Category: Uncategorized

happy birthday max and ruby

whbeebe

August is the birthday month for Max and Ruby. We make a big fuss over them by taking them for a ride in the car to a local McDonalds where we order a vanilla ice cream cone (no chocolate dip, thank you very much) and a napkins. Lots and lots of napkins.

Then we pull over to a parking slot and let the two eat their ice cream. That’s where all the napkins come into play. Keeps the puppy slobber and ice cream drips off the upholstery.

Max turned 14 this year. He’s not the oldest Lab we’ve ever had; that belongs to Katie (15 years) and the grand old man himself, Rhett, who was our first yellow and who lived to be 16.

Max is, however, unique in a number of ways. Max is the oldest lab who continues to want to go on walks. He’s no where near as fast, nor does he cover the same distance when he was younger. But he still goes out, day in and day out. Even when it storms he wants to go out somewhere.

And he’s “trained” Ruby to be just as demanding of a walk. She pushes for her walks just as much as he does. When we all go out together she’s always out front, pulling on the lead, while Max hangs back checking out all the smells.

It’s all part and parcel of owning dogs. We don’t dress them up, or treat them as little humans. But they do enjoy having them around, and they enjoy being around us. We make each other happy, and make life that much more pleasant. And in this day and time, it’s the most valuable gift we share.

Update

This marks my 100th post on Arcane Science Lab.

from my friends in nigeria

whbeebe

I don’t normally pay attention to what lands in my Google mail spam folder. I’ll quickly scan the folder to make sure there are no false positives, remove the occasional few, then delete everything else. But once in a good long while an unusually titled email will hit that catches my attention.

In the past, on my old blog, I wrote maybe a half-dozen posts about some of the wilder and crazier scam/spam emails that came my way. The most creative was the one I received from the alleged estate of Luciano Pavarotti in 2009. That has to be one of my all-time favorites.

This latest hit my spam folder four days ago. From one perspective it’s your typical Nigerian spam email. But the sheer chutzpah in the way the email is written was worthy of a mention, if not a good laugh. Without further ado…

US AMBASSADOR TO NIGERIA
Terence P. McCulley
11 GARKI ROAD ABUJA
ABUJA, NIGERIA.

Dear

I SHALL BE COMING TO YOUR COUNTRY FOR AN OFFICIAL MEETING ON WEDNESDAY AND I WILL BE BRINGING YOUR FUNDS OF $4.5M ALONG WITH ME AS PART OF COMPENSATION FROM THE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA FOR THOSE AFFECTED IN SCAMS ACTIVITIES IN NIGERIA BUT THIS TIME I WILL NOT GO THROUGH CUSTOMS BECAUSE AS AN AMBASSADOR TO NIGERIA, I AM A US GOVERNMENT AGENT AND I HAVE THE VETO POWER TO GO THROUGH CUSTOMS. AS SOON AS I AM THROUGH WITH THE MEETING I SHALL THEN PROCEED TO YOUR ADDRESS. (SEND YOUR CELL PHONE NUMBER AND THE ADDRESS WHERE YOU WANT ME TO BRING THE PACKAGE).

YOU HAVE REALLY PAID SO MUCH IN THIS DELIVERY THAT MAKES ME WONDER. YOU ARE A VERY LUCKY PERSON BECAUSE I SHALL BE BRINGING IT MYSELF AND THERE IS NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.

YOUR PACKAGE ($4.5M) MUST BE REGISTERED AS AN AMBASSADORIAL PACKAGE FOR ME TO DEFEAT ALL ODDS AND THE COST OF REGISTERING IT IS $90 THE FEE MUST BE PAID IN THE NEXT 50 HOURS VIA MONEY GRAM SO THAT ALL NECESSARY ARRANGEMENT CAN BE MADE BEFORE TIME WILL BE AGAINST US.SEND THE FEE VIA MONEY GRAM MONEY TRANSFER OR WESTERN UNION TO MY OFFICER

RECEIVER’S NAME: PAUL NWANZE
ADDRESS: LAGOS, NIGERIA
TEXT QUESTION: FOR WHAT
ANSWER: DELIVER
AMOUNT:$90

AS SOON AS YOU SEND THE FEE MAKE SURE YOU SEND ME THE PAYMENT THIS EMAIL INFORMATION.TO ADDRESS: terencemcculley443@yahoo.es MY FLIGHT IS WEDNESDAY AND I EXPECT YOU TO COMPLY BEFORE THEN SO THAT THE DELIVERY CAN BE COMPLETED. IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY, THEN IT WILL NOT BE MY FAULT IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE YOUR PACKAGE.

Congratulations!!!
Respectfully yours,
Terence P. McCulley
US Ambassador to Nigeria
Email: terencemcculley443@yahoo.es

You see the email in all its glory, misspellings, grammatical errors, blatantly incorrect facts and UPPER CASE TYPE unchanged by me. If you want to follow-up on this then knock yourselves out. I just wonder how many people actually fell for this and donated the “$90 fee” to this particular scammer. And there has to be enough marks to have made similar donations, because they keep coming across my spam folder, and have for almost a decade.

By the way, the top level domain .es (as in yahoo.es) is Spain. Considering the dire financial straights that many in Spain find themselves in right now it shouldn’t be a surprise to find Nigerian copy-cat scam spam coming out of Spain.