Phone fraud experience

Someone was trying to scam me on the phone yesterday. Here's the story:

Last week, I got a call from a Chinese girl who speaks mandarin. Usually when I get calls like this, I just pretended that I don't speak Chinese and hang up. ( I have had enough calls from people who spoke in Mandarin and wanted me to subscribe to their long distance services) Anyhow, this time, I decided to lecture them about the national-do-not-call list so that they would stop calling once and for all. But as it turned out, it was a phone scam. The girl claimed
that she was from a travel agency and the name of the business translates to "Crown" if I am not mistaken. She said they are Hong-Kong based and they are trying to expand their business to US and Canada and that's why they have been calling around to promote theirbusiness. I asked them how they got my number and she said it is computer generated and it is hard to find someone who speaks Chinese and begged me not to hang up. She said she is new to the job blah
blah blah. Initially she was just asking questions like where I want to travel to etc. Lateron she said they are giving everyone they called a membership number and members get discount for tours booking etc. They asked for my personal info but I refused to give them anything. The girl tried pushing for a little while but gave up eventually. I didn't think much at the time but turns out that this was part of a scam.
Part two of the story: yesterday afternoon at around 4pm, I got another call from this travel agency. They said they had a draw at a function over the weekend and my membership number won second prize, $100,000 US. She said, even tho I wasn't at the function to claim the prize, the company is nice enough to keep it for me. All I need to give them is my name, address, and banking information so that they can wire the money. As soon as they mentioned banking information my red-alert is triggered. I said I don't give out my information over the phone and ask them if there is any other way to claim the prize. They said I can go to their office in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong and gave me an address that seems legit. Then I asked her, if you are a HK based company, why do you speak Mandarin? Shouldn't you be speaking Cantonese. Then this woman tried to lecture me about HK is part of China and I must not have been back to HK for ages and her company (and many companies) requires them to speak Mandarin at work. Anyway, I got tired playing along and I said if I want the prize I will go to their office to get it, then I hung up. I did a little more digging after the call. I visited the HK government website to look for the list of registered travel agencies, there is no such company as expected. And if you think about it, they called at 4pm my time, which is 5am HK time. Who from HK works at
5am? And *69 reveals that this is a 1-811 number...not a number from Hong Kong. I decided to report the fraud so I called the Canadian anti-fraud call-center: http://www.phonebusters.com/english/reportit.html

Turns out that for this scam alone, there are 38 victims already. One guy lost nearly $10,000. Another guy lost close to $5,000. So, when you get calls like that, be alert. And remember, DON'T BE GREEDY!!

Elvis' obsession

Three days ago, Elvis discovered that whenever Oliver kicks or punches hard, my tummy would vibrate.  Like a curious little kid, he has been staring at my tummy waiting for Oliver's next big movement.  I felt like a guinea pig being experimented on.  Unfortunately, Oliver has been disappointing him.   So far, Elvis only gets to observe at most one vibration per night. Oliver tends to kick hard after Elvis has given up and went to bed.   Way to go son!!

Joy vs Frustration

I started feeling fetus movements, i.e. kicking and punching, about a week ago. It was amazing that you can actually feel Olive's movements but at the same time it was also very frustrating. Olive tends to kick when I try to fall asleep...it has been extremely hard to fall asleep while someone kept kicking you non-stop. Olive is also fairly active hours after I consume food. According to the book I read, in order to encourage baby movements, drink a glass of orange juice will do the trick. This is because the sugar content of the juice will cause a spike of energy on the mother's body and hence on the fetus as well. But if you ask me, I think a bowl of yummy ice-cream works better.

Baby's name

We are thinking of naming the baby Oliver. Here's the story: When we first found out about the pregnancy, I was already two months pregnant. Why didn't I find out earlier? That's another long story. By the time I got a book on pregnancy and fetus development, I was already 9 weeks pregnant. By then, the fetus was about the size of an olive. We have been calling it Olive since then. Once we found out that the baby is a HE, it is only natural to call him Oliver. Another reason why we like the name was because Elvis always wanted to have a biblical name for the baby. Although Oliver isn't really biblical, the fruit olive has a symbolic meaning in the bible: it means dignity. So, unless someone has a better suggestion, it is very likely that we are going to stick with the name Oliver :)

99.9% certainty

We just had the second ultrasound imaging yesterday. We are happy to announce that, with "99.9% certainty", we have a boy! It was funny that we had to sign on a piece of paper to acknowledge that the medical personnel could never be 100% certain about the gender of the baby....but from we saw on the US images, there is no doubt that the baby is a boy :)

Just in case you are wonder, the 2nd US image is the foot.

Kitty is now 20 weeks pregnant. Aside from the bloating problem, which is common among all pregnant women, she is doing just fine. She has a lot more energy than the 1st trimester and we are actually starting to play badminton. But don't tell our parents that.

Olive

If there was a reason why we haven't updated our blog in such a long time, this picture should tell you why. Kitty just passed her first trimester; the baby is about 13 weeks old. It looks as if the baby is healthy but we will know for certain when the test result for blood work comes back.

Stay tuned.

Fishing

Went out for fishing for the first time this year. I got my chores done early and had a early dinner. Being on a Saturday there is nothing on TV, so I decided to take a little break from home and went fishing at the Lower Brewer Mill.

I had simple gears today: the new 6' rod I bought from Canadian Tires, 4lb test line, a 1/16 oz jig, and some yellow tubes. My objective was to catch some perch, crappies if they are still in the river. Wasn't expecting anything big as bass season isn't open yet.

It was a blast. Fished for about 1.5 hours. At the beginning fishing was slow: I was using a new rod, new line, so I spend a bit of time experimenting with the gears. At round 8pm, fishes started to bite; I had a fish on every 5 casts I made, it seemed. I even caught a 2lb bass, and since I was using a 4lb test line it took a bit of efforts to get it in.

All in all, a fun day.

May flowers

Our hard work last year is finally yielding some results! Kitty planted some tulips last November and they are beautiful! She was a little unhappy though: the bag of tulip bulbs she bought were supposed to be multi-colour. As you can see, only 2 tulips were multi-color (purple with white stripe); the rest were mono-colour.


What is more surprising is our combo-pear tree! Even though we only planted it last year, we are already getting flowers from all 5 branches (different kind of pear on each branch)!!! I wonder if we'll actually get any fruit from it this year, and even if we do, whether the fruits are eatable. Only time will tell.

wii fixed

Just a quick update: I initially semi-bricked my wii by playing a PAL version of Super Mario Galaxy. Finally fixed it with Super Smash Bros. Brawl (U). SSBW requires a dual-layer disc though.

Can't help but to post it.

This got to be the best laugh I have had in a long time. Original source is here.

WRTP54G-ER unlock

I have been using Voice-Over-IP (VOIP), a.k.a. internet phone, for 3 years now. It had saved me a lot of money. To utilize VOIP, one can either use a soft-phone (software running on a computer), or get an ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) device. Personally I prefer ATA because 1) you don't need a computer, 2) the voice quality is generally better, and 3) you can use a regular telephone handset with it, meaning that there is less problem and no UI change. As matter of fact, once set up properly a user (i.e. mom) will not be able to tell the difference between a phone attached to ATA or POTS.

I'm particularly fond of Linksys WRTP54G. It is an all-in-one device that combines a router, wireless adapter, and ATA. The regular price for a WRTP54G is about CDN$100, which is not bad considering all the functionality it has. Furtherore, one can often buy it for US$30 from time to time. The catch? These $30 unites are locked with a specific provider (Vonage or Earthlink). Fortunately one can unlock it with ease.

Below is my experience with unlocking a Earthlink-locked WRTP54G. The first one I had, I had to unlock it using a JTAG method. The JTAG method requires some soldering and is not for an average user. Fortunally a software-only hack was recently discovered:

1. power up a WRTP54G-ER but do not connect it to the internet,
2. using a computer connecting to the LAN port of the WRTP54G, use a browser to connect to the router (default IP is http://192.168.15.1). The login info for the main page is: Admin/Admin.
3. upgrade the default firmware using a modified (ssh-enabled) firmware, version 3.1.17. The account/password is: Admin/sP0dfub2. The router will be rebooted after the firmware is flashed.
4. ssh into the router, and issue the following command "dd bs=65536 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtd/9". Without rebooting, flash the firmware again to version 3.1.24.
5. The ATA should be unlocked at this point. One should reset the VOICE setting to the factory default.
6. If one lives in North American, one can set the new day-time-saving rule to "start=3/8/7/02:0:0;end=11/1/7/02:0:0;save=1"

Total time: 5 minutes. Saving: >$70. Enabling parents to make long-distance call for nearly free: priceless.

Food poisoning

NOTE TO SELF: don't ever mix up the utensil for raw/cooked food again. It wasn't fun.

Asus EEE

Our friend Brady was nice enough to bring back an Asus EEE subnotebook for us from Taiwan. Our siblings were surprised why we wanted such a low-powered device. Two words: portability/price.

Both Kitty and I travel from time to time, going to conferences and visiting families. While on the road, we need two things from our computer: powerpoint and internet. Obviously, powerpoint for presentation in our conferences, and internet so we can stay connected. EEE does just that.

I've already upgraded the RAM from 512MB to 2GB and added a class-6 8GB SDHC card.

It weights just 2lb and is smaller than an ordinary university text-book. The AC adapter is about the same size, just tad bigger, than a cell-phone charger. This is a truly ultra-portable machine. So it is slow with small screen, but for our intended use it is just perfect.

My complains so far: small key and the pre-installed OS (linux). The keyboard is too small even for me (and I cannot imagine anyone average french-fry fingers to use EEE), and the default Xandros OS detected only 1 out of the 2GB RAM. I plan to install XP on the SSD and Ubuntu on the SDHC anyway, so it doesn't really bother me.

And, of course, I'm writing this blog from EEE :)

Total cost: CDN$360 for the Asus EEE (tax included, compared to $399 before tax if bought from Canada). 2GB RAM was CDN$30 and 8GB SDHC was $40.