Scams

Here is a scam
message that I received today. Many of you have already seen a
message like this and know how to spot one, but for you that haven’t
I will go through and point out things that make it a scam. I will
put my comments in brackets and red. This scam I believe is very
obvious, but there are some written in a similar way that are not as
obvious and are easily believed. Note, the typing errors are from
the original message, they may be because the person does not write
English as a first language or they are trying to look like they
don’t to make their story more believable.

Hello My Dear

How are you doing today, i hope you are
doing fine. I hope and i know that this email [this was not an email
it was sent on a social networking site] that i am sending to you
would be reaching you in good health?with me just here hoping and
praying that you can find a place in your heart to help me save my
mothers life [The person is trying to get my
heart to feel for their story and make me more likely to respond to
them because of emotion not logic],, I want to tell you
something very important, though i am not suppose to tell you now
because we haven’t met before but i know that you would be of good
help to me, but i think i need to tell you this, because i think you
may be a nice person because when i sending these mail,i felt you are
a nice and caring person. And i think i can trust you in this too,
this is why i am telling you this. All i want you to do is to keep
this as a top secret between us [They don't
want me to tell anyone else because someone else might know it is a
scam and tell me not to listen to them]. and also promise me
that no other person will hear this okay. Right now am really going
through hard and terrible life with my mother. [Trying
to make me feel bad for not helping]

Actually it happened when i lost my
dad, my dad is dead and i am left with my mum. so after the death of
my father, his family member came to the house and collected
everything my dad left behind for us. and they ask me and my mum to
leave the compound and they sold the house. We could not able to find
them again because of the war that happened in my country Liberia, so
just last week my mum show to me some documents which my dad use to
deposit $19Million US dollars in a bank here in Ghana and also a
picture of my dad at the time of sign the agreement letter with the
bank and he use my name as the next of kin to the funds. So when my
mum show to me the documents, i was so happy so i travel to Ghana
with my mum. When we get to the bank and we presented all the legal
documents that was given to my father at the time of depositing the
fund with the bank, we were told that the money is still with the
bank, but they cannot transfer the money to us here in Africa,
because my dad went into an agreement with them at the time of
depositing the fund that the fund should be transferred on express
transfer to leave Africa. I never knew my dad was planning of opening a
company abroad. so on our way out of the bank, one of the staff of
the bank advice us to look for a trust worthy foreign partner to help
us receive the funds from the bank. So i want you to help us contact
the bank, so that the bank can transfer the money of my late father
to you, so that i and my mum can come over to your country and meet
you so we all can start a better and happy life again.

Please, i want you to understand that I
trust you and I know you can help me and my family because we are
passing through hard moments here in Ghana, I am a beautiful girl and
so when people see me they don’t know the condition that i am
undergoing due the reason that I don’t want people to know the stress
and pains we are passing here in Ghana, and then we meet and live
life to the fullest, and i feel we can be together if it is meant to
be, that is why am telling you this top secret because am sacred and
this is all we have left in this world. i believe you can understand
my present situation. I trust you that is why I am telling you this
[She doesn't know me, how can she trust me?].
as am

writing you this mail, my eyes is full
of tears because my mum is seriously sick and we don’t know any body
here in Ghana. so we are living with an old lady called Mrs. Vida
[Last name removed in case it is a real
person], she is working as a security officer close to us, but
she is very old and she will stop work very soon, so try your best
and help me and my mum. We really need your help. Life is so hard and
terrible for me and my mum right now in Ghana because we don’t have
any helper. i think I’ve truly been blessed by finding you and I ‘ll
never let you go away from my life. I will want you to understand
that we are going to sign an agreement before the bank will transfer
the fund of my late father to you because we have not met before now
and the Agreement is for the security reason of the funds too. so i
will like you to provide this information so that i and my mum can
get the Agreement done from a lawyer [How are they paying for a
lawyer?] here in Ghana, and send you a copy of it to sign. So please
reply me with your, Full name, Age, Occupation and address. My mum
promise to give to you 20% percent if you can help us get the money
from the bank. [If I did this they would most
likely send me a check to cash and ask me to keep 20% and send the
rest to them. After I have sent the money the
check would not clear and I would be stuck with having to pay back
the money that I sent to them because of the contract that I signed.]

I will send you a picture of my mum, my
late father at the time of depositing the fund with the bank here in
Ghana and a picture of my late father casket during burial ceremony,
and i will also send to you a picture of myself. When i receive a
reply from you. Please try and get back to me so that i can send to
you the legal documents that was given to my father at the time of
depositing the fund with the
bank.

Please take care of your self,

i hope to hear from you soon. God bless
you.

Yours Obediently,

From Nelly and mother

please send a reply to [removed
just because I think it should be]@yahoo.com

If you receive a
message or phone call similar to this one DO NOT! listen to it, you
could have a huge financial problem on your hands if you do. Always
be suspicious of anyone asking for money especially if they ask for
personal information.

my eeepc is back

I received my eeepc back from Asus on February 6, 2008. I have had no problems with it, it is working great. I am not certain, but it appears to be a brand new one unless they replaced the case and changed the serial number. Thanks Asus for replacing it.

I thought that I wold post a couple pictures so here they are. I took them on my camera phone so they are a littler blurry so sorry. I might review my phone later and I might review my Palm TX that I used for a size comparison.

Ubuntu Linux

Several months ago I officially switched to Ubuntu Linux as my primary operating system. For those of you that don’t know what Linux is, Linux is an alternative operating system to the likes of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and OS X. The reason that you might not have heard about Linux before is because Linux used to be only for the major computer geek, it was not something that the average person could use efficiently.

Ubuntu is a version of Linux that is considered one of the most user friendly versions available. This for this reason that it is one of the most popular, maybe even the most popular version. If you are new to Linux it is the one that I believe you should start with. Before Ubuntu I had tried other versions of Linux with not much success on getting it to work correctly. I tried Fedora and Suse and did like the part that I got to work correctly, but I alway had problems with certain parts such as getting the correct screen resolution so that my screen did not look distorted and setting up my wireless card. What really kept me from switching to Linux was not being able to get dual boot to work correctly. I have XP and Vista installed also and when I would install the GRUB boot loader that allows me to choose which one I want to use at startup, it would sometimes not recognize XP and Vista and I would have to repair them by reinstalling them again. I know that it is not necessary to reinstall them, but they had slowed down over time anyways so it was a good idea to reinstall. After trying this a few times I finally gave up and settled for Windows for a while, that is until Ubuntu 7.10 came out. I had head that it was much improved to the earlier version which I had tried and had fail to recognize Windows.

So I tried it, I put the disk in and booted up the live CD and clicked install and went through the steps to install it. I resized my NTFS partitions and made a new one for Ubuntu and followed the simple install process. When it had finished I rebooted and GRUB came up and had the option to go into XP and Vista along with Ubuntu. I went into XP and Vista first and they both still worked so I went into Ubuntu and it worked great. It already had the screen resolution set correctly. The only immediate problem that I had was my wireless card was not setup with the correct driver and failed to work. After so research on the Ubuntu forums and several hours later I was able to get it working by disabling the driver that was not working and and using NDISWRAPPER which allows you to use the Windows driver for that card in Linux.

Now that I had Internet I could start to install programs to make it work better. The first thing I did was install the video card driver using the restricted drivers manager. This allowed me to have 3d acceleration so that I could play graphic intensive games and also enable Compiz. Compiz adds the eye candy that makes Vista look like Windows 9x. Compiz gives you a 3d cube with virtual desktops and wobbly windows.
Wobbly windows make your windows flex and gives you the feeling that your are physically doing something when you move it because it has a response like real objects, plus it looks really cool. There are several other cool things that you can do with Compiz that I can’t cover here, so check the Ubuntu forums.

Linux is finally reaching the point where the average user will be comfortable with it. If you want to try something different than what Micro$oft has to offer Ubuntu is a good option. I am not saying that Micro$oft is bad (I know some Linux users will disown me for saying this). Micro$oft is just more expensive (Ubuntu is free) and in many, but not all way inferior to Linux, especially when it comes to stability. If you do not consider your self capable of installing Linux yourself I would recommend either installing it on an old unused computer that you can’t hurt or having a geeky friend of yours install it. Or if you are looking for a new computer Dell has some models that you can get preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. Now that Linux is ready for the average and the geek it is becoming a competitor to Micro$oft.

Some of you might not want to install Linux because there are compatibility problems with it and Micro$oft you don’t have to worry too much because with programs like OpenOffice.org you can use Micro$oft formats. You can also run many Windows programs in Linux using a program called Wine. With more competition to Micro$oft out there Windows will have to improve in stability and in security and listening to customers. So go try Linux and watch for either Micro$oft to decline into nothingness or to greatly improve.

Like what you read? Help pay for my college? Donate with PayPal, you don’t need an account just click continue near the bottom left of the page, above the credit cards, every dollar counts. Thanks,

eeepc

I recently purchased the new laptop from Asus, the eeepc, You can hardly call it a laptop, it is more of an ultra-portable. It is extremely tiny as you can tell from the picture on the above website, it feels smaller when you hold it in your hands for the first time. The eeepc is a really nice computer, I can take it wherever I go, I even carry it in my pocket when I don’t have my backpack. I take it to school with me and use it to write all of my reports in class when I have free time. I am extremely impressed with the performance that this computer has, it runs a version of Xandros Linux that makes it run really fast on the modest processor that it has. I personally prefer Ubuntu Linux, which I will review in a future blog, but to keep the computer running fast this was a good choice for Asus to choose Xandros. If you do not like Xandros you can choose to put another operating system on it, even Windows XP. You can also boot from an SD card or a flash drive and have an option of which operating system you want at boot. I have installed Ubuntu on an SD card and ran it, but boot time was really slow, the main problem was that I had a slow SD card that caused it to run slower.

Everything about the eeepc can’t be good so here are the problems that I have had. The screen is very small and makes it more difficult to see things on the screen, this is mainly a problem when I am using it for web browsing and I have to scroll horizontally. If a big screen is what you need or want you should get a full featured laptop. The eeepc is a product for certain people, it is not for everyone. Another sometimes limiting feature of the eeepc is that it lacks a CD/DVD drive. The only time that I dislike this is when I want to watch a DVD or install a different operating system. This problem can be solved by getting an external USB CD/DVD drive for when you really need it. Now for the big problem that I have had with this computer. This is the reason that I am not using it to write this now. The one that I had started to freeze up on me at intermittent times. It was not a software error because I restored it to the factory defaults and it did not fix the problem. So I had to contact Asus support to get an RMA number so that I could send it back, so I sent an email to Asus requesting one and then I waited five business days and did not get a response, so I resent that email and three days later I got an email and this is basically what it said: “For eeepc support call this number.” This is where the tech support got better, I was on hold for about five seconds and all together I was on the phone for maybe seven minutes at most and I had a RMA number. The people that I talked to also spoke English as a first language. I would highly recommend calling Asus instead of emailing. I can not say for sure that their email tech support is bad because at this time the company is working on splitting into two companies so it is most likely hectic at this time. I have not heard any bad tech support stories over at eeeuser on the forums, but I have heard some good ones. I would highly recommend going to eeeuser if you are interested in getting an eeepc or need help on problems you might be experiencing with yours.

I have not yet received my eeepc back from Asus so I am hoping to get it soon, should be today or tomorrow, so I hope that they tell me what was wrong with it.

All in all the eeepc is an excellent computer to own. I would recommend it to anyone that needs a computer that they can take anywhere with them. Someone that wants a computer that can do most tasks easily and quickly. The eeepc is also very affordable with prices starting as low as $299, I have the $399 version that has the webcam and four gigabytes of storage instead of two.

 

 

Like what you read? Help pay for my college? Donate with PayPal, you don’t need an account just click continue near the bottom left of the page, above the credit cards, every dollar counts. Thanks,

welcome to geek_tech_blog

At geek_tech_blog I will be writing reviews and making informative videos and tutorials on geek related tech.  Such as web related services, computer programs and operating systems. I do not have any info up at this point because I am still getting started, stay tuned for exciting stuff coming soon. If you are not a geek I will try to make my information understandable and applicable to you as well.