August 28, 2004
Reverse Telemarketing
With the advent of "Do Not Call" lists direct marketing companies have had to come up with inventive ways to contact potential customers (or shall we say victims). The other day I recieved a plain white postcard from ARC, Inc, 5175 Perfomance Dr., Cumming, GA 30040-9656 mailed presorted first-class from Fort Meyers, FL. The front of the card has a couple of "peanut people" drawn on it with a slogan that reads "We're going nuts trying to reach you!!" Yeah, right.
I immediately suspected this as being some sort of scam. Anyone that would legitimately need to contact me would:
- Contact me by phone (as they are permitted).
- Would most likely been successful at option 1
- Or, if option 1 failed, contact me by form letter, not a stupid post card.
I googled arc inc cumming ga to see if there was any info on this company. The results were a little disappointing, but not useless. I found Wisely Said's archive of weblog entries devoted to the topic which in turn links to a post at Mark's Realm that includes some research on the subject.
They do this to get around the Do Not Call restrictions. If you contact them you are initiating a business relationship (whether you buy anything or not) and as a result give them permission to add you to their call list and start bugging you. Great.
August 24, 2004
School Began Yesterday
Yay!
I started school yesterday. RCTC starts a week before WSU. That gives me time to start into my English and Calculus classes at RCTC before my C.S. classes from WSU begin. It makes the transistion a little less painful.
For reference, here's my complete schedule for the semester:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0800 | ENGL 1118 Reading & Writing II |
Study Time | ENGL 1118 Reading & Writing II |
||
| 0830 | |||||
| 0900 | MATH 1127 Calculus I |
||||
| 0930 | |||||
| 1000 | Study Time | Study Time | Study Time | Study Time | Study Time |
| 1030 | |||||
| 1100 | CS 301 Discrete Structures |
CS 301 Discrete Strucutres |
|||
| 1130 | |||||
| 1200 | |||||
| 1230 | Lunch | ||||
| 1300 | |||||
| 1330 | Work | ||||
| 1400 | |||||
| 1430 | |||||
| 1500 | |||||
| 1530 | |||||
| 1600 | |||||
| 1630 | |||||
| 1700 | |||||
| 1730 | |||||
| 1800 | CS 385 Applied Database Management Systems |
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| 1830 | |||||
| 1900 | |||||
| 1930 | |||||
| 2000 | |||||
| 2030 | |||||
| 2100 | |||||
August 10, 2004
Blog Update
I've updated Movable Type to version 3.01D for my blog. I considered switching to WordPress and still may do that someday, but the free version of MT is still good enough for me. Also I really don't want to try to migrate to a new blogging system right now.
Along with this upgrade I added an Atom 0.3 feed using the template I found on Mark Pilgrim's site. I modified it slightly to use MT's UTC date features (utc="1" option in any date tag) instead of the UTCDate plugin. This really shouldn't matter for the moment because both my web server and my blog have their timezones set to UTC.
I think the next step will be to phase out most, if not all, of the other feeds. I found it rather confusing to be using Bloglines and find 3 or more feeds for the same blog. There is no way to tell the difference from the search page. One must preview it, click on the subscribe link, then look at the feed's URL to determine the feed to which you are subscribing.
A site redesign is also in the works. This includes a consistent look for the homepage, blog, wiki, and photo gallery. I would like that to be completed before school starts (in two weeks, uff-da).
August 2, 2004
Logo Look-alike
I installed Microsoft Lookout on my PC at work last week. Today this popup appeared and I noticed the logo looks quite similar to a popular web search company's logo. (Can anyone guess which?)
