Since I’m a Firefox junkie, I opened my dusty copy of MSIE7 and turned on the phishing filter.   Sure enough, when I went to the reported page, I was pinged with the suspicious phishing website warning.

Being Murphy’s Law, it was the revenue generating page of the whole site. Now, I’m a little panicky, ‘cuz the client’s probably calling his lawyer. So after nosing around a bit, I click on the link “Report whether or not this is a phishing website.” This leads to a submission form enabling cub reporters to say “Yes - indeed this is a phishing website. Set Homeland Security to Yellow.”; or for the vanquished tagee to whimper “I’m sorry Officer, was I speeding?”.

Instead of telling them how I really felt, I copped a plea and gave Microsoft Phish Central the what for’s, maybe’s and why’s. Not ever thinking I’d hear from them again, I set about finding out why that one page would be tagged. I found clues, but no real answers. Miraculously, I heard back from the collective and they’ve added the page to the “I’m OK-You’re OK” list.

But back to Geez Louise…not only was that a bunch of non-billable scurrying around, but I felt like the poor dude who gets secreted away in “Rendition”. Not torture in the congressional sense, but that page has been up and running for quite awhile. How many people visited the site, popped the phishing filter, and scurried away, never to be heard from (or transacted with) again? Thanks, Big Brother.

GoDaddy silenced one part of my cheering section last week by exposing (and implementing) a little-known policy that everyone quickly checks off in the mundane “I agree to the terms of this agreement”. As part of the agreement, any domain disputes sent to GoDaddy are automatically investigated and the INVESTIGATED party is charged for the investigation.

One of my domains was anonymously submitted, and I was investigated, and I was billed for the costs. I complained, but it fell on deaf ears because… I was negligent. On that particular domain, I was trying to keep my phone number private. Turns out the only way to keep some semblance of privacy on your domains is to purchase extra privacy from a proxy.

Now don’t accuse me of being a dummy; I’m just frugal. I ‘ve purchased the proxy before and thought it was a waste of money. This time around, I simply entered in the good old 555-XXXX telephone number used in TV and movies. Since being charged for the “investigation” and threatened with loss of the domain, I’ve updated the number to my real, call me at all hours of the night with ridiculous crap, phone number.

Shame on me for not forking over more cash for the options.

I renewed my driver’s license online today and I figure they saved me at least an hour of driving time, an hour or so of standing in line aggravation, and a gallon or so of gas.

Thanks to DPS!

Miles and Miles of Texas

Back…oh, 6 or so months ago, I wondered who’d win the high definition DVD battle;

Toshiba HD DVD or Sony Blu-ray.

What prompted me was an article I read where Netflix had wholly endorsed HD DVD…or something to that effect…I don’t remember the details. Regardless, I thought HD DVD was a sure thing for that reason, plus Microsoft backed it.

Be glad I’m not a day-trader working your money;

Toshiba officially threw in the towel and the now ubiqutious Blu-Ray will rule the day. Naturally, former supporters moved quickly to Blu-ray, notably Wal-Mart and Netflix. Target and Blockbuster had already made the decision earlier. Meanwhile, Microsoft eschews the obvious.

Blue Morning, Blue Day

Speaking of paperwork, it’s spam season for me again. (What a segue) Late last year, I finally managed to use a good spam filter and dedicated whitelist to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, I have it set to delete immediately, so I wonder how much wheat is splling from the silo. But I digress…spam season again.

Spam season and tax season are synonmous with me today because I’ve been reading how talk of a tax rebate has already let loose the spammers and scammers. While everyone expects scammer’s to come out when there’s blood in the water, I thought it was laughable, because who would fall for something so stupid.

I guess I underestimated how bold and unrefined the spammers can be. Go figure…

P.S. Curiosity killed the cat, so don’t fill out the form just to see what happens.

P.P.S Firefox brings up a phish warning for the url shown.

P.P.P.S Internet Explorer offers to let you auto-fill the form for a percentage of the refund.

P.P.P.P.S. You didn’t believe the P.P.P.S. did you?

P.P.P.P.P.S. Baby You’re a Rich Man

Through the sample database, it provides:

• ADO Version
• Database Path
• Sample Records (Test Adding, Editing, and Deleting Records)
• Server Information

To install, download and unzip the file »

FTP dbTest.asp and dbTest.mdb to the same folder on your IIS Server and then call http://YourWebsiteName.com/YourTargetFolder/dbTest.asp

Right outside my door were the headquarters for Sun, Yahoo, and Mcafee. Up the street in Mountain View were one of Microsoft’s California offices, and the mother of all search engines, Google.

I expected a monolith tower to the mighty Google god, but instead found a quiet business park as non-descript as any other you might find in San Antonio. They did occupy quite a few buildings, so it was more akin to USAA’s campus.

Nothing remarkable on the outside, but a world of innovation on the inside. I guess that sums up the whole Silicon Valley experience. But I’ll have to find out for sure another day. This time it was just a quick peek as I wandered around Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area.

Plus, I just finished reading “Don’t Make Me Think”, a handbook of web design and usability by Steve Krug. If you’re a web designer and want to refresh yourself and pick up a few tips, I highly recommend it.

Most of the content was very familiar to me and I was proud that I followed the same tenets as other leading designers. But I spent a lot of time on a little section that talked about taglines.

Taglines are supposed to define what your site is all about without visitors having to…[wait for it]…think.

I had no tagline and a lot of content to wade through to find the answer, so I immediately re-designed the website logo you see today. I hope it accomplished my goal.

While I was at it, I made a concerted effort to standardize this blog to the rest of the site and I also re-designed the portfolio so visitors could browse through each portfolio detail without having to return to the portfolio index pages. » Go to the portfolio index.

Happy Halloween 2007!

Ms. LoRusso is the owner and principal attorney for Maria T. LoRusso, A Professional Corporation.

Located in the Stone Oak area of San Antonio, the firm selected Desktop Consulting Service to completely re-vamp their website. We added some contemporary design features, a bold new layout, and an interactive Google map.

Visit the website at www.lorussobusinesslaw.com

The Quality Cost Segregation Group, LLC mission is to provide quality Engineering-Based Cost Segregation Studies to the owners of commercial/investment real properties.

They bring together a true consultancy team of accountants and engineers to conduct engineering-based Cost Segregation Studies with strict adherence to the IRS Cost Segregation Audit Techniques Guide, including all the elements that the IRS looks for in a quality Cost Segregation Study.

Their clients enjoy significant tax savings and increased cash flow with peace of mind knowing that the tax position they took was based on a Cost Segregation Study which withstands the scrutiny of the IRS.