I have had “smart” phones now for over a decade. And with expensive phones, comes the insurance to protect them. Now, I’ve had my share of “mishaps”, but I have consistently kept my phone insurance up to date, and insuring every phone on our plan.

Recently, I have had a couple of accidents, starting about six months ago when a careless driver illegally cut through a gas station parking to avoid a traffic light, almost hitting me. I dropped the phone, which slid under his car and subsequently was crushed by his back tires as he kept driving on. To it’s credit, the Motorola Droid still worked, but the screen was so wrecked I couldn’t use it.

Now, I’ve been holding out on an upgrade, but since it looks like the Droid Bionic won’t be released anytime soon, I upgraded to a Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt only lasted two days before it fell off the console in the car onto the carpet and put two large cracks all the way across the screen, but the LCD and digitizer, were intact.

Now with asurion, you get two replacements in a 12 month period. In the past, I just use to continue paying the monthly premium, and my phone remained on the plan, but I was not eligible for a replacement until the following calendar year. Well that is not the case anymore… apparently they decided to fire me as a customer. Asurion has made their money, all the monthly premiums and the deductibles I have paid over the years more than cover the replacement costs of the phones I made claims on.

So, I’m not taking this sitting down. Asurion made clear in the letter I received today that there was no need to worry, the rest of the phones on my plan were still covered. Well, not anymore, I cancelled all of my coverage. Instead, I will be using SquareTrade.

I usually get several of these types of emails a week, but none are stupid as the one I received today, so I thought I would share it with you.

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The email contained a PDF from the FBI, well the Department of Homeland Security to be precise. But it was on FBI letterhead…. ??? and signed by the FBI Director… ???

OK, I was intrigued. Upon further examination, my contact’s name didn’t have just two first names, but three. It is the practice of these scammers to use fake names usually using two common first names, for example Robert David. Throw on a title like Doctor, Barister, or their favorite, Reverend, and there you have it. My contact was Rev. Frank Tim Kelley, I hit the trifecta.

Reading on, I was threatened with arrest or detainment, and, my personal favorite, “jailed as terrorism, drug trafficking, or money laundering”. The english over there is “not so good”. The letter, which was not addressed to me, or made any mention of my identity what-so-ever, demanded that I  send $350.00 to clear some documents through customs, along with personal information including my name, address, home and mobile telephone numbers.

I was given a time frame in which to comply. 48 hours was the initial time limit which changed to 24 hours  at the end of the letter. I’m thinking he was getting a little confused, what, being a Reverend and a “Principal Legal Advisor U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” using FBI Letterhead (I’m guessing the initials are for dramatic effect???))

My failure to comply would result in the Rev. Frank Tim Kelley sending an agent to my house. Wouldn’t that mean, they already knew my address? And by agent, the letter was not specific as to which kind of agent, FBI, DHS, or maybe someone from the Choir.

The letter, apparently a forgery, was full of grammatical errors, and misspellings, but it does contain a signature of the current Director of the FBI Robert S. Mueller, III.

Hey, I know you idiot spammers aren’t reading the Blog, but I’ll post this anyway. KNOCK IT OFF! You don’t get past my Askimet filter, and your SPAM comments never see the light of day because I DELETE THEM as soon as I get them.

Ah, but those those who may actually read the Blog and want to post a comment, I don’t delete legitimate comments.

Edit: It seems we are a big hit for Polish Spammers these days… yeeesh…

I prefer Blogging as a social media anyway, because I have control of the content and don’t have to look at or more importantly my readers don’t have to look at idiotic banner ads. Plus there’s no better forum for sticking it to the Man but from the Blogosphere. Sticking it to the Man  since 2004 !

So my kids, both minors, get checks for birthdays and Christmas. They are drawn on Chase Bank, but since we don’t have an account there, and never will I might add, the boys, remember minors, get dinged $6.00 per check to cash a gift check. “Hey, before I give it to you, let me put a bow on that $6.00 for ya, I didn’t know it was your birthday too!” To top it off the memo line on the checks said either Happy Birthday, or Merry Christmas. Really, you’re going to take money from a kid’s gift check? Really? That’ sounds pretty Chickensh!t too me. I bet they take candy from babies too!

There’s nothing new here, even you libs will admit that Google is liberal. In 2005 alone $463,500 was given to Democrats by Google management and employees, while $5,000 was given to Republicans, (or 100 to 1 for those of you from Lake Jackson). They spend their money on “socially progressive corporations” and “influencing public policy,” code words for liberal agenda.

So, I have dropped Adsense, the Google sitemap plugin, the gvisit tracker plugin, and now even Feedburner, a recent Google acquisition. I have changed all the search engines in the house, and the office PC’s to Windows Live, and I host my on RSS feeds. We are now Google free. I even took the bookmarks and search engine off my Blackberry.

The prevelance of Google in the market place is staggering, from Google Earth, StreetView, Maps, GMail etc., and the fact that 60% of all searches are through the Google search engine, the amount of data they have access to is frightening. Nefarious? well you be the judge…

Moral of the story… keep good backups of our xorg.conf files.

Open source may have it’s issues at times, but I have had shrinkwrapped software go belly up after applying patches, and sevice packs also, and that software, I had to buy.