Nothing funny about feldspar

Dear Citibank Online Customer:

It has come to our attention that your Citibank account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. Due to your recent account activity, we are kindly asking you to confirm that ONLY you manage your Citibank account, and the recent money transfers were made by you.

If you did not effectuated the money transfers, you can confirm by logging to your account and filling up the verification procedure here:

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Thank you for banking with Citibank.
Citibank Security

I wonder how many people were involved in writing this message? The grammar and word choice is ok in Paragraph 1, awful in Paragraph 2, and moderately bad in Paragraph 3. I’m guessing our intrepid phisherman plagiarized the first paragraph.

The decision to simply license the brand and collect royalties “allows the Philips brand to be very evident in the North American market and de-risks the profit potential,” said Paul Zeven, Philips’ North American chief executive officer. “Margins here are razor-thin; this is a win-win situation. It is part of our worldwide agenda to focus on more stable market sectors.”

— New York Times

It took me 5 clicks to learn that SOBCon08 wasn’t about male dogs. That is an area with which I am totally unfamiliar.

What, you don’t know either? It means “Successful and Outstanding Bloggers.” Don’t think I qualify. (And I don’t link because I’m a bad blogger.) I thought SXSW wasn’t my tribe; this is even the next level (or two) out.

I’m not a registered anything party member, so the state of the Democratic Primary in Michigan really doesn’t mean anything to me. As a non-aligned voter, I get attention from both sides of the aisle, which usually annoys the heck out of me. This year, with all the sanctions, etc., the pre-primary campaigning was thankfully kept to a minimum. It was the quietest election season I think I’ve ever experienced. Now that the proposed rerun has fallen by the wayside, I can enjoy my peace for another couple of months.

I went to my first (and likely only) SXSW interactive this week. I had heard such good things — about how it’s fun and informative and lots of meeting friendly people and parties and swag, and I must say that they must’ve seen me coming and turned it into a bore-fest.

No, that’s not entirely fair. But I did get the impression some sharks have been jumped. There wasn’t much in the way of technical stuff, most of the panels seemed to be about getting money for your “social media site” and the walk between panels took nearly the whole half-hour between sessions so there was little time for hallway confabs. There was not-so-bad wifi, and plenty of tables and outlets, so many people just lifted the lids of their laptops and ignored the world passing by (couldn’t they have just done that at home?). And the parties… well, let’s just say they obviously didn’t want to piss off any local restaurants, because while there was plenty of free booze (provided you got there before the limit was reached) none of ‘em had food. At least not at any of the ones I went to. Can you imagine a thousand drunk 20-40somethings? Not a pretty sight.

Ah well. Perhaps I’m just not the right demographic. Since I’ve returned, I’ve heard it described as “Spring Break for Geeks.” That could just about be right. At least the weather wasn’t bad. It’ll be probably six weeks before I’m running around in a t-shirt again.