…and around it goes

One of their drivers hit it while it was parked in my deeded parking space.  Destroyed the front bumper cover and right headlight.  They did leave a note and phone number to call.  Verizon’s insurance will also pick up the damages.  Unfortunately, only the factory can make paint stick to a plastic bumper cover for any amount of time.  Once replaced and repainted, it will be flaking within two years.

Anyway, I don’t mention this solely because my truck was hit, I mention this mainly for our long term customers who are aware of our repeated issues with Verizon.  For those unaware, they cut our lines once and ripped out all the copper to our building another time (just to mention two issues, there have been more).  We are not even a Verizon customer.  Verizon seems to cross my path every spring.  It’s getting comical.  At least this time it it wasn’t the service.   Too bad for my truck, though.

I know, this is actually slow and I could do it faster using Packetderm bandwidth, but I’m at home and fifteen years ago this would have taken me over a day.  That is progress.  Even ten years ago when the first invocation of cotse was made it did not have this kind of bandwidth.  Now I have it at home.

This will be the story we tell our children.  Gone are the “I had to walk both ways to school, barefoot, in the snow,  uphill…” tales of my parents, replaced with my “You kids are spoiled, I remember when we were lucky to have a 300 baud acoustic coupler connect.  We used to listen to the whistles and could tell the connection we got by the sound of the whistle.”

Granted, I also remember three channels on the black and white TV and no computers, I may even have a TV in the closet with a pong line on it, but my mark on the door jam measuring our progress is bandwidth.  Faster and cheaper.  Fiber in the homes.  Wireless faster than high cost wired connections of yesterday.  Video now on my cell phone.  These were dreams fifteen years ago, now taken for granted by my kids.

They get impatient with the download, “is it done yet dad”, while I am amazed at it’s speed.   I have no doubt that the title of this post will be laughed at as slow in another ten years or so.  It will probably be wireless speeds that do it too, with us even in our pocket and wearable devices.

Anyway, I never walked to school barefoot in the snow, but I certainly do remember that 300 baud acoustic coupler connection from my DECWriter to the University’s time shared Vax.

I went shopping the other day to buy a few necessities and saw that the grocery was getting rid of some rose stock.  Two dozen, all colors of the rainbow, for only $10 (score!).  Being a practical man I saw an obvious benefit to an inexpensive and unexpected two dozen roses.  So I grabbed them.

I got home, clipped the ends, and I put them into a vase.   Roses always go over well.  I went into my office and pondered how I would redeem my brownie points.  Unfortunately, every plan has a fatal flaw, especially in a house with cats and kids.

The cat thought only one thing, “he bought me a salad”.  He was happy.  He promptly ate his salad then apparently decided to see if he could find creative spots to vomit it back up.   A nice floral pattern, of course, they were multicolored roses.  Remember, I’m still sitting in my office, completely oblivious.

This is how it went when my girlfriend got home.

She takes off her shoes and steps in cat puke.  I think the cat vomited on everything (I imagine that he ate more than the recommended daily allowance of roses for a cat).  He even vomited from a beam ten feet up onto everything below.  Yes, eewww.

The kid comes running out “Mom, Steve got a bunch of roses for only $10 (he said they were a score) and Oliver ate them then threw up everywhere.  I tried to stop him.”  I’m still sitting in my office, completely oblivious.  I guess I needed to be kept in the dark about it until Mom could be shown.

It didn’t go quite the way I’d planned.

I cover helpdesk because I actually like it and it keeps me “in the know” with what users are saying and how they are using the service.  Granted, when things are running well, helpdesk traffic is very light (we have good docs) and so it is easy, but even if it becomes more difficult with increased size I will remain in direct contact with it.

A business benefit to me covering the helpdesk is that nobody gets an auto-reply or clueless support drone.  I know I hate those when I contact support somewhere, I don’t want this service to ever suffer from that.  Support needs to know the service inside and out (and right now nobody knows it better than I do) and a person, not a script, needs to reply.

Another business benefit is one that transfers from the brick and mortar world,  people like personal attention from the owner.  There is little difference in the reasons behind why people choose a niche service and why they visit a mom and pop brick and mortar store.

If you want auto-replies and to talk to people named Bob with thick Indian accents, you go to the places so big that you are just a number .  If you want a person and even better, one with a vested interest in the business beyond just getting a paycheck, you go with a niche service.

The is a followup to “Brrrrrrrrr”

I did find stickers that say Scooter Mom. They are secretly going on the back of his truck as well as his bike.   Hell, I’ll stick it on the back of his rig next run he makes if I can coordinate being there before he leaves.  I’ll post pics too.  I wonder how long I’ll get before he notices.

Flat bed your bike because it’s too cold, tsk tsk, we don’t ride Harleys, our bikes are far more than simple butt bling.  They actually run in all kinds of weather, not just on nice sunny days.  So Jimmy, you have earned the award of Scooter Mom for the illegal use of a flatbed with a Valkyrie.

By Stephen K. Gielda (sorry search engine seeding)

The web never forgets, however the big problem with this lies in the fact that everyone gets to record their voice on it.   I suppose it was inevitable, my daughter running a web search on my name. She quickly stumbled upon some of the pages and posts made by a few of the more unstable individuals who’s path I crossed.

I hear my mother even fell for some forgeries pretending to be me.  Anyway, such is life in my chosen field.  I seem to have a small (very small) celebrity status in certain circles, and as with any (very small) celebrity I have my detractors as well,  The yang must balance the ying, I guess.  Unfortunately, the yang can be very loud.

A little history may be required. Back in 1998 through 2001 Cotse ran a free web interface that posted directly through the then replay, now dizum, mail2news gateway. It wasn’t anonymous, but it was private.  In addition we provided some cypherpunk resources.

In order to be responsible and address any real abuse that happened, we included our contact information in the headers of messages posted through our interface, so as to handle our own abuse issues so they would not be a load on alex (who ran replay/dizum in the NL). This was my introduction into the deep bowels of a thing called Usenet.

Usenet is a discussion forum. Many today think of it as Google Groups, because Google bought the Deja News archives, but Usenet is it’s own entity. Google is merely displaying an archive, making it searchable, and providing a NNTP web interface, allowing the masses to post through pretty web forms instead of a usenet client.  Kind of like what we did on a much smaller scale (ours, not theirs).

Usenet is full of sociopaths. Forum kings and queens. If you have ever seen a craigslist rants and raves forum for any city, you know how it gets when you add a little anonymity. People are vulgar, scathing, insipid, beasts when they can hide. So it is inevitable that egos will clash and insults fly.

The name of the game is to seriously muddy your opponents name and if possible win your argument by account term.   It includes forgeries and then complaining about the forgeries as if their opponent posted them.  The game is still being played across many forums on the Internet today.  It was one of the original reasons I began Cotse (Cotse’s privacy side began as a free web to news interface)

People were and are still losing their Internet access based upon exaggerated lies from someone they crossed online who knows how to play the game.   They are also ending up with their name returning 72,000+ hits due to some lunatic.  It still happens.  If the claims sound real, the forged headers look real, the forged “evidence” looks real enough…

So I created a web to news poster, to add a shield between them and their ISP and their identity.  Naturally this was going to place me (Stephen K. Gielda (more search engine seeding)) at odds with some of the most unstable of individuals when they had no one to attack personally but me.

In addition, that abuse info in the headers along with replay info also caused another problem.  It made some people assume that everything that came out of the mixmaster and cypherpunk remailers came from us.  There was no convincing them this was not the case.  It was also easily to forge, (anyone could post directly to replay mail2new just like my form did).

When some did did not get their way they came after me personally and my service.  There were many, but there were a few that really brought that little bit extra to the party. One example was an individual who contacted me demanding that I terminate the account of a user of ours who called him a liar.

He claimed that this was criminal libel and I was aiding and abetting a known criminal if I did not act and remove the account (there were no accounts at this stage). That his notice was enough to prove that I was complicit if I did not remove the account. He had entire volumes full of why it was my responsibility to silence my user.  I investigated, our user was not abusing our service in any way, it was a standard forum flamefest with both posters arguing heatedly.

So I (Stephen K. Gielda) informed him that we were not a court of law and could not determine if him being called a liar was libel and that he would need to file suit against our user if he believed it to be. That once we were notified of a subpoena for information, we would comply. Well, he went off the deep end.

The emails became more demanding, more threatening, more vulgarity laced.  He was going to make sure the entire Internet knew how evil a person I was if I did not terminate this account. He followed me wherever I went, attacking everything I posted anywhere.  He started forging me and my service.

Now here is where I made a mistake, being new to all this, I got fed up with him and his threats and said “Yes, I think it is perfectly ok that he called you a liar, I can certainly think of far more apt things to call you.  Now ___ off with all the threats and sue us if you have a case.  We are accepting no more email from you.”  And I blocked his mail.

He really went ballistic.  He started posting web pages dedicated to me. He called me every name in the book. He appeared in other forums and posted pretending to be different people making allegations about me. He posted that my business was a scam in may different web forums.  He started small, but rapidly moved to more serious allegations. He seeded search engines to make good on his promise that all would know.  He even found my address and called my local police and my neighbors.  I even received a visit from the FBI.

This continued for years.  Sometimes he’d taper off for a little, then come back form a different angle.  I finally had enough and shut down the web2new interface in favor of just mixmaster (because they can’t be traced back to us).

He eventually peaked in a flurry of anonymous posts asking for a contract killing for me (Stephen K. Gielda) (see the links here).  In fact one of those was printed out and stuck under my windshield wiper by someone who must have seen me and opted for the flyer instead.  Funny how he thought he should be able to post that all against me and keep his account, but I need to silence anyone using our web form for calling him a liar.

Yet the damage he did to my name (Stephen K. Gielda), sorry, I know it’s annoying) still remains, some of his pages return high in searches because of his search engine seeding.   Some of his forgeries do as well.  I never paid it much accord, because I figured anyone reading it all would see it was the work of someone unstable and easily see through it, but every once in a while I find myself explaining.  Something out of context appears in a search.

Unfortunately, the screams of the insane echo for quite some time on the Internet.  Perhaps this post will appear equally high in the search now and I won’t have to explain so many times. .  I think he was committed somewhere.

Thanks,
Stephen K. Gielda

We’ve got a bruiser of a storm headed our way. So last night I decided that I had better get my bike over to a friend’s garage or I would not see it until spring as it would be frozen in ice. Sixty five miles an hour, nine degrees Fahrenheit, wearing my beanie, and no face covering. Pardon my vulgarity for a second, most apt descriptive term…but that was fuckin cold. Stupidity aside, I pulled in to find out that another friend (*cough*Jimmy*cough*) was also bringing his bike to my friend Vin’s, via a flatbed truck. I’m going to put a sticker on the back of his bike that says “Scooter Mom”.

It looks like it may be worse than feared.  Thousands of ghost tankers parked off Malaysia (more than the combined navys of the British and US).  Tens of thousands of abandoned box cars in the US.  All this at a time when the ramping up for the Christmas season should be happening.  Could this be a harbinger?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/revealed-the-ghost-fleet-recession.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535033769344811.html

Wait, it’s not just cargo ships and trains, it’s planes too:

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2009-04-06-airlines-parking-planes_N.htm

Not to mention Insiders are selling like there is no tomorrow:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/10/news/economy/insider.sales/index.htm?postversion=2009091219

It certainly does not look good.  All this TARP spending is a temporary fix.  Anyone who owns a credit card knows that spending off it is only a temporary boost, until it’s maxed and the bill comes due.  What will come when the country is maxed and this bill is due and there are no goods moving to pay it?

Mainboard failure.  It was a nice machine, now history.  Not sure what I’ll do with it.  I do have an extended warranty, but with the company gone and nobody to fix it I’m probably out of luck.  Time to shop for a laptop, think I’m done with UMPCs. This was an expensive lesson, only got a year and a half out of it.

I usually stay away from discussing politics on my blog that do not relate to privacy, however a recent article on The Drudge Report is rather interesting. Regardless of where you stand politically and/or on the Health Care debate, if what is written is true then it’s a bit troubling to see ABC News pulling a Micheal Moore. There is more than one side of an issue, even if you may not agree with it.

In the effort towards full disclosure:

Politically I try to remain neutral and evaluate each issue independently. However, I suppose that due to my strong belief in personal freedom and privacy, along with my belief that big government just breeds bigger and more inefficient government, and that spending is something to track carefully so that you remain within a workable budget, that I may learn somewhat conservative/libertarian.  I am a registered Libertarian, it seems to fit best, although I do not agree with all of their beliefs.  I view extremism at any end as bad.

As for this particular debate, I’d love to see money we effectively waste elsewhere covering the health issue, health is important and costs are out of control.  I’m paying $700 a month to cover myself and my daughter and each year that premium goes up as do the copays and the coverage goes down along with the caps.  My taxes also go up with me seeing little in return.  That angers me.

Yet I also see how poorly the government handles health care where they already handle it (medicare/veterans administration/etc).  I also know as a business man that just throwing more money that you don’t have into a broken system has only one result, bankruptcy.
Idealistically, I’d love to see good government run health care that resulted in me and my family covered well at less of a cost.  Realistically, I fear we’ll get less and pay even more.