Late this afternoon while snoozing on the couch, I received a phone call from a lady asking if I purchased an HP notebook computer this morning. I told her I didn’t and she asked if I had a Visa ending in ‘####’ to which I confirmed. She then advised me to call up the credit card company to cancel my card and even provided me their number. The only problem was the number she gave me didn’t match the number on the back of my card. I called my credit card company using the # on the back of my card and reported this incident to them and sure enough, there was a charge made for a $1300 notebook from hpshopping.com made at 12:30 PM. First off, I was asleep when this transaction occurred. Second, I have a fully loaded dell 700m which I couldn’t be happier with, and third, it was on a credit card I use infrequently and strictly use for Amazon purchases. Now I’m thinking about who the lady was that called me. I’m a pretty active online shopper and purchasing an abundance of computer hardware is not out of the norm for me so what was it about that particular transaction that prompted an inquiry over the phone. I have a couple theories.
1) The lady works for HPShopping.com and something about the transaction raised some flags over the veracity of the charge, maybe the shipping address not matching up with the billing. Hence, the phone inquiry.
2) The lady is in on the scam. She provides me a fake cust serv # so I would call up a fake cust serv department and provide them even more details about myself when they ask, as most CC companies do, for my mother’s maiden name, SS#, DOB, etc. This would take their identity theft to another level — creating CC#s under my name with a bogus billing address / phone # that I would have a hard time finding out about.
Feb
27
The inability to distinguish one person from another of the same race — I personally never had a problem with it and it wasn’t something I noticed much of until college but apparently most white people suffer from this affliction. My guess for why I didn’t encounter this before college is probably because there weren’t a lot of asians where I grew up. I was usually the only asian kid in the class. In college though, majoring in the sciences and engineering, at least a fourth of the class would be asian. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been mistaken for some other asian dude. It didn’t matter how fat/skinny/tall/short/ugly the guy was as long as he was asian.
Here’s a social experiment to try: spot the ugliest coworker/classmate and then the cutest one. “Accidentally” swap their names for a day and gauge the reaction.
Feb
23
If not for his two interceptions, he probably would’ve been co-MVP with Hines Ward last night. This guy never ceases to amaze me. I remember watching him a couple years ago on TV when cameras followed him during the NFL draft and I felt bad for him cause he got drafted much lower than his agent and a lot of other people had projected. In the end though, it worked out great for him and the Steelers. Congratulations to them for a well deserved victory.
On a side note, if for whatever reason football doesn’t work out for Ben, he could always work as a double for the Burger King guy. Uncanny resemblance really.
Feb
6
Are you someone who downloads torrents a lot? If you are, then you definitely need to get the Hawking Broadband Booster (HBB1).
Here’s why. Most cable ISPs will restrict your upload bandwidth to around 384Kbps (48 KB/s) and if you’re using DSL, it’s usually worse (~20KB/s). While this amount of bandwidth is fine for browsing websites, when you start using torrents, you’re uploading while you’re downloading which typically results in saturating your upstream. When you make an HTTP GET to view a site, that packet has to wait in line, so to speak, in order to go out to the internet. What the HBB1 does is it acts like a carpool / HOV lane, allowing packets from realtime applications priority over data traffic like FTP/torrents so you don’t experience high latency with online gaming (xbox live) and voice over ip (vonage).
Feb
4
- Read/Write Email (Versamail)
- Browse the Web (Blazer)
- Remote Desktop to my Desktop (mobileTS and PalmVNC)
- SSH to servers at work (pssh or TuSSH)
- IPSec VPN to work (Movian VPN)
- AOL Instant Messager (Causerie or Verichat)
- Listen to Music (PocketTunes)
- Watch TV (MobiTV)
- Take Pictures
- Record videos
- Take Notes
- Save Credit Card #s, Passwords (SplashID)
- To Do lists
- Calendar/Appointments
- Read ebooks
- Dictionary
- Watch Movies (TCPMP)
- Chat on IRC (upIRC)
- Use as a modem for my laptop (Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking)
- Make phone calls
Feb
4
