March 15, 2011

My Conversation with a Hacker

I had a fun encounter this morning with a hacked Facebook account that started chatting with me. Realizing it was a hack, I decided to play along and see how far it would get. Keep in mind, I knew the entire time that the person that the account belongs to was not in London. Here’s the transcription:

Me: hey val!

Hacked Account: we are not too good at the moment in a deep mess

Me: what’s going on

Hacked Account: we are currently stuck in London uk,went there on a short vacation unfortunately we got mugged at a gun point last night…scary!

Me: whoa

Me: i had no idea

Hacked Account: i was hurt on my head,writing you in tears now as we speak,all cash and credit card was stolen off including cell phone,it was a brutal experience

Me: oh my

Me: are you guys ok?

Me: hello?

Hacked Account: we are freaked out here,have been to the embassy and the police they are not helping issues at all i was ask to come back in three weeks time

Me: so what are you going to do?

Hacked Account: thank God we still have our life and passport saved with us…Our return flight leaves in few hours…i need your help

Me: how os

Me: so

Me: ?

Hacked Account: i need you to loan me some few CASH to get our hotel bills settled and get a cab to the airport,would def refund it back to you once am back home tomorrow

Me: how much

Me: ?

Hacked Account: 670

Me: how do I get it to you?

Hacked Account: you can have it wire on my name via western union to me all you need is my name and present location,do you know of any western union outlet or store around you?

Me: sure, I can head there this morning

Hacked Account: ok..let me give you my info you need

Hacked Account: Name:Valerie Tidbal
Hacked Account: Location:7 Walworth Road London, SE17 1RL, United Kingdom

Hacked Account: got it?

Me: How will you know when it gets there?

Hacked Account: you would be given a confirmation number at the western union outlet

Hacked Account: that’s what you will send to me

Hacked Account: can you email me when you are done with the transfer ?

Me: Sure, which email address?

Hacked Account: here is my private email address: get2meet2@yahoo.com

Hacked Account: get2meet2@yahoo.com

Hacked Account: send me a test mail to confirm you got my email correctly

Me: how long have you had that email sis?

Hacked Account: send me a test mail to confirm you got my email correctly

Hacked Account: ?

Me: I just did

Hacked Account: let me know when you send the test mail

Hacked Account: ok?

Me: I already did

Me: just told you

Hacked Account: i didn’t get it

Hacked Account: can i have your email?

Hacked Account: so i will email you

Me: snoopdog23@gmail.com

Hacked Account: are you kidding me?

Account Banned

February 23, 2011

WordPress 3.1 Admin Bar Affects Absolute Positioning CSS

With the new release of WordPress 3.1, they have unveiled a new “Admin Bar” that displays on the public side of your WordPress instance if individuals are logged in. Pretty slick and handy! However, if you are using any absolute positioned items that are positioning off of the top <body> tag, such as absolutely positioned items using “top”, when this admin bar displays, it will not shift those items.

What you will have to do is add in new CSS declarations that specify when the admin bar is displayed. If you are using the WordPress generated CSS classes on your body tag (such as: <body <?php body_class() ?>> for your body tag in your theme’s header.php file), the Admin Bar will add the class “admin-bar” to the body tag. The admin bar is 28px in height. Therefore, you can add new declarations to your CSS file to shift your absolutely positioned items 28 more pixels by doing something similar:

.admin-bar .positioneditem { top: (previous top value + 28)px }

February 23, 2011

Dream Log: Running from Matt Damon

This one is a long dream…so many elements that when I woke up immediately at the end…I wrote down all the things I could remember…here we go. Continue reading →

January 18, 2011

Dream Log: My Day with the President

So last night I dreamed that for some reason, Obama was visiting some sort of resort, and I was part of the inner circle of folks he was hanging out with. I can remember somebody who was his brother was there too. So we were walking around, him shaking people’s hands and whatnot, finally he said he needed a break, so we all went up to his room where he laid down while I sat in a chair across the room.

I remember thinking, man I wonder where all the secret service folks are as I looked out the window. But, I saw some of them out in the courtyard walking around, etc. As I went back to my chair, we heard this whoosh sound go through the room, and we saw the fibers on the blanket covering the president split – and we knew it was a bullet going through the room. The resort was shaped like a U, and across the courtyard from the room we were in was more rooms, and there was apparently a sniper over there somewhere trying to shoot the president. More shots came through the room as I yelled at him to roll off the bed and onto the floor. As he did that though, a bullet hit his leg. I knew I needed to call secret service, and that 911 would take too long, so I asked the president what number I should call. He told me, and I kept messing up the numbers cause I was freaking out. His brother came back into the room and made the call.

So the secret service shows up, but the president didn’t want the media or the shooter to think he had been shot, so he muscled up the strength to walk down on his own to an awaiting car. As we did though, more people wanted to take a photo with him. I couldn’t believe that he wanted to stop, have me get his camera out of his bag, and take a photo with them, but I did. After that tons of secret service folks swooped in, whisked him away, and that was it.

January 13, 2011

Dream Log: Boats and Pitbulls

So I was dreaming that I was back in Minooka riding a bike through town with my iPad in one hand. As I rode past the old firestation, somebody had bought it and turned it into a boat cleaning place, kinda like a car wash / mechanic shop for boats. As I got to the next building in town, there were a bunch of police officers standing around griping saying something about ‘they’re going to tip them off’…and I heard this chanting in the distance, as I got closer to the chanting, it was a group from one of those repossession shows on TV that were about to raid the boat place to pick up all the stolen boats that they had in there, and they were all standing around in a circle like a football team does before a game pepping themselves up…well sure enough the boat folks heard it all and by the time they were done, all the boats were cleared out.

I kept riding my bike through town, hit a grassy patch and started to wipeout, but I clearly remember setting the iPad down on the ground gently before taking a hard spill myself. Hehe.

As I fell though, there was a pitbull in the area that saw me go down, and started heading my way. I quickly hopped back on the bike and started peddling as fast as possible, but it was catching up with me. Of course, the dog caught up and started nipping at me, the handlebars, my feet. I couldn’t shake it, and it finally got caught up between the bike wheels, everything spinning around, I get back on the bike and quickly get home and realize that somehow there’s a quarter sized hole in my leg…that hurt pretty bad…and I could look down into the hole and it seemed to just keep on going much longer than the actual size of my leg…ouch.

Pretty much after that, I woke up. The end.