The King of Pop has passed on

Just over two hours ago, Michael Jackson passed away apparently due to cardiac arrest. Heard it on CNN this morning as I was leaving the house, and Mix FM carried the news too. It’s gonna be tribute weekend, for sure.

So many memories linked to him and his music. Set aside the controversies surrounding him for a moment, and you’ll remember he was a good performer.

He practically pioneered the music video as mini-movie. The release of his Thriller video was an event of note. I even remember when the Bad music video was released.

He may have belonged to a particular era, especially when he couldn’t stage any meaningful comeback in the past decade. But his music will live on.

A’isyah’s first assessment

Two weeks ago Nany and I met up with A’isyah’s teacher, after receiving her first report card. I had been pleased with the report card, even though Nany was hoping for better performance from A’isyah. I still am pleased with her results. However, there’s more to your child’s progress than just their report card.

And that’s where the discussion with A’isyah’s teacher came in. Turns out that A’isyah’s a bit of a handful at school. Hehe. She can be rebellious, or stubborn, about doing as the teacher asks. She will sometimes come up with excuses for not responding to the teacher’s queries, or talks in class. She does like to talk, and seems to enjoy talking to her friends, even during lesson time. It doesn’t help that half the class will back her up and entertain her. Guess she’s the friendly type.

But this may become a problem. We don’t want her monopolizing the teacher’s time, and neither do we want A’isyah to be a distraction to the other students. We explained to her teacher that we don’t mind her being firm with A’isyah. We also explained that A’isyah has a tendency to not try something until she’s comfortable that she’ll succeed at it. She’s always been that way. Even when she started walking, she didn’t spend too much time practicing, falling down and so on. She waited until she was confident in herself, then got up and starting walking from one piece of furniture to another. Soon she was walking without aid.

So, yeah, A’isyah will wait until she knows that she can do something before trying to do it. And she is a willful little girl. Hehe. I just hope she turns around. We’re doing what we can at home, and I hope that she gets more positive examples from school as well.

Yeah, right, Bill Gates is gonna donate (part of) his fortune to me

Did you not know? You haven’t had any friends spread the wealth around to you? You mean, you haven’t gotten this email yet:

Dear Friends,

Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. If you ignore this you will repent later. [You won’t just regret it; you’ll repent for your sin of not grabbing a share of that huge pie!] Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. [Must be that damn Firefox competition that’s gotten Microsoft so scared. Kinda odd though, since Microsoft is a software company. What the heck is an “Internet” company anyway? Oh well. Nice of AOL to extend this e-mail beta test (e-mail’s still in beta?) to those outside the US.]

When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. [Good thing I’m not gonna forward this email from my Mac or Linux box. Hmm… do the Gmail servers run on Linux?]

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00, for every person that you send it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $241.00. Within 2 weeks!, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a cheque.

Wow. Serious? I’m surprised Bill Gates isn’t bankrupt yet. It’s not that USD 245.00 per person you forward to, or even the USD 243.00 for each of those persons who also forwards it on. It’s the USD 241.00 that you’ll get for every third person who receives it that’s really gonna start putting a strain on his massive fortune.

Sigh.

So I got the above e-mail, and did the only responsible thing. I replied with this:

Wow. This is still going around?

<text from previous email on something similar>

Dear All,

Please don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just trying to share some knowledge.

The message that was recently forwarded to you is an email hoax (try a Google search on “email hoaxes”). To make it a little simpler for you, check out the following two links:

Snopes entry on Microsoft and AOL email hoax

Entry at Truthorfiction.com

I’ve seen a version of this hoax before (and lots of other kinds too), so I know what to look out for. Besides, I also know enough about how the Internet works. Key feature: it’s decentralized. There is no central tracking system for email, so there’s no way for a private enterprise (even Microsoft) to track who you forward email to. It’s especially difficult to try to track forwarding of one specific email.

(Nod to victims of hackers/trojans/keyloggers/etc: Ok, so yes, the above is possible, but only if your PC has already been infected.)
(Nod to conspiracy theorists: Yes, of course the NSA has their supersecret supercomputers tracking all global communications, but no, it’s not being commissioned by Bill Gates for philanthropy. ;-) )
(Nod to MS bungling: Yes, Microsoft did once issue an automated update for their XP OS that secretly contact their servers with information on your machine, specifically your OS. They were doing that to check piracy. However, this was quickly found out by the security companies (heck, anyone with a decent firewall would have noticed it), and that update was retracted. No one wants their computer to secretly contact anyone, even the supplier of their OS. But that would be one way to track your emails...)

So, sorry, but you won’t be getting any nice big cheques from Bill Gates anytime soon.

</end text>

I’ll admit, this is the first time I’ve encountered this with testimonials in BM. It’s still false. It doesn’t work. It cannot work.

Interestingly, notice how the m.o. seems to change? They’re supposed to contact you for your address and then send you a cheque. And yet, some people mysteriously receive cheques from goodness-knows-where, and some have direct deposits to their bank accounts. Strange, and somewhat alarming…

Btw, to those who think, “what’s the harm in trying?”, forwarding junk emails actually has an impact. Bandwidth still isn’t free, even if it is “unlimited”. As always, there’s a cost involved.

So why am I replying to everyone? Because I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, people will learn to use readily available resources and educate themselves about this sort of thing. After all, a little bit of knowledge doesn’t hurt you, right?


Cheers!


Your Internet sleuth,

So there you have it. Hopes dashed. No cheque for thousands of dollars on your way. Please stop sharing Bill Gates’ wealth with me. Thank you very much.

Extra scenes in Terminator 2

A couple of nights ago I (re-)watched Terminator 2: Judgement Day with Azafia. It was part of her preparations to watch Terminator: Salvation, the fourth movie in the franchise. We’d caught the first movie on Astro a few nights previous, and since she had never watched the previous Terminator movies, except for parts of the third, she decided to watch the whole set in order. I had told her that it wasn’t really necessary for you to enjoy the latest Terminator movie, which I had just seen at the cinema. Still, having watched the previous movies gives you additional insights into the background story, and allowed you to catch all the references that have made their way into the pop-culture. Who doesn’t remember the phrase, “I’ll be back”, which is uttered in each of the Terminator movies?

Anyway, while watching Terminator 2, I noticed several scenes that I could not recall from my previous screenings of the movie. And I know that movie quite well, since it was one of the few movies we had on laserdisc back in the day. Now I guess this is a decade late, but I’ve just found out about it, so it’s new to me. Hehe. Turns out there was a Special Edition, with some additional scenes. I found synopses of the additional scenes, culled from a Terminator FAQ here.

The scenes added to characterization as well as story, and I finally know what Miles Dyson was holding over the detonator!

Feeling so alone

Sometimes all you need is someone to listen to you, and sympathize. Or at least, simulate sympathy. Sometimes, that’s not to be found. Because sometimes, you need to act. And that’s where I’m not performing. It still doesn’t do anything about feelings of loneliness. Of being pushed back into a corner. I swear I’m gonna crack one of these days.