Crazy E-mail Day

I survived the DST update at work (so far) and life is getting back to some semblance of normalcy. There is a good bit of follow up required and minor issues to stay on top of, but on the whole I would call the patch and update effort a good success.

In between tracking down the final few rogue calendar entries that refused to update this past Friday night, I checked my gmail and had two "phunny" e-mails. Most Phishing e-mails are pretty easy to spot and understand the angle that is being shot. The first one I got (on my work account actually) is the standard type:

Dear Telus member,

You are receiving this email with regards to your personal account.

Please read carefully before continuing as some vital information is being updated.

Your account is showing to be incomplete due to a data failure in our systems and you MUST provide us with a correct information within 48 hours of receiving this email.

Failure to comply will result in account termination.
To update your account provide us with the following datas:

1. Maiden name:

2. Primary and secondary email address:

3. Account Password:

Ensure the informations are correct carefully before submitting it, mistakes can terminate your account.


Thank you for your support.
Account Supervisor Team

The grammatical and spelling errors usually are a pretty good tip that something is not right. If you are a major company and you are sending a communication to all your consumers, don't you think that it would go through at least one or two reviews and someone would catch the "informations are correct" and the "provide us with a correct information"? Secondly, a close look at the Sent From "Support@telus.net" and the Reply To "Please respond to uwanettt@yahoo.com" fields are another big red Stop sign. Finally, how many times are people warned that, "XYZ will never ask you for your password and blah blah blah"?

I guess there are enough complete and total morons on this planet that these horrible phishing e-mails are +EV for the creators.

The second one I received, and the motivator for this post, was a little more interesting. I am curious what the angle is here. Driving traffic to a site for ads? Hosting malicious code and driving my browser to it so I can be infected? It does not ask for any info... but it caught my attention in the Inbox:

From: Beat me (wagyxehon96125@gmail.com)
Subject: Beat me in poker and I 'll pay for your trip to vegas
Body:
Hey Bud ,
I heard on the boards you are a preety good Poker Player.
well, I can beat you ass in any type of poker and mostly texas holdem any given day.
Come visit me in my favorite poker room, get a decent bonus and the best of all,
If u beat me in the game I will pay for your Trip to VEGAS!!!
look for user 'playpokerwithme'

See you Tonight on http://www.geocities.com/mexulufa73227

Since I am at work and I don't understand the "trick" here, I did not visit the geocities site on the link. I would not advise anyone else to either. I am curious if other people got this e-mail, perhaps my address was scraped from this site?

In addition to all the unanswered questions above, the most lingering and perhaps most important is - Could wagyxehon96125@gmail.com beat me ass in mostly texas holdem?

Hell's ZIP Code is 48169

A co-worker read teh blog today and IM'd me to correct my apparent mistake -



"your blog is off.. it's not Bullshit Cold... it's "Sofa King Cold"



I let him know that I was reserving that for the next level of chilliness, the kind where Hell starts getting icicles. You can't pull anything past these wily Michiganders. He immediately replied,



"there is plenty of ice in hell"



I may not be able to see that 23s coming to crack my Aces, but I saw this one a frozen mile away - "let me guess, there is a Hell, MI?"



Masterful user of the inter-tubes that he is, he simply replied with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan



Quickly followed by where he would prefer to live in Michigan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax%2C_Michigan



And concluded with the proof that it is so cold here that all people do is think about sex: (SFW) http://www.getoffonbigbeaver.com/



I am sad to admit that while I have yet to get off on the big beaver, the lovely SteelerSteph has. Drunken College exploration you ask? Hardly. There is apparently a very nice mall at exit 69 on I-75. Since I try to avoid malls like a part time job, the chances of me hitting the big beaver while getting off on 69 are slim. I wonder what the degree of correlation between the double entendre suggested here and the act of going to the mall with my wife is.



I suspect it is high.

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We've Gone Plaid!!

I figured Michigan might be a little colder than Ohio as it is an hour or two North of where I used to live. I was right.



I never knew that the outside temperature display in my Honda could display negative numbers. I learned this morning that it can.



There is a term for this, I think what I am experiencing is known as "Bullshit Cold". Yup, we have gone past plaid cold, beyond ludicrous cold directly into Bullshit Cold. Rick Moranis would be freezing his little nerdy head off if he were in Detroit right now.



When the Pilot reluctantly cranked to life this morning, the outside temp gauge was displaying -4. With the accompanying brisk wind I am sure the windchill had us in the negative 20s. It hurt to breathe in.



All of this cold bs naturally leads to some self introspection. "Wtf am I doing in this?" "This is bs, who would live here?" and thoughts along those lines.



The icing on the proverbial cake was DNasty pinging me from Florida this morning asking if it was cold enough for me here. While I was glad to see he dodged the weather disaster that struck on Friday (Hurricane? Tornado?) I also have to laugh at him. His dumbass is excited to move back here!! I am excited too. Misery loves company, especially company that likes to play some live poker!!



Hurry h-h-h-home D-D-D-Dnasty (not a stutter, just chattering teeth from the negative degrees) but don't slip on all the snow and goddamn ice around here. If you fall, you might get stuck. You know, like that stupid kid in a Christmas Story. I triple dog dare you to move back here from Florida. :)

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