Gmail Hijackers Ahoy!

Woke up this morning to an interesting email from my mother's address:

Pls reply me back

Happy New Year...

I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's  just because of the situation of things right now, i'm stuck in London, I came down here on vacation, i was robbed, worse  of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone was stolen at GUN  POINT, it's such a crazy experience for me, i need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is i still have my passport but don't have enough money to get my flight ticket back home, please i need you to loan me some money, will refund you as  soon as i'm back home, i promise.

Thank you Rand Winton

Hmmm. No. That's not real at all.

I replied to it and the hijackers further prompted me to provide help. So they are actively using her account. Great.

After texting her (she's been bombarded by all her contacts checking whether she's OK or letting her know she's been hacked) I tried to login. Of course her password didn't work. I tried the password retrieval mechanism and it said it was sending the change request email to an address that looks like ******@y****.**.uk -- also not my mother.

So, I have reported the problem to Google and am waiting for their response.

It looks like these people also deleted an announcement I posted to Mom's Facebook wall, too, so I assume they are in there also.

Sometimes the internet is such a jerk!

Update: She has managed to wrangle her Gmail out of the clutches of the baddies. Her Facebook account is currently locked down, but she's barely concerned about that.

The Almost-Annual LA Road Trip

Tomorrow the Wife and I will hop in the Honda and head West-by-Southwest to the Hollywood hills to see her brother and his lady friend. We're extra excited because it's been a couple years between visits, since we hit Portland instead last year. We don't really have any plans for while we're there. We generally play these things by ear. We do have a couple things that should occupy our time:

  • The boy's birthday shindig on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
  • The Wife wants to hit Ripley's and the wax museum while we're there.
  • There's a slim chance I might get to bump into an old friend from from way back in my Tennessee days while we're both in LA. That would be interesting for sure.

Oh and the usual imbibing and staying up late and whatnot.

It's always fun.

If you're interested, you can probably keep track of us on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and all the "web 2.0 social networking" crap like that.

PS: In case there are any internet stalkerati out there: No, our house is not vacant, so buzz off. ;)

Fifty *BLEEP*ing People

That's the round estimate of how many folks showed up for the latest Sutton Family Dinner on Saturday evening. The house got wicked hot, but everyone got fed and seemed to have a damned good time. I only got to spend a fraction of the time I should have/wanted to with any one person, but that's to be expected when your living room looks and sounds like a downtown bus terminal.

The food turned out quite good. I'm very pleased.

The people make the event, though, so thanks all! It was a fantastic evening thanks to you.

Next time we may need to sell tickets or something...

Jimmy Is Back

He used to be Jimmy Luxury. At times he was Cobraman. Now he's half(ish?) of Brentwood Estates. He's still totally awesome.

You see, one afternoon during the first of a series of double bass tracking sessions (Jason Fraticelli was on upright, Spiker on electric...playing at the same time...check out "Whiskey"), Jimmy just happened to stop by Spiker's Undercarriage Studios on his way home. Ironically, Jimmy was the only one who didn't drink the whiskey that day (it sure as hell sounds like he did when he launched into a 9 minute freestyle about the beverage).

All of the lyrics that you hear on that song are 100% freestyled. In fact, all of the words on the entire album are freestyled, with the exception of a couple of the hooks. You just can't make that shit up......

Go get it: Brentwood Estates

Much Nothing About... Ado?

Took last week off to get a little break after our big launch at work. It turned into a fairly busy period in between all the loafing on the couch. Highlights:

  • Had a meeting with Ma and her giant dog rescue crew and got them introduced to my boss in case we can do some pro-bono work for them. We have a meeting scheduled for this Tuesday, so we'll see if anything comes of it.
  • Took Mingus in for shoulder x-rays to see if anything joint-related was making him gimpy. Turns out the joints look pretty darned good. Hooray no surgery for the dog.
  • I had a medical visit myself, but that warrants its own post... Coming soon... ;)
  • Painted the kitchen a pretty little shade of blue with the help of The Wife.
  • Spent the 4th at Brozo's, which is fast becoming tradition. Drank some beers, threw a couple bottle rockets, managed not to start any fires. Y'know, standard stuff.
  • The next day we made it out to see the Burlesque As It Was troupe put on a righteous USO-style show. That Charlie Champale is something else, I tell ya. The girls were pretty fun, too. We liked it so much, in fact, we're going to see them again on the 26th at the Bluebird theater in Denver.
  • Today's highlight was Rafa "Gun Show" Nadal finally finishing off Roger Federer in a marathon Wimbledon final. That and being able to buy a bunch of beer on a Sunday. Nice!

Other than that, I got to watch some Red Sox baseball, but really that hardly matters to me -- I don't really pay attention until September. ;)

So, the iPhone 3G comes out this Friday, eh? Hmmmmm...

Phew!

So, the big push was a fairly resounding success (as much as these things usually are), and I'm happy and relieved. Enough about me, though, really. How have you been?

Some topics for discussion:

  1. Have you seen the Big Picture blog at Boston.com? It's hot -- both in the "that's sexy" way and that all the cool kids are talking about it.
  2. Speaking of cool kids, my buddy and former coworker, Rod, got all internet famous last week with his fake script for Indy 4.
  3. This is totally ghey, but skip to the 3 minute mark and it's a least a little amusing.
  4. Speaking of ... erm... Yeah. Did you guys see the Turkish wrestling spread in ESPN the Magazine? Yeah, neither did I. I hear it's totally macho, though.
  5. More macho is Sasuke -- or as it's called on the G4 network, Ninja Warrior. Holy crap that show is awesome! Makoto Nagano is my hero.
  6. I like plurk a lot. The Interface is light years ahead of Twitter. And if you're into either of those jammies, check out ping.fm -- right this second "letmeping" should work as a beta code.

Other stuff of note:

  • My darling Ma has teamed up with some cohorts to start a giant dog rescue. We're talking Danes, Newfies, Mastiffs, Wolfies, and so on. Wow.
  • Think I'm gonna ride the motorcycle into work a least a couple days this week. Turn the stress dial back a couple clicks.
  • Oh, I am so getting an iPhone 3G in July. OMG!

G'night, kids.

Long Weekends Should Be Longer

Not that I'm greedy or anything. It just that I once again managed to let a holiday weekend slip by without doing anything worth mentioning. I got back on the exercise horse with short, awful runs on Saturday and Monday and Bowflex action on Sunday, but so what? I dipped to a new low weight for this weight loss effort, too, but bounced back up a pound or so.

My mother had a nice deck party on her brand new deck on Saturday -- that was pretty much the highlight of the weekend. She and her cohorts are now talking about starting a rescue not just for Danes but for all sorts of giant dogs. (I figure that'll make Miracle Ed smile.)

After Ma's I went to check in on my friend David's birthday party, but apparently it had just broken up after BJ Penn beat up Sean Sherk. Since the party (and DJ) were winding down, Erik and I went to his house to throw darts and play a little ping-pong. Yep. We're wild.

Sunday was a failure, as I decided not to ride my motorcycle figuring I would do that on Monday. Well, Monday turned out rainy, so no Bonneville time for me. This bummed me out since Erik had come over last week to help me get the Bonnie running well after a long bit of garage rest.

So it goes, eh?

A couple media notes:

  1. Don't waste your time with Revolver. Gah.
  2. Sweeney Todd, by contrast was good times. On Helena Bonham Carter -- Me: "I wonder what she's like day to day... You never hear much gossip." Wife: "Yeah, I don't know. I was just thinking she's got to be the oldest goth chick around." Me: "Still totally hot, though." Wife: "Well, yeah."
  3. Also, if you're cooler than me (by which, in this case, I mean you own a Blu-ray player), you might be interested in Amazon's Blu-ray sale.

Both Kinds

That John Croghan kid sure puts on a good show. Like, for real. As The Wife put it, "He plays country music I don't mind!" ;)

Worth noting are the "Face Melting" covers* featured last night: "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Six Days on the Road" (which I know as a Taj Mahal jam).

* Not featured last night was my own request for "More Than Words". The Excuse: "The band didn't have time to learn it." The Wife's reaction: "There's no band in that song!!"

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig

Supposedly, that's Irish Gaelic (which I'm allowed to rock thanks to my 13th century Kilpatrick heritage, yo)... So, yeah, it's St. Patrick's Day and it's snowing like a bitch this morning. Luckily the roads stayed mostly clear, and we didn't get anything near the high end of the 4-8 inch predictions.

Nevertheless, I am pleased that I was able to get my celebrating out of the way this past Saturday with Brozovich at the "Lazy J Ranch" of one John Croghan. John pulls together a nice little crowd of good people, so it was an excellent laid-back time. Plus he had a keg of Guinness. Hard to go wrong there. (Hell, I didn't even bother to check if it was carbonated or nitrogenated. No need to be rude in the man's house.)

By the way, John is doing his country crooning thing in Olde Town Arvada on April 4 at the 12 Volt Tavern. He's guessing he'll go on around 10pm or so. I'm definitely going to be there. If I'm lucky, John might even sing my request. ;)

In other music performance news, The Aggrolites are playing in Denver this Wednesday. I love those boys. We saw them open for Madness in Los Angeles a couple years ago and have since collected all of their stuff. Well worth the $13 ticket, I'm thinking. (Here are some YouTube samples for you. Oh, and The Wife's favorite track.)

Oh, there's also roller derby on April 5. The Wife was asking about derby last night, so we'll probably try to hit that, I think. Derby's always worth the $13 ticket.

That's all I've got, but that's way more than usual, so I'm fine with it.

Nerd Sexy

Today, Rod posted these rejected Star Wars products to our sooper-seekrit IRC channel, prompting the following:

  • Jake: and pants are optional!
  • Rod: hell yes
  • Rod: and then if you're at a halloween party and some girl opens up your sweaty suit to blow you, she can say "and i thought they smelled bad on the outside"
  • Rod: and then you can marry her because she's awesome

That's gold, people. Pure gold!

And then there was this exchange, as well...

Hit 'Em Again

Here's to having MLK Day off from work! Going for my walk/run today in 15 degree (F) temps wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. Until my calf started cramping. That had nothing to do with the cold, though. It was ready to go from the activity earlier in the weekend.

Junk I've run across:

The Weekly-ish Update

Random tidbits once again:

  • I'm really pleased with the results of my latest slate tile project. Now I'm itching to switch into woodworking mode. I'm super excited about the new episodes of the New Yankee Workshop: Norm is building kitchen cabinets. I plan to eventually build cabinets for the mudroom and perhaps the garage (as practice for the potential "big job" of the actual kitchen). I think I'll go ahead and buy the DVDs.
  • I'm gradually building up my home entertainment system to match the new TV. I've gotten a fancy HDMI-switching receiver and a fairly cool iPod dock thingy. Next on my list is a TiVo HD. Then some surround speakers of some sort (I'm still living in stereo, folks...). And then maybe an Xbox 360, finally. (Still holding out for GTA4 on that one.)
  • On the fitness front, my weight dipped below 200 pounds for the first time in a while yesterday. It's back above today, but we'll assume that's temporary. I'm going to join a climbing gym soon, I think. A great new motivator I have is the Garmin Forerunner 205 I got for Xmas. It's not as sexy as the new 405 everyone is drooling over, but it's pretty darned cool. Of course, now I'm obsessed with tracking the slightest walk / jog / jaunt to the mail box. When The Wife teased me about it I quipped, "Are you kidding? I'm gonna track my trips to the bathroom from now on!"
  • Lots of interesting gossip about former coworkers and new coworkers. That's about all I'll say about that, I suppose.
  • I'm still an Obama cheerleader, though I don't generally like to air my politics on this site. I like the look of things right now.
  • Trent Reznor isn't exactly excited by the results of the Niggy Tardust experiment.
  • TV sucks almighty ass right now. I know there's a writer's strike going, but why aren't networks taking better advantage by replaying some of the good stuff we might have missed previously? Example: AMC's Mad Men? (Ooh! There's an encore starting Jan 21. Nice.) At least I always have books to read.

So yeah... What's new with you?

Momma's (gonna be) a Mac User

My dear mother has made the leap to Apple computing hardware, which I welcome wholeheartedly. Of course, she had to do it whole-hog by getting an iMac and a MacBook, but I can't begrudge her having her toys. Plus she got a discount through her employer, so she was able to get everything nicely upgraded. Now I just need to get down there this weekend and install the wireless router I got her for Xmas...

Then we can figure out that crazy screen sharing action in iChat. That'll be awesome for remote troubleshooting, should it ever be needed.

Hey, how are ya?

Some random crap: My mommy got me a 40" Sony LCD HDTV for Xmas. I was planning to get something in the 46" range later in 2008, but 40" turns out to be plenty big (plus, it's free, yo!). That mother of mine is pretty cool. Even if she does have a thundering herd of Great Danes at her house (including this one and this one, who will make you cry).

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Did you hear the Lakota have decided to secede from the US? I figure this is roughly equivalent to them going on strike. They're grabbing some attention and might get some sort fo concession from the US government, but in the end it will amount to nothing. Though, Brozo and I think it'd be fun if they started tolling traffic on I-90 and formed an army. How long do you think it would take for them to be labeled "terrorists" if they did that?

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Did you hear that monkeys are as good at mental mathematics as college kids?

"We had them do math on the fly," Cantlon said.

The task was to mentally add two sets of dots that were briefly flashed on a computer screen. The teams were asked to pick the correct answer from two choices on a different screen.

The humans were not allowed to count or verbalize as they worked, and they were told to answer as quickly as possible. Both monkeys and humans typically answered within 1 second.

And both groups fared about the same.

Great. Just great.

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Maybe they can help economists decide whether there's going to be a recession or not.

"A lot of the underlying resilience of the U.S. economy seems a bit unappreciated," says Citigroup economist Steven Wieting. "It's not clear that this is so large a burden that we can't muddle through this."

That's the best this guy could come up with? Muddle through?

Ring Of Fire 31: Undisputed

We went to another live Ring of Fire mixed martial arts event at the Broomfield Event Center last night. Here are a few notes:

  • We were part of the posse for the wife of the main event title holder, Eliot "The Fire" Marshall, by way of a friend-of-a-friend relationship. This turned out to be both awesome and stressful. Can't beat the seats.
  • Bossman and I made $1 bets on each bout with the loser picking the next fight. I lost $4-5. :(
  • There were three female fights on this card. They were scrappers, too. I think the "Karate Hottie" should have to change her name since she lost.
  • Most of the fights didn't make it past the first round. One that went the full distance ended up 29-27, 27-29, 28-28. In Colorado, though, the 28-28 judge has to actually pick a winner... Weird.
  • I'm still tickled that Brothers BBQ caters the "VIP" tables. They also do a pork sandwich toss (in which the ring sluts and some Brothers folks literally throw pork sandwiches in paper bags into the audience). Awesome.

So the main event was the main reason we were there. Bossman's wife works with Eliot's wife, so we all turned out to support him. He had looked really good the first time we'd seen him in one of these ROF events, so we weren't too worried event though the competition, Rob "Maximus" MacDonald was definitely a step up for him. The rest of the people in the "Fire" posse were great folks, too, it should be said. It really was a nice night out except for the idea of the nice lady down the row from you, whom you've just met, watching her husband getting beat up in the cage.

Which is unfortunately what happened. When MacDonald came into the cage I noticed that his shorts were branded with the Gym Jones logo. I immediately leaned over to The Wife and Bossman to whisper "Oh shit... Gym Jones is super badass." This proved to be prophetic as MacDonald tied Eliot up at will and slammed him to the mat like a rag doll over and over. After round one, Bossman's wife asked me "What's your take?" to which I arched my brows and said flat out "Really bad for Eliot!" It got to be hard to watch. The dude just seemed so much stronger than Eliot.

The commentary on the Gym Jones site sums it up well:

Rob won (referee stoppage in the second round). He was fierce, and shockingly strong; able to take Marshall down seemingly at will. Eliot showed great class and respect both before and after the fight. It was a privilege to see them do battle.

The fight was stopped in the second as MacDonald had Eliot mounted and was pounding him with a full-bore ground & pound. Eliot's wife didn't react well, needless to say (though it probably wasn't what you're thinking). When I got the chance to talk to him at the Foundry afterwards, Eliot admitted that his head just wasn't in it. I realize that you'll have that in this kind of game, but I do wonder how big of a set-back this will prove. He was the ROF light heavyweight champion and seemingly on his way up to the next level -- and certainly a great guy, but he failed at his first defense of the title... I'm curious what will be next for him.