I got an email from PayPal this morning threatening to terminate my account.  I've recieved emails from PayPal before - every single time I purchase something from eBay or Etsy, actually - and I'm familiar with the layout and terminology PayPal uses. So, when I opened this latest email it was immediately obvious to me that this was NOT PayPal contacting me but a phishing scam.  The following is the copied and pasted text of the email: Dear PayPal Customer, For the User...

I have an almost-14-year old daughter who has discovered the joys of blogging and the internet.  As a parent, I feel it's my responsibility to somehow manage to prepare my children for the uneven playing field that is life but at the same time not blow their innocence away too soon.  It's hard, especially when you have a child who thinks they're worldy and society-savvy and wants to stake their claim for a little independence.  I want my daughter to know that I trust her, but ...

I have a PayPal account that I use mainly for purchasing things on eBay. It's directly linked to my checking account. I haven't bought anything from eBay for a while....like a couple of months.  So, imagine my surprise when I found a receipt from PayPal in my inbox this morning.  Apparently, I had purchased a $300 watch. My heart was in my throat....$300 out of my checking account wouldn't leave me in the red, but it would mean that I wouldn't have the money to kit the kids...

The following is an excerpt from a conversation I had with SBC tech support earlier this evening: Me: I'm having a problem connecting to the internet and i wanted to see if you had had any reports of issues in my area. SBC: yes sir, let me check that for you. Me: It's ma'am. SBC:  Alright sir, I'm sorry about that. Me: it's ma'm. SBC: yes, yes, I meant ma'am.  Well, I'm not seeing any problems as reported in your area, can you tell me what your modem looks l...

...my real mother, that is - not my birth mother.  I'm finding myself having to make the distinction between the two more and more often. So, I rang my mum and told her about locating my birth mother.  She took it really very well, considering.  She didn't seem very surprised and was actually very helpful. My younger brother is adopted too, you see, and he want and found his birth mother a few years ago.  it was disastrous.  My mum and dad invited Chris's birth mot...

I found this site earlier today, and I'm enamoured. www.postsecret.com The idea is that you can make yourself a postcard with a secret of yours written on it, and you mail it to the person who owns the site.  S/he then scans it and posts it on his site (Sundays are update days).  It's totally anonymous; no-one need ever know that it came from you.  The postcards on there today range from hilarious ("I use my room-mate's hair clips as nipple clamps") to sad (a picture o...

I found this really cool game to play online - and it's free! Link It's called 'Guess-The-Google'.  What you have to do it guess what word generated the Google images you're shown.  You have 20 seconds to guess, and you get points for the numbers of seconds you have remaining...making it beneficial to guess once and to guess quickly. It's actually quite addicting.  I spent the better part of an hour playing before I could break myself away to come and tell y'all about ...

The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve took me all of 24 hours to read. The story centers around Kathryn Lyon's grief at being told that the commercial airliner her husband Jack was piloting has gone down off the coast of Ireland.  The ensuing drama follows Kathryn's discovery of Jack's secret life....one of bigamy and terrorism. This book is predictable.  As soon as I had read the first chapter I knew where it was going.  Even the characters were predictable...you had the gr...

I wrote a quote for the 'fortune' page at www.thinkgeek.com . I actually saw my own quote. My eyes hurt, my finger is numb, my F5 key is about to die...but.... I saw my quote. Schweet!

I've been using Kazaa for P2P tunes for a while now...over a year and a half. I've been consistently disappointed with it.  The paid version is supposed to be ad-free, but I found that to not be entirely true.  It not only slowed down my PC a noticeable amount, but I kept getting corrupt files that wouldn't play or played badly.  It really ticked me off....it wasn't the swiftest service in the world to begin with, but when I try to play a song that took me 10 mins to downlo...

I was lacking anything else constructive to do (well, that's not entirely true but that's what I'm going to tell y'all) so I Googled my screen name this morning. Link Yeah...not a really good thing to have done. My illusion of being the only Dharmagirl on the planet were shattered.  There are a few of us...and some of us seem to be into some pretty kinky stuff. There's the Dharmagirl who's listed herself in a adult personal ad site.  Looking at this one was scary at first b...

Take note, all those who create fake internet personas, all those who make anonymous comments and then swear it wasn't them... Link It was this woman's IP address that sealed her fate.