My friends visit

I have been out of sorts a little bit. I was sick, then I was in Indiana, now my back hurts, and I've lost my voice. but I am feeling better. My friend, D, visited me right when I got back from Indiana and that was a mistake. It was nice to see him, but I was tired and he was episodotic. (he is now in the hospital doing a drug study and getting paid hundreds as oppose to having to pay thousands, if he just was a regular patients). But it was really interesting being with him and seeing how much fun he had.

My friend, just has a way of talking to strangers. He brought a bunch of homeless kids pizza. (So they could spend their money on drugs, I presume. It is berkeley after all). We were at the coffee shop and he starts a conversation with a homeless native american guy and really connects with him. I felt sorry that we were going to a warm house and this guy is looking for the best place to sleep not sure he could sneak on BART and sleep in a train or something.

after the coffee shop, we were taking BART back home and we had 15 minutes tell the next train. I was discouraged, but my friend said, no, let's talk to someone, people are lonely. so while I was pretending not to notice my friend, he went up to a cool looking guy, starting a conversation with him. at first the guy was like, what do you want? but after realizing my friend just wanted to connect, he engaged in the conversation. and then once it was "safe" I joined in. a little. I think my friend talked to like 8 or 9 different strangers over his stay with me. and his illusions of the world fit right in with the disillusionment of Berkeley. He would say, "the man is out to get you and me." and the Berkeley locals would say, "yes, he is". although my friend meant it literally. and I am guessing both of the groups have no idea of who or what the "man" really is.

but, I'll volunteer for the position, if no one else wants it. I'll be the man. you can blame me for your problems. I can take it. and if you tell me your woes, I'm pretty bright and have been around the block (a few times). maybe I can help you to help yourself, so you will stop blaming me for your problems. but I understand, I could solve your problems, I just choose not to, most of the time.

so even though my back hurts, I have a cold, and I canceled a trip to LA this weekend, I am good.

thanks to anonymous for increasing our website visits and for giving us such legitimate and scrupulous opportunities to increase our wealth. you were anonymous, because you didn't want the credit for the mitzvah, which is even more honorable.

: - ).

Cheers (as swimmer A-Train would say)

GCNOF

Why Health Care Reform Is Difficult

Talking Points Memo put up an interesting post on why national Democrats are often ineffective when it comes to big policy goals, like health care reform. The commentor's point is that Democrats represent a large number of interest groups and are better at acting in opposition to policies that a wide majority of their constituents dislike, than they are at crafting policies that please enough of their backers without alienating anyone.

He also accuses Obama of missing a strategic opportunity in the wake of one of the most unpopular presidents in history, to consistently paint the entire GOP as "Bush Republicans".

His critique is probably accurate. It also is another way of saying that Democrats act like adults who represent large portions of our society's interests, with the corollary that Republican stock in trade is ad hominem attacks to push the agenda of a very narrow group.

Spam Sucess Stories Revisited!

Thank you readers for responding to our request for true life spam success stories. We were literally deluged with your letters of concern and condolence. However, we were hoping for emails of what happened when you replied to internet spam. A couple of you managed to stay on topic so here goes:

Have you ever responded to "Hot Girls" who may "Want to Meet You", and actually met them?

Dear GTT:
I have responded to numerous solicitations to “Meet Hot Girls”, and it has mostly turned out great. The women in question tend to be surprisingly happy to meet me and I have had lots of relations with a variety of highly attractive ladies, very few of whom have later appeared on talk shows. I hide my indiscretions from my wife by telling her I am golfing (I am pretty good) so she has remained more or less blissfully ignorant. That is, until recently when she went a little Babe Ruth on my whip. But I am not too worried. I am a pretty focused person who can usually accomplish whatever task I set my mind to. I am still working out all the angles on this particular issue, but I am confident I can knock this one back onto the green. Or at least continue to see my kids. Maybe on weekends. So, again, not saying it’s totally consequence free, but overall, pretty happy with the whole “Hot Girls Want To Meet You” thing.
Yours, T



Ever gotten free stuff in response to a spam e-mail? Tell us about it.

It sounds too good to be true, but all I had to do was type my credit card numbers, SS# and address into this website: https://www.eswearthisisntas.cam
It turns out I had the winning numbers so now I will be receiving free Viagra and free Breast Enhancement Cream! Seems a little redundant doesn’t it?
-John Q. Gullible


If you are making $100-$200 a day from your home, please let us know how that's going and what you actually do?

It’s true! I make at least this much every day without leaving the comfort of my bedroom, or sometimes my boyfriend drops me off at a motel.
-Peaches


Gotten money from Bill Gates for buying a Windows product? or gotten a free vacation? or gotten to test and keep (for free) the latest in electronic gadgetry?

Dear Unwashed Masses,
Please, please stop emailing me about this. I mean really…stop it. I know that I am a little smarter than most people, but how dumb do you have to be? Yet my inbox is clogged every single morning! I have to change my MSN address like twice a week. It is really getting to be a problem. So let me put this out there: don’t ever respond to any internet promotion containing the words “Bill", "Gates" and "Free”. Please. In fact, unless you are my wife, my girlfriend, my accountant or CEO of a company named after a piece of fruit, then you can feel confident that I don’t want to hear from you. Really. I mean it! Thanks.
-W. Gates


Has anyone ever been generously given a winning a lottery ticket or been sent money from a dead relative that you didn't know existed? What are you doing with your millions?

To Whom Is Concerned,
This has all happened to me many times over and some more! You will be happy to meet my positive experiences with TrustTrueNexTechHappyCatCo. The corporation formerly known as TrustTrueNexTechHappyCatCo is the best place for giving them and us your money. TrustTrueNexTechHappyCatCo will invest your savings of life in a diversified portfolio of opportunities and risk-chances that could see one or the other of us rich! rIch! RIICh! rR1Ch!!!!! RICH.rtf
-Charles Dickens
Lagos, Nigeria

The Face of Spam

Thank you readers for your wonderful submissions of Spam success stories. This is a follow up to El Capitan's printing of your responses.

Since I asked our readers their experience with Spam. I thought I would do some follow up and really investigate this issue. So I set my sights on the Spam King, and the Can-Spam law. Did you know that 80% of Spam is sent by only 135 people? They may be small in number, but powerful in deed. (of course I'm not sure this limited to the US or World Wide.) So I'm not sure if there are 135 Spam Kings in the U.S. or in the whole world. either way this fits Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theory that a small number of people are involved in most of the real action.

The official definition of illegal Spamming is sending e-mails from other people's accounts, usually by means of a virus or an unsecure network, crafting messages to disguise the origin, falsifying the headers, or creating five or more e-mail accounts with fake names or five IP addresses and spamming from them.

So if you want to avoid the CAN-SPAM Act, four is the golden number for your Spam operation.*
Four e-mail accounts and four IP addresses. Of course if you limit yourself to four, you probably won't be sending billions of Spam e-mails or making $18,000 (a year in US dollars).
(from http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/security-bytes/japanese-spam-king-arrested/)

Not all Spammers that get caught, are just your basic white collar criminals.

for a morbid and somber Spam King story: see.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/24/20080725_C6LO_BENNETT/

On that, Spam is just a slight hiccup when considering the positives of new technology.

Thank you, Internet for we take the good with the bad, allowing us to gain inheritance from dead relatives we never knew we had or helping out a stranger with a winning lottery ticket. Thank you for the free stuff. Free Porn. Which in my opinion has completed screwed up a generation of young men. Free news articles (so we can help the newspapers go out of business, and force alcoholic journalists to find a job that pays more so that don't have as much to gripe about when they go to a bar).

So Thank you, Al Gore. (j/k). Really, thank you Bill Joy and others lucky to be born in 1954-1956, nerdy, and willing to forgo sex with hot co-eds in the seventies (when everyone was just giving it away), to put in over 10,000 hours of programming (in front of awfully slow computers) to make the internet what it is today.

I might be wrong about the sex, I'm basing my judgment solely on my impression of computer "geeks" from 80s movies, like "Revenge of the Nerds." Well, maybe the computer guys weren't forgoing sex. Perhaps, in the seventies there was true equality, and even computer nerds got laid... (just during the day, when they were not programming.)

*Four besides being the ideal number for Spammers is also the number of wives you can have in Muslim culture (definitely the biggest draw in converting to Islam... at least for guys.) of course you have to wake up at dawn, pray throughout the day, live with people that only know the Koran and nothing else, rely on handouts from people that sell oil and might have to kill your daughter if she doesn't wear the right clothing, gets raped, has sex or even just goes on "dates" without your consent.

and I'm not even mentioning that you have to live and submit to the rules of completely nuts, power hungry undeserving dogmatic and delusional fellow Muslims. They might be using Russian (Soviet Union) or US made arms to intimidate or kill you, because they see you as a rival, you forgot to follow one of the Islam's rules or they were just having a bad day.

but you get four wives! tough call. maybe there are many Muslim men out there, completely reasonable citizens of the world: for peace, conserving the environment, social justice, educating the young, that just going along with the fanatical religion thing, oppressive government, etc. because they have four hot or at worse still attractive wives (at the same time). and they know that with all our freedoms, in the United States, you get in trouble if you have more than one wife (at a time).

or you could live in the Muslim world for a few years get married (four times) and move to GB (Great Britain). Do you think they have just one bride per wedding at a time? or do they sometimes double or triple-team it, or even go for the whole shebang all at once?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/fergus_shanahan/790620/Columnist-Fergus-Shanahan-Bed-hoppers-are-screwing-us-all.html

Peace out.
GCNOF.

RIP Frank McCourt

I just realized Frank McCourt passed away this year. July 19, 2009. I wondered if I missed it at the time or just forgot? It was the weekend of my Tahoe Swim Relay.

I read his ob piece in the New York Times.

here it is...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/books/20mccourt.html

I enjoyed his books tremendously. I read all three. Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, and Teacher Man.
If I ever write a memoir it will be because of him. (ok, a little melodramatic; exaggerated.)
I also like how he writes about his teaching. To McCourt! If you haven't read his work you're missing out. No one does childhood or adult life, quite like the Irish. And McCourt captures it beautifully and memorably.

And remember to share with us at Georgetown Tales, your Spam stories. (Georgetown Tales is not liable for any harm to persons, possessions or computers, resulting from investigations into your Spam e-mail. You do that at your own risk. We especially caution against traveling to Nigeria to gain inheritance or to attend funeral proceedings for dead relatives [that are not on your family tree]). Nonetheless, we relish in hearing your stories.

Spam: Internet Success Stories

I write today. First I would I like to thank all our anonymous readers out there, for making it seem like we have more readers than we actually do. Even if you just are trying to get us to by Viagra, or separate us from our money for no worthwhile product. We really need to make it look like this blog is the blog to read.

So (as long as you count on our counter) Spam away!

[I was like 8 comments on my blog. I don't know if I have eight friends that read this blog.]
(as if) R.I.P.B.M.

We, here at Georgetown Tales, know that hot girls (not married to us) don't really want to see us. Unless, we spend lots of money on them or are Tiger Woods (I think even he had to spend lots of money on them, but maybe that's just a rumor). People do not want to give us money for nothing. Nor do they want to give us "free laptops", "free ipods" or "free trips to the Bahamas". Bill Gates doesn't want to help the economy, simply by giving away his money to all Americans. That's just not his style.

People may make $200/day working for home. But I'm not sure how that works. and somehow I know I would wind up on the shorthand of the stick or maybe I would become another Spammer. Besides, I already work for "the man." and the worst part is that my particular "man" isn't doing that well in this economy.

I don't want to try products for free. Because I have a tough enough time ending relationships as it is. and I don't want to go to the hassle of canceling after receiving your product. Plus there is the off chance, you'll charge my credit card. (and thanks S C D), it happened once and took me two months to clear the charges.

But Spammers, Spam away. We have a symbiotic relationship. Readers, if something seems so good that besides your better judgment you have to check it out, go ahead and click on it!

From personal experience, just don't give away your e-mail address and use a public computer. That way if you get a virus, you'll cause problems for a whole public computer system, at the library or a school as opposed to your own.

But don't do it at work, you might get fired.

So Readers, we, at Georgetown Tales, are having a world-wide search.

If you have ever soliticited hot girls, and actually met them or gotten a free product in response to a Spam e-mail. Please let us know. How many other products did you have to buy? how long did it take?

We, here at Georgetown Tales, are very curious. if you are making $100-$200 a day from your home, please let us know how that's going and what you actually do. Gotten money from Bill Gates for buying a Windows product? or gotten a free vacation? or gotten to test and keep (for free) the latest in electronic gadgetry?

And of course, I'm forgetting the big ones: who's been generously given a winning a lottery ticket or sent money from a dead relative? (that you didn't even know you had) preferably one that was living in Nigeria. please share your success story. what are you doing with the millions of dollars?

Loyal readers, in my next week's column I'll write some of internet Spam's success stories. The lottery winners of the internet age. They didn't even need to buy a ticket!

Of course, if you've had a Spam disaster, please tell us to. What happened, what are were the consequences?

You can read our Spam success stories and learn where you went wrong. Maybe you too can meet hot, local, young women or get to test and keep a new flatscreen TV.

Find out what it is exactly that separates Spam disaster from Spam success in next week's column.

(no guarantees, when that column will actually appear).

-GCNOF

writer's block

Things have a way of working out, I was out of work and now have a calculus student. I face a major decision. stay in California and (possibly) finish my Master's in statistics or leave to work as a writer. which maybe in DC or really anywhere.

It would be nice to change just a little bit. stay in California, but become a writer and still finish my Master's Degree in Statistics. moving across the country for a job, sounds kinda of risky, even if it is a place I know, like DC. too bad, I didn't get a writing job while I was living there the first time, maybe I would have never moved back.

DC is probably the most appealing city for me to move. I had quite a few friends in DC. and they have a good ultimate frisbee league. it's close to philly and my other relatives there. I could get back into that. I was happy there. I won't need a car, but I am hesitant to move. I like Lafayette, and California even though I was happy in DC, except about missing home and my social connections in Lafayette aren't that great, mainly old friends that I hang out with. I just like the hills, the weather and the vacation spots (Tahoe, the Pacific, San Francisc0).

I thought I would blog about this. I would like to be a journalist that focused on the science/break down the science for the common folk. I wouldn't have to be the expert. I could bring in other people that really knew the issues, like a statistician with a PhD., but I know enough about it, I think to be able to ask the right questions to an expert.

I think that is what I want to do, be a journalist. at least for today. fight misinformation. encourage children and young adults to value their mind. make thinking cool again. I guess if I am really serious about this, I need to write more.

here's my first blog in ages. I would love the peanut gallery to comment on my blog. stay in CA. move to greener pastures, DC or somewhere else, with a fresh start. I think getting a degree in statistics might help. it would be cool to move out of my parents' house. I'm about the right age for that to happen.