So hey, I finally took the plunge and made a reservation for Boston, just in time to see a forecast for a storm coming to New England Tuesday night, a forecast that was confirmed juuuuuust late enough to ensure I couldn’t cancel my reservation in time. Yaaay!

But whatever, I was born during violent weather, so this will be a mere walk in the park for me, even though my dear Mommy threw a fit about me traveling under such adverse conditions. If this is how she reacts to me being in mildly bad weather, then I probably shouldn’t tell her about my plans to go tornado chasing in a few months.

So this is how I’m gonna kick it: I’ll be spending a large part of the day driving the scenic byways in Rhode Island and geocaching along the way like a fanatic monkey who has no life whatsoever, mainly because I do in fact have no life whatsoever. In the course of doing so I may come across hot babes at rest stops and whatnot prior to my arrival at Boston, in which case I will walk up to them and use my world renowned pickup line: “I think you’re beeeooootiful! Will you be my love snuggles?”

After having been solidly rejected by the entire female population of Rhode Island (all 6 of them), I will spend a few minutes crying over hot cocoa at the border of Massachusetts, then continue on my journey until I arrive at long last at Beantown, for the first time evah! I will then check in, discreetly inquire about escort services, then decide I would never make enough money in this lifetime or the next to afford it, and opt for a slice of pizza at the North End instead.

Good times, baby, good times.

Wish me luck! I probably won’t blog at length until I’m safe and sound at my hotel tomorrow night.

Tags: Beantown, boston, geocaching, hot babes, hotel, journey, Massachusetts, New England, pizza, scenic byways, storm, travel, weather
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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You know, it’s one thing to have a website crucial to your business hacked into, but it’s quite another to let it stay hacked ALL FLIPPING DAY LONG without apparently any of you noticing. Good job! I really feel comfortable now submitting sensitive information to your site when I want to make a reservation. Oh wait… no I don’t.

This is the second time this has happened to me too. I settle on a hotel to stay at, I go to their site to make a reservation, only to find what looks like a parked domain page, except that it isn’t. Instead, some depraved disease spreading spankypants (from Romania I suspect) figures out a way to hack into the site and places code that redirects visitors to a completely unrelated site with a stonking mad truckload of affiliate based links, or worse yet, malicious code that attempts to install a trojan on your computer.

What are these affiliate links you ask? Well it’s simple, every time you click on a link on one of these hacked pages, a cookie gets saved in your browser. The cookie contains certain information that will credit the hacker with a commission if you buy the right product or service, even if it’s months down the road. That’s how they make their money, and the reason why affiliate marketing needs to either be reigned in or die some kind of violent, radioactive death.

I can’t even bring up a cached version of the hotel’s site to compare the difference to the hacked version, but suffice it to say, it was a nice and simple site that had information about the hotel, its history, contact info, parking garage info, and a link to make a reservation. That has now all been replaced, with this:

Things are not what they appear...

I checked the McAfee site rating for the link in that address (don’t go there by the way!) and sure enough, it’s one of the malicious domain names being used to propagate spam and malware.

I sent an email to the real hotel people about this with no response. Beautiful. Fire everyone in your IT department now, because they must be weapons grade numbnuts not to have noticed that the WEBSITE IS GONE. As long as it stays up more visitors will be hoodwinked and might get infected with malware. That’s what cheeses me off too.

Ok, I’m done ranting now. On the upside, the trouble here eventually led me to start an account with Hotels.com instead and use their WelcomeRewards program. I saved $12 in doing so, and now I only need seven more nights to get the next one free. Who’s awesome, baby.

Tags: affiliate links, affiliate marketing, domain, domain names, hacked, hacker, hotel, hotels, malicious code, trojan, website
Categories: Tangled Webs
 
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Took this while walking by the Met. Ok so they were closed, but still, I was there!

Categories: Gone Mobile
 
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I keed, I keed.

Categories: Gone Mobile
 
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I must be on some kind of hit list with Public Safety here. My first hint was when I sometimes parked somewhere deep in the back when nothing else was available on the side streets, thinking everything was gravy. What I didn’t know was that the spots there were reserved, but the numbers had since been eroded with time. Didn’t matter. Public Safety right then and there decided I was their number #1 enemy and had to die.

So what do they do? They actually run my plate and called my workplace. Next thing you know I’m taking a call from some obnoxious Public Safety drone who proceeds to lecture me about parking etiquette and why don’t I just grow up already?

So I stopped parking in the back since then and found other alternatives that some might find… unorthodox, but which suits me just fine. Like say, parking on the curb, parking on the grass, parking on what technically should be considered a sidewalk, or when I’m desperate, parking next to a fire hydrant.

Now before you start berating me for being a knob here, consider that I’m one of the last people to show up at my job… no… scratch that, I AM the last person to show up due to my crazy hours, and as such, everyone’s already got their space spoken for except me. There is NO parking here. NONE. Dramatic measures are needed if I want to avoid walking 10 blocks just to get to the door. You understand.

I’ve parked by the fire hydrant a few times before without any trouble, always close enough that if I happen to see a building burning nearby when I’m looking out the window it’s only 30 seconds from here to there to run out and move the car, even if I did get some evil stares from the firemen along the way.

But then once again, Public Safety had to ruin everything. Whoever this Nazi spankypants is, he stops by my car, but haha, he can’t write any tickets on account of him being a virginal numbnut with no vested authority in ticketing people. So what does he do?

HE CALLS THE FIRE MARSHAL, WHO COMES ON DOWN SO HE COULD WRITE THE TICKET FOR HIM.

Who goes through that much trouble to get a ticket written over a fire hydrant when it’s @#$%^ POURING rain out? And on top of that Mr. Smokey the Bear checks off the maximum fine too, when I could have just as easily been slapped with the usual $30 fine instead. Public Safety Nazi Virgin Boy wanted to send me a message, I’m sure.

And what happens the next day? There’s another car parked by the fire hydrant.

And you know bloody well I watched that car ALL day to see if they would ticket it too, watched the virginal Nazi spankypants drive past it several times, and still the dweeb didn’t get ticketed. Why, cuz he drives a Prius? @#$% racists.

I know where this guy keeps his Public Safety vehicle too, and I am THISCLOSE to finding it under the cover of night so I can let the air out of the tires. Let’s see how big and mighty you can be without a set of wheels, punk.

Sigh, I need a new job.

Tags: automobile, car, fire hydrant, fire marshal, park, parked, parking, public safety, street, ticket, workplace
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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Warning: techie geeky nerd-like dweebie content ahead.

One of the things I’ve been needing to complete my mobile blogging arsenal is a way to extend the life of my cell phone while I was out in the field. I use my iPod Touch for all things Internet via wifi tethering on my Verizon phone, but enabling wifi sucks the battery juice like a vampire on a hot babe. Usually I get only 2-3 hours usage before the battery dies completely. What I’ve wanted to do to address this issue was get a battery operated charger that I could attach to the cell, enable wifi and then toss the whole thing in my backpack while I’m out scouting the city or geocaching. That could extend the life of my cell phone’s wifi for as long as I’d need it, giving both my iPod and my laptop Internet access anywhere in the country, even out in the wilderness. Who’s awesome? I’m awesome.

So I did some researching, and researching, and researching. As it turns out, there’s only ONE battery charger suitable for my cell phone with the right connector (because these cell phone makers, they just wubs to make their own nonstandard ports to set their cell phones apart from the rest and make it speeeciaaal, doncha know?) The charger is made by Energizer and is powered by two AA batteries. Awesome.

But wait, they recommend lithium batteries, their own brand of course. The idea of swapping expensive lithium batteries on a daily basis to keep my charger going seems well, weapons grade STOOOPID. So I researched some more to see if there were rechargeable batteries out there that would have enough juice to power this thing. Turns out one does, Rayovac Hybrid batteries. Awesome.

But wait, their charger to put it bluntly, sucks the crap stick. It’s a dumb charger that simply charges for x amount of hours and turns off, regardless of whether it properly charged the batteries or not. I needed a smart charger that would turn on and off according to how much charge a battery needed and not wreck the cells in the process. So I did some more research, and as it turns out, the best charger for it is made by Duracell. As an added bonus, the Duracell charger also doubles as a battery operated USB charger, so it can also charge my iPod too. Awesome!

So after much hair tearing, the solution turned out to be an Energizer charger, powered by Rayovac batteries, which are recharged with a Duracell charger.

As a friend of mine commented, the solution I came up with here seemed to suit me: difficult and full of irony.

Ah well. I should have a chance to give this a trial run later this week to see how long I can keep my cell phone’s wifi going, just in time before I take my trip to Boston. The prospect of being able to walk everywhere in the city with my iPod fully powered for blogging and geocaching gives me ooovas!

Tags: batteries, battery, battery charger, blogging, cell phone, city, Duracell, Energizer, geocaching, internet access, ipod touch, laptop, mobile, Rayovac, verizon, wifi
Categories: Gone Mobile
 
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Decided to do a combo of urban caching and hot cocoa sampling in the city on Sunday, starting out at Battery Park and working my way uptown. BooYAH!

Here’s the thing though, whoever said this was a city that never sleeps was stoking one up. Three of the cafe/chocolate shops I wanted to check out was closed, including Jacques Torres, which have these seriously cool Willy Wonka type machines that you can get your chocolates from. And it was CLOSED. Son of a

But of course Starbucks was open.

Only way to get there today was to swim. Mmmm, nah.

I hung out at Battery Park enjoying the view of the Statue of Liberty for a while, then worked my way uptown to Tribeca. There was a cache there that takes you from the Tribeca Clock to the firehouse building that was used in the movie Ghostbusters, one of my all-time favorite movies. I hugged the building too, just cuz I like to emote on inanimate objects, and stuff. Sometimes I think the buildings here show me more affection than the women do. Actually I don’t think it, I KNOW they do.

There's a scene with this clock in the movie You've Got Mail, so obviously nobody would know that.

We're ready to believe you!

After that I decided to get back to my car and take a drive towards Washington Heights for the New Leaf Cafe, stopping along the way at an espresso bar on the Upper West Side that was also on my hot cocoa checklist. By some miracle I got a parking space nearby and went in from there. The bar was called Aroma, and at first glance it seemed like an upscale Panera Bread to me. There were a lot of students inside, coming from I guess either Columbia or John Jay, the only two schools I could think of that were within walking distance.

I ordered my hot chocolate and could not stop admiring this girl who was chatting it up with some metrosexual dude. She… was… GORGEOUS. Tastefully dressed, with long raven black hair and bright hazel looking eyes. Sigh.

I did my best not to gawk, taking in the general scenery instead, and decided that I definitely looked out of place. The students here looked well groomed, wearing fashionable, preppy clothes, while I was sporting a five o’ clock shadow and a Walmart jacket. I was polluting their existence with my very presence, and I felt the weight of that reality come over me like a heavy cloud, so I took my hot chocolate and left, instead enjoying a walk on the streets. I got back in my car again and headed for Fort Tryon, but New Leaf Cafe was closed as well, so I pulled off to the side somewhere to enjoy a view of the GW Bridge.

You know, I really do love the city, but I only wish some of that love was reciprocated for once. Everywhere I walked no one would look at me, and no girl wanted to even acknowledge my presence, much less smile at me. Honestly, if I already had someone in my life I wouldn’t give a rip one way or the other, but I have to deal with this every day, hoping some how, some way, one sweet, pretty looking girl will finally SEE me. But it would never happen.

Instead I walk around the city like a ghost. I sort of exist, but not really.

I wonder how much more of this I can take before I end up doing something really stupid, like surgically attaching myself to some neurotic man-faced freakshow that I met on Craigslist because she/it was the only one who ever paid any attention to me. Seriously, I can feel myself getting thisclose to giving up, throwing my standards and self-esteem out the window and settle for the first thing that comes along, because that’s going to be as good as it gets.

It’s not even a question of IF I wind up doing something like that, but a question of WHEN. The clock is ticking down. Something needs to give… at least until I finally get my mail-order bride catalog.

No need to put out flames today. Women have killed the fire of wubs.

Tags: battery park, chocolates, ghostbusters, hot chocolate, hot cocoa, loneliness, starbucks, statue of liberty, tribeca, upper west side, uptown, women
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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