2012 October General Conference Semi-Live Blog

It is hard to believe six months have gone by since the April General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but they have. I will be putting up comments on the talks as they are given, or more likely right after them. It is an experiment and I’ll see how I do at it! Warning, it will be scattershot rather than organized thoughts.

The video stream can be found here.

Saturday Morning Session

President Thomas S. Monson just announced a lowering of age restrictions on full time missionaries. Now 18 year old young men and high school (or equivalent) degree holders from all countries will be allowed to serve. The age for young women serving has been lowered from 21 to 19. This is fairly big news. Also announce were two new temples, one in Tucson, AZ and the other in Akiba, Peru.

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Quentin L. Cook began his talk with a reminiscence about being a missionary in the field the last time the age was lowered, from 20 to 19. Elder Holland was the first 19 year old in his mission! The bulk of his talk was about repentance and has made an emphasis on how men are accountable for how they treat their wives, children, and others. The culture you were raised in does not excuse or permit abuse.

And Now It Is Time for a Phone Scam

What an interesting day I am having. After just finishing the most recent post on blog referral spam, I answered my father’s phone line. At first there was no sound, then the sound of a ring in, so the call was placed from an autodialer. On the other end was a clearly VOIP using man with a thick Indian accent, who acted like he was taking a survey at first. Often hard to understand, he implied he was with Microsoft and that there was “something bad” that had been downloaded to the computer there.

I was suspicious from the moment the call began, but became utterly incredulous at this point. Instantly, I was in hunter mode stalking prey – yes it was that exact feeling. When he said that he needed to take control of the computer, I knew I had found a scammer. I said that he would not be doing that and that I was a very experienced user with multiple firewalls and virus scanners. True, if you count the multiple computers we have, but I could not keep the glee out of my voice.

If he had half a brain, he would have disconnected at this point. Fortunately for my entertainment purposes, he did not. I pressed him repeatedly for his name and phone number. Instead, he gave a web address for onlinepc . com and eventually a phone number of 1-646-502-6605. Clearly flustered, he repeated the number angrily when I asked for the name again and only gave one after another request, Lazer is what it sounded like. Then I said goodbye and hung up on him.

Well, the website is documented as being a scam at Microsoft and the States are not the only ones getting these cold calls. I found this thread about the calls received in Australia. Looking up the phone number turned up a more recent series of calls with many recipients being on the national Do Not Call list like my father (and me). The phone number originates in New York, but with VOIP hacking making it easy to falsify phone numbers it could have been made from anywhere.

If anyone calls you and uses this routine on you, DO NOT COOPERATE WITH HIM! It is all a con job to access your PC for whatever nefarious purpose.

UPDATED October 5, 2012

Great news! The ring behind this scam has been busted in an international effort by law enforcement in the United States, Canada, and Australia. India may get involved as well, since most of the criminals called from there. It looks like Microsoft got directly involved and that is why things happened.

2012 Presidential Debate #1

Not much to say after watching the whole thing, other than that was the most one sided drubbing I have ever witnessed in a debate or forum at any political level. Romney utterly destroyed Obama who was reduced to a rambling, stuttering, and dissembling mess. It reminds me of the Hulk vs. Loki, it was that extreme.

Now I understand why the White House was downplaying expectations. Wow.

UPDATED: Had to correct the mistyped title, I was actually getting hits from other people fumble fingering searches – so at least I’m not alone!

RIP Flying Squirrel

I made a short trip out to get some things in a local town and came back to see Jazz, my part Siamese cat, carrying something with a suspiciously familiar tail dangling. He brought in the flying squirrel that surprised me on Saturday night to show off. So I took the corpse away from him and tossed it outside where he won’t find it again. It had the softest fur, sigh.

So much for the wonders of nature.

Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth: Complete Collection(2011)

An utterly charming anime about a Japanese girl in Paris circa the late 1800s provides laughs, drama, and a severe case of the warm fuzzies. It has a gentle heart while still facing the hardships of life, for there are many challenges for little Yune to face while dealing with culture shock . Not the least of them is the proud young Frenchman she lives with.

This 2011 anime series was expected to be a breakout hit by a lot of people in Japan and other countries, so it was a huge shock when it bombed at home. Culture clashes and the most moe of main characters should have guaranteed success, but the otakus in Japan were not impressed. Thanks to Sentai Filmworks, Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth is now available to own in the United States. With the preordered set finally in my hands, I can review how Sentai did.

The main character is Yune, a very young looking girl brought to Paris by Oscar Claudel as part of the effort made by the Japanese to increase knowledge of the West after the Meiji Restoration. From her first entrance on screen, she is a delightful character, a bright, intelligent soul fascinated by everything. Sweet, but stubborn in her own way, she is destined to shake things up for the Claudels.

More Russian Referral Spam

The latest round of spam showing up as blogger hits come from fr.netlog . com and appears to be actually a link from t . co instead. So far I have gotten sixteen “referrals” from there this week. While they show up on the Blogger dashboard’s stats, Google Analytics does not list the hits. Why Google does not filter them out for Blogger’s built in stats puzzles me.

So anyone getting hits from there, please do not clink on the links to investigate, that is what they want you to do. I would not be surprised if this is being done by the same people responsible for the aptratings spam.

UPDATED October 1, 2012

Yet another round of referral spam from Russia has been hitting my blog heavily. In this case adsresultpages . com links to a viagra ad. Out of curiosity, I looked up the website through whois and found out it gets about the same amount of visits I do a day. Not exactly a successful campaign, is it?

Funny thing is that referral spam has been around since at least 2002 when blogs started getting going in earnest and nobody can figure out how it can be profitable.

Technology Can Make You Feel Old

I was reading that the first CD came out thirty years ago today. Three decades ago. I remember hearing my first one circa 1987 since cassette tapes took awhile to be displaced.  In fact, I did not have a CD player until around ten years after the first ones were released.

Now the Compact Disc is on its way out with sales having collapsed. Downloadable digital files have been the bulk of music sales for some time now and supposedly streaming subscriptions are the wave of the future. That I will believe when I see it.

Attempts to replace the CD with another hard medium all failed. SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc), DAT (Digital Audio Tape), and DVD-A (Digital Versatile Disc – Audio) never caught on with only DAT surviving in the studio environment.