Markus’ Blog

Labour Day long weekend is around the corner. Well, it’s basically here already (Friday evening). Yay for long weekends and yay for road trips.

Victoria, here we come.

We’ll celebrate the beginning of the weekend with some nice Japanese food (this is just the beginning of a weekend full of good food, I am hoping). Late morning tomorrow, we’ll leave for the Tsawwassen ferry terminal and over to the Island we go.

We are planning on relaxing, having a good time, exploring the Greater Victoria area, have some fish & chips at Barb’s Place and, finally, see the Titanic exhibition and documentary. — Did I mention that we’ll have lots of good food? lol

Stay tuned, pictures will be forthcoming. There also might be posts from the Island if we come across an Internet cafe and take the time to sit down and post.

A blog entry about golfing filed under the “work” category? What the hell? — Yep, seriously. Work.

We had our annual “social” outing from work today. Last year we went to play volley ball. This year it was golf — at the Eagle Quest golf course in Coquitlam. What a perfect day it was, maybe a little on the warm side. (We were very lucky weather wise last year, too.) It was my first time ever trying golf. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t go to badly.

Of course I had quite a few crappy shots (especially the long ones), but it could have been much, much worse. lol

We ended the afternoon with burger and beer. Nice. We should have more afternoons like this.

On Monday, for our one year anniversary, we went for dinner at Le Gavroche. We had the four course tasting menu with wine pairings. It was fantastic. We’ve already decided that we’ll be back for more.

I had:

• Escargots (special, not on their regular menu!)
• Mushroom soup
• Elk steak (special, not on their regular menu!)
• The dessert trio

Brigette tried:

• Crab cakes
• Onion soup
• Beef tenderloin
• Bread pudding

Delicious food, delicious wine, awesome company. Life at its finest!

Yep, it was “Joshie Time” again. This time for real (=double pack). Last Friday night we went to see him in Vancouver at GM Place. We had great seats (maybe 2 meters away from the stage extenders). The concert was good, but unfortunately waited without success for him to come out after the show and give autographs. Apparently, there was no room to accommodate waiting fans on the sidewalks and GM Place is surrounded by busy roads. That’s what the security people said, anyway.

On Saturday, we drove down to Seattle (it took four hours to cross the border!) and saw him perform again (at the Key Arena). The seats, this time, were not all that good, but he did come out afterwards to meet his fans. So, Brigette did get her autograph after all, which made her happy.

Photos of the event are now up, including a big grin after successfully securing an autograph. There are several shots of Josh, too. Some of them are a little blurry, but some are quite good.

Brigette, I have no doubt, will describe the two concerts and the strategy behind choosing the seats we got, etc. in more detail.

Yesterday, I sold my trusty Sun Ultra 60 after owning it for 6 or 7 years. Can’t remember if I got it in 2000 or in 2001. I got it in fall, that I do remember.

The box definitely found a good home — with a fellow geek that is looking forward to experimenting with Solaris on SPARC hardware. Way to go, my little box.

After attending Bard on the Beach only a short while ago, we decided to give the “other” open air stage performance another shot. It was our second time seeing a Theatre under the Stars performance.

The first one we saw was Footloose in 2004 (see also Wikipedia for their past plays). This time we watched Grease.

We started out the evening (afternoon, actually) with an early dinner at The Fish House in Stanley Park. It was delicious. The stroll from the stage area to the restaurant and back was lovely as well. The performance itself was only “so-so”. We remembered that the conclusion three years ago, about Footloose, had been very similar.

Unlike Bard on the Beach, which we totally loved and want to do again next year, Theatre under the Stars will have to wait for at least another three, before we give it another try.

I got another interesting specimen of e-mail today. It’s along the lines of this masterpiece I wrote about last year.

Here it comes. The e-mail address they published in the original has been removed, because I am certainly not going to help them with their scam by publishing their e-mail even more.

Dear PayPal,

This is a message to inform you about the CASE PP245621185, concerning your paypal account and 1 other

Beginning on 2 July 2007, a new PayPal company, PayPal (Europe) S.a r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. (PayPal Luxembourg), have become the service provider for PayPal in the EU.

Due some technical errors we face we have delayed some payments. You are now having 1 payments to you from [hotmail -email address removed] of a total of 321.65$ to be added in your account.

Please proceed to the payment of the fee (0.35$for each payment+1%) which is 3.26$.

Once your payment been received you will get a receipt via mail and your payment amount of 321.65$ will be visible and added in your account. If there is no amount in your account or you are not able to proceed with the payment your account access will be limited. Login in the following link and proceed with the process.

Sincerely,

PayPal Account Review Department

The first thing to notice, of course, is the bad English the mail is written in. Although I have to say it’s not nearly as bad as the “German” in that other e-mail from last year. At least this e-mail is understandable and only slightly off. Still, not the kind of publication you’d receive from a reputed company.

The scariest thing, though, is that here will actually be people replying to this scam by sending money. And you don’t need many people replying. Say it cost $500 to send the spam to 2 million e-mail addresses. All you need is 0.1% of those 2 million recipients to reply to you and you are making $(3.26*2000)-500=6020. More than $6000 in profits.

Yes, 2000 people is lots, but 2000 people out of 2 million is not that many. Still, I don’t know if it is actually reasonable to expect 2000 people to fall for this scheme, but it is certainly a possibility.

The funniest detail I haven’t even mentioned yet. They didn’t even get their calculation right. It says “Please proceed to the payment of the fee (0.35$for each payment+1%) which is 3.26$.” If I understand correctly, that means 321.65*0.01+0.35, but the result of that calculation is 3.56, not 3.26 as they claim.

Obviously, they are not very thorough scammers.

Saturday night, Brigette and I went to see The Taming of the Shrew performed by the Bard on the Beach ensemble. Since it was a fireworks night as well, Bard on the Beach offered a special “package”:

• the play
• dinner (grilled salmon, salad buffet, bread) during the 90 minute intermission
• second half of the play
• dessert
• a prime location to watch the fireworks

We both enjoyed it a lot. So much so that we have already decided that we should do this every year from now on. The play was good, it was fun, the food was tasty and the view of the fireworks was for once not disturbed by people suddenly deciding to stand right in front of you, blocking the view. That’s what usually happens down in the Westend during the fireworks.

The only downside was getting home afterwards. Originally I had looked at the bus routes getting us back home and thought: “Wow, 41 minutes to get home. That’s quite long.” We decided to drive — and it took a lot longer than 41 minutes. Getting out of the parking lot alone took about 10 minutes and “driving” (I should call it “standing”) from Cornwall Avenue to 12th Avenue took another 35 minutes or so, probably even more! Driving down on 12th was quite a bit better, traffic flowing easier the further we went. By the time we turned onto Kingsway, things were back to “normal” Saturday night traffic. Overall driving time was about 60 minutes.

Still, slow traffic wasn’t damping our moods in any way. It was a lovely evening that I would not want to have missed and I am already looking forward to next time.