Justin's Blog

I don’t want to make anyone nervous with my title. Just to make it clear up front I’m not in any kind of financial problems. My credit cards all have a $0 balance.

Anyway, on to my story. In the last week 3 people I know have had problems with potential credit card theft.

One of them definitely had there card number stolen. A $4,000 charge was put on his card. Luckily the bank noticed it and let him know. They’re not holding him responsible for the charge. Two of them I believe only got precautionary notices that there is a chance that there cards could have been stolen because they were found in a database on an FBI seized computer.

Now, I come home from work on Friday and have a letter from the bank. In the letter it says that my check card number has been stolen. They are sending me a new one. I believe this is the same thing that happened with my two other friends. No weird charges are showing up on any of my accounts.

None of our banks are telling us where the numbers were taken from. I did see a news story this week that some numbers were stolen from Office Max. We do have an Office Max in my town and I have shopped there with my card. Who knows, maybe that’s where it’s from.

It is kind of strange that in 5 days, 4 people (including myself) have had there credit card numbers stolen. So if you’ve been to an Office Max check your statements and contact your banks.

*** UPDATE***

I hear that in addition to Office Max, Staples and Best Buy customers were also effected.

MIT with the help of some major computer industry players (not Microsoft) developed a $100 laptop computer. This was done with hopes to provide a laptop for every child in 3rd world and developing countries. For $100 obviously the laptop isn’t going to be the latest and greatest. However, it does have all of the essentials a person would need. It even has a wireless network chip in it so that when multiple laptops are in the area it sets up a network. Here’s the website if you want more info on the project: http://laptop.org/index.en_US.html

Now Bill Gates is upset because the computers don’t run Windows. I believe they run a custom version of Red Hat Linux. He’s also upset that they are not running on Microsoft’s new Origami machines. These are supposed to be ultra portable desktop/tablet PC/pda hybrid machines. They have a price tag of $600-$1000 each.

So where does good old Bill decided to speak out against this project? At MIT! Bill must forget what it’s like to not have money. He forgets that a developing country can by 10 of the $100 laptops for the price of 1 of his Origami machines. It seems like a no brainer to me. Anyway, you can read more about Bill’s outcry at:
Reuters.

March Madness is upon us. I love this time of year. The 2006 bracket has officially been announced. Here are my picks.

I can remember filling out my first brackets in 5th or 6th grade. I was a ball boy for Bucknell’s Mens Basketball team those years. Bucknell never made it to the tournament under my watch, but I think watching Patriot League championship games had a lasting impression on me. FYI, Bucknell has made the tournament in 2005 and 2006. I have to wonder what my legacy I left behind has to do with this!

Anyway, fast forward to 2006. WVU is now my team of choice (as if you didn’t already know). WVU finished 3rd in the Big East. We finished behind UConn and Villanova, both #1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Speaking of the Big East. We have 5 teams in the top 25 and 8 teams in the NCAA tournament, the best in the country. WVU is on both of these lists.

I really wish college football would adopt a tournament to decide the champ. I’m not sure what we’d call it though. Here’s a couple of ideas, December Delight or January Jubilation. I think NCAA would have to hire some marketers to come up with a catchy name.

I know my blog isn’t read by a ton of people, as it has been up for quite a few months now and I just got my first comment on my last posting. It was a comment from Jason, a friend I work with and see all the time. Anyway, ever since I upgraded to WordPress 2 I have had Akismet turned on to catch spammers trying to advertise in the comments of my blog. It does a great job. I had not seen anything get through it in the past.

The interesting thing is that ever since Jason posted a comment I have had a ton of spammers trying to post comments. I normally would login and Akismet would have caught 10-20 comments that it though was spam. This morning I logged in and it had 79 comments it thought was spam. There were also 19 more comments that made it’s way past Akismet. Luckily I have WordPress setup so that I have to approve comments before they are posted to my site. So these 19 never actually made it to my page, they were waiting for my approval.

I hate spammers. I think we should send them to an island some where with only an internal network connection. That way they can piss off each other and leave the rest of us alone. I think I’ll go send my idea to my congress representatives.

I knew it was going to happen. I got Treah’s cold. I guess karma caught up with me. I cracked a lot of jokes when Treah had it about her being sick.

Anyway, I have a soar throat, my nose seems to switch randomly from being stuffed up to constantly running, and my ears feel like they need to be popped. Throw in a cough here and there, and a couple sneezes, and you’ve got my weekend.

One benefit of being a state employee is that I accrue 11.5 hours of sick leave a month. I have 300+ hours of sick leave to take. I think that should cover this sickness.