Saturday, October 21, 2006

Carousel Ride

It's moments like these when I wish I were a kid again. I don't even remember how much fun it truly was to ride a wooden horse on a carousel. By the excited look on my nephew's face it apparently is wonderful. I love seeing things through his eyes, things are usually more fun that way.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Spam Attack

I don't think I've been as annoyed with spam as I am now. My domain has been hacked, I keep getting e-mail messages for non-delivered e-mails that I DO NOT SEND. In addition to that I have a form on my freelance site that has been hijacked. I keep getting fake quote request filled with links for products and other nonsensical garbage. I hate that I will have to spend my weekend either adding more validation on my forms or adding more server-side code to combat this internet spam. I truly feel bad for the recipients of these e-mails that are coming from my domain. The sad part is that I just renewed my domain for another three years, so I really wouldn't want to cancel it. I think I will have to place a call to my hosting provider as well :(

Monday, October 16, 2006

Feelings - woe, woe, woe, feelings

It's funny when you see a person you haven't seen in a very long time the feelings you usually think have past rise again with great strength. You not only remember the reasons for having those initial feelings, but you feel them once more. Two close friends surprised me this Friday when they suddenly showed up from out of town. I think it's been two or three years since I had seen them last. I'm not saying that I forgot about them, I just feel our friendship revived again. It's weird I didn't realize I needed that - the direct contact that is. E-ail and IM is fine, but you can't beat actually hanging out. D&V hope to see you again soon - don't be strangers! (Meow!)

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Never Surprise a Police Officer

Check out this funny clip (well I think it's funny)! See how an attempted surprise party goes terribly bad.

Google Blog Gets Hacked

Everything in Google is not all a bouquet of roses. After news of the purchase of You Tube ran accross all news wires, another news alert went out. Turns out that the Giant can be succomed to hackers. I worry about my many blogs here on blogger.
A hacker broke into Google's main official blog and posted a false message on Saturday, saying that the company had decided to cancel a joint project with eBay.

The intrusion marks the second time this year that Google's official blog has fallen into unauthorized hands. In March, Google staffers deleted the so-called Google Blog by mistake and someone briefly took control of the Web address.
Blog Carries Corporate Messages
In Saturday's incident, someone exploited a bug in Blogger, the Google Web log publishing service on which Google Blog is hosted. The hacker published a note riddled with grammatical and spelling errors that said Google had ended its click-to-call advertising project with eBay because it was 'monopolistic.'
The next day, Karen Wickre, from the Google Blog team, alerted readers about the false posting and said the Blogger bug had been fixed, without detailing the breach. The eBay project remains alive and well, she wrote on the blog. | source: Yahoo! News

Monday, October 09, 2006

Record labels in deals with YouTube, Google

Several media companies announced licensing deals Monday with YouTube Inc., potentially clearing copyright hurdles as Google Inc. (GOOG) reportedly is set to acquire the popular Internet-video site. Under agreements with two record labels and CBS Corp. (CBS), YouTube will track copyrighted material incorporated in its user-created videos and share advertising revenue with the media groups that own the content. Amicable partnerships could help pave the way for the YouTube acquisition, which has been pegged at $1.6 billion and could come as early as Monday afternoon.
...
Napster shuttered its pioneering music-download service amid a barrage of lawsuits from the major record labels. In echoes of the controversy, Universal Music Group had hinted it might sue YouTube for copyright infringement. Instead Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi (12777.FR), and Sony BMG Music Entertainment were part of the deal flurry announced Monday. The companies will make their music-video libraries available on YouTube and share ad revenue for user-generated content that use their music. Google's video-sharing site reached similar arrangements with Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. (SNE) and German media giant Bertelsmann AG, and Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG), which recently signed a licensing deal with YouTube. | source: Marketwatch

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Oh Yeah, There Is The Dial-up Option!

I have been using broadband internet for such a long time now that I forgot that I could connect online via dialup. These past days I have not had access to anything online. I don't recall if I checked on Friday night but Saturday morning my connection was not there. I figured my brother-in-law must have moved a cable again from the main router upstairs. I was busy all day preparing my sister's baby shower and didn't have time to check any settings or see if the connection came back. Saturday night after all the guest had left and everything was clean I opened up my browser only to receive that familiar error message of page cannot be found. It was too late to bother so I went to sleep. Today Sunday I tried a couple of times and finally went upstairs to check things out.

Everything seems to be in place all lights are flickering properly. The computers recognize that there is a signal but for some odd reason connection itself is not happening. There must be something wrong with Comcast or the router itself. After feeling defeated and just killing time with a good old fashion game of solitaire I remembered my trusty AOL. I have never been so happy to have dial-up :)

Everything is obviously slower but it's true - something is better than nothing. Too bad I realized it on Sunday night instead of Friday night.