Financial Information Security Savvy

Do you shred your bank statements? With a strip cut shredder? Heavens no! They can piece that back together, and then they'll know that you spent all that money at Radio Shack and Taco Bell and Cashwise Liquor, you fucking loser. Diamond cut shredder, with credit card shredder and pencil sharpener features. Then douse the shreddings in Tabasco sauce and used coffee grounds, then bring the garbage bag out seconds before the garbage truck arrives. Pre-approved credits card offers should be stir fried and coated in beer batter, and buried in the hobo cemetary under the full moon.

Wouldn't it be nice if we did

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched andwonderfully diversified human race. -Jacques Barzun, professor and writer (1907- )

thinking thinking thinking

No, that's not it. I'm definitely not into thinking a bunch. I have a copy of Cosmopolitan at my desk. The Shirtless Guy issue. I'm watching Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. Life is, if not good, adequate. I've been thinking about taking up my Days of our Lives habit again after reading Honey Bunny's post on same. My brain is melting and I love it.

The thing about Cosmo, hmm, there are lots of things about Cosmopolitan. It has its own universe. There's a very informative article about the dangers of drinking games that I may summarize for pedagogical purposes later. There are also many bare-torsoed men; does that require any further elucidation? See, I am getting dumber by the second. I am using dumb words. Dumb in the sense of mute and meaningless! I am going to play some stupid computer game until my eyes bleed! Good day!

not too bad considering it's free

I haven't been online (except to file my taxes) since Tuesday. It was kind of cool to be offline for a bit. Did I miss anything?

My parents have some sort of free dial up that allows them ten hours a month, but it drops constantly. So I had to like, read the newspaper and talk to people.

The tax thing pissed me off. I ended up doing my MN taxes three times because TurboTax wanted me to pay for it when I used the free IRS page link. So I deleted the MN so it would let me file the federal. Fine, whatever, I did the paper form. Then I went to do the MN tax site to find the property tax rebate form. Guess what I found on their main page? If you go through their stupid link it's free online state filing. Same stupid program, just a different stupid link. So for the third time I did the stupid taxes. At least they came out the same each time. And at least it was free.

Who shops online? Anybody? Anybody?

I don't buy a lot online, but when I do, I go through MyPoints.com. That's right folks, MyPoints.com is the fast, easy way to earn points by viewing ads and shopping online through links in their website. You can trade the points for gift certificates to normal places, like chain restaurants (you know you love 'em) and the Gap and Old Navy and Barnes & Noble, just to name my personal favorites. It slices, it dices, it juliennes and does your taxes. E-mail me at somethingdirty at gmail and I'll send you a referral, or you can go straight there.

I don't get any spam from this program but I do get ads. The difference is I've asked to see them and they're actually for stuff I want. Like I might switch ISPs, might even go dial-up, and if I do I'll use PeoplePC. Saw it in a MyPoints ad. If you shop a lot online you could earn a lot of gift certificates, and you can still use other discounts on the site. Just make sure to click on the MyPoints link. Ok, I'm done shilling for now. If you are a bargain hunter, check it out.

Sunday is a good day

-Someone down the hall is baking cookies, it smells nice.
-I am watching Extreme Engineering on the Discovery channel. Some Swedish guys are building an apartment high-rise. Before this I was watching The Blasters, they were blowing up an apartment building in Charlotte. It's the circle of life, people!
-I love reading the Sunday paper. Reading online is not the same.
-I've been reading grouphug every couple of days since Doordolt told me about it. It's only amusing if one presumes 90% of them are fake, otherwise it's depressing as hell.

I am not always

I am not always the type of person who likes other people around me much, they are often the source of various loud noises and they make me want to go away. Today is just a smidgen worse. I might be getting a cold and perhaps my ears are hurting, or maybe, just maybe, everybody needs to shut the hell up. If people can hear your shrill, cawing cackle from across the office, maybe you should tone it down to a dull squeal. But I'm not fooled. I know you are doing it on purpose.

Maybe you don't know that it makes me, specifically me, nauseous and twitchy, but you know this is an unreasonable laugh, and any discerning listener can tell it is not born of joy or merriment but of something darker and more menacing. These are the people who chew, enthusiastically, on stinky food while talking, inches away from one's face.

The worst people in my daily life are just really annoying or a bit toxic, and my strategy is to avoid them or keep my distance if interaction is required. I wonder if I find today's braying more repellant than usual, because the Cubicle Neighbor from Heck isn't around this week, and my defenses are weak from lack of use.

I'll be at my desk, counting toothpicks and writing all the prime numbers up to 1,000,001. (That is prime, yes? I want to do this right. I suppose I could Google it, but that's not really in the spirit of the thing.)

I love my new sweatshirt, and pink the color, pink the person ... things that are awesome!

I'm totally awesome in my Dunder Mifflin hoodie from the fine people at Shirtheadz. Here's what my shirt looks like except my shirt is a blue hoodie, not a blue t-shirt, but the design is the same so you get the general idea. And Dunder Mifflin is not a real company, it is the company that the people on The Office work at, except for Bob Vance who owns Vance Refrigeration, plus there's that girl who sold the purses, and there are various other ancillary characters, like the booze cruise captain.

But there aren't any episodes on til March 2nd because of the dumb Olympics. Not that my world revolves around television, it's just that every two years the Olympics kills my tv watching schedule and it makes me realize how much my world revolves around television and I hate the Olympics for that.

Another disappointed surfer

I was looking at the Bravenet stats as I do every week or so (you can do it too!). The "referrers" section is my personal favorite, sometimes you find gems like this:

Referring URL: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q= COUPLS SEX&FORM=QBRE
It's a search for 'coupls sex'. It's mostly group stuff here, so you wouldn't think...

Jerry was at the bottom of the first page! It was this post and then this one that have the desired search terms. I never noticed I spelled 'couple' as 'coupls'. My bad.

Lookit the baby

She looks a little goofy in this picture. She's not that goofy looking in person.

Babies are amazing. This one is about four weeks old. She lifts her head a bit, smiles, makes all sorts of faces including sticking out her tongue.

Her eyes don't quite focus, so everything must look very cool. When her father blew raspberries on her neck, her tiny arms and legs would shoot out each time, shocked and ticklish.

Her mom said she already watches too much tv, they feel they have to turn off the big screen because she looks so damn enraptured.

The Elements of Spam

Good times. Click on the post title to read the link.

Satan's pedicure

I am disappointed the sparkles in the blue nail polish don't show in the picture. I showed a friend this pic while it was on the camera, she said it just looks like his toes are cyanotic, which I think means blue from lack of oxygen. Hmm.

Anyways, does anybody have a better headline? "man breaks off foot in tv repairman's ass" or something like that

a new twist on those 419 scam e-mails.

We've all gotten the e-mail from some guy who needs to get his money out of his country, usually Nigeria or something, and he needs your help to do it, just give him your bank account number and he'll pay you really well, too. Here's the Wikipedia article on these scams that I just read. Now the English banks are getting into the biz! It's exciting to see, but I could wish the English bank executive wrote with a better command of his mother tongue. Maybe this one has been around for the while, I just felt like reading spam today for some reason.

Here it is, for your reading delectation.

FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION


For Your Kind Attention,
I am a top executive in one of the leading banks in London.

I am writing to seek your cooperation over this business . In my department, I discovered an unclaimed sum of GBP15,500,000 (Fifteen Million, Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds) only, in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire family in a plane crash that took place in Kenya, East Africa. The late Dr. George Brumley, a citizen of Atlanta, United States of America but resident here in London, United Kingdom, until his death was my personal physician. See weblink (redacted).

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his "Next of Kin" to come over and claim his money because it cannot be released unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines but unfortunately, all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him in the plane crash having nobody behind to claim the money.

The banking law and guideline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after four years, the money will be transferred into the Bank Treasury as unclaimed fund. The request for your assistance and maximum co-operation as a foreign citizen to stand as the Next of Kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the deceased customer was a foreigner. Therefore, your utmost confidentiality in this deal is required.

If this interests you, kindly forward your tel, fax and email address to me for the way forward as regards the consumation of this deal.

Await your immediate response.

Sincerely Yours,
Mr. Graham Beale

Creepy Kansas Law // More like a cute overdose

http://www.slate.com/id/2135328/

What is wrong with these people? If your mission is so holy why do you have to be so underhanded? Also, any grown man this obsessed with the sex lives of teenagers needs to be watched closely.

Dahlia Lithwick says it best:

At one level, one almost wishes Kline would prevail in this case, if only to have his offices inundated with tens of thousands of reports that Steve frenched Stacy on the band trip to Topeka.

Also in Slate:

Puppy mules: During a recent DEA raid in Colombia, authorities discovered that a veterinarian had surgically implanted packets of liquid heroin into several puppies, mostly Labrador retrievers. The cartel, which also uses human mules, hid a total of three kilos of heroin in six puppies. After the drugs were removed, three puppies died from infection. Another three have been adopted by the Colombian police.

Monkey-ing around! Hahahahahahahhahah.

I would have typed "LOL" but that would be a lie. Not even "LQTM".
http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/default.aspx?siteid=superbowl06

Make a talking monkey card! And send it to me! Or somebody else.

Last Friday, I got a haircut.

I put my hair, and indeed my fate, in Alyssa's hands. She was very excited by my vague idea of 'shorter, with more layers', and gave me lots of suggestions. She asked me several times "Don't freak out on me, ok? It's a big change, ok?" while she was still cutting away. She nearly hopped with glee. Then she used a lot of different products! Then she scrunched my hair! And dried it with a diffuser! It was all a blur!

Then she let me put on my glasses again. I didn't freak out, I'm proud to say. Going curly made it look even shorter. Then she gave me a card for a discount on color. So... that's next. I want tiger stripes, I think.

The old hair; with JB at Legends.
Somebody got a new haircut! Somebody got a new camera! Not the greatest picture of me, but fresh from the salon. Does anybody know how I can keep my glasses from sliding down my nose like that?
Here's a better picture, the straight/wavy version. Ok, not so much. But it looks cool, huh?
Here's the other picture, a side view.

Here's what bothers me about the Oprah/Frey thing.

Here's what bugs me:
Oprah's people do shitty research. They've been taken in before. And the verisimilitude of Frey's book was questioned back in 2003, in the Star Tribune.

So I finally watched the one where Oprah rakes Frey over the coals. Thank goodness for DVR! It was pretty good. She cares about truth, dammit. Then she had all these staid journalist types on who were close to wetting themselves from the excitement of being on her show. This journalism professor kept trying to get a laugh; it made me sad.

Then I watched another episode of Oprah, this one featuring Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling; that was sadder than the unfunny professor, because of the poor babies and gang members. Then I watched Dr. Phil, an episode about compulsive hoarders. Then I threw a bunch of shit away, because I started to worry that I was compulsively hoarding the shit. So it had to go.

Oprah v. Dr. Phil.
Oprah is mostly awesome, but just a dash evil. The power of Oprah compels you!
Dr. Phil is mostly full of shit, but he has some good ideas. You need to go to his website and check out the upcoming topics. You could be on the TV! That would be awesome. The one I saw last night is gone. Was it all a wonderfull dream? It said, "Do you know a bitch?" Oh, boy! Do I ever!