, Washington D.C

ATTN: BENEFICIARY

This is to Officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigated with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you are having an illegal transaction with Impostors claiming to be Prof. Charles C. Soludo of the Central Bank Of Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Aziza, Mr Frank Nweke,Sanusi Bello none officials of Oceanic Bank, none officials of Zenith Bank and some impostors claiming to be the Federal Bureau Of Investigation agents. During our Investigation, it came to our notice that the reason why you have not received your payment is because you have not fulfilled your Financial Obligation given to you in respect of your Contract/Inheritance Payment.

So therefore, we have contacted the Federal Ministry Of Finance on your behalf and they have brought a solution to your problem by coordinating your payment in the total amount of $800,000.00 USD which will be deposited into an ATM CARD which you will use to withdraw funds anywhere of the world. You now have the lawful right to claim your funds which have been deposited into the ATM CARD.

Since the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been involved in this transaction, you are now to be rest assured that this transaction is legitimate and completely risk-free as it is our duty to Protect and Serve citizens of the United States Of America. All you have to do is immediately contact the ATM CARD CENTER via E-mail for instructions on how to procure your Approval Slip which contains details on how to receive and activate your ATM CARD for immediate use to withdraw funds being paid to you. We have confirmed that the amount required to procure the Approval Slip will cost you a total of $200 USD which will be paid directly to the ATM CARD CENTER agent via Western Union Money Transfer / MoneyGram Money Transfer. Below, you shall find contact details of the Agent whom will process your transaction:

CONTACT INFORMATION

NAME: MR. PAUL SMITH

EMAIL : paul_smith200@gala.net

Immediately contact Mr. Paul Smith of the ATM Card Centre with the following information:

Full Name:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Direct Phone Number:
Current Occupation:
Annual Income:


Once you have sent the required information to Mr. Paul Smith he will contact you with instructions on how to make the payment of $200 USD for the Approval Slip after which he will proceed towards delivery of the ATM CARD without any further delay. You have hereby been authorized/guaranteed by the Federal Bureau Of Investigation to commence towards completing this transaction, as there shall be NO delay once payment for the Approval Slip has been made to the authorized agent.

Once you have completed payment of $200 to the agent in charge of this transaction, immediately contact me back so as to ensure your ATM CARD gets to you rapidly.


FBI Director
Robert Mueller.

red guard

I had a young Chinese guy in the cab a few days ago. A Tulane student going to the airport for Christmas break. He said he was Chinese so I asked "Shanghai?". He said yes, it was a beautiful city. I said "Red Guard". He laughed and said that his papa had been a red guard.

D-Link dsl modem on AT&T dsl

Last year I was working on getting my Cousine Carolyn Sue's home network up. AT&T dsl. There were phone line quality issues; I strung some new wire, the company put in a new box on the side of the house. We got reliable service with the Motorola Netopia 2210 modem.

Hooking up the Tivo to the network required stringing ethernet cable and taping it to the floor. This is not an optimal solution but we settled for it.

Wi-fi with DSL: I had installed a wi-fi access point in my house to work with a Netopia modem but for some reason we chose to get a D-Link dsl modem with router and wi-fi built in. The model we bought in 2009 was the 2640B. Attaching it to the phone line resulted in a web browser returning a strange detour page from ATT.net requiring downloading of software to reset the password. This looks a lot like a hijacking attempt but it is the way they do it.

Couldn't get it to work and I didn't want to spend the time on the phone with AT&T tech support. That D-Link sat on the floor for more than a year.

Last week Cousine Sue got an iPad and needed a home wi-fi signal. I resolved to return to the problem of getting the D-Link 2640b to link up with the AT&T signal. It is difficult and little help is available.

I went thru the same procedure as last year, disconnecting the Netopia and hooking up the D-link and getting a redirect page from the AT&T network. This time I invested the time in calling tech support.

I actually got a helpful tech support guy. He spent a considerable amount of time on the phone with me; he was knowledgeable about the different models of Netopia modems (the newest ones are crippled to make NAT and routing very difficult).

The problems with getting the D-Link to sync were thus: the wizard scans and searches for usable signals but reports that all of them are busy. Skipping the wizard reveals multiple VPI and VCI assignments available but in use.

(I think those were the names of the ports, I am writing this at home and do not have perfect recollection; I'd never worked inside a DSL modem before. The D-Link allows access to vastly more settings than the Motorola Netopia.)

Searching help forums didn't give a lot of information. D-Link knowledge base had nothing helpful. I finally found one post (somewhere) that referred to leaving the old modem turned off for a day before hooking up the new modem. Hmm. From this hint I started to glean that the busy ports were still thinking that they had to talk to the netopia.

SOLUTION:
I synced up the Netopia then held down the reset button on the back of the unit. Just as it began to wake up I disconnected it and hooked up the D-LInk. Booted it up, logged into the D-link and set the ports to 8 and 35. Save and reset. After booting up the D-Link it came up with the I light on!

Perhaps someone else will find this useful.

updating a Vista nstallation

I've been working on updating Mary & Victor's computer for days now. They got it three years ago from those Blue Hippo people. It has Vista basic and 512 megabytes of ram. 1000 times the ram as a working computer of 20 years ago and it would barely run.
I put 2 gigs in it and it runs at least; not fast, but running. This AMD X64 system has not been updated since 2007. I've spent the last two days downloading, installing and re-booting. I am just at the point of trying to get a service pak 1 to take. AMD's seem to have a problem with this. Maybe Dells too, according to MS forums.
If I were doing this for money it would be embarrassing.

more on the ssd/dual drive ProBook

I've had a bit of trouble with the system since installing the SSD. It would freeze on boot up from cold. I booted with the Snow Leopard install disk and went to disk utility and found the original, 120 gig HD was corrupt. Fix it. Then I found that the new boot SSD had bad permissions. Fix it. I don't know all the majik shell commands to move files in and out of a boot disk.

Eventually I decided to move the assigned ~/HOME directory back to boot/users/myname and keep photos and itunes libraries on the external. Documents and Downloads and Movies too. I cannot discover how to make the ~/Documents folder redirect to the second disk. So, I made an alias for the Documents folder on the second disk and moved that into boot/users/me. So, I see a Documents and 'Documents alias' folder. Sloppy.

I don't quite know why having $HOME on the second disk makes problems, or if it really was that. For now, I'm keeping $HOME on the boot.

It boots up screamingly fast from the SSD.

I was afraid of opening up this thing, what with my experience trying to solder inside my Amiga 3000 all of 20 years ago. It was no problem; Modern laptops are incredible.

ssd in macbook pro

I've been thinking of cleaning up my Macbook Pro. I got it in 2008 when Emile-Alexandre broke my previous laptop, an iBook. The DVD/CD drive stopped working a long time ago; same with the drive in the Mac Mini. I got an external Samsung DVD writer for $50. Much better idea. How often do I use an optical drive these days? Couple times a year.

I'd heard about replacing the DVD drive with a second hard drive, and I'd thought about using an SSD (Solid State Drive). So I got a 40gig Intel SSD for a hunnerd bux.

I followed instructions here and at ifixit.com. I got an adapter at newmodeus.com. It is a little confusing figuring out which adapter to use. This probook has an ATA bus for the DVD. ATA is now called PATA. Parallel ATA, which is for some reason slower than the new Serial ATA. So, the hard drive is SATA and the tray to replace the DVD has an ATA buss on the outside and SATA on the inside.

It fit perfectly. I moved the old drive into the DVD bay and put the SSD in the boot drive location. Then I assigned ~/home to the old drive in the new location. You do this in advanced options of the login preference. A right click is necessary to find this hidden advanced option. Non obvious.

So after installing OSX snow leopard onto the SSD and re-assigning ~/home and rebooting I have a fast system and a big user area for all files. Applications are installed on the SSD boot drive. I deleted all the old system files from the original 120gig (now the second drive, remember?)

Kul

the counter revolution of the Idiocracy

This Tea Party "movement" is the counter revolution of the Idiocracy.

oil spill

A mother jones article about the BP oil spill in the Gulf. I'm living in New Orleans and this is what everyone talks about. The linked article itself links to an oil industry discussion site called The Oil Drum.

I discovered a new feature on Facebook the other day; they allow importing weblogs into the 'notes' section of yr profile.
so I went to bring these blogger entries in. They did not require a login to Blogger! I could have imported ANY blog into MY notes. Good grief.

ps3 down, new slim sold out

My PS3 stopped playing bluray disks today. That means ps3 games as well as BD movies. I had Slumdog Millionaire in from Netflix and it wouldn't play. I heard seeking, and it started to play, but then froze up. My brand new Modern Warfare 2 played two days ago, today it started, then froze the system, then nothing BluRay was recognized. Bummer. Lots of threads on the playstation forums about some problem with software.

A number of new download games haven't been working on this original 60 gig 4 USB model, considered the top of the line by many people. It has a hardware PS2 built into it. So, even tho I cannot afford it, I went to Amazon to buy a basic new $299 PS3 slim. None available. Walmart? Sold out. Best Buy? Nothing available anywhere. Hm. This new model is selling very well.

More from Zone of Death

A final count of our immediate family in Hayti? No fatalities. Last week Nadia's Maren/godmother called. Her name is Marie-Michelle. She had been reported confirmed dead immediately after the quake. Now it is revealed that she and Nadia, our 9 year old daughter, are in a displaced persons camp by the Dominican border and have been treated by Dominican doctors. Perhaps they are inside the DR, it is unclear. They don't have a cell phone number to call them back. After three weeks of failing hope this was wonderful news.

Lucienne will be flying in to Santo Domingo on the 8th of February and taking a bus overland. She is taking a tent which was donated here in New Orleans and LED flashlights, etc. Mostly money. Our friend Thor Burnham is in Port au Prince now rounding up and taking care of his wife's family who are sleeping on the street around Delmas 30. My mother in law Vanita Louis is camping in PetionVille at Place Saint Pierre, the central square of the city. Jeff, the 14 year old cousin has a Voila cell phone and is taking care of business. Luckily Vanita has her identification so she is able to get money from Western Union or Moneygram, etc.

Brother Marcel found his three children. Where were they? Dunno, but the first reports were that they were missing. Sister Beatrice has her two kids. Our very first call was from Beatrice's ex-husband who came immediately from Santo Domingo to search and reported that the whole neighborhood where they lived had fallen into the ravine and no one was to be found.

The eventuality of everyone being found alive after so many have died is amazing. Merci Bon Dieu.

My sister Pamela Lyall got a lot of interest among her friends and started a prayer circle to envision Nadia alive and well. That seems to have worked out well. Some of her people wanted to send money directly to family of people whom they know, rather than to an aid agency. That is an excellent concept as well.

Some of our friends and family who may wish to contribute to a salvation fund for my wife's family in Haiti.
Here is a facebook email which I sent to Tracy in Humboldt.

Western Union is the best way now, cause it is free. They are waiving all transfer fees to Haiti.
I just sent $200 at the corner mini mart with a WU transfer desk. I picked up the dedicated phone
at the little table and talked to a woman who answered. I just told her "$200 to Vanita Louis in Haiti".
I took the order to the clerk and paid him; he entered it into a WU terminal and gave me a receipt.
(this was the first time I had ever done this) On that receipt is a confirmation number.
That number (and her ID) is what allowed Mama (Vanita Louis) to get the money at her local WU agent in PetionVille

So, there is the method to get money to Roxannes Grandmama, who will feed about 8 children.

Merci d'avance

more on Port au Prince

Today there was a 6am earthquake in Hayti. Lucienne received a call immediately from Jeff, her nephew/brother. A police woman in Place St Pierre (the central park in Petionville) was saying that the USA immigration had new rules allowing family members to leave Haiti and go to Etats Unis. I knew this wasn't true but had to get up and search the net for immigration news. Turns out that existing adoption applications are being expedited.

The final toll there in Petionville is two brothers dead, Jean Baptiste and Patrick. Beatrice's two kids are ok. Later brother Marcel called for the first time. The Voila cell network is up. He is sleeping in the street down around Nazon. His three kids have been found. Nadia, Lucienne's eldest daughter (and Roxanne's older sister) is still missing.

The Port au Prince apocalypse

The destruction of Port au Prince has captured the imagination of the USA. For us, it is personal. Lucienne's family all live in poor districts of Port au Prince. When I first heard of an earthquake in Haiti I wasn't too concerned. There was a small earthquake when we lived in Kenscoff; I hardly noticed it. By California standards it was nothing worse than a truck driving by.

This 2010 quake was far stronger than the 1989 Santa Cruz quake (usually mistakenly called a San Francisco quake) which I rode out balancing on my bouncing house. The Haiti quake, in particular, lasted for 35 seconds, a very long time. The measure of ground movement puts it towards the strongest possible quakes. Port au Prince is one of the least prepared large cities imaginable for such destruction.

Lucienne tried to call Haiti for hours on tuesday night, to no avail. No lines available, and the cell phone networks were probably not functioning at all. Wednesday a call came in from Haiti, from Ernest Pinchinat, the ex-husband of Lulu's sister Beatrice. He came in immediately from Santo Domingo and reported that the hillside neighborhood where they lived had all collapsed into the ravine. He could not find anyone. This is a bidonville/favela on the side of a hill behind where the Hotel Kinam is at the top of Petionville. Lucienne calls it Morne Calvaire, but it is the foot of the Morne.

The next day, at 3am one of the young boys in Mama's household (a nephew/cousin or something) called Lucienne and spoke just long enough to say "call me back". Well, you cannot call back. So, word from someone, but mysteries continue. Great grief here. No word about Nadia, Roxanne's older sister, who lives with her Maren/Godmother in Tabarre (close by Aristides old palace and the new US embassy).

On Saturday a friend of Marcel, Luciennes brother, called and said that Nadia's Maren was confirmed dead and Nanou is missing. Mama and Sister Beatrice are alive but with injured feet or legs. Injured how badly? Unknown. Two brothers are dead, some of the other children are alive. The number living there fluctuates and who is family or not also varies.

I started getting active on Twitter and find it actually useful for something like this. Some folks with satellite internet and some source of electricity were able to get word out online, where telephones were not useful. People whom I know were tweeting from Jacmel and Port au Prince.

Today NPR has the first reports of Leogane. I knew it would be bad there, the center of the quake was in the mountains just above Leogane. They said that 90% of the houses are destroyed and there had been no help at all in six days.