Exposing my socks to the world

Spammers are getting quite creative in their attempts to lure me into clicking random links so they can get my login information. I’m going to share a couple of my latest favorites.

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $63.80. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here (link removed)

Regards,
Internal Revenue Service

(c) Copyright 2006, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved..

Clicking on the link took me to a fairly convincing site, but I’m fairly certain that the United States Internal Revenue Service hasn’t yet decided to run its servers out of Japan, and even if they have, they probably would want more information from me than my Social Security Number and my credit card info. Unfortunately, I don’t need $63.80 bad enough to fall for this one.

Subject: Microsoft Outlook Lucky winner…

From: Mrs. Helen Van Patt
(Lottery Coordinator)

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

We are pleased to inform you the result of the Microsoft Outlook Award Lotteries, held on the 15th July 2006.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket #: 4434/2113-78 with prize # 83429/2 drew ?1,000,000.00 which was first in the 2nd class of the draws.

You are to receive ?1,000,000.00 (One Million Euros).

Because of mix up in cash payouts, we ask that you keep your winning information
confidential until your money (?1,000,000.00) has been fully remitted to you by our
accredited pay-point bank.

This measure must be adhere to avoid loss of your cash prize – winners of our cash
prizes are advised to adhere to these instructions to forestall the abuse of this
program by other participants.

It’s important to note that these draws were conducted formally, and winners are
selected through an Internet ballot system from 60,000 individual and companies
e-mail addresses the draws are conducted around the world through our Internet
based ballot system.

The promotion is sponsored and promoted by WORLD MICROSOFT OUTLOOK PROGRAMM.

We congratulate you once again. We hope you will use part of it in our next draws; the Jackpot winning is 2, million Euros.

Remember, all winning must be claimed not later than 20 days.

After this date all unclaimed cash prize will be forfeited and included in the next sweepstake.

Please, in order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications remember to
quote personal and winning numbers in all correspondence with us.

Congratulations once again from all members of Internet Microsoft Lotteries.

Thank you for being part of our promotional program.

For immediate release of your cash prize to you, please kindly contact our Paying Bank (Laagste Heypotheekofferte Bank Amsterdam,)

Send them the following Information Through the Email Address below:

(i). Your names
(ii) Contact telephone and fax numbers
(iii) Contact Address
(iv) your winning numbers
(v) Quote amount won.

Laagste Heypotheekofferte Bank. N.L.
Mrs. Jennifer Clark,
Email : (removed)
Email: (removed)
Tel: (removed)
Fax: (removed)

Congratulations once again.
Yours in service,
Mrs. (Grace Ferry)
(Lottery Coordinator)

I’m not so much surprised that I won one million euros, that seems to happen every couple of days. I’m more concerned that the From: line at the top of the email and the signature are two different names. I briefly considered replying to the people on the list, but then I realized that by posting this I have already forfeited my claim to the money. You know, since you all know my winning ticket number and can now claim my winnings that were previously held up in some kind of mix-up… or something like that.

And finally:

Subject: Re: cat who has inherited a castle

That’s it. The email didn’t have a body, just a subject line that I found humorous for some strange reason.

Been thinking about trying to get your Media Center PC and your XBox 360 working in tandem? You might want to give this article over at Stage Select a look. From the article:

Once you face the reality of Media Center though, it’s a god-awful mess, and no one seems to be talking about it. The problems that I’ve had with Media Center really boggle my mind. So, I wanted to talk about it – to open an Internet discussion. If you’re looking at putting your Xbox 360 in the mix with a Media Center PC, you should be aware of just how fickle the Media Center software is, especially when streaming TV or other video.

For about the space of a year, I was beholden to the MMORPG monster. I spent nearly all my free time grinding levels and not much else. I mostly enjoyed it, but came to the realization that in the space of an entire year I had only played two games, and the others that I wanted to play were just sitting around gathering dust. So last summer I decided to go ahead and shelve Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft for good.

Then I started having the cravings. I needed to slay some monsters, loot the corpses, and sell the loot so I could get better gear to kill stronger monsters.

I then remembered about Progress Quest

Progress Quest is an interesting MMORPG with all of the tedium abstracted out of it leaving you with the the meat of the MMO experience without the tedium of actually working for it.

Starting a new Progress Quest character is relatively straightforward: you select if you would like to play online (you then must choose your realm) or offline, you choose a name for your character (there’s even a random name generator included that generates fairly pronounceable names), select your race from 21 choices (including Half Man, Double Hobbit, Demicanadian, and Gyrognome), select one of 18 character classes, and then Roll your stats (Progress Quest even sports an “Unroll” feature should you change your mind and wish to go back to the previous set of stats). Once you are satisfied with your character you hit “Sold!” and embark on your quest.

This is where you sit back and let the game take over. The story is a bit cliché, but it gets the job done. Your character then heads off into the killing fields and begins murdering wildlife, looting the corpses, selling the loot and then getting better equipment. One of the best features of this game is that since it’s all automatic, you can still play and progress even if you have to leave your computer for any amount of time, or even while you’re playing something else.

The latest version of Progress Quest will minimize unobtrusively to your system tray so you can concentrate on other tasks while your character dutifully continues to make progress. You can at any time bring back up the main window which will show you everything you need to know about how your game is… um… progressing. There is a window that shows your character sheet, spells learned, inventory, equipment, plot development, what quest you’re currently doing, and what your character is doing at any given moment.

If you’re playing online, Progress Quest supports three kinds of guilds (evil, neutral, or good) that you can create and recruit people for. You also have access to the PQ Hall of Fame where you can see how your character measures up against the other players in your realm, who’s in your guild, and other exciting stats.

If I have to explain why Progress Quest is a great game, then you just won’t understand. But, trust me, it’s great.

See also

The official site
PQ in Wikipedia

One trip across country and then back is now in the history books.

I don’t like planes so much.

Note: this was taken from a Wikipedia article that was nominated for deletion on the basis of non-importance. I am mirroring it here because I respectfully disagree and don’t wish for the contents of this article to vanish into the ether. –basscomm

LoadingReadyRun is a comedy website created by Graham Stark and Paul Saunders that serves an original short video each week and acts as a host for eight active webcomics. Its primary draw is an archive of original comedic videos. A new video has been added every Friday since the site’s inception in August of 2003 ¹. Nearly 150 videos have been aired, both on the website and as two DVD box-sets.

LoadingReadyRun videos have appeared and won awards at Film Festivals in the Vancouver Island area, and the site has an active relationship with the Texas comedy troupe Random Acts. LoadingReadyRun has also worked with other comedic acts such as the Arrogant Worms.

The Crew
Some of the Crew members of LoadingReadyRun. Back row: Left to right Bill Watt, Morgan vanHumbeck. Middle row: Matt Wiggins, James Turner, Andy Cownden. Front row: Graham Stark,and Paul Saunders.

Paul Saunders and Graham Stark created the site and are the primary driving force behind it. Paul designs and maintains the website, while Graham edits the videos. Both write and direct the shorts while they and many others serve as actors. The LoadingReadyRun crewmembers most actively involved in the site are Jeremy Petter, James Turner, Bill Watt, Matt Wiggins, Morgan vanHumbeck, Kathleen De Vere, Lissette Arevalo, Kate Stark, Ashley Vickers, Andrew Cownden and Adam Savidan.

Content

LoadingReadyRun videos represent a variety of styles, and are organized by category. Some of the most common categories include:

Shorts: Scripted shorts in the classic style of sketch comedy. Shorts are generally approximately 5 minutes long.

Machinima: Re-dubbed and extensively re-edited footage from video games. “Celestial Sea” is a series of machinima videos created from the game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

Music: Music videos in various genres such as rap and showtunes appear on the site. The rap videos feature the faux-rap crew “64K,” comprised of G Star (Graham), Ice tray (Morgan) and JP (Jeremy). All music featured in LoadingReadyRun’s music category is originally composed, written and performed.

Sheer Stupidity: Sheer Stupidity videos are unscripted and feature the cast in a variety of situations that don’t fit neatly into one of the other categories. A more sophmoric style of humor, the Sheer Stupidity videos have featured the eating of gross foods to the crew Christmas carolling on Halloween.

X ways to Y: Quasi-instructional videos set to music designed to illustrate “X” number of methods to perform activity “Y”, such as: ways to get rid of a hangover, ways to get rid of your Christmas tree and ways to get killed in a horror movie.

Comics: Several webcomics have run during LoadingReadyRun’s existance. Some have also been printed in The Martlet, the University of Victoria’s student newspaper, such as Roomies by Graham Stark, Korea by Kathleen De Vere, Small Boy and Monkey by Anthony Fratarolli and Disce Pati. Other LoadingReadyRun comics are Canadian Waste by Ash Vickers, Cacti by Alex Steacy and Gumbubble by Mik Holmes.

Popularity

Their most popular video is “1337”, a rap music video about the history of video games. It is hosted on AtomFilms and XFire and has gotten increased exposure from mentions on several high-traffic sites ^{2 3}

LoadingReadyRun’s resident fake rap group, “64K” were interviewed and featured in German video game magazine, GEE Magazine (Jan, 2006) and the “1337” music video was also featured on the magazine’s DVD.

Other videos that received internet notoriety include “Uwe Boll PSA” ⁴, a rant against video game movie director Uwe Boll, and “Who Watches Movies” ⁵, a video parodying the MPAA’s “Who Makes Movies” anti-piracy ads.

Awards

Several LoadingReadyRun videos have appeared at British Columbia film festivals.
Some of their selections and awards are as follows:

Suspend Your Disbelief

Audience Choice – Vancouver Island Short Film Festival

Audience Choice – University of Victoria Student Film Festival

Best Male Performance – Andrew Cownden – Vancouver Island Short Film Festival

The Professor’s Funhouse

Best Writing – Edges Film Festival

Official Selection – Vancouver Island Short Film Festival

Anchovies

Winner of $2000 – BC Rock the Vote video contest

After Hours

Audience Choice – Vancouver Island Film, Video & New Media Festival

External links
* 1337 on AtomFilms
* Random Acts Productions
* Discussion of 1337 in the GEE Mag forums (German)