jim_p: Net Avenger?

I don't know if my efforts did it, but an identity theif got shut down...

Last night I got the usual kind of identity-theft spam in my inbox... "Please update your security information" ostensibly from Citibank. Of course, the site that hosted the information-gathering wan't a citi.com site but was attached to something called "128encrypted.com". This got my suspicions WAY up, and with a bit of internet detective work I dug my way to their upstream provider and alerted them to the possible scam they were hosting.

They were good, BTW. When I looked up the registration information for 128encrypted.com, they led to a name and address that was easily verifiable in such places as switchboard.com. Thinking that was too easy, I dug a little further and found that the ostensible registrar was a geology author of some note in Nevada; pretty unlikely to be involved in an identity theft scam, but quite likely to be a victim thereof.

Just now, while cleaning out my inbox I came across the same spam and clicked on the harvester link again... lo and behold "128encrypted.com" is now no longer a valid domain name.

I'd like to think I made a difference :)

Quest for Fire, continued

Well, I've lined up a chimney guy to hopefully help us finish topping off the chimney for the woodstove. I've also got the parts ready.

I'd found less-expensive chimney pipe at Lowe's, but what I didn't realize was that it was dented and the connection points were sufficiently out-of-round as to be a problem. Apparently this stuff doesn't tolerate rough handling, and Lowe's isn't aware of this. Although I'd stocked up on enough parts to finish the install, the chimney guy strongly suggested that I exchange them for good parts. Knowing what to look for, when I went back to Lowe's it turned out to be hard to find un-dented chimney pipe within their selection. I managed to get just enough to finish the job, I hope.

On a semi-related note, when we spent a week at the Cape house we hoped we'd be able to make use of the fireplace there for some roaring blazes. It was okay, until one night when it was a bit breezy; at intervals the wind would shift and smoke would puff into the house. Not good. Obviously the chimney needs attention (most likely the current flat chimney cap needs to be removed and the individual flues extended with their own caps or somesuch). On top of our home woodburning woes, it just added insult to injury.

My theory...

...which is mine, etc.

A friend posted in her journal about skipping an event she'd planned on going to because she got a "bad feeling" about it.

I have a theory about these things. It's a little off the wall and totally unprovable, but it's no better or worse than reading tea leaves:

There is a theory, born of quantum theory, that says that at every decision point the universe splits and creates one universe where the decision went one way and another where the decision went the other (so take heart, there exists a parallel universe where you *did* accept that hot date and have a great time!).

If this is the case, it may be possible that sufficiently intense and focused psychic energy can make the jump from one reality to another one "nearby". If you come to a very crucial decision point (say, whether to try and gun it through that yellow light or not) and you come to ruin in another universe, you'll feel the "echoes" of that intense feeling in this one.

The other day I was working alone at the top of a ladder on the outside of my house... maybe eighteen feet off the ground. High enough that a fall could be very painful, send me to the hospital, perhaps be fatal if I fell exactly wrong. I was maybe 95% sure of the ladder's footing, but not 100%. I'm working away, when suddenly I get this really bad feeling, totally out of the blue. I decide to stop and not move until the feeling passed, which it did in a few minutes. I could only wonder if, in a parallel universe, I had in my haste perhaps reached just a little too far over and had a painful mishap...