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Went to see 50 first dates last week and we had an interesting time at Taco Bell after the show.

See, 50 first dates is a story about a girl who has short term memory loss, she can’t remember anything the next day. In the movie there was an even more extreme case of 10 second tom where he couldn’t remember anything from 10 seconds ago.

This is where Taco Bell comes into play…

We went to Taco Bell immediatly after the movie and pulled up to the drive through, gave the order and then the girl said “What was your order again”?

So I tell it to her again, and then immediatly afterwards she was like can you repeat your order again? I asked how much she had and she responded none of it. So I gave the order again… This continued for about 5 more tries, she swears she was having computer problems and I offered to come up there and write the order down for her… Finally they get the order and ask us if we wanted sauce over the intercom, I responded back with my usual Hot and mild Puhlease. And then pulled up… Once we got to the window I handed the money and was asked if I wanted sauce again.. I proceeded to say Hot and Mild Please again. At this point the three of us in the car are all cracking up and about to burst at the gut over this situation. We swore 10 second tom was taking our order. Finally, the food comes to the window and the girl asked…..

“Would you like any sauce with this?”

Well, after watching the screen savers tonight and seeing Kevin Mitnick spoof caller id live on the set with his cell phone I felt like I needed to try it. I tried quite a few of the tricks but they didn’t work from a cell phone. Some of the most popular ones are the Vonage call waiting trick where you call a PSTN number and then put them on hold and call another number, that will allow you to assume the identity of the number you dialed. There are all of the people who seem to think he used an “Orange Box” to do this but I think it’s something simpler than that. If anything, I think he probably used an insecure PBX system, maybe his own at his company, to fake the caller id number. Especially since he used no social engineering on the show.

There is an alternative though…

It is possible that you could hack the phone number stored on the phone and this might be able to be used on an out of network provider as your phone number.. I haven’t tried to hack my nokia yet though to see if this is possible, but I don’t see how he would have been able to do it so quickly on the show if that was how he was doing it.

If anyone knows any “Real” ways to do this, that they personally have used, and aren’t just urban legends, post them…

WALMART DIAGNOSTIC COMPUTER

One day, in line at the cafeteria, Bob says to Stanley
behind him, “My elbow
hurts like hell. I guess I better see a doctor.”
“Listen, you don’t have to
spend that kind of money,” Stan replies. “There’s a
diagnostic computer
down at WalMart. Just give it a urine sample and the
computer’ll tell you
what’s wrong and what to do about it. It takes ten
seconds and costs ten
dollars…a lot cheaper than a doctor.”

So Bob deposits a urine sample in a small jar and
takes it to WalMart. He
deposits ten dollars, and the computer lights up and
asks for the urine
sample. He pours the sample into the slot and waits.
Ten seconds later, the
computer ejects a printout:
“You have tennis elbow. Soak your arm in warm water
and avoid heavy
activity. It will improve in two weeks.”

That evening while thinking how amazing this new
technology was, Jack began
wondering if the computer could be fooled. He mixed
some tap water, a stool
sample from his dog, urine samples from his wife and
daughter, and
masturbated into the mixture for good measure. Bob
hurries back to WalMart,
eager to check the results.
He deposits ten dollars, pours in his concoction, and
waits. The computer
prints the following:

1. Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener.
2. Your dog has ringworm. Bathe him with anti-fungal
shampoo.
3. Your daughter has a cocaine habit. Get her into
rehab…
4. Your wife is pregnant. Twins. They aren’t yours.
Get a lawyer.
5. If you don’t stop playing with yourself, your elbow
will never get
better.

Thank you for shopping at WalMart.

Quacky is alive and well…

Quacky is a travelbug that me and laura found down here in south florida and took with us to europe. While in europe we proceeded to leave him in the Roman Forum geocache for the next traveller. That was almost a year ago…

Quacky has been missing since. No sign of quacky at all.. Until…. Just yesturday, the traveller that took quacky from the roman forum posted a note saying he has him and will update soon.. SOOOOOO… QUACKY IS ALIVE…

I am getting tired of people hiding behind age when they can’t prove their arguments. Now, I am only a young 26, but I believe that my reasoning, logic skills, and common sense is fairly well developed. At least as much if not more so than most 30 or 40 year olds. I also understand the argument that age does matter to some degree, but I think most people are using this because they can’t explain themselves to a degree that will influence the other person. At least not in a logical way. Furthermore, when you throw age into the equation, it creates a temporary brotherhood and support group for the elders.

Sidethought….

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This reminds me of a friend I had when I was growing up. He was a very intelligent young fellow, but was one who thought his own life was too boring and constantly invented past. He would defend himself vigorously. One night, a group of ten or so people were sitting around having a few drinks and smokes when he was talking about how he had a Diplomatic Passport and he could kill any of us and they couldn’t prosecute him for it.

Normally, I am very relaxed guy and will let people get away with stuff like that. That night, I wasn’t feeling very “Easy”…

I called him on his bluff, to which the entire room agreed with me at the time. They all called him a bullshit artist and disproved everything he said. Of course he could offer no proof and could not justify his claims at all. But then, he did something magical..

He stated “You wouldn’t understand because your not Jewish”.

At that moment, being in South Florida, half the room was Jewish. The same people that strongly believed he did not have one, all of a sudden came to his defense stating that I and the others that were not jewish just don’t understand.

*********

This is the same principal and the reason why alot of people use the age debate. By doing it they create a temporary brotherhood that you are not a part of. All members of that brotherhood don’t care anymore what the original “Reasoning” behind the debate was, just now they are a member of an exclusive club and usually will go along with the reasoning.

Point is, this is not a valid way to argue and hiding behind a “You can’t understand because of: ” is the easy way out and by doing so you are only stating that you don’t know enough about what you are talking about to prove your point to someone that’s NOT in that group.

More and more I hear people talk about Reaganomics and the effect it had on this country. Being a generation x’er, I was not old enough to vote or care during Reagan’s term so I had no real arguing point on this subject. Of course, the people I usually debated this subject with were of my own age and they didn’t really have any facts to base there opinions on either. Because of the lack of information on the actual subject, I decided to actually start doing my own research and thinking into the area. Below is what I have come to believe and feel in the discussion of Reaganomics…

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From my understanding, Reaganomics is the belief that steep tax cuts will stimulate the economy and help the economy grow. While in principle, you are putting alot of money into the hands of the American public as a whole, on a paycheck to paycheck level, there is very few extra money in the average americans pocketbook, maybe enough to buy an extra chocolate bar and help stimulate the Nestle Companys economy, but definatly not enough to improve your chances to buy a new car or any other major manufactured good.

Now in theory, Tax Cuts can help the economy. You are putting money into pockets that will be spent back into the economy, no matter how trivial the amount it. The problem with Reaganomics is though the price of the Tax Cuts. The Tax Cuts that Reagan dished out also created an immense deficit in funds. This deficit in turn made investors and banks a bit stand offish on american debt and as such they increased there “Safety Margin” on there interest rates causing the cost of debt to rise to the average american household and also eating up more money than the tax cuts generated.

So the problem with Reagans tax cuts is that they did put more money in the economy, but they caused a deficit which lowered confidence and in turn hurt the economy more than it was attempting to help the economy. Later presidents, Bush 41 and Clinton 42, discovered how important a balanced budget was and worked to lower spending and increase taxes so that there was an even budget and and even a surplus budget. This improved confidence and thus improved the economy.

******

On a more recent, related issue, this is the problem with Bush’s Tax Cuts. They do not improve confidence in the economy and put very little real money back into the system. Furthermore, they have once again caused a defecit and will hurt confidence and bring us back where we all started.