Today I got a very strange check in the mail. It's clearly designed to make me think it's my state tax refund, but I am skeptical about its authenticity, for a number of reasons, which I shall outline below.
The very first strange thing is the timeframe. This check arrived before my federal tax refund. The federal refund has always arrived first, before the state one, in the past. I just mailed off my IT-1040 a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn't expecting a refund check for another month at least. If that were the only oddity, of course, I'd just figure the state got their act together better this year, maybe some new electronic processing or something, and the checks are coming out sooner. But...
The address in the upper-left corner of the check, which showed through the envelope in the return-address position (the envelope itself has no information on it at all), is a P.O. Box address for something called "Taxation-Refund/Research", which sounds very much like it was carefully constructed to let extremely gullible recipients think that it might come from the Department of Taxation, without actually saying so.
The check is signed by someone named "J. Pari Saberty", whom I've never heard of, and whose title is given as "Director", and the subtext reads "Office of Budget Management". Real state tax refund checks, at least in Ohio, are signed by someone with a significantly more familiar title, such as State Treasurer, or at least they always have been in the past. I've never heard of the "Office of Budget Management" before, and I find it interesting that it isn't the "Ohio Office of Budget Management", as one would expect if it were a legitimate branch of the state government. Perhaps it is the Office of Budget Management of the Taxation-Refund/Research Corporation?
There are some other oddities. The check has a warrant number; maybe I'm just forgetting, but I don't recall seeing one of those on a check before. In the upper-right corner there are also three different unlabeled numbers; there's no way to know what they are supposed to represent.
The tear-off sheet on top, which came folded behind the check, also includes a warrant date and, I am not making this up, a vendor number, as well as a voucher ID number. That word voucher is a bit scary. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but in the back of my mind, there is a notion rolling around that a voucher can come with strings attached.
Then there's this wording:
REFUND FOR TAX YEAR 2008
This payment represents your Personal Income tax refund.
For payment information contact 800-282-1780.
That word "represents" is outright terrifying in its clearly deliberate vagueness. They went out of their way to avoid saying that this is in fact my refund. It only represents my refund. One supposes my actual refund will be coming along later, from the state, and if I've cashed this check meanwhile, then I'll probably owe the refund itself to "Taxation-Refund/Research", perhaps with interest and other attached strings.
I could look up that 800 number and see who it belongs to, but realistically there's no point, because even if the phone number belongs to the Ohio Department of Taxation, it only means that this outfit printed that phone number on the document they sent me. The wording surrounding it is sufficiently vague ("For payment information") that you couldn't even really argue that the outfit issuing the check is claiming the number belongs to them. There's clearly no such claim. They're just advising you to call the number if you need information.
So I did a web search for "Taxation-Refund/Research", and I found... an article on a blog, headlined "Refund checks aren't a scam; they're the work of state government". On a blog. Yeah.
I'll say that again, because it bears repeating: my web search for the name of the organization that issued this check turns up an article on a blog. There are no other significant results. Notably, a web search for this outfit does not turn up any Ohio state government websites.
The blog article is designed to look like it's a column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but the domain name of the blog, while it is a name that would be very plausible for the Plain Dealer, does not match the actual domain name of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, (which I looked up in a search engine).
At this point, loud alarm bells are going off in my brain.
When I trim the blog article's URL back to just the domain name, it's... a blog-hosting site. There's a "sign up for a blog" link right there in the sidebar, which is presumably what "Taxation-Refund/Research" did, I guess.
The blog article claims that the Ohio Department of Taxation got enough calls about the redesigned checks that they posted a sample of what the new checks look like on their website. This claim should be verifiable... but I have looked on said Dept of Taxation website and have not been able to locate any such thing. It's possible that I'm just missing it, I suppose... government websites are notoriously badly organized and difficult to navigate. But it's also at least vaguely conceivable to me that the blog article, reputable though it may seem on account of the fact that somebody posted it up on the internet, is less than 100% accurate, as unlikely as that may seem. This is one detail of the article that I should be able to verify, if it were true, and I cannot.
On the other hand, there's a light "Great Seal of the State of Ohio" graphic built into the background of the check, which probably should ought to be illegal for a private company to use in this manner without proper authorization, though I'm not a lawyer and can't really say this for certain. And yes, I know what said seal is supposed to look like, and this looks like it. So there's that.
Also, the amount of the check happens to exactly match the amount of the refund I was expecting, which would be a pretty odd coincidence if they didn't get the number from the Ohio Dept of Taxation. Then again, the name of the outfit issuing the check includes the word "Research", so maybe they know something I don't about the legal nuances of tax and public records laws. I thought the amount of your tax refund was considered confidential and not disclosed to third parties, but I am not a lawyer and could be mistaken about this. I'd have to research it to be sure, but this also points toward the check perhaps being legitimate, unless there's something I don't know. So there's that too.
Additionally, the check says "VOID AFTER 2 YEARS", which is a normal duration for a tax refund check. You'd normally expect a scam to say something more like "VOID AFTER THIRTY DAYS", to encourage people to stop thinking and just go cash the thing already. This, to my way of thinking, is the strongest piece of evidence I could find that the check might in fact be legitimate.
The two-year duration allows me to just hang onto the thing for a couple of months, if I am so inclined, to see if perhaps my real tax refund check will arrive in the mail from the Ohio Department of the Treasury. Since the check is for a small amount, I might just do that, rather than bother doing any further research.
But it seems very likely to me that this is some kind of scam. The supposed Plain Dealer article on a blog, rather than on the Plain Dealer website, and the lack of any evidence on the web that there's any "Taxation-Refund/Research" associated with any branch of the Ohio state government, are both difficult to explain away. And if it is a scam, it's one of the most underhandedly ingenious ones I've ever seen, and likely to catch a lot of unsuspecting people.
A Very Strange Check
Housing Credit Crisis
I ran across this video (via Gerv Markham's blog) that tries to explain in layman's terms why the banks have run into trouble. On the whole, I think it does a pretty fair job of breaking down some of the basic points and making them understandable.
It basically comes down to this: sub-prime mortgages are a somewhat riskier investment, and the risk was underplayed, and some funds were invested in sub-prime mortgages that really could not tolerate that level of risk.
How to upgrade Debian from Etch to Lenny
Okay, if you've tried upgrading from etch to lenny, you've probably seen an error message, to the following effect:
1. You can't upgrade libc6 until you first install a 2.6 kernel.
2. You can't install the lenny 2.6 kernel until you upgrade libc6.
3. This is NOT (in big tall capital letters) a bug.
4. You should add the etch sources and install an etch 2.6 kernel before trying to upgrade to lenny.
I suppose if you do step 4 first, before attempting to upgrade to lenny, that may be all you need to do. However, once you see the error message, you will discover that you are stuck in an in-between state that can be difficult to resolve.
1. If you follow the instructions and ADD the etch sources, then apt-get update will whine that it can't do that because it runs out of memory. The solution is to REMOVE the lenny or stable sources from sources.list, listing ONLY the etch ones (for now).
2. apt-get update should work now, but apt-get still won't do squat else, and the error message it gives you is vague. Upon closer examination, this is caused by the fact that you have a broken package, which was caused by trying to upgrade to Lenny without installing a 2.6 kernel first. You can fix this by using the fix broken packages option. (This option is in the menus in both synaptic and aptitude, though you still have to apply to make it actually happen.)
3. If you're a forgetful sort of person, chances are by the time you get your broken packages fixed, you've forgotten the exact incantation that the first error message gave you for installing the 2.6 kernel. Here it is:
apt-get install -t etch linux-image-2.6
4. Of course, linux-image-2.6 is a virtual package, so you have a choice of which kernel you actually want to install. I picked the 2.6.18 686 kernel, and that worked for me, YMMV. Don't forget to make sure /boot is remounted rw, if you normally mount it ro. (If you don't know how /boot is mounted, it's probably rw already, and may even be part of the / filesystem.)
5. Since you've just upgraded the kernel, you probably want to reboot. Yes, that means you have to close Firefox (or Iceweasel, or whatever they're calling it these days).
6. While you're still on the etch sources, go ahead and do apt-get dist-upgrade, to make sure you're at least fully up to the latest and greatest etch.
7. NOW it should be safe to change sources.list to refer to stable (or lenny) instead of etch, do your apt-get update, and proceed as usual from there.
Orange Marmalade & Clove Merengue Pie
This is based on my grapefruit merengue pie recipe, which I posted here a while ago, although there are more differences in the filling than just the fruit. The crust, however, is identical to that recipe, q.v. (Actually, you could use any pie crust that you like with this filling, and, come to think of it, a graham cracker crust might be interesting. But I used the shortbread, and it worked out pretty well.)
Filling Ingredients:
- 3 oranges, or 2 if large
- boiling water, divided
- 5/2 cups granulated sugar (That's 2.5 cups, if I still remember how to convert rationals to decimal notation.)
- 3/4 cups cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves (See notes below.)
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 TBSP shortening (optional)
- orange food coloring (optional)
Prepare the dough for the crust, and place it in the refrigerator to chill.
Stir the cornstarch into the sugar in a medium-large saucepan. Bring the water to a rolling boil.
Grate rind (amount to taste; I took most of the outer, dark-orange layer of rind from two oranges) into a large measuring cup and add the juice and pulp, discarding any seeds, the remaining peel, and as many of the section dividers as you can easily separate from the pulp. Add enough boiling water to bring the total volume, including the fruit pulp, to four and a half cups.
Add the water and fruit mixture to the sugar and cornstarch in the saucepan, stirring. Place over low-to-medium heat and stir as necessary until it boils gently. Add another half a cup of boiling water, the egg yolks, and the cloves. Continue stirring until it reaches a good boil. Remove from heat and stir in the food coloring and/or butter if desired.
Let it cool. Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Roll the crusts, invert onto pie pans, and prebake them. Add the filling, top with merengue right to the edges, and bake just until the merengue is lightly browned. Cool. Serve chilled.
I am of two minds about the amount of cloves in this recipe. On the one hand, the presence of the cloves is readily apparent, and a smaller quantity might create a more subtle effect, which might be better, especially if the effect you're going for is "orange pie". On the other hand, the flavor of the cloves is not as strong as the orange flavor, particularly if you use as much rind as I did, so more cloves might create more of a balance. If the effect you're going for is an even balance of clove and orange, more clove is probably wanted. I can't decide which way I'd go next time.
It may also be worth considering a bit of vanilla extract, or a bit of lemon juice in the water.
I believe I got the sugar about right, at least for the oranges I used (seedless "naval" oranges; it's what we had in the fridge, and they weren't the freshest ever either; better oranges would presumably yield better results). I wasn't sure I'd nail the sugar the first time, since I was reducing it from the amount in the grapefruit version, but I think I got it about right.
A Treatise on the Length of Handles
I am not a particularly tall man, as men go.
According to Uncle John's Monumental Bathroom Reader (a book that my sister purchased for us to keep in the bathroom because, you know, you've got to have reading material in there, and Reader's Digest these days most emphatically ain't what it used to be), 25% of American men are over six feet tall. Even if the precision of this statistic is in doubt, the general principle is undeniable: there are a lot of men out there who are taller than, you know, the short people.
Well, 25% of American men may be over six feet tall, but I'm not. I don't know my exact height, but my father, who is significantly taller than I am, is still a couple of inches shy of six feet. So presumably more than 25% of American men are taller than my father, and I can tell you for certain that a good deal more than 25% (perhaps as many as 50%) of American men are taller than I am. I'm not shrimpy short, but I'm not especially tall either.
Which brings me around to my main topic of snow shovels, and specifically, the length of snow shovel handles. Apparently the entire snow shovel industry is run by eight-year-old children and/or four-foot-tall women, because it is difficult to buy a snow shovel with a handle that comes anywhere near shoulder height on me (let alone on a tall man). Waist height is more typical. (Okay, so my waist is a little higher than average for a man my height. Still.) By the time you angle the shovel at the thirty-five degrees (from horizontal) or so that you need in order to get next to the sidewalk and separate the snow from it, this means the handle is at, approximately, knee height. (Okay, so my knees are a little higher than average for a man my height, and maybe you could make a shovel work at forty degrees, forty-five if it's got a well-angled edge in good condition. Still.) Even if we assume that twice as many women shovel snow as men (which seems unlikely to me), and that 100% of women are shorter than I am (which is definitely not true), that still means a double-digit percentage of the snow-shoveling population is WAY too tall to use the shovels that are commonly available.
WHY should I have to bend over (or, worse, kneel) until my head is barely above the level of my waist? Is there a good reason for this? (Hint: No, there is not.) I'm not yet forty years old, so I can do that for a couple of minutes, but if I have to shovel any _significant_ amount of area, the bending over gets old. Fast. My back and waist and knees get tired *way* before my arms do, even if it's heavy snow. And my arms are not exactly what you'd call the athletic sort, as anyone who knows me can attest.
And heaven forfend I should want to shovel my way *down* the stairs, starting from the top, from inside the house. (Apparently, it doesn't ever snow at night in Snow Shovel Design Land, or something.) In that case I would have to be enough of a gymnast to bend over until my elbows are level with my ankles. Haha. While that would admittedly make an amusing cartoon short, I am in practice not nearly that flexible, so I generally have to step on the snow I'm about to shovel (which, if it's the kind of warm wet snow we tend to get most of the time around here (albeit, not today), makes it rather harder to shovel afterward) to get to the bottom and work my way back up.
I can sort of understand why shovel handles, when measured from the tip of the blade, might only come to three and a half or four feet, if you were only concerned about selling the blessed things in Japan, where the idea that a man might be six feet tall is simultaneously silly and yet also somewhat terrifying. But in the Western world, where it's *common* for a man to be six feet tall or more, and we have entire chains of clothing stores that cater exclusively to men who are over six and a half feet all, why does nobody sell a snow shovel with a longer handle? I'd buy one. I bet a lot of other guys would too.
Incidentally, there are other things I'd like to have with a longer handle as well. Garden implements, leaf rakes, brooms, mops... one could imagine an entire product line based around this simple concept. But the top of the list, as far as I'm concerned, is the snow shovel.
Arbitrary Screenshot
I've been tapped. The instructions don't specify an order, so I used directory order (ls -U), which is, generally speaking, the order in which things were created. Based on that, the fourth subfolder in /b4/img (where I keep most of my images) is sshots, which as you might guess is where I generally put screenshots.
The fourth file (using directory order again) therein is this little gem.
Wow, that's old. I believe this is from the era when I was using a Windows Me system as a temporary stand-in (which ended up lasting for several months) because my Linux system had developed hardware problems. I had forgotten that Inkscape had been around that long. That was way back before I built the FreeBSD system, which I used for a couple of years, and then I upgraded/migrated it to Debian stable a good while ago, back when sarge was current IIRC, and now etch is living on borrowed time.
Anyway, I took this screenshot to show how practically all software honors the system colors (in the shot you can see OpenOffice.org, Gimp, and the web browser from the Mozilla application suite). But then you also see how Inkscape looked at the time, and how it absolutely didn't make any effort to match at all. It has since somewhat improved, incidentally. It still doesn't use automatic on-screen document colors from the system colors, like OpenOffice does (as you can see), but recent versions of Inkscape do at least paint the UI in the system colors, as you can see from this much more current screenshot:
Inkscape is still a pain to use for me, compared to other applications, because of the fact that it doesn't automatically use system colors for the document while editing. I generally end up changing the actual document background color for editing comfort (I can't work with blinding white backgrounds; it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache), and then I have to remember to change it back any time I want to print, or export a raster image, or anything along those lines. Annoying.
But at least the chrome is painted in system colors now.
Recipe for Pain
- Contract a minor cold, of the kind that you barely notice, except that it makes you cough at the least provocation, e.g., whenever you laugh it starts a coughing fit that takes a minute or so to stop.
- Take the puppy out for a romp in the snow, slip, fall, and catch yourself in a way that strains some of your rib muscles, so that they're sore and sensitive to sudden movement, such as coughing.
- Decide to enter the Lyttle Lytton Contest again this year.
- While working on your entry, be sure to do your research by reading through all the past winners, in order to compile a nice little ranked list of features that the winning entries tend to have.
Modernizing It's All About the Pentiums
One of my favorite rap songs is Weird Al's It's All About the Pentiums
. In some ways the exaggerative style of the lyrics have protected the song, and it has aged relatively well, given the subject matter, but even so there are some parts of it that just seem like they could stand to be modernized. Here are a few of my suggestions. (Note that I'm only listing the parts I suggest changes for. The full lyrics, if you don't know them, are available elsewhere.)
| original lyric | comments | suggested revision |
|---|---|---|
| Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills | While defragmentation is not entirely obsolete as such, it seems a lot less relevant now than ten years ago, and indeed there are much geekier things one can do with a filesystem these days than defragment it. Unfortunately, tuning the filesystem parameters for performance doesn't seem to fit the metre here, so I had to go with something older, older even than defragmentation, but something all geeks still do from time to time. | Partition my hard drive for thrills (or stet) |
| Installed a T1 line in my house | While residential frame relay is still geeky in general, T1 is no longer the same kind of overkill that it was when the song was written, and many ordinary consumers have that much bandwidth from DSL or even cable modem service. My revised lyric, however, should be good for at least ten years more. | Installed an OC3 at my house |
| Upgrade my system at least twice a day | The first line here would have been fine as it stands, except that changing the rhyme makes the next line easier to work with. This latter did not age well and is arguably the worst lyric in the song. (The part about Y2K was laughable within six months after the song's release, and probably should not have been included in the first place.) The line can't even really be upgraded with a modern equivalent, because there isn't one. PnP is a very bad memory for most geeks, with no modern equivalent really, and nobody is very much afraid of 2038, most software having already been upgraded to 64-bit datetime values as I write this. That makes this line a good choice to slip in something that wasn't on most people's radar when the song was written in the nineties. Network security and reliability seems obvious. Social networking and user-created content are another option, but security seems more likely to still be an issue in ten years. Threading and Unicode seem too technical, managed code too likely to be taken for granted in another ten years. | My battery backup is certified green. |
| I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K | My generator's clean. My firewall is lean and mean. | |
| You think your Commodore 64 is really neato | No one could have predicted in 1999 that the Commodore 64 would be cool again in 2007, but the retro trend, among teenagers and gamers, has really changed the flavor of meaning this line carries. A small brand substitution should restore the original sentiment. | You think your Packard Bell is really neato |
| In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user | Yeah, there is still a lot of 32-bit stuff out there, but the cool CPUs now are all 64-bit, and the days of 32-bit software are numbered. I wouldn't have revised the song for this, and it may even be a little ahead of its time, but since we're making changes, this should be updated too. | In a 64-bit world, you're a 2-bit user |
Wow, look at that. With only six changes (and most of them are very small changes, and two of them scarcely even necessary) a song from 1999 feels current in 2006. Given the subject matter, that's actually fairly amazing. It's hard to find a computer book from 1999 that's worth the paper it's printed on, so these lyrics really have aged quite well.
Book Series and Strange Titles
This morning I just happened to see this book, and it set me thinking. I realize, of course, that Visual Quickstart Guide
is the series title, and so they kept it on this book so as to match the other books in the series. Nonetheless, the idea of having a visual guide to text-based markup standards is... funny. Well, it's funny to me. So this set me thinking about what other bizarre or oxymoronic titles there could be, if books on certain topics were published as part of a series with a poorly-matched series title...
- sed and awk Visual Quickstart Guide
- Brain Surgery for Dummies
- Teach Yourself Patience in 21 Days
: Quick & Easy- Emacs: The Missing Manual