SPECTROX BLOG

Garbage In, Garbage Out

2010-03-10T15:30:00Z

With the economy being in the toilet these days, I have several friends and acquaintances who are looking for work due to one reason or another. In the past I had suggested indeed.com to several folks due to the large group of job sites that it aggregates data from. For that function, it seems to work quite well. The thing that I found more interesting is the Free Salary Search that indeed.com promotes. I'll sum up my results with a few images. I put in some nonsense data to see what comes back and was quite amused.

And for the Grand Finale..

With the data and graphs it is clearly evident: Pimps earn 93% more than Playas.

Links:

Welcome home Franklin!

2010-03-08T16:00:44Z

Yesterday we brought home a wonderful addition to our family. Franklin is a 3 2 year old Dalmatian who has had a somewhat rough start to his life. Found homeless on the streets of Fresno, Franklin was suffering from terrible bladder stones. The animal shelter was going to put him down due to all his issues until Save a Spot rescue of Turlock swooped in and took him home. They invested so much time and energy into this wonderful young boy. After being neutered, having bowel surgery and bladder surgery, he has come to live with us. He is so incredibly sweet and gentle.

Why the name Franklin? When we were trying to come up with a good name for him, we found that Benjamin Franklin was lover of Dalmatians, and the name stuck!

More pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaron_anderer/sets/72157623576043544/

The wonders of Japanese engineering

2010-03-06T19:13:40Z

Before we get started, this post has nothing to do with Toyota braking issue recalls. My last three personal vehicles have been Toyota. I don't think any one company or country has a monopoly on automobiles that are deathtraps, especially now in the age of outsourcing and globalization. It isn't that long ago that people were burning to death with exploding gas tanks in Ford Pintos, rolling over in Suzuki Samurais, or having their Ford vehicles with Firestone tires blow out and causing massive accidents. Anyways...

(Photo Courtesy of Giovanni Spina on Flickr)

Last weekend we made the trip to Costco to purchase some groceries and pick up a new cordless phone for the house. The last unit we had was purchased sometime in the 2003/2004 time frame after then-puppy Hazel had brutally destroyed one of the handsets from our VTech cordless and Duke had chewed most of the plastic off another handset. The last phone was another Costco purchase and was chosen because it was inexpensive and the model that they had in the store that week. That Panasonic phone set endured countless handling atrocities such as having the handsets dropped hundreds of times on concrete, tile and laminate flooring. While the handsets avoided the dog chew toy treatment that the last phone endured, they had been carried or munched on to some extent. The final nail in the coffin for this fine example of Panasonic engineering happened to come from our cat Oprah. As a cat with diabetes, she sometimes communicates her displeasure through the fine art of urination. So we ended up buying a similar Panasonic model at Costco for $60 USD. Note to Panasonic test engineers: Make sure your phone circuitry passes the cat urine test. (Yahoo! Babel Fish tells me that it is this in Japanese: あなたの電話回路部品のパスを猫の尿検査確かめなさい ). We are more than happy to provide Oprah as a "consultant" for a small fee.

This is totally legit...

2010-02-27T19:30:08Z

Going through my spam folder looking for a boarding notification, I ran across this email. Will Nigeria ever be taken seriously? For those uninitiated in the world of internet scams, 419 is the Nigerian penal code reference for various types of fraud. If there were some sort of gold medal in fraudulent activity that was somewhat humorous at times, Nigeria would win every year. If for some reason, you have been taken in by a scam such as this, a great resource is the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which is a US Government office that is a point of contact in resolving these sorts of issues. This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but almost a welcome change from all the v1agra spam.

From Federal Bureau Of Investigation Sun Feb 14 11:02:04 2010
From:
"Federal Bureau Of Investigation"
Subject: ***Mail From The FBI
Anti-Terrorist and International Fraud Division
Federal Bureau Of Investigation.
Seattle, Washington.
Telephone/Fax Number: (206) 426-2866

Attn: Beneficiary

This is to Officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigation with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you legally won the sum of $850,000.00 US Dollars from a Lottery Company in the United Kingdom. During our investigation we discovered that your e-mail won the money from an Online Balloting System and we have authorized this winning to be authentic and paid to you via a Certified Cashier's Check. Normally, it will take up to 10 business days for an International Check to be cashed by your local bank. We have successfully come to an agreement this company on your behalf that funds are to be drawn from a registered bank within the United States Of America so as to enable you cash the check instantly without any delay, henceforth the stated amount of $850,000.00 US Dollars has been deposited with Bank Of America.

We have completed this investigation and you are hereby approved to receive the winning prize as we have verified the entire transaction to be Legitimate, Safe and 100% risk free of scams and frauds of any nature, due to the fact that the funds have been deposited at Bank Of America you will be required to settle the following bills directly to the lottery claims agent in-charge of this transaction whom is located at the liaison office of the Lottery Company in Seattle-Washington. According to our discoveries, you are required to pay for the following:

(1) Deposit Fee's (Fee's paid by the lottery company for the deposit into an American Bank which is - Bank of America)
(2) Cashier's Check Conversion Fee (Fee for converting the Wire Transfer payment into a Certified Cashier's Check)
(3) Shipping Fee's (This is the charge for shipping the Cashier's Check to your nominated destination)

The total amount for everything is $299.99 (Two Hundred & Ninety Nine United States Dollars & Ninety Nine Cents). We have tried our possible best to indicate that this $299.99 should be deducted from your winning prize but the funds have already been deposited at The Bank of America and cannot be accessed by anyone apart from you the winner. Therefore you will be required to pay the needed funds to your lotto claims Agent in-charge of this transaction via Western Union Money Transfer Or Money Gram. The payment will NOT reflect at the Bank of America with the given transaction code(EA2948-910) until you have covered the processing fees needed.
In order to proceed with this transaction, Click Here (lmj@gala.net) to contact your claims agent Mrs. Louise Major .You will be required to call her for verbal verification and e-mail her with the following informations:

FULL NAME:
FULL MAILING ADDRESS(INCLUDING CITY/STATE/ZIPCODE):
AGE/SEX/OCCUPATION:
CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS(CELL & HOME):

You will also be required to request Western Union details on how to send the required $299.99 in order to immediately ship your prize of $850,000.00 US Dollars via Certified Cashier's Check drawn from The Bank of America, Also include the following transaction code in order for her to immediately identify this transaction : EA2948-910. This letter will serve as proof that the Federal Bureau Of Investigation is authorizing you to pay the required $299.99 ONLY to your claims agent via the information in which she shall send to you upon your request, if you do not receive your winning prize of $850,000.00 US Dollars we shall be held responsible for the loss and this shall invite a penalty of $3,000 which will be made PAYABLE ONLY by you (The Winner).

Robert Mueller
Federal Bureau Of Investigation

(Photo courtesy of Dan Mogford on Flickr)

Open the extended posting for the full text. Some hostname and ip addresses have been removed to protect the innocent.

Links:

]]> Full Text Below:

***Mail From The FBI
Sunday, February 14, 2010 3:02 AM
From Federal Bureau Of Investigation Sun Feb 14 11:02:04 2010
X-Apparently-To:         xxxxx_yyyyyyy@yahoo.com via 209.191.69.79; Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:04:40 -0800
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Return-Path:
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X-YMailISG:         yob9vlkWLDv0mH.ab9XAXAq.jksE6ZqiT38Q13VJskUmyCTWDJ7XD0d1ohwzDpB0F.67SXtLYRmFUXiPJa33U8zAxGgyYtFQx1ruHq4tT7c83VAzwB5x3hbRMvyrXVTv0sjJlD6RwKFQkPr58xzJ2OuwvOWlLQOxolqETQAfaZtCdcYdGuhYZ07PtdmY4oBjpJaL1lULlI82uLyxf6TMDkg_F23bQZQf1LSnkhfmrT1thn7hM5Rrm6feMEzzU1odq9y13WXMH_XbKOdAgeS6HdtbwbQKfXmziB5T292DaMHajQ--
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"Federal Bureau Of Investigation"
Add sender to Contacts
Subject:         ***Mail From The FBI
Date:         Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:02:04 -0500
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To:         undisclosed-recipients:;
Content-Length:         4484
Compact Headers
Anti-Terrorist and International Fraud Division
Federal Bureau Of Investigation.
Seattle, Washington.
Telephone/Fax Number: (206) 426-2866

Attn: Beneficiary

This is to Officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigation with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you legally won the sum of $850,000.00 US Dollars from a Lottery Company in the United Kingdom. During our investigation we discovered that your e-mail won the money from an Online Balloting System and we have authorized this winning to be authentic and paid to you via a Certified Cashier's Check. Normally, it will take up to 10 business days for an International Check to be cashed by your local bank. We have successfully come to an agreement this company on your behalf that funds are to be drawn from a registered bank within the United States Of America so as to enable you cash the check instantly without any delay, henceforth the stated amount of $850,000.00 US Dollars has been deposited with Bank Of America.

We have completed this investigation and you are hereby approved to receive the winning prize as we have verified the entire transaction to be Legitimate, Safe and 100% risk free of scams and frauds of any nature, due to the fact that the funds have been deposited at Bank Of America you will be required to settle the following bills directly to the lottery claims agent in-charge of this transaction whom is located at the liaison office of the Lottery Company in Seattle-Washington. According to our discoveries, you are required to pay for the following:

(1) Deposit Fee's (Fee's paid by the lottery company for the deposit into an American Bank which is - Bank of America)
(2) Cashier's Check Conversion Fee (Fee for converting the Wire Transfer payment into a Certified Cashier's Check)
(3) Shipping Fee's (This is the charge for shipping the Cashier's Check to your nominated destination)

The total amount for everything is $299.99 (Two Hundred & Ninety Nine United States Dollars & Ninety Nine Cents). We have tried our possible best to indicate that this $299.99 should be deducted from your winning prize but the funds have already been deposited at The Bank of America and cannot be accessed by anyone apart from you the winner. Therefore you will be required to pay the needed funds to your lotto claims Agent in-charge of this transaction via Western Union Money Transfer Or Money Gram. The payment will NOT reflect at the Bank of America with the given transaction code(EA2948-910) until you have covered the processing fees needed.
In order to proceed with this transaction, Click Here (lmj@gala.net) to contact your claims agent Mrs. Louise Major .You will be required to call her for verbal verification and e-mail her with the following informations:

FULL NAME:
FULL MAILING ADDRESS(INCLUDING CITY/STATE/ZIPCODE):
AGE/SEX/OCCUPATION:
CONTACT PHONE NUMBERS(CELL & HOME):

You will also be required to request Western Union details on how to send the required $299.99 in order to immediately ship your prize of $850,000.00 US Dollars via Certified Cashier's Check drawn from The Bank of America, Also include the following transaction code in order for her to immediately identify this transaction : EA2948-910. This letter will serve as proof that the Federal Bureau Of Investigation is authorizing you to pay the required $299.99 ONLY to your claims agent via the information in which she shall send to you upon your request, if you do not receive your winning prize of $850,000.00 US Dollars we shall be held responsible for the loss and this shall invite a penalty of $3,000 which will be made PAYABLE ONLY by you (The Winner).

Robert Mueller
Federal Bureau Of Investigation

NOTE: In order to ensure your check gets delivered to you ASAP, you are advised to immediately contact Mrs. Louise Major via contact information provided above and make the required payment of $299.99 to information in which she will provide you.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The information contained in this email message is legally privileged and confidential information intended solely for the use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s), any distribution, dissemination, or reproduction of this email message is strictly prohibited.

Tracking Flatulence

2010-02-25T04:00:35Z

I have been tracking the web traffic associated with my domain spectrox.com recently and was amused. I was hoping that the bulk of the traffic would be associated with my blog (this site) and associated files, but that was not the case. Back in 1994 I came across a text file that discussed the chemical composition of flatus (a fart for the uninitiated) in detail. I moved that text file over to an html file and put it online in 1996 and didn't think much of it. It turns out that this is a very popular search term. You never know what people will want to search for on the internet. Below is the picture from the Google Analytics site attached to this link.

Link:

http://www.spectrox.com/flatulence.html

Rootkit security threats on Smartphones

2010-02-23T15:30:14Z

Now that almost everyone has a Blackberry, Android, or iPhone, they are a tasty market for hackers trying to gain backdoor access to these smartphones. The use of rootkits is increasing in this segment. Rutgers Today has a great YouTube segment describing this threat.

Links:

Another family member on the way.

2010-02-22T01:36:45Z

We have a young one joining our family very soon... just not the human kind! We took a trip to the Save A Spot Dalmatian Rescue in Turlock, California yesterday. We met several wonderful dogs, but clicked with a sweet young Dalmatian that has had a very hard life so far. He's just had several surgeries and is recovering with a foster family until we can come and pick him up in about two weeks. He has already met our Son and Australian Cattle Dog. What a sweet personality!

Here is a sneak peek from yesterday, just excuse the e-collar.

Link:

http://www.adoptapet.com/adoption_rescue/73624.html

8 Bit memories

2010-02-17T02:45:00Z

When I was flying the day before yesterday, I was reminiscing about the days before the ubiquitous MP3, when the the Microsoft WAV and SoundBlaster VOC files were too bloated and the AdLib ROL files were too tinny. At this sweet spot in time there was something beautiful called a MOD file. These hybrid files were multichannel audio files that allowed samples to be played back in sequence as music through expensive sound cards of the time. I spent the summer of summer of '88 scouring FTP sites all over the Internet for precious MOD files. At that point in time I was able to FTP them to a SunOS host that had a HUGE 56kbps circuit, then download them at 1200bps using ZMODEM to my super pimped out V20 based 10MHz XT clone system. I was living large.

It may seem silly now to kids that have 16gb flash based iPod systems, but it was a big deal at the time to generate sound from a computer that could only beep in a few tones. Storage was a huge thing too, you could fit dozens of these on a 1.2Mb floppy disk (yes kids, we actually did use 5.25" disks).

The thing that surprised me, is that there are a bunch of file repositories on the web that have archived these gems. While I don't have a machine at my house that can run ScreamTracker properly, it turns out that WinAMP and XMMS have the ability to do playback on this format. I'm going to queue a few up and take a time machine back 20 years.

Hey Rod!

Links:

Video Speed Test

2010-02-14T17:01:01Z

I am always a fan of displaying information in a compact and accessible format. Youtube has just launched a new speed test display that allows you to see how fast your broadband provider is compared with other providers in your geographic area based on their actual log data. The ISP in my case is fairly low end, since it is a 3G cellular connection.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's day everyone.

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

Best. Homepage. Ever.

2010-02-08T02:29:56Z

Eugene Hsu, if I had a job for you, I would hire you on the spot. Bask in the glory of my adoration.

Links:

http://www.squicky.org/

Domain Parking Tickets

2010-02-02T22:48:36Z

While domain parking is a popular method of generating income, sometime the results can be really foul. The way this domain has been used is fairly distasteful. However you weigh in on this whole situation, I think either side would be fairly disgusted.

What time is it?

2010-01-10T21:18:07Z

You have got to love performance art when it is so functional. This clock by Maarten Baas, is hand drawn for every hour and minute of the day. The cycle was recorded once and then played out forever through this clock with a LCD display in it. Take a look...

Links:

http://www.maartenbaas.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW5PByaR2EQ

Concrete Ships and other oddities

2010-01-05T12:01:01Z

Over the New Year holiday we were down in the Santa Cruz area for some relaxation. While in Aptos, we were walking by the large concrete ship attached to a pier. I remembered seeing this as a child, but I never knew the exact story about it, so I did some research on the web (ok, I just googled it and came up with the info), and found Sandy Lydon's website with tons of odd history in the Santa Cruz area. The ship turned out to be the S.S. Palo Alto, which has a long and storied history. I knew a little bit about Liberty Ships made of concrete, but I found out way to much random info at Mr. Lydon's website.

(photo courtesy of redteam on Flickr)

Links:

BART Tube Cellular Update: Awesome!

2010-01-04T16:00:41Z

After posting about the cellular upgrade in the BART Transbay Tube, I decided to check out the service for myself. Using a Sprint 3G data adapter, I was able to keep a decent signal from the West Oakland BART station to the Embarcadero BART station in San Francisco without dropping a connection. What is somewhat ironic here, is that the service under the water was better than in Lake Merritt Station, which is station closest to BART HQ!

Sweet XO-3

2010-01-03T03:28:16Z

It looks like the One Laptop per Child team may beat Apple at the tablet game. Take a look at these sweet concept demo pictures of the OLPC XO-3 tablet.

Links: