So, I put my car up for sale this weekend. Got lots of interest off of postings to CraigsList, PDXForSale and del.icio.us, so that’s good. However, this morning I get this message:

Hello,

I saw your advert placed online for the sale of your 1995 Subaru Legacy and i will really like to buy from you.

Please let me know if the Item is still available forsale and also the last price you will want to sell it to me.I will appreciate it if you can send me pictures too,so to have a glance on what i want to buy..

I will await to read from you as quickly as possible so to proceed.

God bless you.

Regards,
SAMUEL.

Sounded weird, but I figured, what the heck, I’ll reply. So I sent this:

Hi Sam–

We’ve had a lot of interest in the car and one guy seems pretty
serious about buying it for his mom, but the Subaru is still available
and we’re flexible on price…feel free to make an offer.

You can reach me via email, or on my cell phone: 503-xxx-xxxx. The
car is in Newberg and available for showing or test driving any time.

–Brendon

About three hours later I get the following reply from “Sam”:

Dear Friend,
With thanks i acknowledge the receipt of your mail and i noted the contents very well.I am happy the Item is still available forsale and also i will need you to let me know the last price you will be willing to sell to me…I will be happy to give you an extra offer on the cost price,if you can assure me you will sell to me..

I already have the shipping to be taken cared of by shipper,on coming over to your place for the pick-up of the Item,but this will be done after you have gotten the payment..Hope this is okay with you…

Finally,i will need you to send me your Full details on how the check will be issued by my Banker and the address where it will be sent to for your collection,including the contact phone number also…

Expecting to read from you soonest.

Regards,

Samuel.D

Now my scam radar is off the chart, so I write back:

Sam, I can assure you that I’ll hold the car for you for $6,200. I
must insist on conducting the transaction in person with either you or
your agent, considering I’ll need a signature on the title transfer
and sales agreement. Also, I won’t accept a personal check, but cash
or cashier’s check will be fine.

–Brendon

After writing that last bit, I did a lookup on Sam’s IP address (81.199.85.91). You won’t be surprised to find that it originates in Nigeria. I guess it’s just another variation of the Nigerian email scam that has been going around for a long time…just customized to make it seem more legit. I’m a little weirded out that I gave him my cell phone number, though. Crazy…

Jared has picked up his writing over at blogger. You can get there this way. He says it’ll be infrequently updated, so it’s probably worth dropping in your RSS reader…

Following is the text of an email I just sent out. I’d be happy to receive any responses here, too.

So, I was walking home for lunch and passed a nicely coiffed woman
sitting patiently in her large SUV in front of a certain private
school. I assume she was waiting for her (only) child to exit the
building and enter the safe confines of the gas-guzzler. Not that I’m
being judgemental or anything. 🙂

Anyway, as I passed by, I wondered what her response would be if Jesus
knocked on her window and asked why she was driving such a big
automobile. I imagined her reciting the usual litany of space and
safety reasons. Then I imagined Jesus pulling a socratic (yeah, I
just coined it) and walking her through some questions that guided her
into considering how her life, perhaps, was structured to make her
believe that she needed that car.

By this time, I was home and I enjoyed my reheated Chinese food from
last night. While I was eating, I searched around the web for
references to ‘right living.’ There are some, but not much. This
made me think that I sure would like to read other folks’ thoughts
about ‘right living’ and how I wished there was some kind of community
weblog where people could write stuff and respond in kind, etc. Then
I thought about how easy it would be to make something like that, but
the tough part would be finding high quality contributors.

So you see where I’m going here. It’s pretty easy to make a
straight-up weblog where many people can write about a finely tuned
topic. The bigger problem is finding people who are willing to write
(even occasionally) and think about the topic. If such a place
existed on the web, I’m relatively confident that it would attract a
sizable readership over time.

So here’s the pitch: are any of you interesting in sharing the burden
of writing about ‘right living’ on the web? I am not suggesting any
particular political agenda here–I’m just interested in smart people
writing about their thoughts on ‘right living’, how it is manifested
in their lives, what it means to them, how they struggle with it, how
it ties to their faith, and so on. If you aren’t interested, do you
know anyone who might be? How ’bout passing this along to them? If
there is sufficient interest in such a project, I’d be happy to make
the place exist–and to contribute in my own inimitable way.

Well, we’re back online. Kinda. Looks like I lost about a month of postings (again), though. Things are working, we’re on a fresh new server (love that new server smell) and we are resolved to making regular backups from now on.

I’ll be restoring all the more recent postings that I could find via Google’s cache later this evening.

I can’t read French, and I don’t know this author, but her book is eerily close to my manifesto proposal!

And this article nails it on the head! You definitely get the stinkeye when you leave work on time–even if you come in super early. The fix, though, is to send some email to people early in the morning. People notice the timestamp on their emails–they’ll see that you were an early bird and they will respect you. Oh yes, they will respect you.

I can feel a worldwide movement beginning… This is going to be bigger than…well…I don’t know what. But big.

I was going through a mess of pictures, getting ready to update some albums. I ran across a picture of Tru’s freaky face. He does this sometimes when he’s grumpy. Totally looks like he’s possessed. Enjoy.

Don’t bother checking the albums, by the way. Haven’t updated them yet. Relax, I’ll do it soon. Remember, I’m a slacker.

So, yesterday was my v-day. I was at work until 3pm, then Amy drove me up to the hospital. We had to drive to a hospital in another town because, apparently, the hospital in Newberg doesn’t allow such procedures to occur within their facilities, on account of their Catholic affiliation. So we had a bit of a drive to make. I was fine with driving myself, but Amy insisted, since we heard a story of a friend who had the same procedure. It seems he drove himself, but the anasthetic wore off too quickly and he actually had to pull over and compose himself before continuing home. My physician took care to prescribe appropriate preventative and palliative remedies–namely, beer. No joke, my doctor prescribed one beer prior to the surgery and then beer and ibuprofen as needed for the next couple of days. I like the idea of medicinal beer.

Anyway, the procedure was fairly benign. I went into the operation with visions of the end of Braveheart, when William Wallace is disemboweled. You only see the top half of him, grimacing in pain while, presumably, the bottom half of him is removed, bit by bit, culminating in an understandable cry of “FREEDOM!” The doc “numbed” the target area with some rub-on stuff, which didn’t work. Let me just state for the record that the relationship between hyperdermic needles and scrotums is not friendly. No worries, though, when the needle-stuff started working. The doc was cuttin’ and tuggin’ away and I didn’t feel a thing. The whole procedure, including both sides, only took about 20 minutes. When everything was tied up, the doc stuffed my pants full of gauze and sent me home to lay down for a couple of days. No jumping jacks for me this weekend.

So now I’m resigned to sitting and laying around the house for the next couple of days. The big idea is to stay “well supported” and reduce any hangtime. No boxer shorts, either. I actually had to buy new underwear just for this weekend. I’m feeling generally okay right now…but that could change quickly if Truman decides to come jump on me when I’m not expecting it…

I’ve always wanted to play the harmonica. As long as I can remember, I’ve liked the sound, and it’s seemed like a portable and low maintenance instrument. I played trombone when I was in high school, and that was neither portable nor low maintenance. When I was still in the single-digit ages, I was pressed into piano lessons. I hated the lessons, though now I wish I could play. But again, the piano isn’t very portable. When I was a single fellow, I bought one of those package deals you find at discount or novelty stores–you know, the harmonica and a book “for idiots.” That got me a little ways down the road, but the harmonica was a cheapo and it broke. I didn’t get another one for a long time. I finally bought a decent new harmonica a while ago and I’ve borrowed some harmonica books from a friend. I’ve committed myself to practicing during my walks to and from work. That gets me about 20-25 minutes a day of playing time. I also practice a bit at night, when I can read the books and try different things out. I’m a looooong way from being able to jam, but I’m beginning to get the feel for some blues riffs, and that’s kinda fun. I can work through some simple hymns, but only with single notes–chords still escape me. Anyway, it’s fun and I hope that in a year or two I’ll be proficient enough to play real songs on demand.

…dry ice bomb! Our 4th of July went pretty well. A couple of parties and some fireworks. The capper, though, were the two dry ice bombs that we made at Ron and Erinn’s house. It doesn’t take much to make ’em–just an empty 2-liter plastic bottle, about a pound of dry ice and some water. You crush the ice and put it in the bottle, then you pour in some water until the steam really starts coming out the top of the bottle, then you cap the sucker and run! It’s loud.

I poured the water and capped the first one myself. It started expanding so fast that I kinda freaked and just hucked it out into Ron’s backyard. It took about two minutes for it to explode and was the loudest thing in the neighborhood. For the second one, we decided to cover it with a 5-gallon bucket, to see how high it would shoot the bucket. This time we filled the bottle with ice and three of us set it up. I poured the water and ran, then Ron capped it and another guy, Joachim, put the bucket over it. Problem was that when Ron went to cap it, the steam was coming out so fast that it blew the cap from his hand–we lost a lot of steam while he scrambled for the cap. The result was that it took about 15-20 minutes for the thing to blow. We ended up throwing things at the bucket to try and set it off. When it finally blew, the bucket was right-side up again (open end toward the sky), so it never went up in the air. The explosion did shoot the bucket across the yard, though, but it’s just not the same… 🙂