Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Ring... ring... ring... ring...

Mrs. Dr. Phil is working on our Day-After-Thanksgiving-Movie-Day holiday dinner. Slow-Moving-Boy has to stand up from the rolltop desk, gather one, two canes, and slowly maneuver across the room, stop, set both canes in one hand and pick up the phone, which has already gone to the outgoing answering machine message. Colliding with An Important Message which is SO Important that not only is there no human being involved, it is too impatient to wait for the beep, colliding with the outgoing message. Brilliant.

"...mail provider..."

I think the recording was talking about e-mail provider. And amazingly, the recorded female voice sounded a lot like the spam recording from "Card Services" announcing a problem with our credit card.

We get that one a lot.

No doubt the message was along the lines that there was a problem with my e-mail provider -- or that my mailbox was full and some other provider was unable to send me an important message. Sure. Right. What info do you need to confirm it's me that YOU'RE CALLING? Name? Address? Phone number? The credit card for the billing department for sure.

Right.

First of all, our emails are all through Gmail (free), GVSU/WMU (free) and my website. Second, no one would use a spam recording to let you know of a problem. And if it's a sales call? Any way you look at it, we don't do anything by phone.

Period.

I hung up and returned to writing. I'm sure that the phone line was tied up for another minute or two, no matter what I did on my end. Fine, the spam machine can talk to the aether and let's see if I care.

Nope.

Don't care about them.

Not. One. Twit.

Merry Black Thanks Friday Giving Mas.

Dr. Phil

Today's Login Message...

Actually, I don't get login messages when I log into my LJ account. Except today:

Sign up for a FREE two-week trial of a LiveJournal Paid Account and you'll enjoy an ad-free environment, 30 userpics, hundreds of premium journal styles, LiveJournal Stats, Google Analytics, and more! Click here to learn more!

The reason I don't get login messages and ads is that I have a LiveJournal Permanent Account, which is sort of an Über Paid Account. In other words, I am supposed to have an ad-free environment and over 200 userpics, etc.

Yes, yes, I know that it's probably like junk mail -- it costs too much to include a search term in the ad spam broadcast to check. But really, don't offend your Paid and Permanent Accounts. (evil grin)

Sorry this isn't anything more interesting or amusing. On the other hand, after working really, really hard at a furious pace, I may survive the month of March in one piece. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Don't Take My Chevy Away

NPR reported on Thursday that GM had sent a memo out that henceforth employees not only should not use the name "Chevy" for "Chevrolet", but that offices should fine the employees a quarter (US25¢) every time they say "Chevy". General Motors, are you nuts?

There was a clarification update from GM that this only applies to GM employees, not civilians, but that's hardly the point. This has got to be another example of Middle Management Run Amuck, as someone or someones in the organization tries to justify their existence and idiots above them somehow think that This Should Be A Good Idea.

IDIOTS! Don't they realize that having a well establish nickname, one that you've used for YEARS in your own damn advertising (Chevy Tough / Chevy Trucks / etc.), is marketing gold? Other companies would kill for having a good nickname. VW and VW Bug -- gold. Toyota = Toy car? Yugo = You Go Nowhere? Not so much.

I grew up in a GM owning family. I don't really remember the 1956 car, but we had Chevy cars forever: 1960 Bel-Air, 1964 / 1968 / 1972 Malibu Chevelle. We didn't get a new Chevy in 1976 because my folks were starting to pay for Northwestern, but they bought one of the first Cavaliers and have had Chevy Cavaliers ever since. My first vehicle was a 1979 Chevy Suburban, followed by a used 1982 Cavalier wagon when we started needing two vehicles, a new 1989 Chevy S-10 Blazer (2WD), then used 1985 / 1994 / 1996 Chevy S-10 Blazers (4WD). Indeed, our first non-Chevy was the used 1999 Olds Bravada -- and not only was it a GM product, but hell, GM threw away the Oldsmobile label which had its own successful nickname, Olds.

It's all about branding. Sure. But a killer nickname? You can't buy good will like that. And to try to ruin it by banning it in the corporatespeak? GM, you're being idiots. And the publicity you're going to get out of it? Not one bit of it will be about professionalism or competence. Period.

Don't Bother Calling Back

One problem of being home during Sabbatical 1.21 is that I get the joy of receiving more stupid phone calls.

Ring-Ring

ME: Hello?

IDIOT: Is this Phil?

ME: Who's calling?

IDIOT: (long pause) This-is-(garbled)-from-the-Police-Benevolent-Society-returning-your-call...

ME: We don't do anything over the phone. (click)

I suppose that telephone spammers and scammers give themselves high fives whenever they come up with or steal a great new idea to con people into actually talking with them. "Returning your call"? Yeah, right. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like cold calling people, so it is HIGHLY unlikely that I'd be calling anyone, including a charitable organization, when I can contact them online or by mail. And I hate giving out contact information, so the very likelihood that you would be returning my call, which presupposes that I made a call first, is pretty much close to zero point zero. We. Don't. Do. Any. Crap. Over. The. Phone.

Pth-hhhhbt! It pisses me off that the politicians included exemptions for (a) charities and (b) THEMSELVES when they put together the Do Not Call List legislation. No points for creativity and ESPECIALLY no points for launching into a rapid fire mutterance which doesn't properly identify you, your organization (WHICH Police Benevolent Society? There are so many jurisdictions here, even assuming you aren't just a scummy scammer.) and trying to slip that little lie in about returning my call.

From Russia, With Love

While I'm bitching about phone spam, I should note that after several months of freedom after LiveJournal beefed up things on their end a bit, I've had several attempts to spam this LJ in the last week. Two were Anonymous and one had an LJ userid -- all were in Cyrillic and all could be translated from Russian to English by Google. What really pisses me off are the ones which try to add spam comments to my LJ postings with my stories in them.

It was because of these bastards I had to implement screening Anonymous comments the other year, though I still allow them. And sometimes you'll see some comment spam from someone with an LJ userid before I find out about it. My apologies for their bad behavior.

A Respite

Finally, just to take away the bad taste from above, jimhines posted this link about:

...this functional LEGO sniper rifle, built by Jack Streat. I’d probably want to double the rubber bands to get better range, but still — this thing has a working clip, tripod, and scope, and appears to be pretty darn accurate for a LEGO rifle.

I was amused to see that when loading the LEGO "bullets" into the magazine, you alternate which way they go so that the nubs don't lock together like LEGOs. (grin) Is there anything you CAN'T build with LEGOs?

Dr. Phil

Sigh

I guess I let it go too long again. Back on 24 October 2009 I wrote about shoveling through 72 pages of spam on my WMU mail account. That was two weeks ago.

So today I checked the Pure Spam trap and found... 67 pages of spam. And again, I really have to wade through them all to make sure I don't miss something important.

Oops

Oh crap I just marked twenty messages and hit the wrong button. The DELIVER MESSAGES button comes first -- and the DELETE MESSAGES comes second. Who the hell came up with this system? In a spam control system, your first choice is to send the messages on? In what alternate universe do these programmers live? And while I'm pissed, what's up with not having an UNDO or CANCEL button?

Second, while they have a button to look over the list of messages you just deleted, there isn't one for the delivery queue. And the 20 messages I have to go and delete in my mail account aren't there yet. They're just waiting for me to finish the session and I log out, I imagine. So rather than deal with my mistake and their bad programming now, I have to remember doing it later. Good, clever, wonderful. Will somebody get a clue-by-four and beat the crap out of the Pure Spam programmers for me?

Dammit

What's the point of having an unhelpful, unuseful and unreasonable spam screening system -- lately a WHOLE lot of spam has been reaching my WMU account, so despite 67 pages of spam, it should've been 72+ pages.

Spammers? Bastards.

Pure Spam? Epic Fail Bastards.

It all sucks, dammit.

Dr. Phil

Physics Spam

From American Physical Society <aps@aps.org>
Sent Wednesday, May 13, 2009 6:35 am
Subject Giant Revolution in the Physics Science
Attachments NewsLetter.htm 7K

(If you see this message in text mode, then please view our attached NewsLetter.htm file!)

AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY

Sent by Philip Maurone, Villanova University; Bryan Penprase, Pomona College; Alan Dorsey, University of Florida; Matthew Moelter, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo; Adella Ahmidouch, North Carolina A&T State University; Harry Tom, University of California, Riverside, Bob Cahn, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab; Nick Hadley, University of Maryland; Sarah Eno, University of Maryland; Chip Brock, Michigan State University, in agreement with last year's Nobel Laureate men: Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa.

Not necessaries more experiments, theories and models about the particle and atomic world, because now exists the very simple and real physics of these!

This is an exceptional and private notice from ten members of APS to all physicists in the world. Six months ago we heard about the paper of Prof. Gabor Fekete, who is a hungarian physicist. We were thoughtfully that the theories and models of the particle and atomic physics every were till now incorrects. The professor reinterprets the total known experimental results and uses solely the mathematical apparatus of dynamics and electrodynamics. With these he got back with eight numeral exactitude the values about every till now known experimental results. We state positively that her paper is the giant revolution of the physics science. We wish with this mail to suggest Prof. Gabor Fekete for Nobel Prize.

Because we know very well that this news not will be welcomed by everybody (we for this reason selected this way to your notice), therefore if you also think to nominate for Nobel Prize the author of the paper, then you are requested to exert pressure on The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, so that you do send an email to Prof. Ingmar Bergström and/or Prof. Per Carlson

The their other availablities:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Box 50005, SE-104 05 Stockholm, SWEDEN

Phone: +46 8 673 95 00, Fax: +46 8 15 56 70

Please, forward this email with the original subject to your journalist and other acquaintances too! Thanks.

The article: THE REAL PARTICLE AND ATOMIC PHYSICS - INSTEAD OF THEORIES - WITH REINTERPRETATION OF THE KNOWN EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND CONFIRMED BY THE LAWS OF THE CLASSICAL PHYSICS. www.physics1.tar.hu

We sent our notice to 70775 members of 6095 research labs, institutes, faculties and departments of physics, astronomy, mathematics and chemistry in 103 countries and merely in the United States 1015 universities and colleges.

Huh?

This just seems hinky to me. No one spams 70,000+ physicists and expects no consequences. And given the large roster of "supporters", the English is atrocious. Most non-native English speaking Physicists I know would never spam a message this bad to the world -- most speak decent English and can write better English anyway!

I emailed one of the names on the list of people. Yeah, it's not from them. They are aware of it. The first spam messages said it was from APS, but had a yahoo e-mail return address in this guy's name. Needless to say, this ain't legitimate.

What the hell is going on?

Dr. Phil