I am sure, like me, you think of yourself as “smarter than average”. You would never fall for a phishing scam or give your bank account number to Nigerian royalty. But the fact is, everyone has their weakness, and someone has found a way to exploit you. Perhaps you’ve been called and told you’ve won a prize and that got you excited. Or maybe you were told about a club discount you could receive, but only by paying huge membership fees. Maybe you’ve fallen for a few of these things. You might still be smarter than average, but even above average people have below average moments.

Mine came in the form of a banner ad. I was told I could buy a Macbook for under $100. I clicked it only because I wanted to know what the scam was this time. The scam was an auction site. I should have clicked ‘back’ right away, but I kept reading. I saw usernames of people who seemed real (and probably are real) winning auctions for big-ticket items like laptops and flat-screen TVs for only a tenth of the retail price.

And that was my weak spot. The idea that this site buys so much stock that they can sell for low prices somehow made sense to the little person inside me who wanted a 50” LCD TV for $150 bucks. The longer I was on the site, the more I felt like I had stumbled upon a gold mine. How did I not know about this place before?

That’s the moment the warning bells should go off. If someone makes you an offer that you can’t wait to tell your friends about, then you are being scammed. As the adage goes, if it seems too good to be true, it is.

I got myself a username and thought it was time to start winning some TV’s and laptops. This was going to be the best Christmas ever. I tried to register a bid, when I was hit by the catch: you had to pay to bid.

Pay to bid? Seemed a little strange. But, hey, each bid was only like 10 cents, so what’s the harm? I’ll pay for a few bids, snipe one of these auctions right before it ends, and I will bringing home some luxury items. So I payed for some bids and began. “Yeah, $60 worth of bids… that’s like 6,000 bids, that’s going to last me a lifetime on this site”.

I started bidding on a Macbook. The bidding started at $0.02. I threw my bid down. Now it was at $0.04 with 20 hours to go. 20 hour until I win my $100 laptop with free shipping!

But why wait 20 hours? Why not go snipe an auction that’s almost ending? There was a TV auction ending in 30 seconds. I entered the room. 3. 2. 1. BID! Yes, I am the high bidder. I WON! Oh wait, the auction has 30 more seconds, how did that happen? Did I read that time wrong? Nope… now the auction has 2 minutes, now 5, now 20. What is going on?

Well, every time you bid, it adds 10 seconds to the auction. In order to win, you need to be the high bidder and stay the high bidder for 10 seconds. But with each auction being watched by 100 other suckers, um, I mean, people of above average intelligence, the auction was never going to end. Once the clock hits 3 seconds, the whole room would bid, pushing the price up another $2 and adding another 10 to 30 minutes to the auction time.

This is going to take forever, I thought, I need to go to bed. The owners of the site had foreseen this problem and created a solution for me. I could buy blocks of bids. I could setup a “bid butler” to bid for me while I dreamed of my new TV. Well, do the math, how long do you think those 6,000 bids I bought lasted? Not very long. Oh, and guess what I won? That’s right, nothing. $60 down the drain.

I started thinking about how much this site was selling these laptops for, in reality. Let’s say the auction ended finally at $200, which for a Macbook would be an amazing deal. 100 people bidding at $0.10 a bid, each time moving the price up only $0.02.

$200 / $0.02 = 10,000 (number of bids)
10,000 bids * $0.10 = $1000 on bidding alone
$1,000 + $200 = $1,200

So, these guys sold that laptop for $200. And out of those 10,000 bids, what are the chances yours will be the winner? Very slim.

Also, $200 as a winning price is a very conservative price. Some were as high as $600, still an outstanding deal. But a $600 final price means the site made $3,600 on that laptop. Sure, a few went for $90, and those are the ones mentioned on the banner ads to get you there. The only way to guarantee a win is to pay 3 times the retail price.

Wow, do I feel stupid. Not only am I down $60, but I was beaten by 6th grade math. Don’t click banner ads.

I was just standing in line at Safeway, picking up an assortment of healthy foods.  Cheesies, cookies, ginger-ale, chocoalte, etc.

As I’m standing in line, a couple comes up behind me and they stand there.  What else can you do, to avoid looking at, or talking to, the person standing a foot away?  Well, you start looking at all the really funny magazines they have there.  The girl looks at them and sees a little book called “Natural remedies”.  She picks it up and says - “Oh, cool - natural remedies!”  The guy openly laughs, and then says:  “What, are you an idiot?”

With considerably more restraint than I could have mustered - she puts the book back and says “Why?  ’cause of the book?  I guess so, then.”   And he responds with “I’ve got a book you should read.”  Which, of course, is ridiculous, since she was just trying to pick up a book about the very subject and read it.

Now, at this point, I really wanted to know - other than that being a ridiculously rude way to talk to someone you’re with - is it the concept of natural remedies that he’s against?  Or is it this particular book?  And why would either of those cause him to think she’s an idiot if she felt like reading the book?

If I wasn’t so immersed in reading about Angelina Jolie’s weight problems, I totally would have said something.  Actually, no - I wish I had the guts to stand up for random strangers, but I really don’t.  So, to compensate for my general cowardice and inability to say anything that might actually matter to the people it applied to, I will just randomly post this on the Intertron.

Manitoba has very horrible roads.  You’d think they could at least get rid of the potholes on the Trans-Canada.  They do tend to keep you awake, though.  It’s hard to fall asleep, fighting whip-lash.  People keep complaining that Saskatchewan is boring.  But it’s only a few hours of driving, and it’s really quite nice - especially at sunset.  The roads are open, straight, and it’s kinda hard to wonder if you’re going the right way.

Calgary Transit should wave all bus fees during the Stampede.  They’d get more people on buses who don’t normally use them - and when people are familiar with the buses and the routes - they’re much more likely to use them.

There are just too many people in TO.  It’s fun there, but it’s a pain in the ass to get around.  Don’t move near a flight path to the airport.  All you hear is airplanes.  All day.  I very much hate that noise.

House centipedes are gross and disgusting.  As Craig pointed out, they make spiders look cute.  They’re a few inches long, their bite is equivalent to a wasp sting, they can climb walls, and they live for years.  If you get them, get a cat.  Cat’s will eat them, you see.  Well, or keep things dry ’cause they apparently can’t live without quite a bit of moisture.

People who are hard to work with … suck.  Finding people that you can work with, that you can communicate with, and who you can be productive with, makes any job awesome.  People who are incompetent and arrogant are … difficult.  It’s even worse when the people who are really hard to work with are actually really nice people.

Cancer sucks.

The plus side to hosting sites on your own servers is that you don’t have to put up with a bunch of bullshit to get things done.  The downside is that it really screws up your online gaming when someone is downloading pictures and sucking up your bandwidth.

I have a beaten up car.  I mean, it rules, and it’s only a few years old, but it has a few flesh wounds.  As I was driving through Northern Ontario, with a huge trailer-full of stuff towing behind me, I was stopped by some cops.  It turns out that one of them was thinking of buying an Impreza and wanted to know how the car was handling the ridiculously steep slopes in the Ontario section of the Trans-Canada.  For the record, the car did awesome.  110km/h from TO to Calgary (3600kms) in 2 days, towing >2000 lbs?  Sweet.  Anyway - definitely one of the best times I’ve been pulled over.

Lastly, I saw District 9 last night.  I had no idea what to expect.  But here’s what it’s about.  It’s about a bunch of aliens being treated poorly by humans.  Some shit goes down, which prompts a wonderful and ridiculously gory battle.  The effects were incredible.  SO much more realistic than muppets.  Maybe you’re asking yourself:  “What are muppets?”  Well, to quote Homer:
“They’re not quite mops, and they’re not quite puppets, but Oh, man!  To answer your question: I don’t know.”

Back to the film.  Be ready for very very graphic violence.  You know, heads exploding, and stuff like that.  Actually, forget that - how about ENTIRE bodies exploding.  Honestly, I haven’t seen gore like that since some crazy video games.  The movie’s shot documentary style, and you’re left with more questions than you had coming in to the movie.  Especially about the movie.  But also about other things.  Like “How the hell can they charge that much for POPCORN”.  And, “If I know (and have known for several YEARS) that they’re ripping me off for this stuff, why do I keep paying for it?”, and of course “How many people have sat in this very seat?”

The movie actually does point out some excellent questions, and the character development was very well done.  Definitely worth seeing.  I’ll give it a solid 3.5/5.  I’m looking forward to a sequel about it.

jeff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qocbsLkXJY&NR=1
jeff: cats are so ridiculous
jeff: I mean, you add a cat with a funny face to anything and suddenly it’s hysterical
brent: yeah, cats are to funny what fizz is to pop

Day in and day out, I am here, at my computer, furiously building websites. I work for a small company and I am a one man team. I try extremely hard to maintain high standards for my work (ie, the W3C). This takes quite a bit of extra effort, but I feel (and our clients feel) that it is worth it.

In my work, I deal with a variety of clients and a variety of project managers. Each has their own way to doing things, which is to be expected. But the change I propose to the world (cause I am sure that’s how many people read stupideverything) is a change in one standard: content delivery.

Every project has a few essential documents:

• Proposal and Budget
• Site Map
• Site Content
• and perhaps a wireframe document

Each of these really makes my job easier. But here is where I want to switch things up: STOP USING MICROSOFT PRODUCTS.

We have designers on Macs, account people on PCs, clients on Macs and PCs, developers on Linux, Mac, PC. Everyone has Blackberries, Windows Mobile phones, iPhone, Treo’s, etc. We are all sharing and editing these documents. Deveoplers, especially are opening these documents constantly, copying and pasting content from the copywritters, checking the for revised versions of the site map to update the navigation. The documents get used, they are tools.

I propose the documents essential to the developers (site map and content documents) need to be in PLAIN TEXT. You don’t need to format these documents. We don’t need fonts or typefaces defined in this document, the designers have prepared style guides, and developers are writting standards-based CSS to interpret the content. Adding margins and tabs and crazy bullet lists to the your Word 97 document are really making it hard for us developers to dump the content into the site quickly.

The main problem with using a MS product for these essential documents is versioning of the Office software itself. There are so many versions of MS Office out there, and for multiple platforms. It is nearly impossible to get all of the stakeholders in the website on the same platform, using the same version of Office. So all of those nifty sharing features and revision features go right out the window. Our small business clients are not upgrading their version of office each time there is a release.

A secondary problem with using MS products, and sort of a personal pet peeve, is that in order for me to get some small detail of the site, like the title of a section of content, I have to fire up MS Office. I am already running a tonne of browers for testing, text editors for writing the code. I probably have Photoshop or Illustrator running and for sure I have some mp3s playing. Opening Office just to get the wording of a title is not convientent in the least.

Another problem, although probably another topic entirely, is the blatant abuse of MS Excel. This is not good software for creating a site map or wireframe documents. Just because it looks like a sheet of graph paper when you open it, doesn’t mean that’s how you should treat it. Excel is not a database, it is not a text editor and it is not a design program.

I propose we use PLAIN TEXT DOCUMENTS. That’s right, ASCII. It renders the same on every machine, it is very fast to open, and its small file size makes it easy to store and email to people on mobile devices. No one every says “Dang, I can’t open this .txt file! I don’t have the right version of Notepad!” or “Man, Notepad just crashed my machine! I hadn’t saved anything!” or “Notepad is taking forver to open.”

Now, MS Office has it’s place for sure. When writting large documents or anything you intend to print or where you want to have a writter style a document, MS Word is great.

This should be your guiding principle:
Any project where the final deliverable is NOT something with the extenions .doc, .xls or .ppt, DO NOT use MS Office.

Let’s do everyone a favour and open Notepad/TextEdit/vim right now.

My 360 broke down about 2 and a half months ago. It’s one of the first ones that came out, and they all have a known problem - something about a cheap solder used on the heat sink, or whatever. I called up their support and they were going to send me a box to ship mine to them and replace my xbox with a nice new one. So, that’s good. But, two months and a half later, I still have a broken xbox. I’ve been calling over that period.  They have an automatic phone system that checks their records, and it’s been insisting my xbox … box … will be arriving in the next 3-5 days. Finally, I called up again and got a really interesting support guy. So, this is about people like him.

So, I talked to Scott about my problem. Immediately, he sees in my account that it’s been 2.5 months since I’ve called and they still haven’t sent the package. So, instead of just re-issuing the order, now we get to spend 30 minutes going through the problem again. I say that I’m experiencing the “red ring of death”, which is the common description of the Xbox failing. It’s called that due to a bunch of LEDs that light up, in a ring. But, Scott feels compelled to tell me that it’s actually not a ring. “It’s actually some LEDs, and they’re built that way because they can represent a large number of hardware problems by which of them go on. 4 solid LEDs in a circle represent a serious hardware failure“. Great. So, we’re on the same page, I guess. Here’s the thing - why do these people feel the need to “educate” everyone? What I’m calling for is to get my machine fixed. I don’t mind some small talk - I’m not in a rush to get off the phone, but I don’t need a 10 minute dissertation on the awesomeness of xbox HW error codes.

At this point, Scott starts to get confused about what’s going on. He’s trying to fill out my address, but the application won’t take my street address. He goes and talks to someone else, and has to reboot his machine. He goes on a rant about updates to their machines which haven’t gone well. So, I figure I’ll participate in the discussion. I tell him how dealing with some customers, I know how sometimes you’ll go through all these steps that usually solve a problem and all these other things will go wrong - and it can all be very insane sometimes. You know - just trying to relate. “Actually, I’m quite good at quickly finding out exactly what’s wrong with the customer’s systems and finding that exact problem that they have, and getting them off the phones quickly.” Right.

Scott seems like he’s having a bit of a rough night, so I ask him where I’m calling. You know, a little chit-chat. “Actually, for security purposes, I’m not allowed to answer that question.” Okay. Are you in the States? “No. Actually I’m in the East Coast.” …. great. I guess now I’ll have to cancel that missle strike. Alright, so I guess small talk is limited to ridiculous lectures. And as if to prove this, he starts to tell me that using a UPS or surge protector with the 360 actually voids the warranty due to the 3 surge protectors that are in the whole power supply thing, and that they require a 30 amp service which can only provided by a wall socket, and the surge protectors don’t give that much, which slowly starves the system of power ….. well, I have to tell you all this - I’ve been told not to keep this kind stuff bottled up.

At long last, we make it to the point in the call where Scott is going to give me the summary. Then he says “Well, this is weird. The last person has it on here that you get a free game. But that’s not normal, so I’m going to go ahead and remove that.” Great. Thanks, Scott. “Instead, I’m going to give you a month of xbox live.” Great, Scott. Then he starts talking about how great xbox live is, so I interrupt to tell him I’ve been on it for a year. And so, he explains to me that he isn’t on it, although he would like to be on it, but his landlord doesn’t want to split the cost for the land line and he and his wife don’t want to pay for the whole thing, and so he’s not sure if he’ll be able ….. yeah, that went on for awhile.

At this point, I think I can write a pretty convincing novel about dear Scott. What motivates him, his likes and dislikes, how he’s moving to a day shift this week because he’s tired of not being able to go to the bars at night, and a host of other fantastic details. But, alas, it’s time for Scott and I to stop talking. He suggests that I call back during the week to talk to a supervisor because he thinks that the 2.5 months is crazy and I should be able to get a free game or something. You know, like I already had before he took it off my records. So, he volunteers to add a note about all this to my account, and I agreed.

And that’s when I found out that Scott still types with one finger. “….cus..to..mer ……has….. re..que..st…ed…… x…box……. live…..” - and so forth. If it’s not too blunt, I think people that still type with one finger should be shot. Especially those who dictate the whole thing as they type. And then Scott started to speak again: “So, what I just wrote down was …” - reading back to me what he had just typed, so that I knew what was in the record. I guess that’s in case I couldn’t understand the ridiculously slow way he talked while typing. It was particularly awesome how he corrected about 5 typos that he had made. I’m not sure how you can make typos when you type with one finger, but whatever.

And so, that ends the stupidest support call ever. What’s awesome is that I should be getting this new box (to ship my broken one back to them in) on Thursday or Friday. I’ll actually be in Whitehorse, so I’m sure this will all continue in wonderful hilarity.

So here’s the thing.

I really enjoy doing things with people. In fact, most things I do, I have people around. But there are also a lot of things I like to do by myself - and I’m okay with that. Especially work things. My job is very cerebral. I spend my days solving puzzles and building things. While it’s great to have other people to bounce ideas off of, sometimes I like to just focus on the complicated tasks at hand. I actually find it very fun. I’m not the only one, either - I think most of you in the software development world can relate.

What happens, though, is that people will look at a group of us developers while we’re working, and think we’re anti-social, and probably incapable of fun.

As a result of those very inaccurate observations, tech companies will often throw their developers into social events, with every action and event scripted to “perfection”. I think this is absolutely insane.

So, if you want a bunch of people to get together and have a good time, what do you do? Remember, from an executive perspective, what you’re looking for here is for the employees to get to know what each other do, so that the whole organization is more effective. Rarely is the executive perspective “fuck it, let’s go for a week in Mauii and have some fun.”

One solution is to get everyone together and stuff them somewhere and plan activities from 6am to midnight and force them all to do it, then ship them home the next day. Now, you certainly have some guaranteed level of success there, as people will be doing what you tell them to do. Especially if you force random people to give speeches. But, in my experience, people will fight back against this type of “planned fun”, and it will only be a moderate success. I mean, think about that solution with people outside a company - they’d all get up and leave. Well, everyone except those who planned it.

Here’s how I think it should work. If you want a big group of people to really get to know each other, their strengths, and what they do - then send them all somewhere fun. Preferably with a beach. Give them a solid week. Give them lots of food and drinks, and let them sign up for whatever they feel like, as long as they don’t do it on their own. In short, let them go into a place and interact normally together. I bet you anything, that by the end of that week, the whole group will be extremely comfortable with each other, and know exactly what everyone else does. Hell, put me somewhere like that for a week, and I’d even interact with a Cave Troll. Plus, it would be FUN.

I would be really interested in what would happen if someone shipped my office to Costa Rica for a week. I bet most of us would sit at a pool, eat and drink, and talk about work. We’d probably all have our laptops around, and would probably write out some prototypes and all sorts of fun stuff. You know why? Because most software developers are actually ridiculously productive when they’re happy, motivated and are having fun. And really, most of us actually enjoy building things. Companies should really take a step back and think about getting teams together in fun settings, if they want them to really be productive. Then they’ll come back to the office and want to build all the cool things they’ve designed.

For those of you who think in numbers, let me break it down like a fraction: Let’s use the Integer number system to rate “fun” - obviously relating positive numbers to a fun experience, and negatives being not so fun. Let Event A be some fun event. I want to prove that Forced Event A is a negative experience.

Fun things are a positive experience. The more fun, the better.

Event A is probably pretty fun - let’s say about +20. Why 20? Why not? 20 is a nice number - it’s got curves.

Forced anything isn’t a happy thing. It means your free will is being taken away and you have no choice. Let’s go so far as to call it a negative. And since it has 6 characters, let’s call it -6.

So, logically,

Forced Event A = -6 * 20 = -120.

Q.E.D.

In summary, give me free trips all over the world.

I just got this spam mail, with the subject “GGET YOUR UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA”:

Hi brett!!
A Genuine University Degree in nnotime![ … blah blah blah marketing speel blah blah blah …]

These are real, genuine degrees that include Bachelors, Masters, MBA and Doctortae Degrees. They are fully verifiable and certified transcripts are also available.

Just call the number beolw. You?ll thank me later?

We work with all counrys
Reach Now +1-325-204-0322

[ … more crazy text … ]

Apparently you don’t need English to get your degrees anymore. I just love the thought of someone who doesn’t have a degree, reading a message rife with typos and horrible grammar (not to mention some crazy random text at the bottom) and thinking to themselves that their ship has finally come in.

How are they certified?! And what happens if you actually call that number …

I guess I’ll thank them later?

It turns out that HMV is now shipping white bags, instead of the traditional black ones. Upon further investigation, they’ve followed MEC and now only hand out bio- degradeable bags. While the bags aren’t perfect, they sure are a step in the right direction, and I applaud any company making an effort to keep the waste down.

Now they just need to get rid of the bloody plastic wrapping around every CD/DVD. And replace them with magnetic fields. Yes, that’ll work. Or maybe they could just keep the CDs/DVDs in the back of the store, and when someone wants something, the clerk could go and get the nicely unwrapped product and give them that. I mean, it’s not like it’s food or anything. Sealed for your safety? I think not.

I seem to be going off on a tangent. So …. yay, HMV!

I have a server that I maintain.  I give accounts to various friends when they need a server to use.  You know, for whatever people do with server accounts.

Anyway, I know a bit about security, so I like to think I look after these machines.  But realistically, I don’t pay that much attention to them.  I mean, they’re automatically updated, and really don’t do much.  The biggest hole is someone on my server not setting up an adequate password.  What are the odds someone would choose a weak password?!

It took me about a week to realize that my server was compromised.  A friend of mine had a very weak password.  You know, something like “12345″ … if the account name was “12345″. 

Someone figured that out, and ran some malicious software on the server.  Did I catch it?  Nay!  But, my ISP did, when some people my machine decided to attack complained.  So, they shut down my account, and let me know about why they would do such a thing.  Of course, I’ve switched phones since I hooked up with them, so they had the wrong number, and so it took a day for me to call and bitch at them, but after that, we were all good.

Anyway, I’ve cleaned off the server and it should be happy again.  I’ve changed the offending users password, then disabled the account ’cause I was mad at it.  ”Stupid account!  Go lay down!”  Obviously I’ll pay very close attention to it, until I get bored and once again ignore it.  Maybe I’ll get around to writing a learning program to tell me when things change that I might care about.  Probably not, but hey, it’s a good idea.

Jeff was good enough to pass along this little firewall change to keep these nasty little buggers at bay.  Here it is, for those of you with servers - I think it’s a great addition!

iptables -N SSH_CHECK
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 22 -m state –state NEW -j SSH_CHECK
iptables -A SSH_CHECK -m recent –set –name SSH
iptables -A SSH_CHECK -m recent –update –seconds 60 –hitcount 4 –name SSH -j DROP

This will block anyone trying to connect to 22 more than 3 times a minute.  Thanks, Jeff!

And so, here’s a friendly reminder to make sure you don’t use weak passwords.  Eventually the script kiddies will hit your account.  Might as well close that door.