Ok, I was kinda snippy in the last two entries, so here are new puppy pics to make up for it.

Wow, we’re both on the couch!

Such…hard…work….getting…sleepy

Oh fine, I give up, nappy time!

When not on the couch, under a table will suffice it seems.

(edited to add some more thoughts at 9:00 PM CST)

Let me say up front, I believe in the “War on Terror”, even if I hate it’s name. I don’t abide terror in any of it’s forms. I have made my feelings on terrorists quite clear last July after the attacks in London.

That being said…(you knew that was coming)…the White House needs to lay off the New York Times for their story on a “secret” system of the banking of suspected terrorists being monitored. Why did I put “secret” in quotes? Well, 1 - 2 times a month I transfer funds to Japan for my business, and I have known of the “secret” monitoring since October of 2001. Everything about how we transferred funds changed after the Patriot Act started and I was informed of the “secret” program by multiple people. It wasn’t a secret folks. And if you don’t think the terrorists knew about it…please, join us in reality. (and for the lovely government officials who may see this, I was told “You know the government is scanning all these wire transfers now.” And I will provide a link at the bottom where the White House themselves told the world they were doing this.)

So why even bring this up? I think the media is being treated unfairly on several fronts. Firstly, the New York Times is the only paper being attacked. Why? Other papers, such as the Wall Street Journal, reported on the same story, but yet they are not being accused of “treason” (puh-lease). My suspicion is this all dates back to the story (free registration required) the Times did break back in December about the massive campaign of wire-tapping that angered the White House so much. So now, here is another story they can attack the Times about, but this time it is a story about something everyone knew what was going on.

The job of the press is to inform the public. The person guilty of “treason”, and I use the word lightly, is whomever “leaked” the information to the press, not the press themselves. I would point every one to the Bill Of Rights

“The government should not abridge freedom of the press”

If the press has to live in constant fear of what might be regarded as “treason”, there will be no “free press” left. The concern here should be the leak. not the reporting. If a piece of information is given to the press, with the exception of “off-the-record” pre-facing it, it has to be considered to be publishable. End of discussion. If the press begins second guessing themselves, we will begin a journey down a slippery slope we will never recover from.

I found a fascinating article by The Times on their website. It notes four other occurances of such things happening:

John Adams (1797-1801): During French Revolutionary War he signed Alien and Sedition Acts, making it illegal to criticise the President or Congress. Several editors arrested and indicted

Richard Nixon (1969-74): The New York Times published excerpts of secret study on expanding military actions in Vietnam. Injunction prohibiting paper from printing any more was lifted by Supreme Court

Some will say I am attacking Republicans. No, I am not. I am attacking anyone who feels the freedom of the press should be stifled in any way, shape or form. If it was not for the press, who would officials be answerable to? If it was not for the press, how would the public be kept up-to-date on what their elected officials are actually doing?

Ask yourself this, if you believe in a curtailed press, if you believe these hard-working journalists should be brought up on charges, or censured, ask yourself one simple question…where would we be if The Washington Post had given in to White House pressure in the early 1970’s over their Watergate investigation? If Ben Bradlee had said “You know what Woodstein (his shortened name for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein), the White House really says we’re stepping on toes, maybe we shouldn’t pursue this.”, the Nixon administration would have walked away free-and-clear of the numerous laws they broke. The press has to, and must work, in a free environment.

If I seem passionate about this, it’s because I am. I was a member of the press, no matter how on the fringe it might have been, I was a member for 5 years. I know it’s not easy, I know you get pieces of info sometimes people don’t want published, but you have to make a judgement call. This, I am sorry to say, was the right thing to do. This was a story that the White House itself had admitted to back in 2001 (again, see the below linked story) and a story that everyone knew was going on. There are members of Congress calling for charges of treason, and I just don’t get it. I mean, it’s not like The New York Times gave away troop locations by drawing a map in the sand while on live tv, that would truly be insane and would really be putting troops in harms way and….oh….oops.

Now, as for the promised link. Thanks to Luis over at BlogD and The Washington Post for this link. As this is a White House press release, and not a copyrighted newspaper, I am allowed to republish the entire document:

The President has directed the first strike on the global terror network today by issuing an Executive Order to starve terrorists of their support funds. The Order expands the Treasury Department’s power to target the support structure of terrorist organizations, freeze the U.S. assets and block the U.S. transactions of terrorists and those that support them, and increases our ability to block U.S. assets of, and deny access to U.S. markets to, foreign banks who refuse to cooperate with U.S. authorities to identify and freeze terrorist assets abroad.

* A Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center (FTAT) is up and running. The FTAT is a multi-agency task force that will identify the network of terrorist funding and freeze assets before new acts of terrorism take place.
* The President, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State and others are working with our allies around the world to tackle the financial underpinnings of terrorism. We are working through the G-8 and the United Nations. Already, several of our allies, including Switzerland and Britain, have frozen accounts of suspected terrorists.

Um….does this mean we should bring the White House website up on treason charges? Just wondering.

Some of you may remember I made a snarky comment about Star Jones a while back. This was followed up by me having to defend myself as not being a racist the next day. I said how I hated her for being a self-obsessed diva and how she wouldn’t shut up about her wedding and sugeries and so on.

Imagine my joy at the news yesterday that Star Jones was leaving The View. It seems that she and Barbara Walters had reached an agreement as to when it would happen, how it would be announced and she would go out with grace. Instead, being the diva she is, she ambushed her co-hosts by announcing it two days early and going to the press with statements of how she had been fired. This caused Walters to spill her guts on the reasons being fans no longer trusted Star. You can find almost all this info here.

So after all this happened, she was told to not bothier coming in anymore and overnight they delted her from the opening credits and was pulled off the show’s website. Adios Star, sounds like you lived up to being a diva…AGAIN!

Oh, and for the record, this has nothing to do with her race.

Last Thursday there was a lightning strike somewhere very, very close to my house. The sonic boom knocked me off the couch (where I was sleeping) and moved my grandmother’s bed and knocked some pictures off her wall. During all this, it fried my Directv receiver with Tivo. Nooooo!

So I gave Directv a call to see about getting a new one. Turned out they would only charge me shipping to send me a new one and give me a label to ship the old one back. Total of $21.44! Sounded like a bargain, I gave them the go ahead, it got here on Monday. After I had it, I ran home, set it up…remote wasn’t working. Called and talked to them, got the old remote to work and they said just swap them out, no big deal.

Got home from work, went to set up some recording, it said it had to call in to get that part working. I made sure the phone cord was working, made sure it was hooked up, left it alone. By 9 PM I still couldn’t get it to record, so I called them for tech support. I worked with them off-and-on until after 2 AM!

I lost count of how many techs I talked to, how many times I told the story, how many times they asked me the same questions. But one tech will stick out in my mind for ages…Angel.

Angel needs to be taken out and smacked up the side of the head. He told me he felt the system needed a whole reset, ok, fine, I followed his directions. After I had pressed the buttons he goes “This may take up to 4 hours to finish, call us back when it’s done.” Now, wouldn’t you think that’s something that should be done overnight, when people are sleeping? Nope. I missed some of my shows due to this reset, but luckily it only took about 2 hours.

Every tech I talked to after that agreed I should have been warned prior to doing it, but oh well. The last tech I talked to was by far the nicest and was very understanding. She finally declared the unit defective and did the paperwork to send me another one right away. At the very end of the conversation, she surprised with a wonderful bit of news. She had also gone in to my account and knocked my subscription price down by $20 a month for 6 months. The main reason? Even after everything that had gone wrong, she could tell I was angry, but I didn’t yell at her or curse at her. Though, she said in my position, she would be.

See? It does pay to be nice…sometimes.

Italy beat Australia 1 - 0 in the final seconds of second half stoppage time. It was off a penalty kick that I will question forever. It was a joke of a penalty and the Italian played over-played it to garner the kick. It’s sad they scored off of it, because those of us watching at home know they stole the match. I had planned to root for Italy, that’s no more.

Ukraine defeated Switzerland in penalty kicks! It was a nutty, intense game, but at least we got to see some penalty kicking!

What is going on with England? 1 - 0 over Ecuador, and only based on a Beckham free kick? That’s twice in this World Cup! England is playing so far below their talent, it’s not even funny.

England will now play Portugal in the quarter finals after Portugal beat the Netherlands 1 - 0, but sadly the score wasn’t the story. The story was the insane penalties. 16 yellow cards, 4 reds. This tied a record for the most cards issued in a game. The end of the second half was a mad house as the cards were flying so fast you couldn’t even focus on what was causing them. The question is:were they all deserved or was the ref insane? A lot fo the cards I agreed with, but it still seemed to be totally out of control.

Was testing something out, ignore it folks!

Well I was on the wrong channel and missed Germany’s two goals since they had them both in the first 12 minutes. Yikes! They knocked Sweden out.

The second game was supposed to be an easy victory for Argentina over Mexico. Mexico scored in the 6th minute, Argentina in the 10th minute and that was it in regulation time. They went in to a 1/2 over time with Argentina scoring in the 8th minute. Now, under the old rules this would have been a “Golden Goal” and ended the game, but under the new rules they had to play the full 1/2 hour. The players were dropping like flies with leg cramps as some of them had played the full 90 minutes already. Don’t let anyone ever tell you this isn’t a physical sport. When was the last time you saw an American football player fall over due to leg cramps?

Germany will now play Argentina on Friday in the rond of 8. Question is, will Argentina have recovered by then?

The second episode of Hell’s Kitchen opened with the girls lamenting thier loss of the first service, but they settled in and went to bed. They were awoke very early th enext morning by Scott and Mary Ann and told to gather outside the back door of the resturant.

It seems Ramsay was disgusted by the amount of food wasted the previous night. To make sure the perspective chefs understand the costs involved with the food, he orders them in to the dumpsters to pick through the waste and sort it. After a good sized mound has been accumulated, he again stresses how much that can cost a resturant and tells them to go back in and get ready for the day. Did anyone wonder who put everything back in the dumpsters? I wondered.

The teams met up with Ramsay in the kitchen and learned about cutting 10 ounce steaks to be added as a steak special on the next night’s menu. He demonstrated how to do it with no waste. He told Keith to sit out to even up the teams, and then gave them 10 minutes to cut as many 10 ounce steaks as they could. I won’t bore you with the whole break down, but the girls cut 12 successful steaks and the men cut 11. 5 of the men’s came from Tom alone! Didn’t matter though, the girls won and got to go to Saddle Peak Lodge, a wild game steakhouse outside of Los Angeles, and to travel there by helicopter. The men got to cut all the steaks needed for the resturant.

When the girls got back, they headed out to the hot tub to relax. The men finished the steaks and decided to get to bed early, all except Larry. Mind you, he hadn’t felt well all day, but he couldn’t resist sitting in the hot tub with the girls for a while. After everyone had headed to bed, Larry started having pains and called for an ambulance. The next morning no one could find him, and then they got a phone call from him that the stress had gotten to him, he was in the hospital and would not be returning.

The teams are saddened by this, but they go to meet Ramsay for the service. Ramsay announces that Sara will be one of the wait staff for the red team and Keith would work for the blues. Sara turned in her first ticket with no problem, Keith wrote horrible tickets and sweated all over the customers.

After 45 minutes, neither side has starters out, but by far, Gabe from the blue side is doing the worse job. As the women start getting their orders out, Mary Ann asked Heather for some duck sauce, and while reaching for it, she badly burned herself. Ramsay raced over to stick her hand under water and called for Jean Phillipe to bring ice. As they waited, Heather turned to call out instructions to her team on what she had left cooking, she then left for the hospital.

As the red kitchen spirals out of control being down another pair of hands, Sara asked Ramsay if she could come back in the kitchen. He said that was the smartest thing she had said since he met her and told her to come back in. Their kitchen got more under control and they got some entrees out before people left in disgust. After multiple tables left, Ramsay gathered the teams and showed them what the death of a resturant looked like…empty tables.

Heather returned to compliments from Ramsay on her clear thinking and to see him declare the men the losers and tell Garret to choose the two to come back. When they do team assemble, Garret picks Tom and Giacomo. Ramsay doesn’t like the choice of Tom and send him back calls Gabe forward. Gabe is sent home and Giacamo gets a warning.

I hate to say it, I’m kind of glad the USA got knocked out today in the World Cup. We weren’t ready for this, and we didn’t deserve it after we let our egos get out of control. We were defeated 2 -1 by Ghana, and let’s hear it for Ghana! First African country to make it to the second round!

I think we needed this though. We went in with an incredible ego that “Hey, we’re the USA and we made it to the second round last time, we’ll win it this year!” We aren’t Brazil. We aren’t Germany. We aren’t Italy. We are not ready for the true world stage of football. This is a true world sport and we are woefully behind.

Not the best record int he world.

Time to meet the Potential Big Brother All-Stars!

Big Brother 1
George - No…please NO! He went insane the first time, he’ll do it again! Why not Curtis? Eddie? BRITTANY?!?

Big Brother 2
The only season I didn’t watch, so not much I can say.
Bunky - From what I know of Bunky, I’d like to see him in the house.

Will “Dr. Evil” - From what I know, a complete bastard, so he’ll probably get in.

Mike “Boogie” - Will’s henchman, bringing him in with Will would be like bringing in a partnership.

Monica - I know absolutely nothing about her.

Big Brother 3
Marcellas - YES! He must be in the house! He made the biggest mistake in BB history, but he was so cool.

Lisa - Also like her, even though she won, but she was a good player.

Danielle - She was either the best player in the year or the worst.

Big Brother 4
Erika - I liked her. Not sure why, I just did.

Dana - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SO annoying!

Allison - Oh lord, no. That woman was so loud, annoying, bitchy…I can’t even begin to list all the reasons I couldn’t stand her.

Big Brother 5
Jase - No…he wears mandannas…just say no to mandannas

Michael “Cowboy” - Well…there goes the IQ in the house.

Jennifer “Nakomis” - A fantastic player, and one of the brightest as she came up with the “Six Finger Plan”.

Diane - Also a darn smart player. I’d love to see her and Nakomis in the house.

Big Brother 6
Howie - Oh I hated Howie…HATED HIM!

Kaysar -Doesn’t matter what I say, he’ll get in.

Ivette - I loved her, her temper, her attitude, she needs to get in.

James - MORON!

Janelle - Snob. Snot. Bitch…she’ll get in, but oh well.

You can vote here.

My recommendations are:
Bunky
Lisa
Erika
Nakomis
Diane
Ivette

He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Gordon Ramsay is back for a second season of Hell’s Kitchen on Fox. 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. Hell’s Kitchen was also a decent sized hit for Fox last Summer.

Returning with Gordon our his assistant chefs, Mary Ann and Scott and the so-put-upon Maitre’D, Jean Phillipe. This year’s prize is the winner will receive their own resaurant at the new Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas.

So, we open up with the twelve new idiots…I mean “chefs”…and Gordon gives them 30 minutes to prepare their signature dishes to give him a clue of what their skills are like. We’ll go down the list as they presented them:

Keith - Goofy guy who seems to think he is a white rapper when he is really a giant doofus. His dish was Cha-Ching Sesame Crusted Tuna…yeah…no one got the “Cha-Ching” part. He called it a “lite dish” when it had a heaping mound of rice, nice pile of carbs. Ramsay told him to take his hat off and he dumped the rice in his hat. Ramsay said it was too hot and too big.

Rachel - She’s Texas through and through, and doesn’t mind letting you know. She makes fried butterflied shrimp with chocolate sauce, lemon and chili pepper. Ramsay likes the shrimp, but nothing else about the dish. Rachel chalks it up to regional differences.

Polly - Polly also hails from Texas, but seems a bit quiet. She prepared undone focaccia bread with garlic dipping oil. Ramsay has no interest in even trying it and sends her back to the line.

Larry - He stands 5′4″ and makes sure everyone knows that he understands the disadvantage this puts him in. He made potato crab cakes with soy and peppers. Ramsay tastes a sample and is amazed that not only are they hot, but undercooked. He seemed quite amazed by this.

Maribel - It’s faily obvious she has an atitiude from what sah said later on. She made an Argentine plantain soup, which Ramsay promptly spit out as too spicy. In a private interview she declared he must be a wimp for not being able to handle it…let’s let that all soak in for a moment folks. 3 star chef vs. a no-one…yeah, she knows better. mmhmm

Tom - A former stock broker, a prolific sweater and very nervous seeming. His dish is pasta with shrimp scampi and cooked ceaser’s salad. Yes, I said cooked. Ramsay picks the salad out and places it in Tom’s bare hands. He tries a shrimp and spits it out. Tom feels he wouldn’t be so rough on them if he didn’t care. Or if you didn’t suck so much, but if your version lets you sleep at night…sure.

Heather - A sous chef in a kitchen with 12 men. She’s used to taking her lumps. She made chocolate raspberry empanadas which Ramsay was nervous about. He felt the dough was too thick, but it was actually the best dish he’d tried yet.

Garret - Basically he made a pile of meat. Ramsay asked where he learned to cook, he quickly replied jail. Ramsay passed on sampling the food and instead chose Gabe to try it he took the oppurtunity to slam on some of the competition. Ramsay did finally try it and agreed.

Gabe - It seems Gabe only took up cooking after seeing the first season of the show. Oh joy. Ramsay never samples his dish as the fish is undercooked and inediable.

Giacomo - He has major hair issues and an ego as big as the hair. He fixed frutti di mare, a pasta dish with a variety of seafood. Ramsay calls Sara forward to sample it. She says it’s quite nice, Ramsay tastes it and thanks him for preparing the first edible dish.

Sara - Not sure what to think of Sara yet except that her voice drives me up the wall. She made a herb-crusted salmon with peekytoe crab pasta. Ramsay proclaimed the pasta to be overcooked mush.

Virginia - Virginia lists her occupation as a salad chef…wow…alrighty then. She made a…wait for it…a coconut, pomegranate and celery root salad. You can all stop gasping now. Ramsay asked her if anything on the plate had been cooked, she informed him the nuts were toasted. He said it was fine for an uncooked dish that took 30 minutes to prepare.

After all this, the chefs were introduced to Scott and Mary Ann and sent off to the dorms. Before they go, they are informed the battle this year is men vs. women, women are red and work with Mary Ann, men are blue an work with Scott. After unpacking they are brought back to the kitchen and told they will be open in 24 hours and they need to start prep. The girls fly through their prep and get to bed around 2 AM and the men take until almost 6 AM. Ramsay catches Tom dripping sweat into a pot of tomato sauce and make him start over and make sure the nextpot is sweat free.

The next day, 10 minutes before opening, Ramsay askas for volunteers, 3 girls immediately raise their hands, only one man, Giacamo raises his, and that was with some hesitation. Ramsay notes this and express his disappointment. Heather and Giacamo are appointed to be cleaners and make sure the workspaces keep clean. Heather is excited, Giacamo looks down on the work as beaneath him.

As the orders start to come in, the appetizers are rejected numerous times until finally Tom gets the first appetizer out for the men…only to have it come back when the diner claims there is no pumpkin in the risotto. After complaining face-to-face with Ramsay, he gladly offers to shove a pumpkin up the man’s ass and sends him way. Ah…there’s the Gordon we love. After Polly fails a few more times, Ramsay changes her out with Heather who fires off a successful appetizer in 3 minutes. That caused Sara to clap with glee…until Ramsay yelled at her for being happy over such a small success.

As anyone could have guessed, hardly anyone gets served, the customers start chanting for food, Ramsay shuts the kitchens down. He then decides the women did the worst, but Heather did the best of them so she gets to decide which two will face Ramsay. She picks Polly and Virginia…I won’t drag it out, Polly goes bye-bye.

I would have never believed it, but that I saw it with my own eyes. It seems NBC has contacted Beijing about their scheduling of certain events at the 2008 Summer games they are hosting. It seems Beijing is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast of America, so to make sure the had some good live stuff to show, they are asking Beijing to move some of the big events ot the morning do that NBC can show the events live.

So here’s my problems. Firstly, where does NBC get off thinking that their schedule is more important than all of Europe and Asia’s? I have no clue, but according to this article , broadcasters in other countries aren’t happy either. Can’t say as I blame them.

Secondly, another chance for thieves to get a hold of your personal data. Kike we don’t heve enough of those already.

And people wonder why America is hated around the world, could it have anything to do with our giant egos?

I’m checking my visitor logs more and finding even more hotlinkers. Here is an example of my latest fun:

Original image

the revised image that now shows where they linked it at

To Whom It May Concern:

I would like to congratulate the ABC Network family of channels for presenting every World Cup game in its entirety. Considering the popularity of soccer in this country, I am sure that this was rather risky in the ratings department and you are to be applauded for showing them.

That being said, I have to express my dismay at the coverage of the June 17, 2006 Czech Republic Vs Ghana game. The commentators, J.P. Dellacamera & John Harkes, seemed to view this match as merely a way to kill time until the USA Vs. Italy game later in the day. Their running commentary was more about what Ghana’s win would mean to the United States than what it would to Ghana itself, the first African country to secure a victory in a World Cup match.

By far, the worst example of this came at the 90:00 minute mark, just as stoppage time began. Yes, the score was 2 – 0, but the commentators favored discussing the fresh copy of the USA’s starting lineup for the game and stopped all commentary on the game currently in progress in order to debate the changes in the USA’s chart. They did not resume commentary again until 91:46 and then it was just for one sentence so that they could elaborate on how this win for Ghana affected the USA’s standings.

I understand that I am in the USA, I understand the interest in our own team, but I found this highly disrespectful to the athletes on the field. They deserved the undivided attention of the commentators as this was their time in the limelight, not the USA’s. You have your half time show, and between-games times to do your speculating and while there are two other teams on the field, the focus should be on them and no one else.

It would benefit everyone if you remembered that this is the “World Cup”, an international tournament in which the USA is merely one participant out of 32. Perhaps you confused it with the “World Series”, which, despite it’s name, is all about the USA.

Thank you for your attention,

Portugal defeated Iran 2 - 0, eliminating any hopes Iran had of moving forward to the second round. They have one more game to play, but no hope of moving on.

In an amazing upset, Ghana defeated the Czech Republic 2 - 0. This is the first ever World Cup match victory for an African country. You wouldn’t know it from the commentators on ABC here in the United States, they only seemed to care how it affected the USA’s chances of moving forward to the second round. (See my seperate blog for more on this)

Then came the USA Vs. Italy game. Can we just go ahead and say it was the worst officiated game ever? Fouls that barely warrented a yellow card earned red cards. By the end of the game the USA had lost two players to red cards and Italy had lost one, so instead of 11-on-11 players, it ended up being 10-on-9. Other fouls that needed only a verbal warning got yellow carded. It was a total disaster. The final score was 1 - 1, and the USA goal was scored off an Italian player. It was a very, very odd game. USA stays in for now though.

There’s been some great games and not-so great games over the past few days. England defeated Trinidad & Tobago 2 - 0, but they didn’t score until the 80th minute. England just seems to be lacking any sense of passion for this, they have no fire, and it’s showing in their haphazard playing. They’re through to the second round though.

Argentina destroyed Serbia in a crushing 6 - 0 defeat. It was almost painful to watch it was so lopsided. Course, Spain defeated Ukraine 4 - 0 a couple days ago, so the Serbia defeat wasn’t the only huge loss.

Tomorrow the USA is playing Italy. If we lose, we’re out. There are lots of people who say we have a shot, but I hate to tell everyone…there is NO hope of us winning this game. We lost 3 - 0 to the Czechs. Italy beat Ghana 2 - 0. I am really expecting the score to be around 3 - 0 with Italy taking it. If we make it past tomorrow I’ll be amazed. We just are not a soccer country, we might be someday, but not yet.

I know it sounds horrible not to be all gung-ho for my own country, but come on folks, let’s be realistic too, it’s not going to happen. If we by some miracle beat Italy tomorrow, we will quickly be eliminated in the next round, we just don’t have the talent or experience of these other teams.

(Written by my friend Rachel, reposted with permission so more people will know the truth)

So I have been thinking about this for a while. Really, ever since I saw that myspace trackers (supposedly) exist. Why do we feel the need to know about every single person who visits our page? Why do we even care? What do we think we are going to accomplish by gaining this information?

I’m sure some people want to see if their (ex-) girlfriend/boyfriend is looking at their page, in case they need to be obsessive about it. Although, why getting (or thinking that you may be getting) one up on your ex because they happened upon your page is a little ridiculous. Having said that, I imagine I might feel the same way if I had had the technology available. Is it just to laugh at your ex and how much you’re supposedly over them because you don’t visit their myspace page (or if you do, it’s from someone else’s computer)? Maybe you want to see if someone you were having an argument with still looked at your page. Maybe you wanted to see if your ex’s new flame was looking at your page. Or maybe you’re a scary serial killer who wants to check out his or her next victim. I don’t believe all this “I get bored”, “it’s just entertainment”, “I just get curious”, “everyone else has one, I want one too” stuff. Think about it. Why is it really important to you to see who looks at your page?

Is it not just a little bit stalkerish? I’m sure you don’t keep track of everyone who walks past your house in a given day, or peer into the windows of someone you thought might have glanced at you in a mall. I highly doubt it. So why do you want to know about every single person who views your webpage? Sure, it might be fun to add someone you know had been viewing your myspace but really. Creepy much? If you knew you had been looking at someones webpage you thought was kinda cool then they added you., well, wouldn’t you think that was a little odd? And, of course, you know that they had a tracker and saw you were on their page 20 times a day, especially if that person is someone who deleted you previously. I’ve been in this position, in case you were wondering.

Now for the real reason that I’m posting this blog. These supposed trackers are actually incredibly convincing tools for spying on you. Had you ever thought to read the fine print on these trackers? Or even if there was any fine print? These alleged “free trackers” are not going to give you something for nothing, of that I can assure you. And from some research done today, I can say that this theory was proven right. Trackers sent out as lovely bulletins often lure you in to signing up for their trackers and downloading a program; what you are actually doing is allowing the site to install a nasty adware program on to your computer which, in layman’s terms, will screw it the fuck up.

And if you are one of the lucky few not to be hit with such a blow? The website with which you registered is not going to give you something for free. They are most likely cashing in on this craze with companies who can see exactly what you search for and what pages you are visiting. Others will use the information that you voluntarily provide them for purposes of identity theft and targeted attacks on your computer. People are even selling trackers on internet auction sites which may or may not be blocked by myspace anyway. So you would be paying for a service that allows people to gain access to your personal information, attack your computer, steal your identity and send your viruses. Oh, and not not to mention, you can’t even see who visits your profile because after a few weeks/months it will just be blocked anyway.

In addition to all of this, these sites go to great lengths to hide who they are. Try searching for them through a site like netsol.com and see what you come up with. With the exception of one or two, each and every myspace tracker site hides their identity. Which begs the question: why? Why hide who you are if you are merely providing a free, safe and legal program to users of a social networking site? That says a lot about the site to which you chose to provide your information. Remember, these are the people that are potentially gaining access to your personal information.

Have you ever wondered that it’s actually quite scary? Or how many hours you are spending checking and refreshing your amazing tracker to see who may be checking out your profile? Or how much personal information you are providing to the world? These links that you click on are no less harmful than viruses sent via email. And most people would not think of opening an email from an unknown sender for just that reason. So why download code, search for scripts and feed your obsession for stalkerism by getting tracker after tracker when you are compromising your personal safety?

Use your head. If you really really must use a myspace tracker, think about a few things before you do: why do you feel the need to spy on everyone who comes to your page? What are the potential risks to your and your computer? What is this really going to accomplish? Why are you allowing a site your myspace log-in details [as some trackers ask you for your myspace email and the password you used to sign up to it]? Why are you walking into something so blindly without thinking to question any possible implications?

And no, myspace is not going to put in profile trackers any time soon. Why? Because it is quite frankly creepy and stalkerish.

[To be continued]