John Hesch

I’m making this post from the newly released Wordpress application for the iPhone/Touch. Very cool. Check it out in the apps store.

I haven’t posted since August of 2007, I was using Wordpress 1.5, and I have had the same theme for years.

Today I upgraded to the latest Wordpress and changed the theme. I am going to try to post more often but these days I have been spending most of my time micro-blogging on Twitter. If you tweet on Twitter you can follow me at @boxfan.

All major browsers change the color of links users have visited. With some JavaScript, a web site can view the colors of the links in a users browser history and determine if they have visited a site. A web site can’t pull a list of sites the user has visited from their browser, but they can test a predefined list of URL’s to see if they have visited any of them.

Spyjax makes it super easy for web sites to spy on their visitors. With Ajax, thousands of links can be tested against a visitors browser history to determine which web sites have been visited.

Luckily, if you’re a Firefox user, there is SafeHistory. A Firefox add-on that restricts the marking of visited links on the basis of the originating document, defending against web privacy attacks that remote sites can use to determine your browser history at other sites.

Using the uptime command on one of my Red Hat Linux servers

Let's see you keep your Windows server online for 258 days without a restart.

I never thought I would see the day where Microsoft would work with Mozilla to build a Microsoft version of Firefox. Introducing Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional!

NOT! It's a joke and a fairly elaborate one. I almost fell for it until I started reading some of the features like

Disables nearly all pre-installed non-Microsoft software to prevent potentially vulnerable controls from being exposed to attack. You can easily enable or disable required programs as needed through the Add-on Manager by using any valid credit card.

Proactively warns and helps protect you against potential or known fraudulent sites such as Google.com, blocks the site and shuts down your computer if necessary. The filter is updated several times per hour using the latest security information from Microsoft.

Too funny.

Today I received my first eBay phishing email. The banking institutions and Paypal scams come fairly frequently. Following through with one of these eBay scams can really be costly.

The email looks like this:

As soon as I clicked on the link Google popped up a nice alert telling me that this page is probably a scam.

The scam page looks like this

The URL was not nearly as clever as what I typically see with Paypal phishing scams

The domain lessmann-five.de belongs to Thomas Lessmann in Germany. I wrote to the domain hosting company to see if they would shut down the site. It is likely that Thomas has nothing to do with this scam and the perpretrator has hacked into his server and created the fake eBay page.

Just be careful.

Found this on Boing Boing.

Some hooligans hanging out at the local park in a Sydney suburb were bothering local residents and town officials so they decided to blast Barry Manilow and Doris Day music into the park from 9:00 PM to midnight each weekend. Apparently the music was so offensive to the youth that they decided to hang out somewhere else. The problem now is the residents surrounding the park are complaining because they can't get any sleep.

Too funny!

Did you catch Barry Manilow on American Idol last season? He seems like a first class guy and of course is one of the most successful song writers of all time.

Did you know that if you purchased anything on the Internet that you are required to pay sales tax? It's called a Use tax. You don't pay it at the time of purchase but rather claim the purchases at the time you file your state income tax.

New York has a place on their state income tax form to calculate online purchases and if a New Yorker is audited, the Department of Taxation said:

If we find out you have made purchases you haven't reported to us, not only are you going to be liable for the amount owed, the tax liability, but also interest and penalties, which...could be up to three times as much as what you actually owe.

I knew that if I purchased from an online business located in Utah I would be charged sales tax, but I had no idea that I had a tax liability for all of my online purchases. Did you? You, uhm I mean we, have until April 17th to pay up.

I'm expecting a letter sent via UPS last Friday. The letter was sent from Salt Lake City, Utah to St. George, Utah using 2nd Day Air. In case you don't know, St. George is approximately 350 miles south of Salt Lake City. I assume I would receive the letter on Tuesday but after checking the tracking number I found out it won't arrive until Wednesday.

Why would it take five days to travel 350 miles, you ask? Well, the letter left Salt Lake City on Saturday and flew to Louisville, KY arriving on Saturday morning. Approximately nine hours after arriving in Louisville, KY the letter was boarded onto another flight and returned to Salt Lake City arriving a few hours later. Update: Actually as I read this tracking again the letter stayed overnight in Kentucky. The letter is now sittling in Salt Lake City apparently waiting for the flight to St. George.

What possible reason could UPS have for sending the letter to Kentucky and back before sending it 300 miles south to St. George? Does all UPS parcels leaving Salt Lake go to Kentucky first? I wouldn't expect this kind of waste from a public corporation.

Here's what the tracking information looks like.

I saw this Adsense ad on one of my websites the other day

Is it possible that there are over 99 billion songs on the planet? And what mega hard drive is storing these 99 billion songs?

Whatever.

UK police are looking for a man wearing just a diaper, who approaches women late at night and asks: "Are there any baby changing facilities around here?"

I'm sorry but I had a good laugh when I saw this. I know it shouldn't be funny as this guy could be a danger to these women but it reminded me of that stupid movie commercial for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo where Rob Schneider is walking around in a diaper.

I actually have some fairly useful posts in draft status so don't give up on me just yet.

A guy in Simi Valley, California was sick and tired of hearing his neighbors car alarm sounding so he did what any caring neighbor would do. He pulled out a handgun and put three rounds into the Camry, silencing the alarm and earning himself a free trip to jail.

Need a good laugh? Head over to Josh Penrod's blog Amishrobot and read Damn You Thomas Edison.

A 73 year old peasant farmer near Mount Kenya, working out in his potato and bean fields finds himself being attacked by a leopard. He has a machete in one hand but hears a voice

A voice, which must have come from God

telling him to drop the machete and shove his hand down the leopard's mouth. He does what he is told and thrusts his hand into the leopard's mouth and rips out its tongue. The animal screams and falls to the ground, near death. A neighbor comes running and finishes off the leopard with a machete.

Nothing messes with a Kenyan peasant farmer. Those guys are tough!

So, this guy walks into a pizza place and orders a pizza. While his pizza is being prepared he fills out a job application using his real name and address. He turns in the application and then pulls out a gun and robs the pizza place.

I would chalk it up to either inexperience or plain stupidity

I wonder if he is sitting in jail right now wondering if he got the job.