YetAnotherPersonalHomepage

I noticed an uptick in spam over the past four days. Curiously, all of it was destined for an email account I use only with United Airlines. Reviewing my logs and email, junk started trickling in on October 4th but I didn’t notice thanks to my filters. I remember setting my "Mileage Plus" profile to not send solicitations and offers when I created the account in June. That choice has been unset but not by me. United Airlines seems to violate its own privacy policy. See this passage currently in the privacy policy:

On occasion, we may provide customer mailing list
and email addresses to reputable, carefully-screened 
Mileage Plus partners or companies whose services 
or products may be of interest to you. (You may 
unsubscribe by Opting-Out.) Sharing of customer lists
may also provide you with the opportunity to earn 
bonus miles for non-flight activity. We require strict
contractual obligations from these third parties to
ensure safeguards for the privacy and security of the
information. 

Opting out obviously isn’t enough. Then there is the matter of the carefully-screened Mileage Plus partners who include the sorts of people who sell "Viagra", "Propecia", "Vicodin" and something named "Cialis". These strict contractual obligations that United Airlines requires of it’s partners also allows for marketing even more dubious products like "Mini Keychain breathalyzer", "Digital Cable Descrambler" and "Diploma in 1 Week".

It’s clear that United Airlines associates with a nice bunch of liars, cheats and thieves.

You know, if you’re trying to commit fraud and if you’re going to do it over the internet and if English isn’t your primary language maybe- hear me out, okay- maybe you should get a buddy who is a native speaker and has a passing familiarity with the culture to proofread your spam. I know, that’s crazy talk. See below:

From: support <xxx@xxxxx.net>
To: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxx.org
Subject: You are suspected of plunder 2100 $ from account Webmoney!
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:58:55 +0300

You are suspected of plunder 2100 $ from 
account Webmoney! It is necessary for you 
to contact employee FBI USA who has 
affairs with representation Webmoney in USA.
We have the decision of a problem and 
further the decision of a problem in regional 
court. The complaint has acted from ID 
828245830532. The full information on 
http://www.fbi-policy.com/webmoney.htm.

Impressive. no? Tucows has already pulled the registration info and the webhost has pulled the page so no one will get to enjoy the rest of this rather convincing professionally-executed scam.

A really good snow storm is blowing. The light on the flying snow makes the street look all smudgy- halloween orange and charcoal. It’s like the ones I remember as a kid where they canceled school the night before and we’d wake up on time- even though we didn’t have to- and see from the bedroom window everything piled white.

One of those snowy mornings, my dad borrowed a front-end loader from my grandfather’s garage and cleared our driveway and sidewalk and the neighbors’ driveways and even some of the street and built up a mountain of snow against a telephone pole in front of our house. We kids- always too tired to shovel snow or bring in wood for the stove or take out ashes or do any other chores- tunneled through it that morning. After a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, we snuck pots and pans of water from the house and splashed them on the hollowed mound and made an icy fort big enough for three of us to sit in at once.

The New York Times and the Mercury News report that Bill Janklow, the US Representative from South Dakota who killed a motorcyclist last year after running a stop sign at over 70 miles per hour, was sentenced to 100 days of jail and must pay a total of $11109 in fines and fees. His felony conviction for second-degree manslaughter forced him to resign from the House of Representatives. He is ordered to serve the first thirty days in jail but after that he can leave each day to perform ten hours of community service. I would be surprised if that doesn’t translate to living outside and doing community service. After release, he spends three years on probation during which he cannot drive.

Sounds like he got what he deserved right? The Grand Forks Herald pointed out earlier in the case that the average jail time for a conviction of second degree manslaughter was six months. I’m not so sure that after a decade of reckless driving- including running the same stop sign and nearly hitting a woman- and using his political influence to dodge tickets that he did. The family of the victim has a civil suit so there may be a bit more handed out to him before he’s through.

Yesterday I took a day off from work to hang out with our friends and play tourist. It’s been at least fifteen and probably closer to twenty years since I’ve been to the Empire State Building. I can’t honestly remember looking at it and seeing anything but "The Empire State Building". I was surprised at what a beautiful art deco building it is and how the themes are carried throughout the public hallways and spaces. I was also surprised at:

• The skyride. A fantasy helicopter tour through New York seen from a shifting, heaving platform to simulate motion. When did that go in? Fun but cheesy. Enter and exit through a gift shop.
• Fleecing the tourists. You go through a gift shop to wait on line. Expect an hour or so of waiting before riding the elevator to a lobby where staff take your photo against a painted backdrop of the building. Proceed past food, audio tour headset rental and gifts to elevators to observatory where you emerge into, guess what… a gift shop. Lather, rinse, repeat on exit. You’ll get an opportunity to buy a copy of the photo they took on the way up. Exit into lobby where there are the usual shops for the business offices residing in the building- dry cleaning, shoe repair, newstand, food- and, of course, a couple of gift shops.

We also went to the Intrepid. Interesting, sort of ad hoc collection. I don’t remember it being so sparse and disjointed. Okay, it was more than twenty years ago since I last toured but even as a kid I think I would have noticed. The simulator rides are an additional charge and very short- seven minutes, three of them spent on orientation. The foundation doesn’t seem to know what to do with all the space and had a rock climbing wall in there… at least it was free. Sadly, the flight deck was closed because of the ice and snow. The tour through the WWII sub the U.S.S. Growler was neat, if quick, and the destroyer and Concorde were not open to the public. I think I’ll be good for another ten years or so before returning to that museum.