Archive for August 2007
Amateur Scammer/Spammer
I have received this phishing scam twice today. (For the safety of my readers, I’ve removed all hyperlinks and other possible malicious stuff.)
This is Jenny T. from the Refund Operations Department at Internal Revenue Service
(United States Department of the Treasury).
After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you
are eligible to receive a tax refund of $49.22.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 1-2 days in order to process it.
A refund can be delayed for a variety of reason. For exemple (invalid records or
applying after the deadline).
The good news is that Internal Revenue Service will make this refund directly to your
visa and/or mastercard linked
to your checking/savings account instead a check or a direct deposit.
To access the form for your tax refund, please continue to our secure server
form at: https://sa1.www4.irs.gov/irfof/lang/en/irfofgetrefund.jsp
Important: Do not use credit and/or american express or discover cards. Only cards that
are linked to your checking/savings account are accepted.
Regards,
Jenny T.
Internal Revenue Service – Tax Refund Specialist
Seems like a pretty ordinary phishing scam to me – bad grammar, poor spelling, sender masquerading as a trusted party, e-mail address that looks nothing like it comes from the IRS, no phone number - except for one thing. Why $49.22? And why checking accounts only? Do they think someone who is so excited to get a refund of less than 50 clams that they will fall for a phishing scam will have enough money in their checking account to make it worth stealing?
1 comment August 30, 2007
Today’s Dubious Health Claim
On the bag my Wendy’s salad came in:
Wendy’s salad dressings contain 0g Trans Fat.
Well, duh! Of course there are no trans fats in salad dressing. Trans fats are used to make liquid vegetable oils solid. Anybody ever heard of a solid salad dressing?
That’s kind of like saying, “Now with low-fat lettuce!”
1 comment August 28, 2007
Best Cat Toy Ever
http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2007/08/good-times.html
It’s fun to see if you can keep track of all the kittens – I swear there were times when I thought there were more than four!
Add comment August 27, 2007
Thumbs Down: UPS
Today I went to UPS.com to track a package that is overdue by a couple of days. It turns out that someone at my office building refused to sign for the package. I have no idea who, or why.
I called UPS, and they have no idea who it was, either.
I asked them why it is that they make me sign to accept a package, but they don’t make people sign to refuse a package. I mean, this package was from drugstore.com. It could’ve been a lifesaving medication (it wasn’t) or an item that is sensitive to heat (it was), and they just let some random unnamed person refuse it? I can ask for drugstore.com to ship it again, but what if it goes to the same unnamed person? I have no way of informing them that I am expecting it and would like to sign for it myself if they do not wish to sign for it.
And why, for heaven’s sake, do they not require the shipper to put the recipient’s phone number on the package? One phone call to me was all it would’ve taken to prevent this.
I find that UPS is good, even great, at delivering packages when everything goes right, but they really suck when even the tiniest little thing goes wrong.
Two summers ago, I was in Santa Fe for a week and had several bottles of wine shipped home from a local winery. I inadvertently gave the winery the wrong ZIP code, and somehow my package ended up being delivered somewhere else. This is completely ridiculous, because UPS has access to the US ZIP code databases. I know this, because if you put in a wrong ZIP code on their web site, they will offer you the correct one. So why they couldn’t have checked the ZIP code is beyond me. Or perhaps they could’ve contacted the shipper, who might possibly have known how to get hold of me. No, they just ended up delivering the package to some town that wasn’t even in the bad ZIP code. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the package was marked ”signature required,” their tracking database indicated that the package had been left by the garage.
Which for all I knew was in the sun. In July.
I kicked and screamed and shouted and pleaded for at least a week until I got UPS to send a driver back out there to retrieve my package. I fretted for a couple of days – what if the resident of that house had opened the package and was enjoying my wine? – but eventually the package arrived. At least one of the bottles was corked, though.
I still don’t hate UPS as much as I do the Postal Service, though. But that’s faint praise, isn’t it?
3 comments August 24, 2007
If We Could Harness This Power for World Peace
http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2007/08/take-this.html
I can’t stop watching this, and I can’t stop laughing! All the times the Red-Haired Boy and I have wondered if there’s a commercial use for cat barf, and here we learn that it’s not about the benjamins – cat barf has the higher purpose of uniting enemies in a common cause.
1 comment August 13, 2007
Thumbs Down: RCN (Part 2)
This column in the Somerville Journal was written by my former landlady. Yep, the switching department (click! it’s on; click! it’s off – real complex stuff here) managed to screw up the disconnection of our cable once again.
http://www.townonline.com/somerville/columnists/x1802019420
The Somerville Journal has much higher circulation than this blog, so I hope this will come to RCN’s attention.
Add comment August 10, 2007
Our New House!
The move went pretty smoothly, though it was extremely hot and humid for the week before and much of the week after, which made packing, moving, and unpacking rather unpleasant.
At 9:30 last Monday we took our final walkthrough of the house. The sellers, Scott and Maureen, had left everything spotless, which was gratifying. At 11:00 am, we closed; at 12:30, the movers called to ask if they could come at 1:15 instead of 2:00; at 12:45 I was shoving a pair of protesting cats into kitty carriers and driving them over to the new place in the rented Ford Exhibitionist.
The movers came, loaded, and stored our stuff overnight. Then the Red-Haired Boy and I loaded up a futon mattress (and three or four loads of other random stuff that we didn’t want the movers to take) into the Ford Escalate. We spent the night in the dining room, since the living room didn’t have blinds yet, and got up to wait for the movers to bring the rest of our stuff.
Three or four more trips with the Ford Excess, and all our worldly possessions were in the new place.
Lots of family and friends have asked for photos, so I’m happy to oblige. More forthcoming, as we dig out from under boxes, boxes, and more boxes.
Here is what the kitchen and dining room looked like when Scott and Maureen lived there:
And here’s what the kitchen looks like now, complete with Red-Haired Boy:
This giant mountain of packing paper accumulated as we looked for the Champagne glasses (so we could celebrate, of course):
The paper is gone now; it went into the recycling before my business trip.
Still haven’t found the Champagne glasses, so we bought some cheap ones at Home Goods instead. The Champagne was a bottle we picked up on our Paris vacation in March; we couldn’t think of a better use than celebrating our first house.
And here’s the deck (taken when Scott and Maureen lived here, but it doesn’t look much different now, except we have a lot of junk out there now).
1 comment August 9, 2007
