Daniel Say – December 25, 2009
Whoever has the most presents, wins God’s birthday.
~ Daniel
Daniel Says are the thoughts expressed by Daniel Degutis. All rights reserved. Copyright 2009
Threatening Spam
A coworker received his disturbing spam email the day before Thanksgiving.
________________________________________
From: w5wade@eastlink.ca [w5wade@eastlink.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 6:11 AM
Subject: Keep very secretxxxThis is Scot, head MZP Squad. I wish to let you know that i have been paid by a client to assasinate you at convenience. I have never met you before, but they gave me the full description of your identity
The reason why they want you dead was never not disclosed to me. My guys are now contantly watching you waiting for my
instruction to terminate you at convenience.THIS IS MY MESSAGE:
Listen very well, the Police cannot do much to help you out in this right now because you are being watched,any such attempt is very risky and can push us to terminate your life without any other option.We DON NOT want any trace whatsoever. So, you are advise to send your reply within 48hrs to: johnsonp46163@msn.com
WARNING: Like you have been told, any attempted attempt to involve third party will be too bad
Bye for now
Obviously, she was disturbed by the message. Who wouldn’t be. As best as I can tell, the goal of the message is to solicit an email response to verify that your email address is valid and then the flood gates (of spam) are open. If you receive this email, or something similar, just delete it.
Al
Nintendo Wii Price Drop
Nintendo has dropped the price of the Wii by $50 to $199.99. We’ve enjoyed playing various games on the Wii. There are games for everyone in the family, from the preschoolers to the grandparents. One of my favorite games to play is the Soccer Practice which comes with the Wii Fit Balance Board (sold separately). I do poorly because I crack up when I get hit in the head with a soccer shoe.
The Nintendo Wii is for the causal gamers, which makes it perfect for family game night.
Celebrating our 11th anniversary – Part 2
For our formal anniversary dinner, we took a train ride. Not on any old train, but on an old electric train. We didn’t take the train to get to our dinner destination; dinner was on the train. The train departed from the East Troy Electric Railway and Train Museum in East Troy, Wisconsin which features award-winning dinner train service on the railroad’s Art Deco diner twins, Ravenswood and Beverly Shores. We dined on the Beverly Shores (#24), which was built in 1927, rebuilt in the 1940’s and restored in 1995.
The train ride was two hours long and stopped at Phantom Lake, where we caught the sunset, before it returned to the train museum.
Photos below (or go to www.degutis.com/blog)
Celebrating our 11th anniversary – Part 1
We celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary on September 13, 2009. Since we had plans to go out for a formal anniversary dinner on Saturday the 19th, we decided to do something we haven’t done in 7 years or more. We went canoeing.
While on the Kishwaukee River (“The Kish”) it dawned on me that canoeing on our anniversary was apropos.
Canoeing, like a marriage, takes teamwork. One person can do all the paddling, but that wears a person down quickly. Sharing the work not only eases the burden, but can also speed things along.
Canoeing also requires a coordinated effort. If both people paddle on the same side of the canoe, it will veer to the other side. Getting to the destination requires teamwork.
Here are some photos from our canoe trip. Unfortunately, not pictured is the eagle that flew overhead.
Snow Leopard – a service pack that needs an update already
I purchased and installed the Mac OS X Snow Leopard update. I knew it wasn’t going to bring a lot of new features but the reviews touted modest performance gains and a few UI gems.
I installed it as a fresh install, not an upgrade, on my 18 month old Macbook Pro with 4 GB of memory. After using it for three days, I have to say I’m disappointed and think it should have been a free upgrade. I’m glad it only cost $30.
Online reviews and comments claim a noticeable increase in performance. I’m wondering if this is the infamous Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field in affect. Here’s are my experiences so far:
- I’ve seen more spinning beach balls (i.e. waiting for the app or OS) in the last 3 days than I have in the last 3 months, especially with Safari 4. Firefox 3.5 has been running fine, without a visit by the spinning beach ball.
- iMovie is also slow. Trying to edit video clips is painful because it pauses for 2-3 seconds.
- Mail.app crashed for the first time in a year, if not longer. I’ve had it lock up occasionally under Leopard, but it only took 1 day for it to crash with an error message in Snow Leopard. This may have to do with the Microsoft Exchange email that I added today, which is a new feature so I can understand this one.
I’m anxiously awaiting the 10.6.1 update. I will not be installing Snow Leopard on my iMac until 10.6.1 comes out and proves itself worthy on my Macbook Pro… unless I revert back to Leopard that is.
~ Posted by Al
