Internet Scams & Browser Cache

Something bad happened to the Chrysler yesterday morning. I won't know how bad until Mr. Heaton takes a look at it. It may be time for another car, which brings us to part two.

Daughter found a couple of big black SUV's for sale really cheap. Both are 2001's with about 80K miles. One is a BMW X5, the other is a Range Rover. Price is $3500, about $10K under what you might think. Big, complicated gas hogs, but certainly cheap enough. Normally I wouldn't think cars like this would be so cheap, but with the economy the way it is, maybe nobody is buying these things and somebody needs to unload theirs quickly. (Silly boy.)

Which brings us to part three. While we were looking one of the ads vanished from the net. Well, it should be in the cache, I can retrieve it from there and harangue the guy about it. So I'm trying to figure out how to pull the file from cache, and I'm not getting anywhere. Seems Firefox has a "new and improved" cache management system - it compresses all the files and stores them in one giant database.

I dig around looking for a viewing tool, but no luck. I finally resort to the Firefox help forum and in a surprisingly short time I have an answer: CacheViewer, an Add-On for Firefox. It installs quickly and easily, though it does require restarting Firefox. It's not readily apparent how to view the file. Pictures show up in the window in the upper left hand corner, but to view html files you have to right click.

I find the ad and with it I get the guy's email address. I write to both of them (the X5 seller and the Range Rover seller), just to see if anybody answers, and they both answer promptly. The first guy is a Master Sargent in the Air Force and is stationed in Alaska, and guess what? The second guy is a Master Sargent in the Air Force and is stationed in Alaska. What are the odds? These guys in the Air Force must be making pretty good money to be able to sell these fancy cars so cheap. I smell a rat. Especially when the first guy wants to ship the car via an Air Force cargo plane to a nearby airport. I know corruption is rampant, but even this is straining my credulity.

The Car Dun Blowed Up

No, you aren't getting into heaven. There's a stop sign in your way.

Dutiful daughter and I are driving our 2001 Chrysler Sebring back from Beaverton this morning and something goes wrong. We are almost to our exit, but we are still on the freeway and she's putting on the brakes. No, she's not, she tells me. Stepping on the gas has no effect. We coast to a stop half way up the exit ramp. The engine has died, and it won't restart. It cranks, but she no catchee. Fine, get out, open the hood. Uh oh. We've got brown oil sprayed over half the engine. Looks like it got blown out the filler cap. I don't think we're going to fix this with jumper cables.

Should we call a tow truck, or should we get my truck and try towing it with a rope? Well, is there any place to even tie a rope onto the car? Um, no, there isn't, not unless you want to hook onto the front suspension, and even then you are going to impacting the lower body work. So no.

Call home, wake someone up, they give us a number for a Hillsboro tow truck company. I call them and get put on hold for ten minutes only to be told that Hillsboro is not in their service area.

A Mexican dude pulls up on a fancy sport bike. He's wearing these cool motorcycle boots with what look like toe protectors. Says he's a mechanic so I show him the mess. He gives us the number of a friend of his with a tow truck. We call the friend. Two people answer, they are both yelling unintelligibly, then the phone disconnects. We try again similar result. Third time I think I am able to communicate. Guy tells me it will be 20 minutes. I spend the time arguing with my daughter and looking for treasure.

Half an hour later still no tow truck. Call him back, more garbled communication, something about a 460. I don't think he's coming.

'Bout this time my wife shows up. We finally get the correct phone number for Hillsboro Towing. Clear, prompt, businesslike communications. The truck will be here in half an hour. The girls take off and I wait for the truck. (I spend the time reading the Omnivore's Dilemma. Very interesting. Probably have to write something about it, if I ever finish it.) The tow company sends a flat bed for which they charge $55 for loading and $5 a mile for carrying. Much better than the $90 the first outfit wanted. And he even gave me a ride home.

Racial profiling: Three vehicles stopped to inquire about our status. Two were Mexicans and one was a white guy. A white guy on a bicycle came by and inquired, but he didn't stop. He didn't have a chain anyway. A cop stopped someone on the freeway right by the exit, but he didn't stop by. None of the new Beemers that came by stopped. Can't say as I am surprised, I generally don't stop either.

Update February 2017 replaced missing pictures.

Techron

I've been hearing about "Chevron with Techron" for like forever. I figured Techron was just a name they came up with for their own particular flavor of jungle joy juice. But today I'm driving down to Eugene and I see a billboard advertising "Texaco with Techron", which really surprised me. Why would Texaco use a Chevron brand name? Could it be that they are actually the same company? Oh. They are. That's why.

Games People Play

I've started playing Equilibria the last couple of days. I must be in some kind of funk. I haven't played it in a long time. I notice an ad for Above The Influence in the side bar, and something about the ad prompted me to click on it. I get to the website and I recall that I've seen ad's on TV for this same program. I Google it, and I find a GAO (Government Accountability Office) Report that has this statement in 40 point type on the front cover:

It gets better on the inside:

Between 1998 and 2004, Congress appropriated over $1.2 billion to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. . . .Given that Westat’s evaluation stated the campaign did not reduce youth drug use nationally, Congress should consider limiting appropriations for the campaign, beginning in the 2007 fiscal year budget until ONDCP provides credible evidence of a media campaign approach that effectively prevents and curtails youth drug use. ONDCP’s written comments on our report generally disagreed with the findings. Specifically, ONDCP does not believe the Westat findings reflect the campaign’s effectiveness. We believe the Westat study is sound. (my emphasis)

How's that for facts? So this report is from 2006. The government spent $200 million a year on this campaign, and here it is 2010 and this is the first I've heard of it. Of course, I'm not their target demographic, so that might be understandable. I do wonder how much they spent on it this year. Criminals.

We really do need that sarcasm font.

Update February 2017 replaced missing image.

Diva of Divisiveness

I am tired of being unemployed and I am tired of looking for a job. It's not that I am worn out physically, it's that I have not had any real positive results (like an interview, or even an indication of interest) in quite a while. So I decided I needed another approach. I'm a smart guy, let's go talk to the movers and shakers and see if we can shake anything loose. I start with the state Democratic party, as I am currently partial to the Democrats. I find a list of candidates (over 100) for upcoming November elections. Just to be fair, I decide to take a look at the state Repulican party's website, and oh s***, look at this, they've invited the wicked witch of the East, the famous inflamatory Diva of Divisiveness, Ann Coulter. She's on my Blacklist. She and other so called "conservative" talk show hosts are one of the big reasons the Republican party has no credibitlity with me.

Mexico's Drug Cartels

There was a column on the Opinion Page in the local paper today by Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star. It was on one of my favorite topics, so naturally I had to tell her what I thought, to wit:

You've heard that old Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times"? Well, I think somebody has cursed us because times sure are interesting.

I don't know which way things are going to go, except that I expect them to get worse, possibly much worse, before they get better.

I don't expect any substantive change because the way things are now too many people are making to much money from illegal drugs.

It is horrible to think of the thousands of people who have died in Mexico in the drug war in Mexico. However, I did hear one estimate that 90% of those killed were drug traffickers. These people presumably knew the risks they were taking by engaging in an illegal activity. Their luck ran out. Unfortunate, but they were combatants in this war. It's not like they were inoccent bystanders.

Some of those engaged in the drug business may have been forced into it by economic circumstances. Perhaps they were unable to find any kind of job, or perhaps they were lured by the prospect of easy money. Hard to tell.

The US went through a similar situation during prohibition when we tried to make alcohol illegal. I don't know if the number of people killed ever got into the thousands, but gang wars were common.

The Mexican government may get an upper hand in this drug war at some point, but it will not last. The war will continue as long the US continues it's idiotic drug prohibition policy.

Hole in the wall repair

Somebody leaned on the towel ring and loosened it's hold on the wall, so I set about fixing it. It's just screwed to the drywall, so it's not the most secure mounting in the first place, but this seems to be the standard for towel racks in modern America. As long as you don't hang on it, it's fine. If you have small kids, well forget it, you're gonna have holes in your walls.

Seems this is the second time it's been repaired as there are four screw anchors in the wall here, so the whole area has disintegrated. The first thing I need is some kind of backstop behind the hole to support my patch. The hole is small and I really don't want to make it any bigger, so I come up with a tedious solution. I take a bit of wood about six inches long, drill four holes in it about an inch apart and then thread screws into the holes and then pull them back out so I can put the screws in by hand. Now I put a long screw in the first hole near the end, then using the screw as a handle slide the stick into the hole and then pull it up flat against the back side of the drywall. Now comes the tricky bit. Hold onto the handle screw (if you lose your grip, you will lose the stick to the wall monster) and slide it all the way to one side so the second hole is visible. Put a second screw in that hole and pull the first screw out. Repeat until the handle screw is in the last hole (which should be in the center of the board), and put two screws through the drywall into the stick, one on each end. Voila! Le steek du backup, she ees in place!

Now we can carry on with our usual patch and paint procedures. The wood putty was not very stiff and wanted to flow out of the hole, so I made a dam out of scotch tape. That worked okay for the front, but evidently some ran out of the back because the top of the putty sagged inward. I used the putty instead of the spackle, because the spackle I've got (Fast & Final) is like made of fluff. It has no mass, and I suspect it has no strength. It was also old and dry and crumbly, so I took some of the crumbs and put them in a bowl with a few drops of water and mixed it up, using my fingers as a pestle. Seemed to work okay. The stuff is like concrete, a little water goes a long way. I put a teaspoon of water in the first batch and it turned to slush and I had to throw it out.

A note about wood putty: A couple of years ago I repaired the door latch on Ross's apartment in Eugene with wood putty. We stopped by recently and I checked out this repair. It was still holding and it was still solid. Neither the screws or the latch plate had worked loose. I am amazed.