Saturday 28 November 2009

Beware tales of fantasy money

Disturbingly I have been regularly contacted through my e-mail on Windows Live by certain individuals from countries in Africa, in my case Togo and Ghana, of requests to make money from the estates of dead individuals. I'd like to think that there is no-one stupid enough to actually believe this bullshit but just in case do not even think of pursuing these. It is well known that a lot of internet scams originate from Africa (Ebay used to get swamped with problems from scammers from Africa, but I think they have tightned up security now).
Here is an example of the type of letter I received today which claims to be from a Richard Ibe, an alleged attorney for some dead guy who was a contractor in his country. He goes on to ask whether you are willing to pretend to be a relative of the dead person and split the money. The story and the names of the deceased changes but the scam is the same.
BEWARE!

Gwyn's Playlist for November 2009

1. Sleeping in Traffic, part 1 - Beardfish
2. Flame - Barbieri and Bowness
3. Cruel Melody - Black Light Burns
4. Black Clouds and Silver Linings - Dream Theater
4. Anthems for the Damned - Filter
5. Speak - No-Man
6. The Wall - Pink Floyd
7. Insurgentes - Steven Wilson
8. My Hotel Year - Tim Bowness
9. The History of Melody Nelson - Serge Gainsbourg
10. Cactus Choir - Dave Greenslade
11. Suspension & Displacement - Djam Karet
12. Between The Leaves - Deja Vu

Contact from Beyond?

Around this time last year my dad finally decided to get a large (44inch) flat screen TV which he got mounted up on his wall. It looked great and he enjoyed watching his Sky Sports matches on there until his passing last August. After his funeral, my mum asked whether we would want it, which I gladly accepted. So its been here since September and has fitted quite well with our small sitting room. However, now and again we will want to watch a DVD with it and for some inexplicable reason we don't get the video but we can hear the sound of the particular DVD. After a few hours, though, the DVD will work, sound and vision! Now, my wife is a spirit believer and has always said that she believes my dad is still around and because of his mischievious nature when alive, is convinced that he is messing with our electrical equipment.
In fact, back in September, when my mum got our old TV (we swapped) she phoned and told us that she could not get a picture on the TV, yet it was working ok 3 hours before. So, I went over to see if I could solve the problem and found that the cables were ok and where they should be. However, the electrical plug had slightly come out, so after pushing it back fully into the socket the TV was working ok. My wife thought my dad was responsible for this. At this time I didn't, because I believe that there were a lot of reasons why the plug was half way out. Secretly I suspected that my mum had been messing about trying to fix the problem before she phoned me, but she was insistent that she had not done so. The fact that this event happened in my dad's old room, now newly decorated and all his stuff has gone, further convinced my wife that it was my dad's doing. Anyway, I can happily report that no such incidents have occurred since. Instead it may appear that my dad is still up to his own tricks only he has moved his centre of attention!
A couple of times we have not been able to figure out why at certain times we can only get sound and no vision on whichever DVD we slot in. But as usual normal service is resumed later. Why, no idea! What promted me to write about this in the blog is because I'm starting to believe that something strange is going on! This occured yesterday tea-time when the boys wanted to watch 'My Name is Earl' DVD, and sure enough we did not get a picture - blue screen and theme music. We could easily have watched something on Sky, but we switched off the TV, and talked. It is something that we don't do enough of, sadly, but we had a lively conversation and it was nice. Later on, near bedtime, sure enough the DVD player worked and the boys were able to watch 'Earl'.
This morning I was conducting a search on Twitter on family history when top of the pile was a link to The Pittsburg Post Gazette.com about a project called 'StoryCorps', where since 2003 ordinary American people have had the opportunity to go into a booth and talk about their lives, sharing experiences. Read the article here and what struck me was the fact that the central purpose of the project is to encourage people to talk to their loved ones, and that yesterday was National Listening Day. Well, yesterday we, as a family, did just that, perhaps with the help of dad through his manipulation of electrical devices which he was so good with when he was alive.