Connectivity restored

It started sometime before 6am on MLK Day, 21 Jan. My internet connection went down. I called Time Warner tech support who could only tell me useful things like they weren’t able to see my modem on the network. Duh. He advised me to go to the office and switch out my modem. I did that. Got home. No workie. I called tech support again.  She asked me to check the cable to see if it was connected to the wall. Then I had her schedule a visit from a tech. So the next morning the tech came over and determined that the problem was at the junction pedestal which is in the back yard of the neighbor behind me. The other problem is they have dogs. So he did something to boost the signal but said that it was a temporary fix. He left a note on the door of the neighbor asking them to call so he could get in and fix the line. They never called. the connectivity came back for the most part. There were a few times when it would go down but I was busy and just tried to tolerate it. That is until yesterday. I came home Friday at 2am to find the connection down. I restarted the modem and after about an hour of blinking it connected again. Then later in the day Friday I decided to hook up a wireless router I bought. To do that I had to shut down the modem and it never found the signal when I turned it back on. So at 2am this morning I called tech support and asked them to send someone. They scheduled it on standby. So this afternoon I went by the neighbor’s house behind me and asked them to do me a favor and bring the dog in. The message I got from her was that if they were there when the tech showed they’d keep the dog tied up but if not they wouldn’t make any exceptions (tying up the dog when they were away, etc). I figure oh well I’ve been shit out of luck before. Fortunately the tech showed up and found that their fucking dog had chewed through the cable insulation and jerked on it to the point that he broke the coax connector. He fixed that and buried the end beside the junction pedestal. So after going through the router setup again we now have wireless internet. What I didn’t tell the tech was that he should have sprinkled wolf piss around the pedestal to scare off the mutt.

$15,000? Man I feel cheap!

Hello,

I am very sorry for you , is a pity that this is how your life is going
to end as soon as you don’t comply. As you can see there is no need of
introducing myself to you because I don’t have any business with you,
my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL you and I have to do it
as I have already been paid for that.

Someone you call a friend wants you Dead by all means, and this person
have spent a lot of money in this venture,This person came to us and
told me that he wanted you dead and he provided us with your name
,picture and other necessary information’s we needed about you. So I
sent my boys to track you down and they have carried out the necessary
investigation needed for the operation on you, and they have done that
but I told them not to kill you that I will like to contact you and see
if your life is important to you.I called my client back and ask him of
your email address which I didn’t tell him what I wanted to do with it
and he gave it to me and I am using it to contact you now.

Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE?Since all program ahs be made and draw to
kill you. Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare
your life, $15,000 is all you need to spend in this process you will first
of all pay $8,000 then i will send a tape to you which i recorded every
discusion i had with the person who wanted you dead and as soon as you get
the tape, you will pay the remaining balance of $7,000. If you are not
ready for my help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up.

WARNING: DO NOT THINK OF CONTACTING THE POLICE OR EVEN TELLING ANYONE
BECAUSE I WILL KNOW,REMEMBER, SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU VERY WELL WANT YOU
DEAD! I WILL EXTEND IT TO YOUR FAMILY, INCASE I NOTICE SOMETHING FUNNY
ABOUT YOUR TELLING THE SECURITY ABOUT IT BECAUSE A GOOD LOOK IS OUT YOU
AT MOMENT.

DO NOT COME OUT ONCE IT IS 7:PM UNTIL I MAKE OUT TIME TO SEE YOU AND
GIVE YOU THE TAPE OF ALL DISCUSSION WITH THE PERSON WHO WANT YOU DEAD
THEN YOU CAN USE IT TO TAKE ANY LEGAL ACTION. GOOD LUCK AS I AWAIT YOUR
REPLY.

I just find it disappointing that I may die at the hands of someone who uses such incredibly bad grammar. This is a known scam. In fact I found the exact letter in the comments on a blog post about this issue at whats.all.this.brouhaha.com The amounts vary in some of the emails. If I get anything with specific personal details I will be forwarding it to the authorities. Otherwise piss off.

Late night tinkering

I need to figure out a way to mirror this site. I just had two people unable to reach it while I was able to load the page and publish a test post. I’ll talk with some people who have done mirroring. I am communicating with tech support at my host to try an figure out why this is happening. I am glad I am able to reach the host but the url needs to be accessible from all over.  I have also been having a problem with the .htaccess file on the server. It seems to be a problem that a number of WordPress users have encountered. I looked up the error on the forum and found the fix. They mentioned needing to reboot the Apache Server but I don’t think that is a problem. It is allowing me to make changes to the options file and that is what I was needing. I hope the WP team ads this to their todo list for 2.5. I am going to get a few hours sleep and deal with some other issues around Noon.

Buying Books Online

I tend to have a much more productive time buying books online. Whenever I go to the bookstore I end up spending a lot more time than I should there and I usually buy several extra books. With online bookstores I use wishlists. I’ll go there to look for something, purchase that and something off my wishlist. I am able to save time and money that way.

IZEARanks dot com: Traffic Statistics

What is our goal here? Anyone taking the time to set up a blog and write wants as many people coming to read his or her work as often and for as long as possible. If you’re writing and you don’t want anyone to see it, get a paper journal or some journaling software. Well in these endeavors to improve our writing and our readership, we like to know where we stand. For a while now we’ve had Alexa and Google Pagerank and now there is a 3rd service that ranks blogs by traffic and influence. IZEA has developed IZEARanks dot com to allow you to see Blog Ranks weighted by more than incoming links. They have an attractive charting system where you can compare several blogs to see how their rank has changed within the last week as well as the previous month, three months, six months and year.  If you and a friend are having a blog contest you can watch your states on the IZEARanks site daily and then have the loser spring for pizza at the end. Advertisers can use the rankings to decide on hiring a particular blogger to create buzz for them. I have quite a bit of work to do this year to get my work on more screens. I think this is a really useful tool.

Buzzfuse: Creative Content Marketing

In reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyoski I learned a number of techniques for creating wealth. To do that I have to make use of assets and one of the things Mr. Kiyosaki mentioned was intellectual property. For the last three months I have been working diligently to get my work (blogs, photography, other writings) in front of more and more people. I joined Buzzfuse to extend that endeavor. People create the content, link it to Buzzfuse, and Buzzfuse puts you in contact with others in their network. The beauty of it is there is no approval process to go through getting your work on Buzzfuse. If you have multiple blogs, content from them can be linked through Buzzfuse. I’ll be signing up for the premium account soon. I want to start by lining up some items I want to create a buzz about.

Domain Registration in Australia

Any domain registration company should offer an integrated set of services, not simply selling you domains. I expect to see an explanation of the various domains and who can or a cannot register for a particular one. You should be able to renew your existing domain and transfer from another registrar. Payless Domains is Australia based and offers 24 hour customer service, web hosting packages, e-commerce packages and has everything you need for domain registration so you can get started putting your site together. Parking a domain until you are ready to point to it is free as well. They’ve also got some tips on choosing a domain name, and a secure WhoIs Lookup with detailed instructions so you can check on the availability of the name you have in mind. There is a detailed help page which includes frequently asked questions. Payless Domains offers competitive pricing and welcomes bulk registering of domains. If you’re interested in registering a domain in Australia, have a look at their website.

Contact Information Removed

I went in and switched the contact information in the website for the property I used to manage. I found out that it hadn’t been updated by the owner and I haven’t been the manager for nine months. I had closed out the PayPal account two months ago. And I had canceled the phone number at the end of April. But the email was still active and someone sent me something from there. So now they’ll have to call the new management company.

It felt good.

easy-poll.com: website polls and counters

easy-poll dot com is just like the name says. It is a simple way to create a poll for your blog or website. See the results immediately. No waiting for an email. You can create yes/no and multiple choice polls. All website add-ons produced through easy-poll dot com have no banners or ads. If you are looking to increase your site’s functionality you can add a free counter through easy-poll.com. The data each counter can produce include info on each user, url, OS, browser. There are several styles to choose from. Check them out at easy-poll.com/counters

webhostingchoice.com

You see ads for web hosting ALL. THE. TIME. If you printed the different ones out over six months time it would probably take up an entire ream of paper. And once you did that you’d have to lay them all out and sort them by type and by offers and after a few hours or days or weeks you might be able to come to a decision. Or you could be impulsive and just grab the first thing that looks halfway decent. Or you could find a guide online for web hosting choice and do a few searches to compare hosting plans and make a decision that was easier and less time consuming than the six month kill a tree method and better for your site and bank account than just going with the first thing in through the cat door. If you’re setting up your first hosting account you will want to go through the Learning Center on WebHostingChoice and learn how to distinguish a good hosting plan from one you probably should avoid. You can do a quick search or use their advanced search to get more specific. They explain the scams that are out there and caution you to watch for terms like “Cheap”, and “Unlimited.” It is a site you’ll want to refer to and recommend to others. Check them out at http://www.webhostingchoice.com