I looked through my bank check card statement this morning and noticed three odd charges from “Yahoo Voice” this month. Two were within a day of each other, and one was about ten days ago. I called up my bank and they are going to have to cancel my existing card and send me a new one — in about ten days. I use my check card for just about everything, including a number of automated payments such as my gym membership. With luck the card will get here before I need it for anything in particular.

I wonder if this has anything to do with my former employer losing a laptop with my social security number on it last year.

The bank has issued me a temporary credit and it doesn’t look like anything else has been erroneously charged, so hopefully this will be the extent of my troubles.

I upgraded to Firefox 3.0 without finding out if some of my favorite extensions and themes were compatible. As such, I’ve had to live without my favorite theme, Noia Extreme 2.0, ever since FFX 3.0 publicly launched ten days ago.

Luckily the author has been hard at work and a beta version of the theme is available.

Screenshot after the jump:
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Well maybe not my WORST flying nightmare - that would be a repeat of six infants with inner ear infections screaming for almost seven straight hours - but this is close.

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Headed to San Francisco for five days to see my family and some of my friends from a previous job. I’ll probably be on at some point during the day thanks to my Windows Mobile phone and my Asus Eee, but I am not sure if I’ll be posting all that much.

Be good while I’m gone :)

About seventeen months ago, I posted my predictions for 2007. This post was so memorable that I complete fucking forgot about it until I found it searching for when I adopted my dog Rosie.

Let’s recap my predictions, and see if they actually came true in 2007.

1. The United States will go to war with Iran. There is too much saber-rattling on behalf of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for George W. to let slide. I’m not belittling the casualties in Iraq, but we’ll see more war-like casualty numbers if we tangle with Iran. At this point, I’d much rather support a war in Iran than one in Iraq.

   Not true. At least, not that anyone is willing to admit.

2. I will divest myself of Inara, my Pontiac Solstice. I would have ditched her sooner, but the wintertime is the wrong time to sell a convertible.

   True. And thank goodness. I was thinking about this the other day, and the Solstice was by far the worst-built car I have ever owned (and I have owned eleven thus far).

3. I will get laid off in June. Re-employment options include hit man or coffee shop manager. Maybe both.

   True … sort of. I was laid off in late October. I am not yet a hit man nor a coffee shop manager.

4. The AD&D campaign played at my house will dissolve as The Proto-Lawyer™ graduates and moves up to Northern Virginia to live with The Accountant™.

   True.

5. A major repair for the house. I am strongly leaning towards water heater failure. The poor thing is almost fifteen years old.

   False. I didn’t have anything major happen to the house, except some siding is starting to rot on the backside of the house.

Three out of five isn’t bad. :) Admittedly, the one about Iran was a longshot, and I already knew I wanted to get rid of Inara. Any predictions for 2008? No, not this year. Besides, I’d be cheating with the year halfway done, right?

I did something today I have never done in over fifteen years of using the World Wide Web. I bought a Web browser. I can’t believe it, either.
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I am up against an interesting problem here at work. They don’t allow access to instant messaging services, Web email, social networking sites, or gaming sites. It makes hard for me to take a mental break every once in awhile, and I have felt very disconnected from my online friends and previous co-workers.

I’ve explored ways to get around the network limitations. I purchased a new phone, the Verizon xv6900 (known elsewhere as the HTC Touch) to handle email. I can also sign onto AIM for instant messaging, but the lack of a hardware keyboard makes IMing kind of a pain in the ass.

There is an “unauthorized” open 802.11 wireless access point here at work. There are a few problems with using this full-time, however. One is that it is, well open. I trust in SSL to encrypt my traffic, but not everywhere I visit is behind the HTTPS protocol. The other drawback is that if I am on the open network I can’t get my work-related email, or be logged into our work-specific instant messaging system. I want to multi-home, and this isn’t possible with my current hardware setup.

There was also the option of using the phone as a wireless modem via Verizon’s high speed EVDO network. After fucking around with the phone and my work laptop off and on for a week, I finally got it working today.

Here are my speed and latency results.
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I thought I’d post another one of these while I eat lunch, since we all seemed to like the other one so much.

This is one of the motivational posters in the stairwell at work:

I hate to bag on it, but here we go.

What the hell does this mean? I think it’s something about being collaborative, but it could also be about lending enthusiasm. Or expertise. Or maybe it’s a suggestion for people dropping nasty shits in the bathrooms: BRING A CANDLE.

I work for a very large company that has a ton of money. Why can’t we hire someone who knows the difference between “its” and “it’s?” At least they didn’t type “looses” instead of “loses.”

I thought you might like to see what my dogs do while I am slaving away to make enough money to buy them cookies.

Sorry for the quality, they came from a cameraphone but were just so cute I had to post them.
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These are the “motivational” posters that I mentioned in my previous post. There is one in every level in every main stairwell.

I don’t know what’s more scary: that someone came up with this, or someone approved it.

What the fuck does this even mean??