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Archives for December 2004
December 22, 2004
This picture made me smile today.
Go take a look at it.
Thanks to
Luke for the link.
On the sad side: The Nigerian scammer seems to
have either grown weary of me, or he really
didn't need his pictures that badly... ;-) No
word from him in days. I almost feel abandoned.
I wonder if I should email him, offering to
just send him a bunch of money so he can continue
with his scam. It's been too much fun...
December 17, 2004
Seems my little counter-scheme for the
Nigerian photo scammer worked.
Dutifully, he got back to me today with this
email:
Simone,
Got your mail. I will be needing about 50
to 80 pictures. Really, it depends on the
amount. I have a budget of about $1,000 for
the project, whatever i can make of that.
Yes, you will get paid before you send the
pictures. I don't understand that paypal
thing, but he head school will be sending
you a certified check which will carry our
end of the year pay just as i explained
below. when you receive the check, you
deduct your fee and help send the balance
so that we can use it for the other programs
before us. If you have any other questions,
please feel free to ask. Otherwise, send
your name and address so that i can forward
it to the head-school and they will send the
check to you directly.
Thanks.
Good one. Note, that he doesn't seem to
understand "this paypal thing", but he's sophisticated
enough to know all about certified checks and
Western Union transfers.
Interesting is also that he not once mentions
anything about licensing rights for the photographs,
and has obviously no clue about pricing, for
$20 for a photograph is beyond cheap. Which
heavily tips you off right there, that this
transaction is not really about buying photography,
but rather about the money.
What I find most hilarious however is that he
advertises sending me a check for *more* than
the $1,000. What would prevent me from just
cashing the check (given that it was real, which
of course it never is), and never sending the
remainder onwards? Which person in their right
mind would gamble on sending a stranger a bunch
of cash, trusting that they would pass on the
remainder via Western Union to some African
Country (not to mention
paying for the hefty fees Western Union charges
for wire transfers)?
Well, I'll be playing along - wasting the sucker's
time as much as I can, and hopefully getting
a good laugh out of it.
Anybody else want to play along? ;-)
December 16, 2004
So today, I got an interesting piece of spam.
This one is a particularly rude variation of
the Nigerian money fund-transfer scam, for it
is specifically targeted at professional
photographers. Read this (and try not to wince
too much at the appalling english writing skills
of the scammer):
Title: photo request
Hello,
Top of the day to you out there. I saw your listing at an online directory website. I wish to aquire some photographs which I intend using as a tutorial gadget in m! y fine art class towards Xmas. The areas of interests include history, war, sports, love, family, wildlife, nature, etc. Some wedding pictures too are welcome, can be used as samples.
The head school is located in Florida but these photos will be needed in the school branch in Nigeria where I am just posted as head for the next 3 years ending.
Please advise the price and your name and address so that I can inform the Head-School management to send a check for the payment asap.They will be sending you our entitlement for the end-of-the-year activities; so you just deduct your amount and send the balance down
here. We will be needing that for the Year Party and the Oliver Dewwit's Day coming up later this year as well.
That means that you will have to cash the check at a local cash point as soon as you receive it (to make it faster) and you send the excess through Western Union the same day. The time is short and we need to move very fast.
Sorry for the rush and delay. Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks and kind regards.
James Drumwell.
Frankly, this just insults my professional
pride. Thinking that enough of my
industry-brethren are
stupid enough to
actually fall for this, it alarming. I
don't think that's an assumption either - why
else would the scammers target photographers
specifically?
What did I do about this scam, you may ask?
I did what every good internet citizen should do:
I pulled a 419
on them. Yepp, I engaged the sucker into a
conversation. Told him I'd be happy to provide
pictures for his project - how many pictures
did he need? And if speed was of concern, I'd
send them out right after I've gotten the
transfer from him in my paypal account. No problem.
Bastards. That'll teach 'em.
PS: The PPA (Professional Photographers of America)
issued a
press release about the tactic back in
June too.
PPS: This guy
struck back at the Nigerian
scam artists with some real creativity and
even has a little photo hall of scammer fame!
Beautiful.
December 13, 2004
I figured, I really should post another update
on the whole
NMI Parity Check error issue.
Emails with error reports and fixes keep pouring
in, and hence, I've established a dedicated
solutions section.
Thanks to all alert readers who were gracious
enough to share their reports and solutions
with me.
December 10, 2004
More so than the drier-than-two-week-old-wheat-bread book
We, the Media by Dan Gillmor, an article I read yesterday
in New York Magazine made me realize the true impact blogs
have had over the past few years on traditional journalism.
The article, titled "The Education of Alexandra Polier",
was written by the title subject herself, a young, budding
journalist with "blonde hair and long legs" who by mistake had
gotten caught up in a fake political scandal, accusing her of
an affair with the at-the-time presidential hopeful, Senator John Kerry.
While the article gives an absorbing glimpse at the tangled web
of political intrigue and how easily an innocent can be caught
up and nearly strangled in it, it more so shows how in our time
of overwhelming media coverage even serious journalists grasp
at and cling to blog-generated internet rumours in search of
that ever-elusive "big story".
As Alexandra Polier writes: "It was becoming clearer: No single
person had to have engineered this. First
came a rumor about Kerry, then a small-time
blogger wrote about it, and his posting was
read by journalists. They started looking
into it, a detail that was picked up by
Drudge - who, post-Monica, is taken seriously
by other sites like Wonkette, which no
political reporter can ignore. I was
getting a better education in 21st-century
reporting than I had gotten at Columbia
J-school."
Link via my old friend Cameron
Barrett, who has been falsely implicated in fueling the
online rumor machine via one of the blogs he helped create (but
was not associted with anymore at the time the story broke), the
political
Watchblog. Cam explains himself in
this blog entry.
December 9, 2004
Sometimes, when the shit hits the fan, it evenly
distributes across your entire spectrum of life.
Like last Monday. I awoke to find 2 inches of
fresh snow had fallen during the night. Peanuts,
I thought. Mother Nature thought the same. So
she decided to dump another foot in La Pine over
the course of the day. I'll be damned, I thought.
Mother Nature nodded in agreement.
Another piece from the shitfan hit my beautiful
Sony Trinitron computer monitor - which picked
this very day to bite the dust. It's little
green light in the lower right corner taunted
me with false hope, but the blank screen
staring back at me made it clear that I shouldn't
even *think* about keeping my hopes up. And
of course it all came just in time for a pile
of work I needed to get done. Naturally.
So here I was - no screen, no way to get any work
done, and with the choice of either risking
my neck driving an hour each way into town
to pick up a new monitor, or taking the day off.
I opted for the second.
Instead, I decided to fight back and take it
out on the snow. On Monday,
I shoveled for roughly 2 hours. On Tuesday, I
got on a roll and only stopped after 3 hours.
Who needs to pay to go work out, I ask? Those
5 hours of cardio this week should make up plenty
for the home-made brownies I ate on Sunday ...
Tuesday morning then the sun came out for a
brief period. So in between shoveling sessions,
I strapped on my snowshoes and headed down to
the Little Deschutes. And Mother Nature said:
See? Didn't I tell you? I can create beauty
out of just about anything. I nodded in wonder
and amazement.
Later that day, I braved the icy and perilous
road to La Pine to go check my email at the
library. But oh, look - the library was
closed "Due to the adverse weather conditions".
So another piece of crap from the fan got stuck there.
Tuesday night it finally seemed that the road
was passable enough to make it into Bend and get
a new monitor. I bought the cheapest I could find -
a 17" CRT "Envision" at Costco for $99.99. Back at
home, it readily sprung to life, but oh my, how
crappy those non-Sony monitors are. I silently
wept for my Trinitron.
The last piece of excrement then stuck on my
Direcway dish all day yesterday - where the
dense snowfall and rain prevented me from getting
a satellite signal and going online all day.
So no chance to shop for a new, classier monitor.
I jutted down on my notepad though to check again with
BendCable on whether they deliver service to
my road...
But today, things look up. The snow is melting
all around, rain is pouring out of the boundless
gray sky, pounding the cold white - and
it has already turned my entire driveway into
something resembling the mosh pit at Woodstock -
except with slush rather than mud. Consequently,
I don't plan on shoveling slush today.
Maybe tomorrow.
December 1, 2004
So my Thanksgiving was a gluttenous occasion - laced
with a Mexican tamale-making party and not one,
but TWO full-blown turkey pig-outs. That's what
happens when you have a bunch of family, strewn
around the country, and they all can't decide
to turn Thanksgiving into one single event ...
The only thing that pretty much kept me sane were
the high-octane concoctions (Absolute Mandarin,
squeezed oranges, and sweet&sour mix, I think)
my sister-in-law Heidi mixed up - and having a
portrait studio setup, all ready to go. All's
I needed to do was plug my camera into the
trigger cord and yell for some people to show
their faces in between drinks and stuffing.
Hence - this picture below (yes, this is Heidi
and my ... uhmm ... rockstar bro-in-law Chris):
![[]](http://simone.seeto.com/images/Heidi_Chris_Fly1.jpg)
Disclaimer: This image was taken after the subjects
had already ingested large quantities of liquor.
No one was hurt however, not even small animals.
So what did *you* do for Thanksgiving this year?
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