A Survey from the Republican Party

Recently I received an envelope marked “2009 Obama Agenda Survey” from the Republican National Committee in Washington, DC.

I am not sure why I received this, as, although I must admit a minor discretion of  having voted in the Republican primary before, I am very apolitical, and have never considered myself a Republican, or even close. I haven’t received any Democratic mailings, and I’ve voted in their primaries too!

The thinly disguised survey, whose questions are worded in a very biased fashion, is actually an attempt to solicit contributions to the Republican Party, and I’m sure whoever does return the survey will, from that day forward, will be rewarded with more and more solicitations.

No, thank you, Republican Party. I’ll keep my opinions and contributions to myself. And don’t even get me started on Sarah Palin!

A check in the mail …

I received the following mailing from the Processing Center with the words “Check Enclosed” prominently displayed on the front of the mailing. I do have some computer rebates pending, which sometimes comes like this mailing, so I opened it expecting that this was a rebate check.

To my dismay it contained the following:

If you analyze it you will see that the refund check is part of a cash back program for enrolling in a PrivacyGuard program. You can earn up to $100 a year for charging $5,000 on your credit card(s). You’ll be charged $13.99 a month for the first 12 months, and then $14.99 afterwards, or until they raise it further.  My math tells me that I will be paying $13.99 times 12 months, or $167.88 a year, so that I can receive back up to $100 a year, I am paying them over $60 for that privilege. They also offer to let me check my credit reports, which I can do now for free, and my “Driver’s record”.  No thanks, PrivacyGuard.

I did a quick search in Google, and found the following link:

http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2009/01/28/budget-is-aiding-and-abetting-abuse-of-your-credit-card-information/

What a scummy company Trilegiant Corporation is. And since I once rented from “Budget Rent a Car”, that makes me one of “Budget’s Customers”. I considered cashing the check and then canceling the program right away, but I don’t want to have to deal with the bunch of losers like this, and the $8.25 is not worth the effort.

Shame on Budget, Shame on Trilegiant.

Niece Kandice in the journal “Cell”

Congrats to my niece Kandice for having an article published in the journal “Cell“. “Cell” is one of the most respected journals in the field of science, (according to Kandice’s husband Ilya, who as someone in the industry I completely believe), and Kandice was the lead author.  The name of the article is  “Matrix Crosslinking Forces Tumor Progression by Enhancing Integrin Signaling”.

Kandice will have to translate that into human like me terms that all of us can understand. The article is mentioned at the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8369377.stm, although one of the persons mentioned in the article was not the lead author and did not “lead the research.” Small details.  The important fact is that Kandice and others are moving closer to finding a cure for breast cancer, and as Ilya has stated, Kandice has achieved what very very VERY few in science ever do…

Congratulations, Kandice, and keep up the good work!

Beware of Norton from Symantec email

I received an email Wednesday that looked like it came from Symantec, the maker of Norton Anti-Virus and other security software. I have used their products in the past, (I still use Norton Ghost occasionally), but don’t care for their anti-virus and internet security products, and considered clicking on the “unsubscribe” link to stop receiving emails from them. Before I did I decided to do a little investigation. Using Outlook I right-clicked on the message listing, then clicked on “Message Options.” That opens a new dialog box labled “Message Options” which has the header of the email, showing who really sent the message, and all the stops it took to get to me.  I noticed that the real sender of the email was norton.rsys1.com. Still looks legit, but I decided to do a little more investigation. I ran a whois check, which tells me who owns the domain.  Nothing from symantec appeared.  So I visited one of my best friends, google, and discovered that rsys1.com has many partners, not only norton.rsys1.com, but also resp.bppr.com, alm.rsys1.com, my.orbitz.com, info.realtor.com.  In other words, this company is a marketer of other company’s products, and what I received was an unsolicited email from them, or what we call spam. I did not click the link in the email to unsubscribe, which would just prove to them that my email address was legit, and that then they could harvest my email to other marketers, but instead forwarded the email to spam@uce.gov which is the email address for the government’s anti-spam office at the FTC.

Hopefully this post will show others how to avoid helping spammers, some of the biggest jerks on the planet.

Windows out of cycle updates late July 2009

For clients, family, and friends, just a quick note that I am installing the Windows patches that came out Tuesday, July 28, 2009  from Microsoft and recommend that everyone do so.

Buttermilk Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup Shortening
• 2 Cups Sugar
• 4 Eggs
• 1 Cup Buttermilk
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 3 Tablespoons Vanilla (Use Real instead of Imitation)
• 3 Cups Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 Cup Pecans

Directions:

Cream Shortening, add Sugar gradually.

Cream until light and fluffy.

Add Eggs, one at at time, mixing each in well before adding another.

Combine Milk, Soda, and Vanilla.

Let Stand.

Sift Flour, measure, and sift with Salt.

Add alternately with Milk to first mixture.

Fold in nutmeats.

Pour into lightly greased and floured 10 in. Tube Pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Buttermilk Cake

I made my first buttermilk cake recently from a family recipe. I can make it available, or post it, if anyone is interested. It came out a little crumbly, but I am wondering if that is due to not enough shortening, (a little less than a cup when 1 cup was asked for), not enough eggs, (used 3 when the recipe asked for 4), or not enough time, (took out after 50 minutes when 1 hour was listed. I did test the cake with a toothpick, and the toothpick did come out dry all 3 times in different areas.) The cake was tasty, certainly not the disaster I was expecting, and we added some clear icing as icing on the cake. (You didn’t think I was going to leave out that lame line, did you?)

Hello world!

Welcome to my blog! Feel free to tell me how lame it is, (I’m used to it.) And if you know, feel free to correct my grammar, like does the period go before or after the closing parenthesis in the last sentence, and should I have used “like does” instead of something else. I hope this blog is mutually beneficial to you the reader as well as me.