guapacha.com

Dear reader, I know the reason you come here is to learn more of my oh-so-correct opinions on important matters. So… here are a couple….

Watched some of the opening of the British Parliament on C-Span last night (yeah, my life is real exciting) and I enjoyed being reminded that no one does pomp and circumstance like the Brits. But what gives with the Lord Chamberlain turning his back on the Queen after giving her the speech? There were times when that would have meant ‘off with his head’.

I love The Amazing Race, its easily the best reality show on TV, but this season’s teams seem a little contrived. What’s up with all the models – is this the only way for pretty boys and girls to get assignments these days? And I know we all watch for the conflict but in previous seasons, tension developed during the race, some of the guys in this Race seem to be in it for trouble from the get-go, to the point where it seems staged (a scripted reality show – no way!). I’ll still be watching it, if only for the two sisters, but wouldn’t it be nice if next show they had some teams where the women were the jerks and the men were the ones saying “she really is a nice person, they just get this way when they are stressed”.

Finally, the NBA Brawl. I can’t believe how ESPN, team coaches etc are defending the players for their behaviour. One of the players said that if he was walking down the street and throw a cup at someone he expected to get hit. That might be true but I am sure he would also expect to have that guy thrown in jail, whereas here the players are saying they can be justified in hitting fans. Apparantly we don’t know the pressures they are under – I disagree, the man walking down the street, probably wondering how he will be able to afford to retire, pay off student loans etc is under much more pressure than someone earning $6M a year. Another player said he plays for the team, he doesn’t care what the fans think of him. You need to wake up – you play for the fans because they are the ones who make the team money, and the team is not there for the glory of the game, its there to make people rich. Perhaps 20 years ago it was different but today all I see is a bunch of whiny egos who care about nothing but themselves. I hope Artest and the others (including guilty fans) spend a little time in a jail to think about that.

So first let me retract the scumbag remark, NM Online is actually the internet department of Neiman Marcus and they were very helpful on the phone. They did some research on the spot and it appears I am the victim of a very common scam.

Russian companies advertise in local newspapers for ‘reshippers’. The scumbag Russians use stolen credit cards to buy goods that are shipped to the reshipper. The reshipper forwards them onto Moscow for resale. NM called the reshipper that received ‘my’ goods and confirmed this is exactly what he had been doing. However, in this instance the reshipper thought something was dodgy pretty early on and kept many of the packages and NM believe they will retrieve most of the goods that were bought with my card. Anything outstanding will be a chargeback by BankOne so I won’t be out of pocket at all.

One real interesting thing: NM called my card company before shipping to verify my address in S. Carolina and it was confirmed. So I called BankOne to ask them how my address got changed. They said it looked like it had been done via a post office change of address notification. Now thats very scary that it can be that simple.

Keep a close eye on your accounts, people.

So I call BankONE to report the card abuse and during the process to establish my identity I am asked to give my old address in South Carolina. Well, I’ve never lived there, never even visited the state. In a classic tale of “its says so on my computer so it must be true” we spent the next 10 minutes arguing about whether I was the owner of the card. In the end she froze the account, not because of the transactions, but because she believed I was not the owner of the card. When I was finally able to tell her about the transactions she marked them as disputed for me but reminded me that I would not get a new card until I could give my Carolina address. I told her she should just cancel the card as there was no way I was staying a customer after this treatment. She said she couldn’t do that until I could verify I was the owner of the card!

Un-freaking-believable.

Ok, so the last few posts have gotten too serious. Here are some random links that have me smiling for a variety of reasons.

This poor guy shares the same name as the lead singer of Maroon 5, lives in LA and has his phone number in the book. Tired of being called by fans all day long, he’s started posting mp3s of some of the more interesting ones on this site.

Looking for some Flash games? This site has them in large buckets. Its not Roller Coaster Tycoon but you’ll surely find some that amuse you for a few minutes.

There may be nothing to see here but I don’t recommend viewing it at work or if you are offended by lingerie ads.

Well, I guess thats it for now.

I never had much faith in the US media before I came to the US but the more I view it the less respect I have for it. Take the latest video of the marine ‘executing’ a terroist. Ok, its not a nice thing to have happen but its a war and these things happen. Compare this with a ‘news’ program at the weekend discussing the new ‘beheading’ video being sold by the Virgin recordstore. The presenter was clearly outraged that such a thing exists and certainly would never show such a thing – so how come its ok to show the US marine over and over again. The host for the ‘beheading’ video was superb, dealt with the presenter with great skill but made one great point: people should see the videos that terrorists make of beheadings and other executions/terror, then the true context of the marine ‘execution’ will be understood. But the US media would rather let everyone think that the terrorists are the good guys in all this. Thank heaven for the BBC News

According to this article general aviation fatalities totalled 340 last fiscal year but there have already been 39 in the first month of the new one. Not a good start, especially with the ‘more difficult’ months ahead of ice, fog and increased night flying.

And its not helped by pilots like the one we overheard at Brown Field yesterday who seemed to have no clue what they were doing…

Tower: ABC123 Hold short of runway 26R
[silence]
Tower: ABC123 You are required to repeat the hold short instuction
Pilot: Hold short of 26R

Tower: ABC123 Position and hold 26R (meaning go on to the runway but hold for takeoff instruction)
Pilot: Position and hold 26R

Tower: ABC123 Do you know what position and hold means?
Pilot: Yes, it means position and hold
(didn’t see what happened but I think the pilot didn’t move onto the runway)

Tower (exasperated voice): ABC123 Cleared for take off, maintain 1500 feet until approved otherwise
Pilot: Cleared for take off

Tower: ABC123 Did you copy the restriction to maintain 1500 feet? (I guess the pilot was now above 1500)
Pilot: Sorry, I did not copy that
Tower: ABC123 When you get back to Brown, please call the tower

The airport was very busy with several planes practicing landings and takeoffs plus a few planes coming in to clear customs from Mexico, pilots needed to be extra vigilant or else accidents will be happening. I am sure when the pilot returned he received quite a lecture from the tower, I hope he learned from it.

After an aborted attempt on Weds when we found that the plane we had booked had a faulty alternator (don’t want to fly without the electrics!) I finally got my first lesson in a high performance plane, defined as any aircraft with a 200HP engine or greater. The Cessna 182 I flew was rated at 235HP and at one point we were indicating an airspeed of 150 mph – now that’s cruising! It sure was a lot of fun, in a couple of weeks we’ll do it again to put me and the plane through some performance maneuvers and after that I should get my endorsement that I am legal to fly the fast planes solo.

Well, the deny list was not comprehensive enough to stop the spammer but I am taking moderation off anyway. Its not that much hassle to delete all the comments straight from the database and after looking through the code its pretty easy to add some lines to ban the spammer completely.

Having just had to delete 180 spam comments from my MINI blog I am setting both that page and this one to moderated comments, at least until I find a good solution to blocking the annoying !%!@*!ers.

Update: I found a list of IPs to deny at the webserver and since then the spamming attack has stopped. Now I don’t know if its because they had gotten bored or if the block list is working. Maybe I can ummoderate comments soon.

The most amazing thing to me about the election is not the size of the Republican party’s win, or even that they won, but that the news media, the oh-so-on-the-pulse political blogs have been totally out of touch with what the American people wanted. For a year, hell even up until late last night, we were told that Kerry, or at least a change, was what the country wanted. I’d like to think that the news networks will re-evaluate their method of making, I mean reporting, the news in future but I am sure that won’t happen.

By the way, 2004 election props to the BBC for the best webpage showing the minute-by-minute election results.

Its here, election day 2004, no more will I have to watch Kerry and lickspittle Edwards promise to give me whatever I want in return for my vote (psst I don’t get a vote). Instead we’ll either be watching them trying to congratulate President Bush (my bet: they will be very poor losers), or watching them dancing in ex-President Bush’s (my bet: he will be a gracious loser) face whilst thinking ‘crap, now we actually need some ideas on what to do’. Either way its all good, as they say in France, plus la change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Btw, I should point out that I am far from being a Republican and disagree with a lot of their policies. However I find Kerry and Edwards most objectionable individuals and would rather see a Republican win than have them rewarded with the Office.