It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

It seems someone is hacking MSN Account using a phishing/scam. It asks  you put in your MSN/Hotmail/Live credentials in the spaces provided and supposedly it will tell you how many of your MSN Messenger contacts have blocked you.

The site looks something along the lines of this:

I’m very suspicious any sites that ask for your log on details especially when I receive the link to the website  from a Hotmail contact whom I’ve not spoeken to in months or even years.

The website may look legitimate because its got the MSN logo and other MSN icons but beleive me its not a legitimate site.

So if you get an email from some asking you to log into this site or a similar site and it asks for your MSN log on details just ignore it, here an example of the email I’ve been recieving

“hiyaaa!

How are you? was bored so planned to write you …
anyway here you go
im sure its gonna be fascinating for you…

It’s Easy, Secure and Free!

Try it Now, Click Here”

Don’t fall for the scammers

Just a quick post to let everyone know that its Chorlton Park Festival today and we;ll be there entering Blue our Cane Corso in the RSPCA Fun Dog Show, so we’re hoping you’ll all be there to offer Blue some support.

Will hopefully post some photos and videos of the day later, details below about the event, its being held at

Chorlton Park
Barlow Moor Road/Mauldeth Road
Manchester M21 7HH

“Dear All,

The RSPCA Manchester and Salford Branch are running a Funday on the 11th of July 2009 – 12-5pm.

There will be:

* Dog shows
* Ethical and charitable stalls
* Rescue dog parade
* Flyball Demos
* Food and refreshments
* Artists and musicians
* Games and rides
* Bouncy castle
* Climbing wall
* Football tournament
* Other Sports

If any charities, community groups and ethical traders would like a stall at the festival:
info only is free
charity/community stall £10
trader/business £25

Please email for booking forms or call 0161 882 0680.

ALSO DOG MOT’S:

We will have vets doing free health checks for dogs. Fleaing, worming and microchipping can be purchased for just £1 each! Brilliant money saver!”

First heard about it on Twitter last night and then it was confirmed  few hours later on the major news sites, though they had been reporting it before as rumours.

He’s been dead less than 1/2 day and already the jokes are doing the rounds, there either jokes that  somehow either include his song titles or relate to his supposed relationships with young boys, either way there coming fast and furious to my email and my mobile.

As well as MJ dying yesterday, another great died yesterday the lovely Farrah Fawcett, a woman who I will readily admit I fantasied about as a teenager, I was one of those 12 million people who went out and bought the Red Swimsuit poster, at this time my thoughts go out to both MJ’s family and also to FF’s family.

2 greats from 2 different spheres of the fame game gone forever

Been a slightly stressful day and a 1/2 at work for me, had to set up some PC’s in the office and transfer data onto them from the PC’s there replacing, now this may not seem very stressful I know, but when you spend 1/2 day trying to figure out why you cant load an operating system onto the PC’s even though you’ve contacted Dell’s Mumbai Support Centre 8 times and each of those 8 times they tell you that these instructions will resolve the matter and 8 times they don’t your bound to be a little stressed.

After finally giving up on getting any sort of help from Dell I eventually found a response on a forum detailing what was causing the problem (it was the SATA settings for the hard-drive in system setup) and resolving it I finally got round to installing Win XP on the 1st of the PC’s.

So I’ve the got the OS installed now all I need to do is back up the PST file from the PC its replacing, copy any files that the user has stored on their PC onto the Server and than replace the PC, copy all the data back onto the new PC, import the PST file into Outlook and Bob’s ya uncle so to speak . . . well again nothings ever easy. First off the PST file is nearly 4 Gig in size (seems the users kept every single email they’ve sent/received in the past 3-4 years, so after 40-60 min’s of exporting I finally start to look for the data files that the user wants me to copy across to the new PC, kindly enough the user has put them all into a folder on his desktop to make it easier for me, so I copy the move the PST file I’ve just exported and drop it inside the folder and prepare to copy it onto the server . . thinking that its not going to take real long, its 4 Gig file and some word/excel documents, surely that won’t take long, how wrong could I be, seems that the copying over the networks going to take 2hrs ! Upon investigating the folder with all the docs in he wants me to copy I find there’s 11 Gig of data in there even before I add the 4 Gig PST file (yep 15 Gig of data), this explains the long time to copy across the network.

So thats why its been a stressful  day and a 1/2 thus far, I’ve not even finished yet either, still got a shed load of windows updates to download and install yet and I’ve yet to copy the data back onto the users new PC . . oh joy.

You know whats really annoying about the whole thing . . . this could have been so much easier, for a start we have a server that gets backed up every night that this person could have been storing their 11 Gig of data on, which if they had would have saved me a good few hours of work, they could have even maybe occasionally gone through there emails and deleted any they don’t need anymore (we keep a backup of incoming/outgoing emails in MailMarshal so people can delete emails, but nobody does).  If they’d just done one of these it would have saved me at least a couple of hours work, but alas no such luck

Well got another email from some of my friends in Nigeria letting me know once again that I could be in for a nice windfall of money, this time however no-ones died and left it to me, something I’m quite happy about as it’s not nice toreceive money because someones died.

So if no-ones died where’s the money come from, well it appears that some   was destined to be paid to me as part of a contract award was in a bank for a long time and it acquired a hefty amount of interest while it was in there and the nice Bank Manager thinks that I should get it as he thought it unfair that Ididn’t get the contract, so he’s decided to give it to me, isn’t that sweet.

Anyway heres his nice letter in its entirity, notice the excellent grammer and construction of the letter, its hard to believe that English is his first language . .

International Remittance Dept
HSBC Bank plc
8 Canada Square
London E14 5HQ

Mr Parry Jones
Int’l Remittance Director
Hsbc Bank London
Tel: +447024076241

Oh how these Nigerians make me laugh with there promises of money, why should I a rich westerner need such money when the street over here are paved with

I had my MD make a very personnel comment about me in front of 2 senior staff today, which embarrassed me, belittled me and as far as I’m concerned was unprofessional and unacceptable of someone in his position to make to a subordanant.

I’ve emailed my Manager expressing concerns and am now waiting till Monday to hear what she says about it, this is the 2nd time in as many months that I’ve raised concerns about my treatment from the MD and I’m still waiting to hear the outcome from the previous email I sent her.  I’m guessing she’ll just give the usual garbage about how not to worry you know what he’s like, etcetera eccetra, but if this continues I think I may hand in my  resignation, because to be honest life’s to short . . .

Seems that our Nigerian friends are at it again, we’ve been contacted once more by a gentleman calling himself

Daniel Moore

He first requested a quote for 2 x Dewalt 9″ D28411 Grinder with Anti Vibration Side Handle (230 Volt), explaining they were for a client in London.

After requesting an address from him so we could quote, he provided me firstly with an address in Epping, which after googling turned out to be a freight forwarding company that dealt with Nigerian customers, I actually rang them to see if they’d ever heard of him, they had’nt, so I emailed him again to confirm that this was the correct address, omitting the fact that I’d discovered his ploy, this time he gave me another address and his clients name

Michael Bashorun

The address he provided this time was no surprises here another after googling was a Freight Forwarding company this time located in Cricklewood, so gave them a call and this time they had heard of him and indeed he did have a Freight Forwarding Service set up there to  . .  wait for it . . . . . .  NIGERIA . . .

I actually got to speak to the Manager this time who it turns out was also Nigerian and who assured me that not all Nigerians wanting to buy goods over the internet or email where fraudsters (which is probably true, but it just seems that all the ones we have contact with are the ones who are indeed fraudsters), he also explained that even if it was a fraud not to worry as we should just wait until the credit card had cleared and we had the money in the bank and then send the goods out, that way we would’nt lose out, erm hold on a minute Mr Manager what about the person who’s credit card was used and the fact that the Banks will have to suffer the cost’s which in turn will no doubt be passed onto us in more Bank charges.

Anyway as is always the case with these scam emails I’ve continued  to email Mr Moore and he’s now replied explaining that he’d like to up the order to 17 x Dewalt 9″ D28411 Grinder with Anti Vibration Side Handle (230 Volt), so I’ve sent him a revised quote and even thrown in free delivery due to the fact he wants to order so many and requested his Credit Card details . .  just waiting for his reply now.

Will get back to you once he’s replied.

Well this afternoon was spent recovering from a verbal outburst from my MD, who was ranting and raving at me because his PC couldn’t get on the network and I’m supposed to figure out why while he screams at me and belittles me in the privacy of his office, turned out it was a loose network cable that had been knocked out while we were doing some work in the patch cabinet yesterday.
Might have spotted it yesterday if he used this PC regularly, but its his spare in his office so it only gets turned on once in a Blue Moon.

I’ve sent an email to my Manager complaining about the way he spoke to me, asking for her support and advice on the matter, but no doubt as per usual she’ll say “Well you know what he’s like!” or “Well if you don’t like it you can always leave” . . .
Is that what Managers are supposed to do ? I think not, but if this is the reply I get, I’ll be informing her that is’nt the answer I wanted and would expect more from her, but even the very same MD who vented his rage and frustration on me has told me and my colleagues that she’s not a real manager . . so it’s very unlikely that she’ll do anything.

Current Mood: Angry

I

Ipod Nano

Yes I’ve just got an email informing me that I’m the lucky winner of an 8gig Ipod Nano :

Vince,
I am really delighted to inform you that you are the winner of our Autumn competition and are now the proud owner of a 8GB iPod Nano. The iPod Nano comes in a variety of colours (they all look quite bright from the Apple website) so could you please let me know which colour you would like from the following list and I can then place an order.
Silver
Grey
Purple
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Red
Pink”

So thanks to those lovely people at Namesco I’m going to be adding a Red 8Gig Ipod Nano to my collection, I’ve had this Blog hosted with Namesco for coming on 8yrs now I think and have to admit in all that time I’ve only had to call them once and that was due to someone hacking my website, once I’d made the call to them they restore the previous nights back-up of my site and I my website was back up with 1/2hr or so, apart from that every things been pretty decent.

Normally I dont enter web competitions, but I use Namesco’s web mail when I’m at work and noticed on their homepage they run a monthly contest, so for the past 3-4 months I’ve been entering, not really expecting to win anything and now I have, so I’ll definitely be entering any more they have on the go and hope I’m a winner again.

So what am I going to do with the lovely shiny pretty new Ipod I receive ?

Well thinking I can use it as my primary work Ipod, load it with my favourite TV Series and Movie’s and when I’m having my lunch or ciggy break catch up on all the TV I’ve been missing, work will never be the same again

Will no doubt post my thoughts on what the new Nano’s like when it arrives, but for now I’ll say it just once more “Thanks Namesco“

Yes believe it or not our Cane Corso Blue has had her identity stolen, well sort of . . let me explain :

A Cane Corso forum I’m a member of has a section on dogs for sale which details any adverts on the net that are spotted by forum members for any Cane Corso or Cane Corso X ? for sale, anyway while browsing this section of the forum I came across an advert for 6 Blue Cane Corso puppies for sale, 2 x dog and 4 x bitch, alongside this advert were some pictures of Cane Corso, 2 fully grown and 1 puppy, now you would assume these were the one of the 6 puppies and the dog and bitch they were bred from. nothing wrong with that you’d assume, but that’s where the problem was, it seems that the mother of these puppies in the photograph looked awfully familiar and the guy in the hat whose should the mother had her head rested on looked even more familiar.

Here let me show you a screen shoot of the advert in question

Who is that good looking fellow with the good looking Cane Corso

Now take a look at this photo from a set on my Flickr page of our Cane Corso Blue

Me and Blue in the car

Notice anything familiar about the photo in the advert and the photo from my flickr set . . .

Yes they are indeed the same photo and considering Blue’s not had any puppies and I aren’t selling any Cane Corso puppies for anyone, it would appear that someone’s stolen Blues identity to try and sell some puppies.

Now as this photo is listed on Flickr as having All rights reserved © i.e. it can not be used without my express permission, it would appear someone stole it from Flickr and used it illegally on the freeadds website.

So I contacted Freeadd explaining all of the above and they have now kindly removed the picture and the advert from there site, they’ve also sent me an email informing me that there moderators will be keeping an eye out for similar adverts, I’ve now emailed them back that I believe the advert to be something similar to the Nigerian Scam emails i.e. they try to sell you something and ask for the money up front, either that or its some other sort of scam.

So as you can see Blue has indeed been the victim of identity theft for profit, so if dogs are’nt safe from it what make you think you are !