thduggie’s blog

Most of you know I sell microscopes, and many of you know that those I sell aren’t optical microscopes.  You get bonus points if you remember that I sell atomic force microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopes.  We’ve just had an article published in Commercial Micro Manufacturing Magazine on the advantages of using an atomic force microscope for surface roughness testing and quality control.  It elaborates the example of ball-point pens and the surface quality requirements for the balls that make up that point.  (Note, however, that if you’re the type that taps your notepad with your pen for emphasis you have no excuse if your pen stops working.  The metal wall that keeps the ball from falling out is very thin and easily bent out of shape!)

If you enjoy reading this sort of more practical stuff about my job I’ll be glad to post more.

I recently received the following e-mail from santoshiando@yahoo.com:

- Dear Friend, I am Ando Satoshi, Japanese national, an attorney at Law, and the official receiver in charge of administering the funds from the sale of the assets of the bankruptcy estate of Sphere Energy Japan. This is the real deal. By virtue of my position as the trustee of the bankruptcy estate, I have processed the claims of all the creditors and also issued out cheques for their claims. However, a certain surplus amounting to about Four Million Seven Hundred Thousand British Pounds Sterling (4,750,000.00) is yet to be disbursed out. To this end, I am seeking your assistance to transfer about Four Million Seven Hundred And Fifty Thousand British Pounds Sterling. I want you to help me collect this deposit and dispatch it to charity organizations. Please kindly note that upon the receipt of these funds from the financial institution, you shall invest it in your line of business and dispatch the profit to charitable home. As soon as i receive your response, I shall communicate with you, and let you know the details of the transfer. Whatever your actions and your decision are, I thank you for taking the time to read this email. Please note that this is not a scam as it does not require upfront payment but escrow payment.Regards, Ando Satoshi

Anti-Fraud International turns up in a google search for Mr. Ando (searching for Satoshi, not Santoshi).  安藤聡史 turns up a boy that lost in a Gifu prefecture tennis tournament five years ago (page 2, number 39) and a boy that won a runner’s up prize in an essay competition.  But even without that, think about it:
- Why is the letter written without any of the typical Janglish that results from trying to map Japanese humble-speak to English?
- Why does Sphere Energy exist only in Canada, and without any hint of a Japanese branch?
- Why would a Japanese attorney want to disburse the remaining assets of a bankrupt Japanese company in British pounds?
- Why would I want British pounds, considering its current performance?
- Why not pick a Japanese charitable organisation?
- Why does a bankrupt company have four million pounds left over after settling all its debts?

I thought about writing “Mr. Ando” a brief note in Japanese, but figured that would only confirm my address as a genuine address worth sending scam-spam to.

Geocities is closing, where I used to (and, until October 26, still will) have my homepage.  It’s not a spectacularly popular one, so I don’t know if I’ll ever resurrect it - but one of the pages has apparently struck a nerve and gets regular visits.  It’s the page on Japanese Onomatopoeia, which due to its popularity I have moved to a static site on this blog.  http://www.geocities.com/thduggie/japan/jslang.htm has moved here: J-Slang: Japanese Onomatopoeia.

Side note: I can’t type “onomatopoeia” without using the backspace key.

I’d like to turn from the Nobel Peace Prize to share a photo that Andri Pol took in Liestal and which was published in this month’s Via.  Via, the SBB magazine, publishes one of Pol’s wry photos in every issue.  It made me chuckle.

Well, I’ve made fun of it, along with 60% of the civilized world (I know that percentage is true because I pulled it out of a hat).

Now for some more serious reflection, in the form of a list of what I don’t like about this year’s Peace Prize award.

First, it turns the award from a recognition of fruitful effort into a political instrumentation.  Will they award the Nobel Peace Prize to Kim Jong Il next in hopes of thus pressuring him out of his self-imposed exile to lunacy and restoring North Korea to the world? (If they do, and it works, the committee can award itself the prize the following year.)
Second, the committee must not have thought very hard about the real-world effects of their award.  Obama is in office; Obama won office with 53% of the vote and has had falling approval ratings since.  Obviously, the committee likes Obama - did they really think this award would help him domestically, or are they just trying to energize the Republican base?

Third, it does appear to me that Obama has good foreign policy ideals and is working to make them happen, but diplomacy usually works best with a minimum of attention drawn to it.  With only a dash of cynicism, the committee decision can also be paraphrased such: “We think this is the last chance we have to award this man, for in a year he won’t deserve it anymore.”

Fourth, it’s okay if the committee didn’t and doesn’t like G.W. Bush, but this is the second spurious prize after 2007 awarded to an American who qualified simply by being in the global limelight and not being Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld.  The committee showed its racism in awarding an old white guy in 2002, and the 1973 prize also went to an American whose merit has been debated hotly - it makes me wonder if the committee thinks they’re the only ones left who can influence US policy and therefore have a moral mandate to do so.

Fifth, all the above obscures what would have been my favorite candidate for 2009, a long-time champion of peace who has won the award multiple times and would have deserved it again for the first time since 1972. That’s the difference between the Nobel Peace Prize and our presidential elections: we have to pick the least unappealing candidate, whereas you, Mr. and Mrs. Committee, get to pass.

But I suppose they can be forgiven for thinking our president is the Messiah - he did, after all, ride into Washington on a donkey.

The Nobel Prize Awarders demonstrate the true audacity of hope. 

For once, I’m waiting for Mallard Fillmore’s reaction. 

Yesterday during Bible Study my laptop decided to bluescreen.  I suppose a good hour of us discussing sins was too much for this oldtimer to bear.

When I re-started the computer, it asked me to send Microsoft an error report, which I allowed.  Microsoft, in turn, informed me that the crash had been caused by “spooldr.sys” and that I had better run the Windows Live OneCare Scanner to remove this malware.

I tried, but was first told I needed to be using Internet Explorer 7.  So I opened Internet Explorer, but I’ve got Internet Explorer 8, which apparently doesn’t allow the Windows Live OneCare Scanner to work right either.  I ended up installing the IETab add-on for Firefox and ran the scanner overnight, with the result that it found one joke program, a boatload of registry entries, and a fragmented hard disk.  No “spooldr.sys” - which my PCTools AntiVirus had said after a scan of less than five minutes.

Of course, this doesn’t do much for my trust in Microsoft for correctly analysing what is wrong with my PC.  However, commensurate with that lack of trust, I also refuse to believe any conspiracy theories that Microsoft is generating fake virus warnings to promote the Windows Live OneCare Scanner Which Doesn’t Work With IE8.