It’s True! It’s True! We finally know who Deep Throat is! *squeals*

Well according to this article, Woodward will now niether confirm or deny that Felt was Deep Throat. However, back when the Vanity Fair article was being written, John D. O’Connor, the author, talked with Woodward about being included in the article.

“Felt, 91, purportedly said he wanted Woodward, who, with Carl Bernstein, relied on Deep Throat in his reporting, to cooperate.

But Woodward was concerned about Felt’s mental state, in talks and a visit with him, and, ultimately, he did not go along with a joint exposure plan.”

So if Woodward really met with Felt, and later said he didn’t feel comfortable with it, this is basically saying Felt *is* Deep Throat without saying it.

I’m as giddy as a school girl! We may finally know the identity of the greatest anonymous source in journalistic history!

Could this really be it? Could we finally know who “Deep Throat” was? According to this article, Deep Throat was W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s. Now, he is stepping forward on his own, but so far neither Ben Bradlee or Carl Bernstein will confirm or deny. (Info on that here)

The odd thing is, I can not find any information about Bob Woodward saying anything yet. As the man who met with Deep Throat all those times, he is really the one who needs to comment, and so far nothing. So I will be watching closely for any information about his comments.

You can read the whole Vanity Fair article here, but I will warn you it is an Adobe PDF, so be prepared for Acrobat to launch.

*taps the mike* Hello? Can anyone hear me? This is a blatant ploy for more comments to be posted! If you are reading this blog, at least leave a comment saying “Howdy!”. I am beginning to think I am doing this for no one but myself! So come on folks! Give me a shout out!

With Survivor and The Apprentice over, you thought you were probably all safe from reality tv coverage on my blog…NOPE! Welcome to Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen!

For those of you unfamiliar with Gordon Ramsay he is a 3 Michelin Star chef, has been voted the best chef in England for 9 years and is ultra-famous for his temper which was documented in Boiling Point and Beyond Boiling Point.

Normally I am not fond of shows all about yelling and tempers, but the thing about Ramsay is that if you actually listen to his anger, listen PAST the yelling, he is ALWAYS right. It is about food safety, a better dining experiance and making sure that people live up to their potential in the food service industry.

All that being said, Hell’s Kitchen is taking 12 contestants into a resturant run by Ramsay where they will be put through tests. Split into two teams, each week one team will lose and Ramsay will send one aspiring chef home. The pot of gold for the winner is a resturant of their own.

In episode 1 we were introduced to all 12 contestants and each had 45 minutes to prepare a signature dish to introduce themselves. Only 2 received begrudging compliments from Ramsay. The contestants were than informed to get ready to start their first test. They were informed that they would be running a resturant that very night.

Here is where Gordon’s perfectionist side comes in. If even one dish in an order does not meet his standards, the whole tables orders are chucked and started over. Now obviouslly the people in the resturant were in on the whole concept, because NO ONE wait around for over 2 hours for their entrees. It was amazing to watch just bungling these 12 contestants were, but was amusing at the same time.

Long story short, some people never got their food, the red team lost and Carolann was sent home for her lack of motivation.

This show will air each Monday at 9 EST/8 CST. Next monday will have a rerunning of the first episode before the new episode. You can tune in at 8 EST/7 CST for the rerun. I’m already hooked!

The Indianapolis 500 normally holds no interest for me, but I admit that the idea of Danica Patrick intrigued me. She is not the first woman to run the race, but she seemed to have a real shot at winning this race, so it got my attention.

Then came the disgusting comments of some of the male drivers. This article points out some of the worst ones. It seems some of the male drivers felt she had an unfair advantage by weighing only 100 pounds. Well, guys, I hate to tell you, there are no rules governing how much a driver should weigh, so you really have nothing to say. They did anyway though:

“NASCAR’s Robby Gordon said he would not race against the petite Patrick because he believes she has a weight advantage at a mere 100 pounds, IRL officials said they were not considering changing their rules to level the playing field.”

He wasn’t the only one though:

“I’m not bragging about it, but I think that’s an advantage for sure,” Kanaan said. “Forty-five pounds is probably like 10 gallons of fuel, so it’s like we’re qualifying with 20 gallons of fuel and she’s qualifying with 10.”

Folks, if it’s not in the rules, it’s not in the rules. Lose some weight yourselves if you think it is such an advantage. Sure, guys are heavier by nature, but that doesn’t mean you should be all chauvinistic . Gentleman, (and I use that term lightly) this is the 21st century, grow up.

And as a post note, congratulations to Ms. Patrick on coming in 4th, the best finish by a woman in this race.

*very computery geekiness warning*
For years now, all work has been concetrated on making computers faster (3.0 GHz, 3.2 GHz…whatever), well, since it doesn’t seem possible at this time to increase the clock speed of the chips, why not slap two chips into the same core instead? Works for me! Intel is now shipping the consumer version of it’s dual-core chip, for now called Intel Pentium D, this week.

What this will do is allow the computer to more effectively run multiple programs at once. You, the end user, will really not see any difference, but “under the hood” of your computer, it should make a world of difference. That difference though is going to cost you (from the linked news story above):

“When purchased in volume, Pentium D prices range from $241 to $530 with speeds from 2.8 gigahertz to 3.2 GHz. Supporting chipsets range from $38 to $42.”

Yowza! What I am personally hoping for though is a drop in price in plain old single core chips. If that does happen, we will hopefully see laptop and desktop prices drop some. Laptops need to desperately.

And for you AMD fans out there, they are supposed to announce their dual-core’s next week.

This is an interesting story. Let me say, the fact Shaq wants to help law enforcement is a noble pursuit, it is just the idea of Shaq…all 7’1″, 325-pounds of him…being “undercover”.

And I really applaud his training to go after child predators online, but can you picture Shaq in a chat room typing:

My name is Theresa and I am just 13…could someone please explain all these new, odd feelings I am getting? Will some older man help me understand?

*shudder*

But good for him wanting to help out!

This is a subject that won’t win me any fans I figure, but it has been eating at me for awhile, so…deal with it.

I despise tipping. There, I’ve said it. Let me say first though, that no matter how much I may not like it, I still do it as it is expected by society. That doesn’t mean though that I don’t think it has gotten out of control. I believe tipping should be a reward for good service, not just be expected carte blanche, sadly it is becoming that way. Observe the reciept from one of the local restuarants

Ok, as some people I have shown this to have point out to me, this is for the people who can’t do the math for themselves. (my feelings on that are a whole nother entry onto itself) I view it as a little nudge…a little reminder…”Don’t forget to tip…we’ll even figure it out for you!” No you won’t. I will decide the value of the tip…I will decide who should be tipped…and I will tip in the amount I see fit.

According to Wikipedia.org (anyone notice how much I like that site yet?) defines tipping as:

A tip (also known as a gratuity) is that amount of payment to certain service sector professionals which is in addition to the advertised bill or fee. These payments and their size are a matter of social custom.

There are no standing rules or obligations concerning whether to tip (tip is both a noun and a verb), who to tip or how much. It varies from being considered rude to offer a tip (the other may find it degrading, as if (s)he is a beggar) to being considered very stingy not to give a tip. To give a very small tip might be considered even worse than giving nothing.

See? Even this says there are no rules and no OBLIGATIONS. Do not just assume that the mere act of showing up at my table and taking my order, obliges me to tip you. I don’t expect you to kiss my feet to earn the tip, but I expect at least a normal level of service from you. Are you keeping my coffee cup from reaching bottom? Are you smiling? Are you checking on my meal is? Did you get my order right? None of those things are too much to ask in my opinion.

And why is tipping so widely expected HERE, as in the USA? Other countries don’t do it as much as us, if at all. Also from Wikipedia:

In Sweden, a tip of the lowest denomination may be given as a sign of approval to a waiter who has given exceptionally good service, but never anything else. In Finland and Taiwan tipping is also practically unheard of except when a customer wants to show appreciation for exceptionally good service.

In Spain, expected tips at restaurants are usually from 5% to 10% of the total amount. But nothing happens if you don’t leave any tip as waiters are already paid.

I can add to this that tipping is unheard of in Japan. The bellman at my hotel, sadly, have gotten used to Westerners tipping them, but I refuse to give in there. Nowhere else in Tokyo do I ever run into it though. Not cab drivers, waiters, doorman, elevator operators….no one.

So here we are in the USA and everyone and their brother expects a tip. Waiters, bartenders, doormen, cab drivers, shoe shiners, hairdressers, delivery men, movers and on and on and on. What is it about the United States that we have to do this? Why do these other countries not view tipping the same way? What is it in our mindset that makes people think they should be rewarded for just doing their job?

I am sorry I don’t have the answers, but I sure have the questions. I won’t stop tipping, I like recieiving my order, but it doesn’t ever mean I have to like the practice.

It seems two English folks wanted to live out their Star Wars fantasies, and thought filling a fluorescent tube with petrol (gasoline to those of us in the USA) was a darn good way to make a lightsaber. And as with any stupid act nowadays, they video taped it. Mark Webb (20) and Shelley Mandiville (17) are now in the hospital in critical condition. It seems Mr. Webb has burns on 40% of his body, no listing of how bad Ms. Mandiville’s burns are.

You can read the news story at Sky News, The Scotsman, BBC News & ITV News.

The only reason these people won’t be up for a Darwin Award is that they lived.

My little town (Kirksville,MO, for those who don’t already know) has one major problem: Wal*Mart.

Wally World has been here FOREVER, since pre-1979 for sure when I moved here. We were an early store for sure as our store number is 189. Around 1992 we were upgraded to one of the first Super Centers. Even since then, we have lost four grocery stores to them. Numerous mom and pop stores have closed and in general just caused havoc ever since then. Over the years I have kept trying not to shop there. The internet made that easier, but no matter how hard I try, I always end up there every once in awhile. Though every moment I am there I despise it.

So my question, Target, is opening 600 new stores this year. Where’s ours? This town is ripe for competition, yet nothing. We are getting a brand new, fairly large Home Depot, but still no Target!

Come on guys…lots of us want to give up Wally World…come here…PLEASE!!!!

For those of you with Ebay or Pay Pal accounts, you have probably seen these stupid emails that tell you things such as:

Become an eBay Power Seller

You have added a new credit card home address!

Account Access Limited!

When you open them up, they look official (some more than others) and they will ask you to click on a link to verify your information for “your safety”. Let me assure you folks, clicking on those links will NOT be a good thing for you.

These types of emails are known as “phishing“. Wikipedia.org defines phishing as “In computing, phishing is the act of attempting to fraudulently acquire through deception sensitive personal information such as passwords and credit card details by masquerading in an official-looking email, IM, etc. as someone trustworthy with a real need for such information.”

Boiled down, this means these are bad people trying to get your informtion from you. The best idea is, if you get an email saying something is wrong with your account, go to the site on your own, NOT through a link in the email. See if there are any messages waiting for you when you log in. Again though, do NOT click on the links in the message.

Now, if you get one of these, you should forward them to the companies they are spoofing. The email addresses for forwarding them in the cases of Ebay and Pay Pal are spoof@ebay.com and spoof@paypal.com. When you do this though, you need to include in the body the “headers” from the email you recieved. Headers look like this:

Return-Path: Received: from rly-xg03.mx.aol.com (rly-xg03.mail.aol.com [172.20.115.200]) by air-xg01.mail.aol.com (vx) with ESMTP id MAILINXG11-45e428c07ed204; Wed, 18 May 2005 23:28:49 -0400
Received: from smtp107.mail.sc5.yahoo.com (smtp107.mail.sc5.yahoo.com [66.163.169.227]) by rly-xg03.mx.aol.com (vx) with ESMTP id MAILRELAYINXG38-45e428c07ed204; Wed, 18 May 2005 23:28:45 -0400
Received: from unknown (HELO User) (pfeffertlkjhgfd@24.110.206.119 with login)
by smtp107.mail.sc5.yahoo.com with SMTP; 19 May 2005 03:28:38 -0000
Reply-To: From: “PayPal” Subject: You have added a new credit card home address!
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 05:28:34 +0200
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=”Windows-1251″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
X-AOL-IP: 66.163.169.227
X-AOL-SCOLL-SCORE: 1:2:411626833:13153337
X-AOL-SCOLL-URL_COUNT: 1
Message-ID: <200505182328.45e428c07ed204@rly-xg03.mx.aol.com>

I know, it looks like gibberish, but it tells the security teams alot about where the email came from. (And btw, this came from a spoof I recieved, so I could care less who see’s all the info!)

Also keep in mind, spoofs can come in many forms, I even get tham about my bank account…at banks I have never dealt with.

So, long story short, never click on a link in any email unless it is a very trusted friend, even then, make sure they really sent it.