Category Archives: Nada que Ver

On the Other Hand

Nada que Ver

This is how a real email scam letter should look! Look at all the trouble they went through to make it look nice and real:

Google Incorporation®.
Belgrave House,
76 Buckingham Palace Road,
London SW1W 9TQ,
United Kingdom
Notification Date: 11th/11/2009
GOOGLE WINNING NOTIFICATION.
We wish to congratulate you once again on this note, for being part of our lucky winners selected this year. This promotion was set-up to encourage the active use of the Google search engine and the Google ancillary services. Hence we do believe with your winning prize, you will continue to be active and patronage to this company. Google is now the world leading search engine worldwide, and in an effort to ensure that it remains the most widely used search engine, an online e-mail balloting was carried out on the 6th November 2009 without your knowledge, it was officially released today been the 11th Of November 2009.We wish to formally announce to you that your email address was attached to a lump sum of ?450,000.00{Four Hundred And Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling’s}.
We also wish to inform you that you have successfully passed the requirements, statutory obligations, verifications and our satisfactory report test conducted for all our online winners. A winning Cheque will be issued in your name by Google Promotion Award Team, and also a certificate of prize claims will be sent along side your winning Cheque.
These are your award details.
Security Code Number: GUK/4532345G.
Ticket No: GUK/699/33/2009
Winning Number: GUK/877/798/2009
Information’s required from you are part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. To claim your won prize, please contact our Foreign Transfer Manager DR WILLIAMS GIBSON neatly filling the verification and fund release form below.
VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM.
(1) Your contact address.
(2) Your Tel/Fax numbers.
(3) Your Nationality/Country.
(4) Your Full Name.
(5) Sex.
(6) Occupation
(7) Age.
(8) Ever won an online lottery?
Mode of Prize Remittance.
(1)Courier Delivery Of your Certified Winning Cheque Name and other Winning Documents safely to you.
You are advised to contact your Foreign Transfer Manager DR. ANDERSON GREY with his private email details below to avoid unnecessary delay and complications:
***********************************************
FOREIGN TRANSFER MANAGER
DR. ANDERSON GREY
GOOGLE SECURITY DEPARTMENT (UK).
E-mail: drandersongrey@windowslive.com
Telephone: +44 7045712963
**********************************************
The Google Promotion Award Team has discovered a huge number of double claims due to winners informing close friends relatives and third parties about their winnings and also sharing their identification numbers. As a result of this, these friends try to claim the lottery on behalf of the real winners. The Google promotion award committee has reached a decision from the headquarters at the United Kingdom that any double claim discovered by the Lottery Board will result to the disqualification of the winners lottery. So you are hereby strongly advised once more to keep your winnings strictly confidential until you claim your prize.
Congratulations from the Staffs & Members of the Google interactive Lottery Board Commission.
Yours Sincerely,

MRS. VERUMLEM KLEITH.
GOOGLE ZONAL CORDINATOR
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

The Lamest Scam Email Ever

Nada que Ver

As you dear readers know, living in Merida means you don’t have to put up with a lot of crap that you do back home (you put up with different crap) but junk mail is unavoidable anywhere.

And that’s how todays’ post ties into the blogs’ theme. Cool, huh?

Usually those emails announcing opportunity to become someones’ investment partner are pretty elaborate. From the widow or orphan asking for help in getting her 950 billion euros out of Ghana or the bank executive in Cote D’Ivoire with a tale of an airplane crash and a millionaires dormant account of which you will get 30%, these stories from our scamming friends in Nigeria are elaborate, riddled with spelling and grammatical gaffes and are fun to read when, say, you are having a ‘nothing to do’ day.

That’s why, when I found this email in my junk mail today, I was struck by its’ casual, ‘whatever’ feel. There’s no attempt to create a compelling story or cleverly disguise the sender; jerry.smith signs his request for your information: Mercedes Office. The mail makes me wonder if they’ll give up the elaborate creative writing class approach for this more direct ‘yeah I’m lying so what send me your information’ attempt to lure stupid people to their fate.

This is the email from this morning:
…………………………………………..
From: Mercedes Benz Xmas promo Hide
Reply-to: jerry.smith044@hotmail.com
To:
Date: 11/14/2009 2:09:56 PM
Subj: Re: End Of Year Promo Winner‏

Send your details. 1:Names….. 2:Address…..3.Phone.No…..4.Present
Country, For the claims of £950,000.00 GBP which was awarded to your E-Mail
ID in our Mercedes Benz Xmas Cash Splash

Best Regards
Mercedes Office

Reply | Reply all | Forward
Prev message | Next message
Back to folder | Move | Delete | Windows Live Home
……………………………………………

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cell Phones on Airplanes

Nada que Ver

“Following” people on Twitter can provide you with nuggets of information it seems. Jorgito, an occasional reader of this blog and the one written by the neurotic Casual Restaurant Critic, noted on Twitter that the use of cell phones was now permitted on airplanes.

It was published today in the Diario de Yucatan newspaper, the bible for many Yucatecans and so the story MUST be true.

A quick check on the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) website in the united states doesn’t seem to have anything new on the subject – the last post is dated May 30, 2006. You’d think the subject would be on the front page if they had approved this.

So does this mean that you can only use cellular phones in Mexican airspace? I’m confused.

Twitter down this Morning?

Nada que Ver

Getting all ready to Twitter away this morning which I like to do in lieu of exercise and what do you know? Twitter won’t load.

A quick Google search takes me to the Twitter status page and it informs me that they are under ‘attack’ and are ‘defending themselves. A Denial of Service Attack. I had to look that up and Wikipedia says the following:

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.

So much activity – I’m exhausted.

Have a great day everyone!

A Fresh Take on the Drug War

Inspired, Nada que Ver, Politics, ,

I had a crazy, out-of-the-box idea today while having lunch with my better half. We were discussing the perception potential tourists have of Mexico given the increase in violence along the border.

Since the drug business is based on the premise of overwhelming and incessant demand by a large percentage of the citizenry of the Somewhat United States of America, who WANT to get high and continue to delude themselves that they live in a democracy, why fight the drug business at all? Isn’t the idea behind the term democracy – so often touted as motivation behind screwing with other people’s freely elected governments and invading nations – being ‘rule by the people, for the people’? Well wake up, leaders of the world’s most hypocritical democracy – THE PEOPLE WANT THEIR DRUGS!!

Why does this country have to play the part of the US’s Mexican housekeeper or nanny? This is a third world country that has to do the dirty work for it’s neighbor in exchange for what?

As Tony Garza Jr., former U.S. ambassador to Mexico put it:

Mexico would not be the center of cartel activity or experience this level of violence were the United States not the largest consumer of illicit drugs and the main supplier of weapons to the cartels. We have a responsibility to fight this war together, or we fail together. (link)

Is it really necessary for Mexicans to be shooting each other because the bloated drug addict up north can’t get his act together? I mean really, what is the incentive? Keep fighting the drug cartels with all the spillover violence just so Mexico can get a condescending pat on the head from the US?

The admittedly crazy idea, is to sit down with the leaders of the drug cartels and offer them the de-criminalization of the whole drug business in exchange for them stopping the violence in Mexico, stopping distribution of drugs in the country and paying off any outstanding debt to the U.S.

If the U.S.A. want to wage a war on drugs, let them wage it on their turf. With their soldiers and their collateral damage. Or, and here’s a novel idea, take a look at the real problem: the depressed, deluded society they have created that cannot stand to look itself in the mirror and demands the drugs in the first place.

OK. I told you it was kind of out-of-the box idea.

Congratulations USA

Nada que Ver, Politics, ,

No arrests yesterday in Washington D.C., with almost 2 million people struggling to be a part of Obama’s inauguration, so that says a lot about the atmosphere and goodwill present!

The official – and probably completely unread – NotTheNews position is one of relief that the Medieval era of Cheney/Bush is finally over. Time to reel in the world’s number one “rogue” nation.

All the best to the new president; there’s a LOT of work to be done, both at home and abroad.

Glad I am not the only one…and Mr. Bloomberg’s Comments

Nada que Ver, Politics, , , , ,

I am glad to not be the only person to be more than a little worried about Israel’s heavy handed, politically-motivated response to the cowardly Hamas idiots who insist on firing missiles at Israel and then hiding among women and children. They (Hamas) must be so proud of themselves now.

That said, it is a sad day for humanity when the elephant, finally tiring of the needle pricks constantly being inflicted on it’s backside by a a few rogue elements in the cage they have built for their neighbors, decide to run amok and destroy the entire contents of that cage. Imagine all the inhabitants, scurrying from one place to another within in that cage, with no place to hide, being systematically trampled by the enraged and completely deranged elephant.

New York City mayor (and aspiring presidential candidate, according to some rumors out there) Michael Bloomberg, in a statement that can only be described as sucking up to his considerable Jewish constituency, maintains that the Israeli offensive is justifiable (I would suggest understandable but not justifiable) and the international law that prohibits this kind of blanket violence, citing the vast disproportionality, is irrelevant, once again showing how obtuse some Americans are, thinking that they are somehow above any silly international law.

His analogy, delivered in a CNN interview after a visit to Israel, which he may have though of himself, goes like this (and I quote): “if you’re in your apartment and some emotionally disturbed person is banging on the door screaming ‘I’m gonna come through this door and kill you” do you want us to respond with one police officer which is proportional or with all the resources at our command?” If you can hear this, note how condescending the tone of his voice becomes as he says this, as if he is talking to some 4 years olds who up until that moment, could not possibly fathom the depth of his understanding of the problem.

Well Mr. Bloomberg, it’s a good analogy but a stupid conclusion. In a situation like that, I would hope you would send in as many police officers as you thought necessary to apprehend and detain this emotionally disturbed person, not sent in a a unit of the 21st Airborne to bomb the entire building and kill the emotionally disturbed person’s entire family, as well as a few neighbors and probably destroy the building, thereby also weakening the structure in which your apartment resides as well.

Maybe Mr. Bloomberg should concentrate on New York City’s more pressing problems as a city and not go around offering such idiotic opinions on international events.

I apologize to those looking for light-hearted comments on the sanitary installations of the local bus terminal here in Merida; I promise there will be more of that soon! I just couldn’t resist commenting when I heard this on the news. And be forewarned: there will be some upcoming criticism of Mr. Obama’s cabinet selections as well, so you might want to avoid coming around in the next few weeks.

🙂

Response to ADO and his Rude Remarks

Nada que Ver, Politics

In case you missed it, an even more neurotic reader of blogs than I visited this blog and commented on my ‘shout out to the Israelis’ post. His rant goes something like this:

ADO said…
Agree with you on the decrepit facilities available to tourists in Mexico.
As for Gaza, perhaps it has escaped your attention that the Hamas government,and its other terrorist friends, has been lobbing missiles at Israelis and snatching Israelis, and that the on-again, off-again blockade by Israel, at its checkpoints, is a direct response to terror attacks. As for the blockade, take a look at the map and discover that both Egypt and Israel blockade Gaza, with the ok of the Abbas PLA government of the so-called territories/”West Bank.”

Or do you just like to take potshots at Jews? There is NO valid comparison between the holocaust and the defensive measures taken by the State of Israel, except to a amoral lover of “progressive” dictators like ex-Pres. Jimmy Carter.

I was going to respond to the post as a comment, but got carried away. Too much text for a simple ‘comment’ so here it is, in post form.

ADO
Hey, thanks for stopping by and insulting me! Always appreciate the right wing coming in, fist in the air, to invalidate anyone else’s opinion. I especially enjoyed the Dictator Carter remark – made me laugh out loud and that doesn’t happen often in these troubled times.

Thinking back, and now that you mention it, I distinctly remember his militant Carter Jugend, with peanuts embroidered on their short sleeved shirts as they tramped through the streets of Georgia, shouting “Down to the Cashew Eaters”.

It has not escaped my attention, as you suggest, that there are missiles being lobbed and Israelis being snatched.

Perhaps it has escaped YOUR attention that the retaliatory measures Israel has imposed are not limited to a blockade designed to magically starve out the bad guys, but has also included bombing on any and all possible targets, civilians be damned, as well as Palestinians being harassed, beaten and arrested. My point was that a people (Israelis) who had suffered so much, would perhaps have a bit more compassion than say, the USA which in the last few decades dumps bombs first and asks questions later.

Another interesting idea that just popped into my head is that the Mossad is one of the world’s best ‘intelligence’ and ‘covert ops’ outfits. Do you not think that they could perhaps do some infiltrating and bring the perps to justice, much like the USA could have done after 9/11 instead of randomly invading Afghanistan?

Back to the blockade – which is not on again, off again, but has been a continuous thing – and which is supposed to somehow make the Palestinians say “Oh, OK. Um, yeah. Let’s get those bad guys that are hiding among us and turn them over to the nice Israelis who have shown that they are more than willing to deal with us fairly”.

Let’s see. People are starving, they have no food, water, electricity. Medical supplies. Students accepted abroad cannot leave thank you very much. If this was happening in your redneck town, do you think you would get perhaps just a little pissed off and might consider JOINING those criminal elements in Redneckville instead of turning them in to the authorities that are starving your kids? Hmm. Tough one.

And, blockades work so well. Look at how effective the Cuban blockade has been. Thanks to the USA, we still have a communist country in this hemisphere!

And don’t take it from me – check out what’s in the news:

United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has accused Israel of “unprecedented and deeply regrettable” treatment of UN human rights investigator Richard Falk. Falk was deported from Israel Monday after being detained at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport for twenty hours. Falk’s detention and expulsion came days after he condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza as a “flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law” and “Crime Against Humanity.”

I am by no means taking potshots at Jews. Where the hell does that idea come from? What hyper-sensitive part of your brain picked that up? In mentioning the holocaust, I merely imply that (I am repeating what I mentioned above, in case you didn’t get it) one would expect a little more maturity from a people that has been through so much.

And another thing.

Bite me.