Evony: Age I – Browser Based Portable Plundering

Evony Game Screen in your browser

Evony fills your medieval need to divide and conquer from any computer and any browser.

Are you at work on break and need an outlet for your frustration? Are you at home needing an outlet for your competitive and strategic spirit? Evony: Age I is for you.

Since the transition from beta to full release in May, 2009, Evony has millions of players taming the beast of competition and strategy. Some of the key features of the game:

• Free to play
• No installation program or software
• Play from any computer and any browser (that supports flash)
• Challenging Quests (over 220) with hundreds of items and techs.

Evony, with it’s clean interface layout and appealing graphics, make this game of intrigue perfect for kids and adults alike. (click images for detailed views) The style of game is Sim based in that you are responsible for the growth, health, and well being of your castle style city/cities and it’s inhabitants. Take care not to over tax your villagers lest they begin leaving, grieving and rioting in the village streets.

Evony game screen at map level

With so many villagers and army troops to feed you will need to gather resources from the surrounding valleys. Different types of valleys provide different resources such as lumber from forests, stone from deserts, iron from the hills, and food from lakes and swamps. Flat lands are for building another castle/city for the necessary expansion of your domain. Of course these valleys are not free for your taking, as you must defeat any rogue troops that have taken up camp and defend these resources.

Along with the surrounding available resources, you are provided with fields within your castle domain for farming, lumber and iron milling, and quarries for stone production. You decide how many of each and at what level they produce for you. Villagers are required for operating these fields as seen in the town level graphic above.

City level view

Each castle/city will have a need for basic types of construction such as a Town Hall to control the tax rate of your citizens, comforting them when they grieve or riot, levying them for food and gold when production is too low, etc. The level of your town hall and other buildings determine other aspects of the game such as the number of resource fields for production, the size and type of your armies, the number of hero’s you can employ and many other aspects. It is your job to keep all safe by defending your castle/cities and valleys from attackers and starvation while growing in size and strength for domain expansion and success. As your domain grows you will gain prestige, rank and titles. You will also be given the opportunity to either create an alliance or join an existing one which will give you strength and power among other players.

Your Inventory and achievements

You will have a very nice display of your inventory, well organized, at your fingertips. Your achievements, items and awards are all conveniently in one place. If you find you are in need of certain items you have two options. Acquire items from conquering valleys and barbarian cities or purchase what you need from the shop.

Other aspects of the game include reports on your status, your plundering, your attacks on other players, troop movement, scouting efforts and transportation of resources. Chat is convenient and available on all screen views regardless of where you are in the game so that you can talk to your alliance members, chat with friends and other players in world chat and communicate privately for those times you are scheming.

This game is easy to use and easy to learn. You do not have to have experience playing online games or strategy games as Evony comes complete with in game information and help as well as forums.

Your quests and instruction for advancing

The Quest guide is only a click away to get all the detailed information about your progress and next quest accomplishments as well as information regarding your next move up in the conquest for extreme ruler of the land.

Not just a game, there is a vast amount of educational information and history of medieval times incorporated into the game. Hovering your mouse over icons and graphics produce snippets of facts and history as well as background on strategizing and control of your resources. You are given detailed information as to what items, technology, rank, titles, and awards you will need to move up through your quests.

Game play is real time and continues to function 24 hours a day even when you are not playing. Your resources continue to grow (or diminish), your armies continue to march, your wealth continues to grow (or deplete) so that you are not required to be at the keys just to become supreme ruler.

This game is truly enjoyable and easy to play as well as satisfying, challenging and rewarding. Come play with us at http://one20.evony.com

I am WolfSong of the Templars alliance on server 26.

Google Chrome OS

That’s right, Google has announced the release of their OS “Chrome” later this year to early 2010.

By John D. Sutter – CNN

(CNN) — Google is jumping into Microsoft Windows territory — and threatening to change the way personal computers work — with its own version of a computer operating system.

The company says the forthcoming Google Chrome OS will revolutionize how computers operate, putting more emphasis on Web functionality, making computers faster and opening them up to helpful tinkering by outside program developers.

“The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web,” Google said late Tuesday on its official blog. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”

Chrome OS will be available to consumers in the second half of 2010, Google says.

But why should you care?

A trim and speedy Google operating system, which has been buzzed about online for some time, is interesting for several reasons — even if you think it could flop out of the gate. (…more)

I personally can’t wait. I predicted (Nov, 2007) Google would be doing this and made mention of my prediction in this blog as a sidebar to the free 411 call called 800GOOG411 ...here

I truly love the Google Chrome web browser that just blows Internet Explorer out of the water for speed, sleek, clean functionality. Bring it on Google, lets give Microsoft the wakeup call. It’s time for Microsoft to smell the roses, hell, I am all for Google shoving a rose so far up Microsoft’s butt that they can taste its fragrance.

More Power to Google and open source!

Welfare Addiction

Many times I have talked with friends about the idea an anonymous man had for trimming the fat from our welfare system. All too often we have heard how much of our hard earned money from the “working Americans” is going into the welfare system, and how few people actually deserve the check.

I wont go into how many illegal immigrants are earning money in America and not paying a single penny into the federal system that pays for welfare and other community programs. I will save that for another post. Right now is as good a time as any to start trimming the fat from the welfare system.

One way we can do that is to change a small way the welfare system works, and that is to require each welfare applicant to take a drug test during the submission of their application and to take a drug test once a month, on a random date, while they are on the program. The first time someone fails the drug test, they lose their welfare and are banned from collecting welfare ever again, ever. The money that would be saved from paying drug addicts to be on welfare would more than pay for the new testing, and the rest could go to people who actually need the assistance or other programs.

Now as it would happen, I was talking to a friend of mine that I used to chat with in public chat rooms frequently, and we agreed we had both seen many conversations of people that are on welfare, in a chat room. These people were supporting , of course, how necessary the welfare system is and how it helps so many people. A great many of us did agree it is important to an extent, however, how is it possible that a welfare recipient can pay for an internet connection and a computer, if they are on welfare? Welfare is meant to give assistance to those who can not afford the basic necessities for survival.

Access to the Internet and purchasing a computer, is a luxury, not a necessity. So it would stand to reason that the welfare department should be doing random inspections of the homes of welfare recipients, and a review of their utility bills to verify that no luxuries are being purchased such as internet access and computers.

The whole idea is not to enable an addict, even someone addicted to welfare. If someone needs Internet access to find a job instead of using their feet, then it isn’t an unsurmountable task to walk up to the public library and use their computers, or even go to the employment office and use their computers.

It’s time to stop funneling money into the hands of addicts through government programs. How can you help? Elect an official to oversee where your hard earned money is going, and stop electing politicians who thrive on special interest groups and padding their own pockets.

Destroy Information on the Internet

Find out everything that’s being said about you online and get rid of the content you don’t like.

Next we DESTROY… This is where we go to work for you. Our trained and expert online reputation specialists use an array of techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web. – ReputationDefender™

Does this sound alarming to you or maybe impossible?

Using our network of websites & forums we dominate your name or business!
PROTECT YOUR NAME FROM HARMFUL INTERNET POSTINGS!

We specialize in moving those negative listings aside and replace them with positive information about you or your company! Dont be held hostage by negative Internet listings. - DefendMyname[.com]

How is this possible? How does a company remove anything you have published, from the Internet?

Do you have a Myspace, Facebook or Hoverspot account? A recent survey of hiring managers at CareerBuilder.com found that about two-thirds of the them rejected an application after performing a web search on you.

As soon as I had heard that companies are claiming to be able to do something like “remove” or “destroy” information on the Internet, a red flag went up. Our country is based on certain inalienable rights, of which freedom of speech and freedom of press are just a couple. So how are these companies able to relieve you of those rights? The answer is, they legally can not.

The first company I quoted (ReputationDefender), doesn’t even have a phone number that you can contact them with, stating “…we are in Beta and we are keeping our costs low, which allows us to keep our prices low.“ Prices? Oh yes, there is always a price, and in this case its $10 for you to find out what information about you they can find and then its $30 for them to do something about the information they find about you, if they can do anything at all. Then they claim to destroy information published on the web. If that doesn’t scream SCAM!, nothing does. I personally challenge them to destroy this post about them without hacking into my account.

The second company is a little more careful with their wording, and to an observant reader, disclose how they accomplish “squelching” any information about you on the internet. The process is simple, but completely unethical. DefendMyName will utilize the technology in search engines such as Google, along with their numerous forums and websites to post repetitious “good” information about you to ensure only the “good” information ranks highest in web search results. This is organized abuse at its finest as well as an unethical business practice. The company will only negatively impact the Internet and make it harder for researchers and folks searching the web for information, to find what they are looking for and force a longer sifting process. This type of flooding the internet with repetitious information is in essence suppression of information, oppression, and propagandizing.

I am sure you were thinking it so I will overstate at this time, yes, there is a price for the service.

Norton Removal and PC Tuneup

Happy New Year 2008! I hope everyone had a great holiday season this past Christmas and New Year.

Being that this is the first post of the new year after a lengthy vacation for me, I feel it is important to start off the year with a useful post to just about every PC user out there.

Anyone that has bought a new PC has probably seen a Symantec created Norton product pre-installed on their machine. You didn’t have a choice of having this product, just like you didn’t have a choice of which version of Windows operating system installed on your machine. You got the latest release and get no choice of previous versions instead.

Like myself, many people are annoyed, frustrated, and unhappy with Norton products for various reasons. Some folks will subscribe and others will be automatically subscribed to Norton products when they purchase a machine, and others like myself will not subscribe at all and immediately uninstall (or try) any Norton products.

It is not commonly understood or known that Norton products severely degrade a Windows operating systems performance, however it is visible to a great many people how slow their systems become after a short time. This is due to a number of reasons most especially because Microsoft Windows still does not handle system resources properly after all these years of being on the market, and also because of utilities (like Norton) that bog down your system resources while trying to perform its tasks in the background. Other reasons are not defragmenting your hard drives with a reputable defragmentation program or at the very least the Windows defrag program, as well as a cluttered system registry (which Windows lacks the ability to keep clean and in top condition on it’s own) and an improperly sized virtual memory or page file.

With a Norton product installed and an expired subscription, you will get annoying reminders to renew your subscription because you are at risk if you don’t. If you have performed an “add/remove” of a Norton product, you may think that all is said and done. However, certain portions of those programs continue to run in the background,use system resources and load at start up even after being uninstalled because a Norton product is never fully uninstalled until you get the Norton Removal Tool. The soul point of todays post is to provide you with the link to remove any Norton product from your machine so that you can once again enjoy better performance from your machine. To do so, *clicky* this link: Symantec Home & Home Office Support to choose the Norton product you want to remove and download the tool.

After you have freed your system from the bonds of sluggish performance of a Norton product, you may be wondering what you can use for protection. I like Trend Micro for their Internet Security and PC protection. If you would like to use their free computer scanning system over the internet, visit Trend Micro Home and Home Office HouseCall. They also have a page with four of their best free programs for security of your computer and internet use called Trend Secure (here). This page also includes the HouseCall scanner.

My recommendations:

1. Never use or have active, more than one virus protection program at a time. You can have more than one program installed, just don’t activate or use them at the same time.
2. Never have more than one spyware/malware/greyware program running at the same time.
3. Since no one program for virus protection and spyware/malware protection is ever going to be 100% accurate or the “endall” of protection, I recommend having and using different kinds independently of each other, periodically.
4. Keep your system registry and your system as a whole tuned up frequently with some utility such as PCPitsop’s PC Optimize or similar program.

PC Pitstop is another what I call “can’t live without” pc resource for maintaining an absolutely top notch computer. You can perform a free scan of your system (even anonymously if you wish), read extremely valuable information about spyware and malware and you can download programs to install and maintain your own system. PC Pitstop “scores” you against their database of visitors and their machines so that you know how you rank compared to your friends machines.

If you have any questions at all or would like to relate your experience at PC Pitstop, or discuss any other items in this post, please leave a comment here. The only truly stupid questions are the ones never asked so please ask. I guarantee at least one other personal will learn something from the information, but was afraid to ask.

A Recovering American Soldier

I don’t normally write posts to my blog about chain letters or junk mail in my email, but this particular time, I do feel it is pertinent to the season and to my need to prevent a vast number of people wasting their time on a heartfelt, good intention.

The chain letter in question is the one going around about sending a card or letter to “A Recovering American Soldier” at the Walter Reed Medical Center in hopes that it will bring good cheer and warm feelings to a soldier at the center. The email looks something like this:

A Great Idea!!!

When you are making out your Christmas card list this year, please include the following:
A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

If you approve of the idea, please pass it on to your e-mail list.

While no one can fault the sentiment behind the suggestion (not only to remember the less fortunate during the holiday season but to make a special effort to reach out to those who have been wounded in the service of their country), the plan falters on one central reality in these times of heightened security, mail from strangers to unnamed soldiers must for everyone’s safety be discarded unopened.

The U.S. Postal Service will not accept mail addressed to “Any Soldier,” “Any Wounded Soldier,” or “A/Any Recovering American Soldier.”
Such offerings are either returned to sender (if a return address has been provided) or donated to charities (if no address for the sender is found). Similarly, military hospitals will not accept letters, cards, or packages addressed in such manner because if it did, it could be providing a conduit for those who might do harm to armed services members. Such beneficences, no matter how kindly meant, are not permitted to reach the soldiers they were intended for.

Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials echoed this information in a statement regarding the proposed plan to send cards to unnamed soldiers in its care:

Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials want to remind those individuals who want to show their appreciation through mail to include packages and letters, addressed to
“Any Wounded Soldier” that Walter Reed will not be accepting these packages in support of the decision by then Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Transportation Policy in 2001. This decision was made to ensure the safety and well being of patients and staff at medical centers throughout the Department of Defense.

In addition, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer accepting “Any Service Member” or “Any Wounded Service Member” letters or packages. Mail to “Any Service Member”
that is deposited into a collection box will not be delivered.

Instead of sending an “Any Wounded Soldier” letter or package to Walter Reed, please consider making a donation to one of the more than 300 nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping our troops and their families listed on the
“America Supports You” website, www.americasupportsyou.mil

Other organizations that offer means of showing your support for our troops or assist wounded service members and their families include:

http://www.usocares.org
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/tooursoldiers
http://www.redcross.org

For individuals without computer access, your local military installation, the local National Guard or military reserve unit in your area may offer the best alternative
to show your support to our returning troops and their families. Walter Reed Army Medical Center will continue to receive process and deliver all mail that is addressed
to a specific individual.

As Walter Reed continues to enhance the medical care and processes for our returning service members, it must also must keep our patients and staff members safe while
following Department of Defense policy. The outpouring of encouragement from the general public, corporate America and civic groups throughout the past year has been
incredible. Our Warriors in Transition are amazed at the thanks and support they receive from their countrymen.

Although the Walter Reed Army Medical Center is not accepting holiday cards for recovering soldiers, the American Red Cross has said that small gifts may be sent to patients in that facility through them:

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center is ONLY accepting phone cards, CDs, individual small packets of candy, things like that; which they will distribute among the
soldiers (as they have a lot of in and out patients). They are not accepting Holiday Cards, as they don’t have the human resources to distribute them.

You may send your packages to:

American Red Cross
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20307-5000

Email Etiquette

Email has been a part of our lives for many years now. In the beginning of the Internet we [geeks] used email to inform the person running their server or BBS (bulletin board service) that we were looking for certain programs or files, and in turn we would also let them know what files we had to share. Email was simple and it was safe.

Email has come a long way since those days and many types of email programs have shown up since then. With the growth of the Internet and email services also came the growth of users on the Internet. Growth in numbers yes, but not the growth of responsible computer geeks using the services. Today, with the simplicity of the Graphical Interface built into our computers, anyone with zero experience using a computer can surf the web and email their friends and family. Even a 10 year old can use a computer to surf the web.

Here-in lies the problem of today’s discussion. Persons of ill repute conduct “data mining” by preying on the inexperienced users of the Internet to mine their data from and use that data to spread viruses and spam advertise. Security holes are exploited very easily but most importantly, the number of people freely and innocently disclosing private email addresses due to basic computer inexperience, is out of control in epidemic proportions.

Here is an example of how it happens:

Sally Smith has had a computer for about 6 months and though she hasn’t had it very long has managed to make use of it to accommodate her need of being in touch with her friends and family. Sally uses a messenger like MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger and she emails all her friends and family quite frequently. When Sally first got her computer, her emails resembled an actual letter to a friend or family member depicting how her day went and how frustrating the organization of the PTA meetings have become and so on. It is now 6 months later and Sally has hundreds of email addresses of friends and family, and her emails have declined to a majority of forwarding chain letters, spreading urban legends (unintentionally of course because she doesn’t know how to verify the validity of urban legend emails she receives before forwarding them on), forwarding cool web sites she has visited, and sending photos of the family pet and the new quilt she just made. Sally’s emails look like this:

From: Sally Smith <salsmith@bignet.com>

To: Joe Public <joepublic@123isp.com>, Jane Doe <jdoe@myisp.com>, (insert 74 more friends and family members)

Subject: <fwd><fwd><fwd>Mickey and Minnie Mouse are brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend.

Message: (insert urban legend)

The problem with Sally’s email is that emails are typically passed along to hundreds of more friends that Sally doesn’t know, and that hundred or so friends each pass it along to hundreds of their friends, and so on. Now literally thousands of people Sally will never know, have her email address, AND all the email addresses of her friends AND family. Why? Because Sally is not experienced in the basic use of the Internet and not educated on maintaining privacy and securing the privacy of her friends and family members over the Internet.

The very first order of business is to obtain a free “virtual email” address such as hotmail, or yahoo, or any one of a large list of other virtual email providers. A virtual email address is your security door on the Internet. Sally provided her ISP assigned email address giving data miners her general physical location. Using the virtual email address protects the privacy of your ISP assigned email address. From the Virtual email you can view your mail on the web, keep it stored on the web or download it into your favorite email program on your computer (commonly called POP mail forwarding).

The second and most important order of business, is protecting your friends and family’s privacy by using BCC (blind carbon copy) to send or forward email to. Sally publicly sent all those email addresses over the web which will get sent all over the world. When sending an e-mail to multiple recipients, you can hide their e-mail addresses from each other. This is a sensible anti-spam precaution because it avoids making a long list of e-mail addresses available to all the recipients.

Here is how you use BCC:

To set up Blind Carbon Copy in Outlook 2000, select “Bcc Field” from the “View” menu, as shown below. This will cause the “Bcc:” field to be displayed from this moment on.

To use Blind Carbon Copy in Outlook Express, choose “All headers” from the “View” menu. This will cause the “Bcc:” field to be displayed from this moment on.

Now for actually using BCC in your emails. I have found the most effective way to send email and protect your privacy, your friend’s privacy and that of your family, is to use a dummy virtual email. I created a free email account called e(dot)dump@**********(dot)com. [For this post I used the word (dot) instead of the actual punctuation mark to prevent email harvesting.] Every single email I send anywhere is addressed to this virtual email address. Every single email that goes to this email address gets deleted/trashed without question. Then the actual people I want the email to go to besides the e.dump address gets put in the BCC: field, and the message is filled in accordingly.

If you are forwarding a message, do not use “forward” or “forward message.” Take the extra time to copy the portion of the email you want to forward, then create a new message to yourself (or a dummy email address like I created), paste the message into the message field, then add the addresses of the people you want to receive the email, into the BCC: field.

Your email should look like this (click image for full size view):

When your email is received, it should look something like this:

You will notice that all the important information is left out of the email, such as ALL email addresses, yours, your friend’s, and your family’s.

Now you can go to your dummy email account at the end of the day or week and delete everything in it, unless you want to save it all as your sent emails.

The most important thing you want to remember is, an email is like a phone number. If you are in the habit of keeping your phone number and other phone numbers private, so should you be in the habit of doing the same with email addresses.

If this information was helpful, please leave a comment saying so, and if you have any suggestions or care to add something, please do that as well.

Donna Jean Summers, Rewarded Criminal at Large.

It’s hard to believe that grown adults could not recognize a seriously wrong situation, let alone adults that were trusted enough to be hired as an assistant manager of a restaurant. Good judgment out the window. Morals, out the window. Intelligence, zero.

April 9th, 2004 – Mt Washington, Kentucky

Asst. Manager Donna Jean Summers [51] gets a call from an unidentified caller telling her that an employee, Louise Ogborn [18], is being accused of stealing a purse. The “caller” tells Donna Jean Summers that he is a police officer. Without any proof of any kind who the person is on the other end of the phone, Donna Jean Summers begins to do everything the caller asks of her. As Donna is instructed by “caller”, she tells Louise she is to be searched, then strip searched or be taken to the police.

After watching this video (originally airing on ABC News Now and edited by Opie and Anthony) you may have about 100 questions popping into your head about the entire incident. Before we get into some of them, the following are the facts as they are today:

1. Louise Ogborn sued McDonalds for $200 million and is awarded $6.1 million.
2. Donna Jean Summers was fired and plead guilty to wrongful imprisonment and given 1 year probation.
3. Donna Jean Summers sues McDonalds for $50 million and is awarded $1 million by the jury.
4. Walter Nix Jr[42] is arrested and convicted for his part in this crime and other related crimes.
5. David Stewart[38] a prison guard in Panama City, Florida is arrested and acquitted of being the culprit in this crime. (other charges pending in other similar cases) [special note, all calls of this nature to fast food restaurants have stopped since Stewart's arrest]
6. McDonalds did send warnings to their stores about prank phone calls two weeks prior to this incident (confirmed).

Now to the questions that came to mind while watching this. A store manager arbitrarily follows the instructions of an unidentified caller to perform police work knowing full well she is not qualified to perform police work, such as a strip search, let alone any kind of search of another person without a warrant. Not even reasonable suspicion will authorize Donna Jean Summers since she is not a law enforcement officer or even remotely trained as one. Donna Jean Summers illegally detains a subordinate, an employee under her care, and removes her victim (Louise Ogborn) of all possible defenses and means to defend herself and imprisons Louise using an effective means that prison guards employ to reduce the number of attempts to escape custody. A psychological ploy that reaches deep into the human psyche is the embarrassment and humiliation of being in public naked/nude and challenging authority. On an 18 year old female, this would be especially effective in keeping her prisoner without any effort. Donna Jean Summers, being an adult female, should have recognized the helplessness of this feeling immediately.

Donna Jean Summers took Louise’ car keys, cell phone and clothes, effectively imprisoning Louise in her office. Was Donna Jean Summers under a spell? Was she drugged? Was she being commanded to perform these acts with a gun held to her head? Why didn’t Donna Jean Summers just ask the “caller” to come to the store and do this himself, if he was truly a law enforcement officer, since the police station was only 5 minutes down the road from that particular McDonalds.

Donna Jean Summers was then instructed to bring her boyfriend/fiancé (Walter Nix Jr.) to the restaurant and perform guard duty. The second unqualified person to perform police work and Donna Jean Summers still doesn’t question anything that she is doing at the command of an “unknown” person on a phone. Keep in mind, this all transpired over the course of approximately 3 hours. Jason Bradley, 27, a cook who Donna Jean Summers at one point called in to watch Ogborn, refused to go along with the caller’s instructions to remove her apron and describe her.

While Louise was held prisoner against her will in a McDonalds store office, stripped of her defenses, stripped of her dignity, the 42 year old Walter Nix Jr (an adult) comes to take over by the “caller’s” request. Why would a 42 year old male, upon witnessing the situation, not immediately question this activity or the authenticity of the caller? We now know why and we now see the true colors of Donna Jean Summers and her judgment of those she “trusts.” What law enforcement authority would command one person to perform sexual acts on another? What idiot would follow such an order?

While Walter Nix Jr is enjoying the commands of his new boss “the caller”, Donna Jean Summers is more interested in keeping her subordinates out of the area of the office by attending to what must have been an “onslaught” of customers that were more important than the seriousness of the supposed situation in the office. If Donna Jean Summers had any true conviction that she was dealing with a real officer on the phone, and believed in her heart that this situation was legitimate and real, why wasn’t she at the side of her subordinate the entire time tending to this supposed more important issue, rather than feeding hungry people, which she had employees for? Donna Jean Summers enters the office at one point and ignoring that Louise is naked walks right past her to fiddle with the computer and looks for gift certificates at which point Walter Nix Jr then tosses Louise the apron to cover herself. Donna Jean Summers had abandoned a defenseless, helpless 18 year old female under her care [who Donna Jean Summers had personally rendered helpless and defenseless] to two adult male strangers, one with physical contact and the other on a phone giving commands. Donna Jean Summers was then shocked and surprised that anything “wrong” was going on even when she walked in on a fully nude Louise at one point.

Some time later, one Thomas Simms [58] was asked into the office and spoke with the “caller” to which he also refused to comply with a stranger on the phone. Donna Jean Summers was shocked and surprised to hear he was asked to remove Louise’ apron as well. Still Donna Jean Summers found nothing wrong with this entire incident, found no reason to stop it and never questioned the morality or violation of a subordinate Donna Jean Summers was responsible for or that persons rights and freedoms, including due process. Donna Jean Summers was in fact a willing participant.

Eventually other managers arrive on the scene (apparently contacted by Donna Jean Summers herself) and the real police were called to the scene who arrive in, you guessed it, 5 minutes.

McDonalds claims they sent warnings about phone pranks and hoaxes to all stores via voice/email two weeks prior to this particular event. This has been confirmed, however, whoever was the first to see this voice/email, somehow discarded it and “forgot” to tell the other managers or employees of this warning. Lisa Siddons, the manager there, said in her deposition that it didn’t mention strip-searches (see special note at the bottom). Apparently it was more important to get the word out that the McRib was back or that happy meals have a better prize in them.

If you look at just how bizarre this incident is in relation to Donna Jean Summers participation and her fiancé’s participation and how they both willingly believed the “caller” was law enforcement, but yet Walter Nix Jr had no problem with an officer telling him to command an 18 year old girl to perform sexual acts with him, and Donna Jean Summer had no problem strip searching one of her own subordinates without question or cause or a flicker of skepticism. Maybe the whole idea of Donna Jean Summers being commanded by a stranger to perform sexually exciting things to an 18 year old female turned Donna Jean Summers on. Maybe it turned on Donna Jean Summers AND her fiancé to have a stranger on the phone command them both to perform sexual acts with an 18 year old female. Maybe it was their secret fantasy to spike their own relationship, but it had to be with someone at least 18 but not old enough to fight back. Wait, that can’t be. There aren’t any people in this world that are that sick and demented, and there is no way that Donna Jean Summers and Walter Nix Jr could ever have been in league with or in partnership with this mysterious “caller” and set this whole thing up so that Walter Nix Jr would be readily available at a moments notice and that it would only be a matter of time before Donna Jean Summers called for some extra help at the end of a particular shift of a person that had already expressed her willingness to help out whenever she could for the extra spending money. Naw………too ridiculous……..or……….is it?

Special Note – McDonald’s employee manual clearly notes its policy against strip-searches. It also notes that no non-employee of McDonalds will be allowed into the restaurant offices.

Your Idenitity Stolen – if you answered the email below

Did you give away your Identity to a thief? Did you get this email below and then answer it?

If so, your identity was stolen and your account information along with it.

I italicized and used strike-through on the words that are misspelled. This will help you to identify emails that are scams. The number one footprint of a scam is a professional looking email that has several misspellings in them or improper grammar. Then I went to this scam site and I got the verification from Google and Firefox as the picture at the right states. Just click on the image to see it in full view.

Please don’t get caught by these scams. In the image to the right is a link to “how Firefox protects you” and I am providing that active link right here. Firefox is a browser like Internet Explorer, Netscape and Safari.

“The Co-operative Bank p.l.c.” <customerservice@co-operativebank.co.uk>

The Co-operative Bank p.l.c., Internet Banking Security Department has been receiving complaints from our customers for unauthorised uses of The Co-operative Bank accounts. As a result we are temporarily shutting down some selected Online Accounts perceived vulnerable to this, pending till the time we carry out proper verification by the account owner. The Co-operative Bank p.l.c., is committed to ensure the safeguard of each customer personal information, making sure only authorised individuals have access to their accounts.As a first step to have Your Co-operative Bank Internet Banking Access reactivated please reconfirm your identity by using the link provided below. https://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/CBIBSWeb/start.do These instructions are sent to and should be followed by all Co-operative Bank clients,to avoid service deactivation after the verification is completed. We apologise for any inconveniences and thank you for your cooperation. The Co-operative Bank p.l.c., Internet Banking Security Department The Co-operative Bank p.l.c., (990937) P.O. Box 101, 1 Balloon Street, Manchester, M60 4EP

Introducing, Gmail Paper

Is it free?

Yes. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations—these are physically impossible in the paper medium.

How about attachments?

All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases.

Is there a limit?

You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.

But what about the environment?

Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.

 

Beta User Testimonials

	“Gmail Paper is a scrapbooker’s dream. I paper archive all of my son’s emails, cut them out in creative shapes, and paste them in my binders.” Anna-Christina D., Lifecoach
	“I’ve always felt uneasy about the whole internet thing. With the help of Gmail Paper, now I’m taking matters back into my own hands, literally.” Kevin S., CEO AdventaStar Inc.
	“Now that I have Gmail Paper, I understand the difference between labels and folders. I had one message with two labels, but when I tried to stick the paper version into two filing cabinets at the same time, it just wouldn’t go.” Mayumi M., Associate
	“It’s paper, plain and easy. I sometimes find myself wondering: what will Google think of next? Cardboard?” Bill K., Armchair Futuris

 

 

 

 

Learn more at Gmail Paper

Internet Speed Fines

All too often I have seen several companies advertising “High Speed Internet” service or “Broadband” service as a campaign against “those other guys” using dial-up or slower cable modems.

Verizon has a real good “hook” campaign and so do some of the Bell companies. I haven’t heard much about Comcast (a.k.a. BrightHouse Networks in the southern states), but that’s probably because they don’t have to advertise so much. I had great service with them in Daytona Beach, Fl. and I had above average service from them in Atlanta, Ga. And I have darn good service with them here in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The real catch is in knowing whether the ads are talking about mega “bits” per second or mega “Bytes” per second transfer rate. We may also be talking Kilobits versus KiloBytes as well.

So here is how it works in simplest form. There are 8 bits of data in a byte. If you see an ad that touts 56Mbps (lower case b), then they are talking megabits. This means you can divide your 56Megabits by 8 and you are actually getting roughly 7MBps ( 7 MegaBytes) transfer speed. I won’t go into details but it is only a rough approximation because of a kilobyte being 1024 thousand bytes of data. Summarily, if you see an add touting 768Kbps versus 768KBps you can then divide the 768Kbps by 8 to discover you are only getting 96KBps true transfer speed.

My results are Download Speed: 12181Kbps (1522.6KBps) which translates into roughly 1.5 MBytes/sec or 15 Mbits/sec.

Now when I say transfer speed, I am actually talking about “optimal” download speed only, not upload speed. Many configuration settings on your computer can affect your actual speed of data transfer (upload and download). The standard upload speed was roughly 384kbps, but there have been some changes in technology of late and some people may be getting close to the same 1500kbps uploads speeds as I get.

If you are interested in knowing what your actual transfer speeds are with the current service you have, click on the Speak Easy speed test Logo at the top right of this article. By the way, just for a cost comparison, I pay about $35 a month for Internet service.

Orisinal.com

Ferry Halim is an exceptional artist. Creator of stunning web designs, artwork in pencil and digital form, and a pretty dang good web designer. He also creates games.

If you are like me, and you enjoy a simple yet challenging moment of mild relaxation, then you will like the game and artwork at Mr Halim’s website [here].

As a good blogger and following web mastering etiquette, I don’t normally include many links that take you away from my blog, however, this is one of those exceptions that I don’t mind at all.

The theme name to Mr Halim’s site is called “orisinal” (of which I have no idea what the meaning is behind the name) which is a wonderful flash website. As well as the games and artwork, there is an excellent e-card mailer where you create the card and build bouquets of flowers yourself (in digital art form) before sending it on to friends and family. [pictured]

Ferry Halim has created many digital projects [for the web] for company’s such as Lifetime TV, SciFi channel, and ITL-Infoway websites just to name a few. He has also designed many games for the Cartoon Network on the web.

Although the entertainment factor is aimed at the childrens market, his works and games are enjoyed by kids of all ages. This is one site I think you will enjoy both as a child and as an adult. The entertainment factor is a 10 out of 10.

Rocket

http://Zuggart.com

I think Paris has been at the top post for far too long, so I am bumping that whiny spoiled brat with this post about my Web Site called Zuggart.com.

Please feel free to peruse the pages of my website and leave a comment or two. You can send me emails from within my website or comment about it here if you would rather.

I’m going to be adding a page to the site dedicated specifically to Second Life[.com] so check it often to see where I have been in Second Life. The photo gallery of my explorations in Second Life will have descriptions so you wont wonder what you are looking at.

Soul Mate Scam

Love Soul Mate scam of the century. It amazes me how much time people have on their hands, and spend it thinking up ways to rip off America.

When you see ads that say “find out the exact name of your soul mate“, do NOT be tempted to take the test. It’s not a test at all. in step 1 you will enter your gender, in step 2 you will enter your zodiacal sign, or star sign. In step 3 you will enter your first name, (are you getting a feel for this yet?), and in step 4 you will enter your cell phone number.

MY What???? That’s right, and what you don’t notice is that at the bottom of the red bordered screen, out of your immediate view, is the “fine print.” In the fine print you will discover that after you have entered your cell phone number, you will be sent a PIN for you to discover the name of your soul mate. You must reply to the text message with your PIN to reveal your soul mate. Once you have replied to the text message, you are subscribing to a weekly prediction service and agree to be charged anywhere from $5.99 each week to $19.99 a month [depending on who your cell service is with].

The ONLY way to stop this service is for you to send the word “STOP” to the number [short code] 89623, which appeared briefly on the “enter your cell phone number” page which you probably breezed right past and didn’t notice the fine print hidden obscurely out of view at the bottom of the page that you must scroll down to see.

What a great scam huh? This is the typical “preying on human nature” scam that Banks on the fact you will be excited, eager and in a hurry to find the answer. In your haste you will zoom right by the important information that will quietly and invisibly relieve you of your hard earned cash on your quest to find out the name of your soul mate.

So who is my soul mate? I don’t know, because I stopped dead in my tracks when I am asked to enter my cell phone number on a web site. However, I am willing to bet that it would have been the name of some celebrity that is also a Sagittarius, or a list of famous celebs with birthdays in December. Or maybe, the name would be revealed to me after I have gotten 6 predictions first, or it would be a name taken from the phone book of a 3rd world country, who needs to be married immediately to an American or they will lose MILLIONS of dollars that is waiting for them in an obscure offshore account because it was left to them by someone who was related to them (by name) and died recently without a will and leaving the money unclaimed. [Some of you may have gotten that if you have seen that scam as well]

Source: http://lovesoulmate.us

***UPDATE***The Soul Mate site has changed their pages to include the “fine print” at the bottom of every page and changed the title to inform you that you will get your soul mate’s name through weekly horoscope predictions to your cell phone.

***UPDATE 6/12/2007***A new website from the same company running love soul mate is now open called My 1 Pure Love. The charges are the same, the scam is the same and still they only offer horoscopes and love “predictions.”

***UPDATE 7/16/2007***Yet another website by the same company has produced “Perfect Lover Calculator” and it appears on myspace.com accounts as “crush Calculator.”

PerfectLover will not issue refunds to persons or entities claiming that they did not authorize the use of their wireless account to receive a Download.

The STOP text of 75557 is the number to use on this service. The terms and conditions are identical to all their other services with the exception of the name change and the terms and conditions were last updated for all their named services in Nov 2005.

***UPDATE 7/30/2007***It appears that the “STOP” numbers that you text back to the company do not work:

December 27th 2006 04:11:32 AM I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM GETTING MESSAGES ON MY T-MOBIL CELL PHONE THEY’VE CHARGED 20.00 2 MY BILL I WANT SOMETHING DONE AND MY ACCOUNT CREDITED 4 THIS 20.00.I’VE TEXT STOP 2 75557 CALLED 800 # TO NO AVAIL . PLEASE DO SOMETHING THIS IS WRONG ITS A SCAM AND NEEDS STOPED AND REPAY THE MONEY CHARGED ON OUR CELL BILL. THANKS M.M. IN ALABAMA

December 21st 2006 04:38:04 PM I have been charged as well and can not get through on my cell phone for them to stop! WHAT A FREAKING SCAM!I had $30.00 worth on my bill. The phone providers are powerless because of “anti-trust” laws. If they can’t do anything, it is up to us to do it. I am going to start by filing a complaint with the FCC. Don’t know if it will help, but worth a shot.

***UPDATE 8/23/2007***Major changes are taking place since I began this consumer alert post. Today I have discovered that LoveSoulMate.us has changed its home page in the following ways:

1. The title of the page is no longer “Find out the exact name of your soulmate.” It is now displaying “Find out the name of your love soulmate with weekly horoscopes to your cell.“
2. The graphic now includes a notice to all users saying “Don’t miss out on calculating your Love Soulmat’s name! You will also get weekly horoscopes.“
3. The home page of the site now includes links to the Service Info, Privacy Policy, Contact Information and Terms and Conditions. [Please read ALL of these first]

In the contact Information you will note “Please tone dial your number to remove yourself from the service. We do not monitor incoming messages to our service number, so you must send the correct keyword STOP to cancel the service.”

They don’t have a live person monitoring their customer service number at 800-235-7105 so you must use the “STOP” text instead to stop the service. What the Hell??!!??!! But you can enter your cell phone number and they will remove that number from their service, after just telling us that we must use the stop text instead. HUGE red SCAM flag.

So, just out of giggles and grins, I entered a bogus number “588-245-1174″ as my cell phone number, and would you believe the response was “We have successfully removed your cell number from our database. You will no longer receive text messages from Mobile [unrecognized word].“

They removed a number that doesn’t even exist? let alone in their database?? HUGE red SCAM flag.

Now the big scam – At first they were going to tell you the exact name of your soul mate (and they consistently spell soul mate as one word “soulmate” when in fact it is two words which suggests this is not an American company), before changing it to say “don’t miss out on calculating…” What the hell does that mean? Don’t miss out on someone doing the calculating for you? Nope, not at all, as is explained in the “service Info” which specifically states “LoveSoulMate.us is an entertainment service providing weekly readings and monthly love tips. The user is able to calculate some details about their perfect match.” So we have to do the calculating ourselves? from what information, our horoscopes about ourselves? Are you kidding me?!?!

Now, the Privacy Policy which states “Removing Yourself From Database -You may unsubscribe from any or all services by messaging the word STOP.“”Law -The only case where we will provide all neccessary information is where we are approached by representatives of the law enforcement bodies.“[necessary is misspelled]Lets Summarize:

1. The Crush Calculator, the Love Soulmate calculator/prediction, The My 1 Pure Love prediction/calculator, are not really calculators or predictions at all.
2. They wont provide any information to anyone unless they are approached by a law enforcement body, in other words, only if they are sued or summoned to a grand jury investigation.
3. “STOP” text message doesn’t work.
4. Calling the company at their customer service number won’t get you a live person because it’s not monitored by a live person.
5. Entering “ANY” number at the customer service number will be removed from the database even if the number doesn’t exist or is not your own. (we don’t know if any number is actually removed)
6. “Any and All services” implies they do own more than one service under different names. (The terms and Conditions verifies this by giving the same customer service number for all the names stated above in this scam)
7. Contradictions, bad or incorrect english and lies [about removing a number from the database and the effectiveness about the STOP text message] all suggest a non-American company and Scam.

This scam needs to be reported to the United States Dept of Justice Attorney Generals office by as many consumers as possible. Click the “Contact Us” link once there.

***UPDATE 7/04/2009*** The global Privacy Policy has been changed to reflect as follows : “We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights…”

“…You have no right, and waive any right you may otherwise have, to pursue any of our service providers or your cell phone carrier for any violation of this Privacy Statement.”

Now I have no idea who the idiot is, pretending to be the legal adviser or legal staff of Mobile Messenger and Mr Tsvetnenko, but this clown has gone way overboard to tell us that we have no rights and that we waive our rights just because he wants us to.  I’m sorry, this is laughable.  Also this service has spread to Facebook under many company names such as IQquizapp, Inc, and MobiConnex (officialIqquiz.com). The Privacy Policy and the Terms & Conditions now use the term “The Company” to represent all the individual company names used for this world wide scam.

Below is a list found on the officialiqquiz.com website to unsubscribe:

“

Playphone – Does NOT Accept Nextel or Boost Traffic

To cancel your Subscription Plan, send a text message with the text “STOP PP” to 77888, or such other number as may be designated on our Website (http://www.playphone.com), or, send an e-mail to refunds@playphone.com or contact 866-661-2076. The termination shall become effective at the end of the billing period in which you gave your notice of termination.

Ringaza – Does NOT Accept Sprint Traffic

Subscribers may cancel by texting STOP to 75714. To know more about Ringaza’s Terms & Conditions please visit our Web site (http://www.ringaza.com) or contact customer service at support@ringaza.com.

Jamster – Does NOT Accept Sprint, Nextel or Boost Traffic

To cancel your Subscription Plan, send a text message with the text “STOP” to 75555.

SendMeMobile

To stop receiving the security code confirmation text messages or to cancel any service at any time, text “STOP” to 77899, or contact our SendMe Mobile customer support team directly help@sendmemobile.com or call 877-3-SENDME or text HELP to 77899.

GameOn

To unsubscribe send “STOP” to 77877.

Mobile Messenger

This is an auto renewing subscription service that will continue until cancelled anytime by texting STOP to short code 46357.

Solow

Text “HELP” to 23687 at any time for more information about how to play. You can also contact SoLow customer service at help@solow.com or by calling 1-877-402-3687. To stop receiving the security code confirmation text messages or to cancel a service at any time, text “STOP” to 23687.

Flycell

To Unsubscribe simply text STOP to 69999. For more information on unsubscribing visit Flycell here.”

“Swim” as part of driving directions?

Sometimes you just have to “swim it” if you really want to get there bad enough.

As many people have discovered, Google™ maps (or Earth) are great ways to find your way to anywhere. I am a huge fan of Google™ and all of their applications and gadgets, so I find myself playing with and learning all the cool stuff they have. I have always had a lot of fun studying maps and while I was playing around one day, I decided I wanted to know if there were driving directions from one country to another.

I live in Pittsburgh now, and while plugging in various destinations around the country from Pittsburgh, I thought “hmm, I wonder how I would get to London, England”? So I plugged it into Google™Earth and discovered something funny.

When the driving directions got me to the coastline of America, I found it interesting that the port of choice was Long Wharf in Boston (probably because I started in Pittsburgh). When I got there, the driving directions actually said “Swim Across the Atlantic”, (click image to enlarge) to which I had to laugh. You have to admit the humor in this is appropriate since, who besides me, would want driving directions across the big water anyway? The joke was on me, and boy it was good.

Now that I had a good laugh, I wondered, where it took me once I had made this Guinness World Record swim across the Atlantic Ocean. So off I went, around the globe to find my port of entry, (click image to enlarge) and sure enough, there it was. In France!?!? Seems to me that France is getting a bit of tourist traffic out of the deal, but it’s all good as I was able to find my way into England quite easily. After all, after a swim like that, my arms would be tired and I would take just about any port of entry to Europe. Talk about raisin skin.

Rocket