According to this news story, Jennifer Wilbanks, aka the “Runaway Bride”, is selling her….”story”….to TV execs to be made into a made-for-TV movie. It appears a company named ReganMedia is devoloping the project, and according to the above linked story:
“ReganMedia did not reveal the amount of the deal, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said it was thought to be around half a million dollars.”
So let me get this straight…she ran away, lied to authorities, cost $10,000’s of dollars in hunting for her. Her punishment? Two years probation, 120 hours of community service and ordered to repay $15,500 to her city for the search. Her reward? A rumored $500,000 deal for her story.
Would someone like to marry me? Don’t worry, you don’t have to actually do it, you can runaway and we’ll split the payday at the end.
Well, my laptop hard drive is dead, but to my surprise, it is still under warrenty! A new hard drive is on it’s way, but more than likely all the data is lost, and everything will need to be reinstalled. Such is life, I really don’t keep primary files on it, so the data being gone is no big loss. Thinking I may just get a new one though and give the old one to my parents to use on their business trips.
Add this to the desktop at work having problems, my dad’s computer is slowly dying….this has not been a good week for the computers in my life.
To top it all off, my allergies are killing me. The pollen was so bad here today, I could taste it in my mouth. Oh joy. Add in the extremely high mold count we have going on, my allergies are not having a good time at all.
1. Have you ever snooped in your significant others things? If so, would you do it again? If not, why not?
Yes I have, not something I am proud of, but I have. It led to me discovering a pretty significant lie, and led to us breaking up. Would I again? Not wholly sure, I think it would depend on the situation. I would rather not, but hard to say without being in the situation.
(And for the record, the extent of my snooping was seeing the corner of something suspicious, lifting a couple sheets of paper and finding tickets for a hockey game that night in her home town. The story I had been told was she was heading home to be with her sick mother.)
2. Would you rather be richer than anyone, better than everyone, or less encumbered by responsibility?
I would have to say less encumbered by responsibility. While I have no one but myself to blame for all the things I have taken on in my life, I have never been one to pass up an opportunity. You pass up one, it makes people less likely to offer you others down the road. However, I know the amount of things I have taken on in my life have led me to miss a lot of “normal” opportunities. Vacations, lengthy relationships and so on.
3. If there were no consequences, would you rather eat and drink as much as you want, sleep with whomever you want, or yell and fight as much as you want?
I hate to say it, but I will be unexciting and go with eat and drink as much as I want. I *love* food, and if I could eat it without consequences, oh my! Take eggs benedict for instance, I love them, but I also know they are extremely bad for you. Now, no consequences? I am not sure any kitchen would be able to keep up with my consumption!
4. Would you rather change your past or know your future? Why?
This is probably the question I thought about the hardest. Though you (meaning anyone) have regrets about your past, every action, no matter how painful, has made you the person you are today. If you aren’t happy with whom you are, than sure, you should want to change the past. If you like who you are, you wouldn’t want to mess with it.
As for knowing the future, if you saw something you didn’t like, it would wreck your present. If you saw something wonderful, it might make you lazy and complacent in the present.
So in the end, I would have to go with changing one or two very minor things in the past, such as telling my folks to get my Japanese lessons when I was a kid!
5. What talent do you wish you possessed?
Tough call because there are several I would love to have, but I would have to say drawing. I would love to be able to draw.
So here’s how this works…
1. LEAVE ME A COMENT SAYING “INTERVIEW ME”
2. I WILL RESPOND BY ASKING YOU FIVE QUESTIONS. I GET TO PICK THE QUESTIONS
3. YOU WILL UPDATE YOUR LJ/BLOG OR EVEN JUST POST ANOTHER COMMENT WITH YOUR ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS
4. YOU WILL CONCLUDE THIS EXPLANATION AND OFFER TO INTERVIEW SOMEONE ELSE IN THE SAME POST
5. WHEN OTHERS COMMENT ASKING TO BE INTERVIEWED, YOU WILL ASK THEM FIVE QUESTIONS
Some of you may be familiar with the ezboard message board system. For those of you who are not, it is a free service for hosting a message board on your website. It is a network of about 9,000 boards now.
Let me get my personal opinion out of the way…some free things on the net rock (I wub you Wordpress), some don’t. Ezboard is a good example of the sucky type.
That being said, the ezboard system was hacked the other day and, it appears, just about every message board got destroyed, along with their backups. Some of the boards are now back up, some had backups dating from May 9th that could be used, but a lot of posts and other items are gone forever.
I am so sorry some folks lost stories they were posting, fun posts they had made or deep conversations they were in. However, I feel NO pity for ezboard. Folks, one of the most basic rules of computing is…YOU DO NOT KEEP YOUR BACKUPS IN THE SAME PLACE AS YOUR ORIGINALS! This applies to your home computers also, but it most assuradly applies to a large network of message boards!
The CEO of ezboard has been trying to cover his behind with a letter he sent out. Let’s laugh together shall we?
1/ The attacker erased all historical post data on all boards and a significant amount of back-up data – the reason we have been able to restore some boards at this time is that we have back up data from the May 9th incremental back-up (we perform back-ups every day, but the attacker deleted many of them). As a result, some board data will be restored, with entries between May 9th and the attack missing. We *may* be able to restore this more recent data from data that we can retrieve from RAM on the servers. The probability of this being successful is not known right now.
If you had non-network connected, or off-site backups, this would not have even been a hiccup you idiot.
7/ New security measures have been put into place to reduce the potential for future attacks,
And what are you doing about backups? Or is it going to be same-ole, same-ole?
What we are doing:
1/ Repairing systems to allow posting on all boards,
2/ Restoring data where possible,
3/ Actions have been taken to close the method the attacker used to gain access to the systems.
And still no mention of a new backup protocal.
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
robertlabatt@ezboard.com
Feel free to send him scornful emails.
You know, I do feel bad for the employees who are working to fix this, but honestly folks, the things I am saying about backups are SO basic it is silly. There is a reason for off-site backups. I hate to bring it up, but 9/11 was a perfect example. The financial companies whose offices were destroyed were running again in no time due to….you guessed it….OFF SITE BACKUPS!
If anything good comes out of this, hopefully people will start dumping ezboard (which really is a lackluster system) for other, far superior free message boards out there.
*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!
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.
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?
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.
Absolutely nothing to report. Slept for 10 hours, which is unheard of for me, but boy does it feel good to be rested for once. Otherwise nothing really to report. Several entries planned for this week though.
