This is the Old Wolf's journal. It's where I engrave the comings and goings and doings of my walk through this green earth. My goal in life is to serve those whose paths I cross and help them achieve their fondest dreams and reach their God-given potential. May what you read here please you.
 
May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.

May this year bring you all you could wish for, and abundantly more!

Almost anyone who has studied Disney animated movies or who is interested in animation as an art form has encountered the work of Preston Blair.



Blair animated the dancing hippos in "Fantasia," and many other characters through his career; he worked not only with Disney but with Warner as well. Some images from his book:


Facial Expressions






The "Screwball" Characters

I've had this book in my library for over 40 years; so you can imagine my surprise when we walked into a McDonald's somewhere in Florida and found this:







Wholesale ripoff of Blair's work. Artists are not supposed to do this; using someone else's work as a model is one thing, but outright plagiarism is another.

Blair's work is probably some of the most pirated ever; all you have to do is go to a Google image search and look for "Preston Blair Ripoffs" - there is no end of examples.

Blair may be long gone, but his work is his, and should not be so blatantly appropriated - especially not by a company as large as McDonald's.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

"Australia is living up to its nickname of "the lucky country," with a new survey marking it as the happiest industrialized nation in the world based on criteria such as jobs, income and health," according to a May 22, 2012 news article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Australia Tops OECD's Better Life Index."

I thought that was interesting, given other recent articles that show migrants leaving in record numbers and that the high cost of living is driving consumer purchasing offshore.

My travels have taken me to Australia twice, and I enjoyed every minute of each visit, but I was struck by how fast those $1.00 and $2.00 coins melted through my fingers... I could truly relate to auld Mac's sentiments:


Charles Keene, from Punch, 5 December, 1868, p. 235

Text reads:

Peebles Body (to townsman who was supposed to be in London on a visit), "E-eh, Mac, Ye're sune hame again!"
Mac, "E-eh, it's just a ruinous place, that. Mun, A had na' been the-erre abune Twa Hoours when - Bang! - went saxpence!"

Now I know a lot of Aussies, and to a man, woman and child they're capital people. But they're all over the economic spectrum, and my experience is that if you're fortunate enough to have a well-paid job, and can live somewhere outside of a major metropolitan area, life is can be pretty good. But I can see that a lot of people are trying to make ends meet, and are more or less running at 100 kph up a down escalator that's doing 120. I know for a fact I could no more survive in Sydney than I could in Manhattan, unless I wanted to reduce my standard of living considerably.

The WSJ article makes passing reference to high cost of living, high rents, and an industrial exodus, but seems intent on making its point despite these factors. I chuckled when one testimonial came from an Italian who plans on staying because wages are better than in Italy, but his last job was working as a farmhand in Victoria State, and who "next plans to pitch his tent in the remote northern city of Darwin, a frontier in Australia's energy boom."

Despite the economic crisis here, and news items indicating that there is now a reverse flow of Mexican immigrants back over the border because times are getting tougher here, we're still getting many who are willing to risk life and limb to make it to this so-called "land of promise." I suspect that many of those who continue to migrate to Australia have had it far worse in their homelands, and this is one of the major factors driving up housing costs, as supply becomes more and more choked. In the end, it's all relative.

As for me, I'd happily live there if I could keep body and soul together. Except for the buggers who hand out speeding tickets in New South Wales and the annoying buzzing insects (oh, wait, sorry, no difference) I've never met an Aussie I didn't like.

To whom it may concern:

I lack sufficient adjectives to describe my dissatisfaction with your keyless chuck electric drills. I've owned two in the last several years, and both have the same problem: they won't hold the hqiz jævla drill bit.

What good is a drill if the hqiz jævla thing just spins around the bit, regardless of how tight I try to crank the chuck down?

I can guarantee you I will never buy one of these hqiz jævla pieces of again until you start making cordless drills with a key again.

No love,
-Me

Recently two email addresses which are linked to businesses that I run have been flooded with Russian pharmacy spam. These addresses have been quiet for years, but apparently the spammers were able to scrape them from somewhere. Interestingly enough, both Comcast and Gmail filter these types of ads on the front end, so I never see them, but these two addresses are linked to Hostgator, which has no such front-end spam filters; however, they are kind enough to flag them as spam based on the following criteria:

[URIs: rxsexpills03.ru] Contains an URL listed in 5 separate blocklists
0.0 HK_NAME_DRUGS From name contains drugs
4.4 KB_RATWARE_OUTLOOK_MID KB_RATWARE_OUTLOOK_MID
1.6 RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT RBL: RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT
[187.114.172.92 listed in bb.barracudacentral.org]
0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
1.3 RDNS_NONE Delivered to internal network by a host with no rDNS
1.8 LONGWORDS Long string of long words
0.0 TO_IN_SUBJ To address is in Subject
0.0 T_REMOTE_IMAGE Message contains an external image
0.0 SUBJ_OBFU_PUNCT_FEW Possible punctuation-obfuscated Subject: header





The only thing visible in the email are the above images, but behind the images are long strings of random text:

telling offices mattocks meantime you transmutation shown islands dat unto former miracle passengers swilldown let remedy herbstinking traveller comte arrived recall bow nose short bedlam philosophers between stomach expugnatory wolves fine big quod worth put secured arimaspes prisoners longskirted loads roasted jasper arch platonic wolves convocated estienne occidental dingdong. each farthingale packing nick bowl administer delectable woodporter anchovy news cups gave overthrow cups friar archer gave hereafter reckoning thither [...]

These are designed to thwart Bayesian spam filtering, but for the most part are not effective.

Click on the link, and you are redirected to an ever-changing URL, which AVG promptly blocks:



In other words, not only are they trying to sell you worthless, counterfeit drugs and steal your credit card information, but you're also downloading some sort of virus. AVG outlines the nature of the Pharmacy Spam Exploit; Symantec provides a detailed explanation as to how the Pharmacy Spam operation is structured; and the Spamhaus project provides a list of the world's 10 most prolific spammers. I do not doubt that this latest flood of hqiz is coming from one of these operations.

While stemming the tide may seem like an impossible task, it is somewhat comforting to know that there are people out there working on it, and - as can be seen with the Estonian gang - can have success in shutting down illegal operations.

I'm grateful to providers like Comcast who filter this stuff out before it even gets to my computer, and to those working to combat this plague; also to AVG, which provides protection against countless threats and exploits.

Moral: Practice safe computing, don't click on unknown links in email messages, and make sure you have good anti-virus protection running on your machine.

First of all, you'd have to duplicate Dër Ratskeller Pizza Shoppe's crust and sauce (can't help you).

Of course, this is a repeat question. The "Rat" is probably what I lived on for close to 3 years, but when I had a chance to make a small pizza for my own lunch, I would usually choose

• Canadian Bacon
  
• Mushrooms
  
• Fresh tomatoes
  
• smoked oysters
  
• Portuguese linguiça

Heavenly combination, that.

Arrived in an email as a .pdf attachment.

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(Click through for full-size image)

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I love the disclaimer at the end. You can bet your sweet bippy that Yahoo won't be responsible if you lose your money to these criminal douchebags.

Found this message in my "other" message bin, dated April 12th - looks like a typical Nigerian scam.

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The Facebook Team

Dear,

Congratulations! you are among the 100 lucky facebook email users that won $100,000 USD (One hundred thousand United States Dollars) each in the just concluded facebook Sweepstakes.

The Sweepstakes was organized to reward facebook email users because of their undying support and massive usage of the facebook email service.The facebook email was launched in November 2010 and by March 2012,facebook email users has passed 100 million,we were excited about this great number of facebook email users within a short period of time and we are hoping that this Sweepstakes will create awareness and encourage more facebook users to activate the facebook email feature on their facebook accounts.

Winners were picked randomly via a balloting process powered by Gmail.Your winning code is wumt33/us.visa23/ikobo11-85/lutrija98-99/mcfcth5-6-10/cardmt@gmail.com

You are required to report at any facebook office nearest to you and present to them your winning code,to enable them pay you the prize money and give you the winning documents.

Reply and tell us your city,to enable us send you a facebook office address nearest to you.

Thanks for using facebook email

The facebook Team

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This message is so old I'm sure the scammers have now had all their existing accounts shut down, so I can't respond and find out how they are conducting their scam. "Facebook office nearest you?" That's a new one. I wonder if they got any bites at all... and I wonder what method they use to spam FB users' mailboxes?

At any rate, watch that "Other" message category, and be sure to report anything suspicious to the Facebook authorities.

Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Dear Friend,

It is with trust and sincerity that I approach you for assistance to transfer some funds into your bank account. Please do accept my apology if my mail infringes on your personal ethics. My name is Augustine Dinga, A Private Lawyer based here in Johannesburg South Africa. Honestly it will be my humble pleasure if we can work together.

I would like you to act as the next of kin to my deceased client, a citizen of your country ( Name withheld for security reasons) name that has the same last name with you who made a deposit of $23.5 million only with a Bank here in Johannesburg few years back. He died in a plane crash with his immediate family in a plane crash without any registered next of kin and as such the funds now have an open beneficiary mandate with a Bank, This means that any person from your country can act as the next of kin of the deceased person for claiming the inheritance funds without any risk involved.


Moreso,I have received official letter from the bank suggesting a likely proceeding for confiscation of the Fund in line with existing laws by the bank in which my client deposited the sum of $23.5 Million Dollars . According to the Government Law as provided in section 129 sub 63(N), South African Banking Edit of 1961 at the expiration of 11 years the fund will revert to the ownership of the South African Government, if nobody applies to claim the fund.


My proposition to you is to present you to the bank as the Next of kin and beneficiary of my deceased client so that the bank will pay this $23.5 million to you so that we can share the amount on a mutually agreed percentage of 60% for me 40% for you.

All legal documents to back up your claim as the deceased Next of Kin will be provided by me. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee you that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.

If you are interested in this transactions, Please do let me know immediately so that I can give you comprehensive details on how to proceed.

Regards,


Barrister Augustine Dinga
Telephone: +27787004077
EMAIL: augustinedinga908@gmail.com

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Never mind that you're proposing that together we rob the bank you work for (even if this proposal were legitimate, which it's obviously not) but that you are

a) acknowledging that it's unethical, and
b) asking for my honest cooperation.

Anyone who falls for these 419 scams is asking for what they get; they thrive on greed and stupidity.