Its the weekend again.. yay 
I am just back from Mississippi where I participated in a workshop to help evaluate some software to help with UXO data processing. I can say that I am definitely not a fan of southern food… The workshop was in Vicksburg which was a sort of spread out sort of place.
I took last Friday (the 21st) off work and headed down to Baltimore to see the Australia Exhibit at the Baltimore National Aquarium. I gotta say that the Australia Exhibit left a bit to be desired. I don’t feel that there was enough there for the price. The value is good if you have not been to the aquarium before but to go primarily to see the Aussie exhibit, I wouldn’t bother.
I did find one thing about the visit very amusing.. When you enter the foyer area of the aquarium, there was a few creatures in tanks as a “warm up” to the full exhibit. The first creature they introduce you to is the Cane Toad! Cane toads were introducted to Australia in the 30’s to help combat a beetle that was eating cane crops. The toad failed at doing this and its population has since exploded in Queensland. It is funny that the first exposure you get is a now regarded pest.
They were also selling vegemite at the Aquarium (woohoo) but the price was astounding - $8 for a tiny little jar!
Anyway, I did have my trusty video camera out for the day so keep an eye out for a video post
Over the recent months I have been watching the bahuma.com domain name. Bahuma.com was bought way back in 2001 by a guy in the UK which redirected it to his main website. It was around this same time that I was thinking of upgrading my dyndns.org address to a to a top level address (.com/.net/.org). His purchase sort of upset me (read as pissed me off) and made me jump on bahuma.net.
Bahuma.com actually expired in April this year but when domains expire they go through a series of stages before they are released back for sale to the public. While the domain was sitting in PENDINGDELETE status, I got an email from Webname solution giving me an ‘exclusive’ offer to buy the domain for US $200! I checked the whois again and it showed that the domain was still in PENDINGDELETE status with MelbourneIT. Webname solution didn’t even own the domain so I hit up google and it showed that they are well known scammers.
Anyway, I kept on watching it and I must have missed and it turns out that I was not quick enough as it was picked up by a domain holding company. The funny thing is that they want me to buy it from them for US $60. The funny thing is that over the years I have become really attached to my .net domain and to be frank (hi, my name is frank) I don’t care if I don’t have the .com :D I would have purchased it for the normal price ($6-7) but no more than that. I am more than happy to wait until the domain holding companies waste their money and finally give up and release the domain.
It was also funny that today I got another scam email telling me to renew bahuma.org immediately or I will be deleted. I did a whois and my registration is good until 2007.
Anyways, ttfn
On the 12th of July 2005, Kyle Macdonald started his campaign to swap his one red paperclip for a house through a series of trades in one year. On the 8th of July 2006, it was announced that he has an offer for a house. It will all become official on the 12th, marking the anniversary of the announcement of one red paperclip.
I think it is pretty cool that this guy travelled all around the place to do this in a series of 14 trades. I suggest you take a look at oneredpaperclip.com
It reminds me off the million dollar homepage. This guy wanted to raise money for uni (but i think he did a little better than that). These ideas get me thinking, trying to come up with something original and fresh that will take off. These are just average joe’s
Around this time yesterday, a train de-railed in Hershey, PA. Eight carriages ended up jumping the rails and I have got an image of the area from Local Live.
It is just up the road from the pub but I don’t believe they are in the exclusion zone (woohoo!). Some news story references are below:
I’m all done on in Denver for now and I arrived back in PA on Thursday night. My CR-V was still waiting for me as well as a stack of mail!
One surprise piece of mail was my denial for a Wells Fargo secured Visa card. I don’t understand how a bank can deny someone for a secured visa card when they are carrying no risk or liability. For those who don’t know, secured visa cards work in the following manner.
When applying for a secured visa card, you supply the bank with a check for the amount of money you want as your spending limit. The bank will then cash your check and place it in a holding account. You then receive the credit card and you can use it just like a standard visa. If for some reason if you don’t pay, the bank will close the card and pay off any remaining funds from the initial security deposit. They will also leave a note saying that you have been a bad buddy on your credit report which will have adverse effects any time you want to get credit.
So where’s the risk? The bank only stands to make money with a secured visa…
