October 2008

There were 93 posts published in October 2008 (this is page 4 of 10).

James Taylor plays Raleigh’s Moore Square

Its strange to see a music star the magnitude of James Taylor play a corner of Moore Square. On the other hand, the unassuming Taylor seemed at home there. The stars align like this maybe once in a million years, so I wasn’t about to let this chance pass me up. My officemate and I played a bit of hookey to see the show.

After catching up on work emails this morning, I took a stroll down to Moore Square a little after 10 to see what was happening. To my surprise, roadies were setting up a modest stage while maybe a dozen fans waited around in the warm morning sun. Then my officemate then called and needed to be let back into the office. Only when I got there did I find out I missed Taylor’s soundcheck by minutes.
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Slashdotted!

I got back from the James Taylor show to find MT.Net has been Slashdotted. Seems my Caller ID sleuthing in relation to Automotive Warranty Solutions caught someone’s attention.

I also see that I’m missing out on some big money. According to the NC Attorney General’s office, these warranty calls could be worth $500 to $5000 apiece! That’s some serious change in this down economy. Even better, I could invest that money in a lot more SIP phone numbers with which to snare even more fines. And I wouldn’t have to lift a finger to collect (well, I would have to show up for court, but I could earn potentially +$25k for each court case).

Hmm. Passive income paid by scammers … what am I waiting for?

MT meets JT

OMG, I just shook James Taylor’s hand. How cool is that?

I saw before soundcheck that his crew walking to Marbles with a carton of coffee so I guessed that’s where he was hanging out. After today’s show (which I’ll blog about soon) I went to the board of elections to vote, chatted with an old friend there, and then wandered back to Moore Square. As I looked in the windows of Marbles, I spotted an eight-foot-tall man in a wide-brimmed hat lumbering up the sidewalk towards the Imax Theatre. A small group of fans were making their way back to their cars and stopped for some photographs with Taylor, who was gracious in the requests.

As he was about to head inside, I thrust my hand out to him and he shook it.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Taylor,” was all I could manage.

“Thank you,” he answered sincerely in his quiet way, smiling and then posing for yet another photograph. Sadly not mine, though, as I had ditched my camera after the show.

I didn’t get a photograph, or an autograph. But what I got was enough. I shook the hand of the legendary James Taylor.

OMG.

What’s in a name?

Our home is on many different borders. It shares plans with a much older subdivision, though it has a distinct name. Its at the very end of our street, which is itself at the end of another street. Our neighborhood shares a street with the Belvidere Park neighborhood but shares a community watch with Oakwood Park.

And what is Oakwood Park neighborhood? Its kind of a loose collection of homes bordering the Oakwood Park on Brookside Drive. The homes comprising Oakwood Park fall into different CACs (Citizens Advisory Councils): the East CAC (of which I am current chair) and North Central CAC.

I found out today that another neighborhood to the west of us is organizing itself as Mordecai East (previously it was content to be grouped with Mordecai proper). There is also a neighborhood somewhere in-between known as Oakdale.

I find all the neighborhood groupings to be amusingly arbitrary and shifting. This is a good thing, as it reflects the transformation taking place in these neighborhoods. They are in the midst of creating an identity and these names reflect this reaching for an identity. I’m glad to be here participating in this identity creation.

AsiaDNR and the domain name scam

The same domain name scam as the one I mentioned previously is still happening. This morning I got an email at $WORK from a company called AsiaDNR. An email from steven@scdomain.org tried to say all of $WORK’s Asia domain names were being registered:

Dear CEO,

We are the domain name registration organization in HongKong, which is the domain name registrar centre in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

we formally received an application on October 19 2008.One company who called Carnelian Investment Company are applying for following:

Domain Names:
$WORK.kr
$WORK.jp
$WORK.my
$WORK.ph
$WORK.net.cn
$WORK.org.cn
$WORK.com.hk
$WORK.com.tw

Internet Brand Name:
$WORK

These days we are dealing with it, After our initial examination, we found that the internet brand name and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. hope to get the affirmation of your company because that may relate to your intellectual property on internet. Now we have not finished the registration of Carnelian Investment Company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or domain name contact me as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Steven
————————————————————————————————————————

Domain Name Auditing and Registration Manager.
Hong Kong Office:
Tel:00852 9566 0103
00852 9566 0205

Fax:00852-82261055
Email:steven@scdomain.org

Website: http://www.domaininasia.com
————————————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————————————
Confidentiality Notice. This is a letter for confirmation. If the mentioned third party is your business partner or distributor in ASIA please DO NOT reply. We will automatically confirm application from your business partner after this audit procedure. we have to notify you, and our registration organization are not responsible for any dispute questions about trade mark, intellectual property nor patent after they succeed in registration.hope you can understand.thank you.

Be forewarned: if you take them up on their “offer,” you’ll be buying and endless number of domain names!

For the sake of the search engines, here’s a list of fake company names used in the scam that I’ve been able to track down (humans might want to just quit reading here):
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JT Tickets available

I walked out of the downtown Obama office just now with two tickets to the free James Taylor concert. Looks like the printer issues never got resolved as the tickets themselves are simply photocopies of an original.

Oh well. With all the stuff going on election-wise I suppose putting on a mini concert tour is a lot to ask.

Palin as President

This Palin As President Flash site is just too funny. Click around the Oval Office to find surprises (some of them have multiple surprises). And if you’re in the office, put your headphones on: you don’t want to miss the sounds that go with this.

Hilarious!

James Taylor tickets not ready yet

I just got back from the downtown Obama headquarters. The tickets for Tuesday’s free James Taylor concert in Moore Square aren’t ready yet. Seems there was a problem with the printer and they all weren’t cut. An Obama staffmember told me he expects them to be in around noon.

Upon hearing this, two fans who had been waiting in a car exclaimed “well, that was a two-hour waste of time.” Those two and one other gentleman were the only other ticket-seekers there when the office opened.

Update: They’re available now.

Strickland Park vote

Tonight’s Parks and Rec meeting was a bit contentious (or so I am told – that’s the only kinds I’ve witnessed so far). There are many stakeholders passionate about their views for the park. I came to accept the Strickland Park plan as probably the best that we could get. I hope the neighbors who will frequent the park will enjoy the finished product.

On a totally unrelated note, I need to start eating supper before dashing off to these meetings. Votes like tonight’s are not easy on my stomach!