I happen to notice some activity on my network this evening and, well, that shouldn't, so I looked into it.  Upon a google search regarding UDP port 50085 and came across a term, GateMAC -- search away!  What I found was the following clones (see:ALL THE SAME).  This irritates me to no end.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3383218.php

http://www.winvistaclub.com/forum/windows-vista-general-topics/7031-gatemac.html

http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/891380.htm

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31485161/what-is-a-gatemac-network.aspx

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/120869-what-gatemac-network.html

http://www.mindfrost82.com/f166-windows-vista/39494-what-gatemac-network.html#post541507

6 of them? I mean seriously. that's ALMOST as bad as having search results of search results.  What the hell!?  This does nothing than waste my time and clutter my searches with CRAP.  From now on, I'm calling them spoogle.  That's right, spam + google = spoogle.  From now on, when I run into spoogles, I'm posting them.  How exactly are these things created?  WHY are they created?  More ads?  More angry blog posts from people like me?  What's the reasoning behind this crap?  Egh, and to think, sometimes I found things useful @ egghead.

Oh and no, none of them contained a useful answer.  I ended up writing a quick IPSec policy that prohibits 50085 udp traffic outside of my home network, period.  Take that.

Around 3pm today I get a message on my phone from data@cuofohio.org and the message went as such

Your Credit Union of Ohio services was suspended for suspicious activity, call us at 3054337563

Immediately my BS flags were going off.  For one, CU of Ohio operates in :GASP: Ohio.  305 goes back to FL.  So far, so full of it.  Next, I do a google search for that number -- nothing found useful.  So far, STILL full of it.  The last bit came when I called them from THEIR website ...and low and behold, the message contained a comment about the text message.  Hopefully, if anyone else searches for 305-433-7563, they'll get this page and realize its a fraud.

If it looks like BS and smells like BS...

A friend of mine has been in school for programming now for nearly 2 years and getting his associates really soon.  Good for him!  On and off he's come and asked me some questions about how to approach certain problems, most of which have been fairly easy to me so I was happy to help and walk him though some of the confusing aspects.  No sweat.

About 2 days ago he approached me about his senior project and that they were doing a website and needed some help with editing, updating employee info.  He also noted that just getting data was a huge pain and took hours for them to get it to work.  No problem, that's easy stuff.  I busted out my favorite ORM tool (subsonic!!!) and showed him how to make his data access life easy.  None of this inline sql crap.  Then I discovered something downright offensive.

We all know architechure is important.  Someone forgot to tell them that.  Further, they didn't seek out any assistance and went crazy.  What they ended up with was a horrific db structure and data access the hardest way known to man (by hand using the object data source).  I kid you not there's a page, an aspx page that has over 1000 lines and its just displaying simple address info, nothing more.  Adding more pain, instead of using 1 page as a one stop shop, every CRUD operation is broken up into individual pages.  View the data over here, edit it over there and save it somewhere else.  I'm not joking.  Just to step it up a notch, the naming conventions are "NewUser" (new employee), "Employee Management" (editing employee data) and "ManagePhoneNumbers" (just to edit phone numbers).  In their defense, the graphics and layout aren't bad, B+.  The links and useability, F.

What are they teaching these students?!  Are the professors this far removed from the real world?  This isn't the first time I've heard of teachers being way way off base and furthers my desire to teach.  It's terrible, sad and pathetic.

I went on a long trip recently -- something around 5000 miles worth.  During this traveling I ended up at JFK, one of the LARGEST airports.  There's something like 8 terminals that are all huge and tons of people coming and going in every single direction. 

But thats not my reason for the post.  I was banking on this HUGE airport having a wireless connection ...BERNT!  wrong.  I spent about half and hour looking for one.  Turning on/off my wireless, randomly picking one and trying to get on the net.  Now, before I go further, let me specify -- FREE wireless is what I was looking for.  I managed to find one that wanted 8 bucks an hour or 25 for the whole day...I think not.  I land in Vienna hours later and guess what they have?  Free.  Wireless.  Internet.  And it works, first time.  I was happy.  By the way, Vienna is about 1/10th the size of the airport at JFK.

On my way back, I go over to JetBlue's terminal which touts free internet! free hotspot!  Not where I was sitting, and nor could the people sitting next to me.  At least they had power outlets.  (All over JFK there's "Samsung recharging stations", warning you of 2amps max with a 4amp breaker next to it ...my laptop worked fine in these outlets at full power while recharging so don't believe the 4amp hype)

Moral of the story -- if you plan on going to JFK, do NOT plan on internet connection (for free) that works ...anywhere.

I find phishing scams amusing.  Always have, always will and I became worried for a while...I haven't seen anything different, new come across my email in a while.  Yes I have a life.  Moving on, I use to write tech articles regularlly for the office, and when I would get a "new" scam, I'd send it out and explain what all was going on and -why- this is stupid to respond.  Well, I found a new one!  This one is semi-new though -- consider it a repackaged "I'm a very wealthy foreign blah blah with a bajillion dollars I'd like to send you" ...but only slightly.  Here's the wording...(see the attached file as well, right here) 

We hereby confirm the receipt of part payment of US$8,500,000.00 dollars only, into our ESCROW vault / account with the HSBC Bank in London by order of the Foreign Debt Recovery Committee on Overdue Contract / Lotto Award / Inheritance payments in Africa / Overseas via the African Development Bank (ADB), as indicated in our database.

Yay!  How amusing.  Same kind of idea "we got money to give you now hand over your first born with a dna sample and your mothers madien name" sure to follow.  And to no surprise...

Kindly provide us with the below information to reconfirm your details in our database and for our prompt payment procedures.

Beneficiary's name / Age: ………………………………………………… Company's name / Rank in office: ………………………………………… Address:……………………………………………………………………

Tel: …………………………………………… Fax: ………………………

Receiving Bank: ……………………………………………………………

Address: ……………………………………………………………………

Bank Routing Number: …………………………………………………… Account number: ……………………………………………………………

Ding ding ding!!!  Congradulations!  You have successfully given someone just enough info to let your money go out the window.  Doesn't it feel good that 8.5mil is on its way?  This comment I find MOST amusing.

Once again, you are strictly warned against your further communication with your unscrupulous associates

What great advice not to share things with my not-so-careful "associates" because they might want some of my 8 million.  Well, I'm off to fill this out and next time you'll hear from me, I'll be on an island somewhere with a little umbrella in my drink!