A waste of bits and bandwidth

Well, bad news. My Nigerian friend has failed to take the bait. Despite a handful of emails to him, there has been no further contact. It’s really a shame as I was hoping to lead him on for a while, maybe right up to the point of getting him sending me his ‘certified cheque’. It was worth a shot… Maybe he reads this blog! No, I doubt it; it’s just me and mom…

The good news is that I did manage to sell my old PC and my old iPod. The LCD that I was trying to sell got more interest than the other two combined and in the end it’s still sitting here. Go figure. After selling some items on the web, nothing surprises me any longer. I’m happy that I raised enough money to cover two thirds of the cash I dropped on the Media Center.

MiHwa was cool to entire idea of a new PC. This is mainly because it wasn’t a new laptop for her and possibly because I didn’t get the chance to mention it until after I had already bought it. I have reason to believe that this has caused her to try and furnish our apartment entirely with Korean furniture. Very cool. Did I mention she would be buying said furniture in Korea? Something tells me we aren’t getting that chest of drawers on the plane…

As you know, I’m attempting to sell my old PC after buying a new one. Can I just say that the picture quality is out of this world? Recorded TV is stunning and live TV is at least equal to just using the TV signal but I digress…

So I placed an ad on Craigslist last night. Shortly after that, this email appears in my inbox:

Hello Seller
i saw your item on site which am intrested on in it kindly get back to me with ditail of its condition and why you want to sell it with last price you are willing to sell it for me…..
thanks….

Ok, seems normal enough. I respond and get this back in the morning:

Hello ,
Thanks for your response am still intrested and am ok with theprice
and the conditions,my name is johnson and am living at 273BURNSVILLE
CIR.,BURNSVILLE MINNESOTA 55306 with my family surch as wife, children
etc, i will be paying it through a certified cashiercheck or money
order and i will be responsible for the shippment and the pickup
because i am presently out of the state since july 28/20/2007 ok, .As
soon as you receive the payment and it clears in your bank you will be
deducting your actual fund and send the remainingamount to my shipping
agent cause i still have some other item in locallity They will be the
one to do the pick-up at your place and others ok. and i will like to
have your info surch as full name,location adress, contact number and
zipcod for the main time in other for the payment to be send to you in
US $ and more of its pictureagain Also i will want u to remove the
item from the site so that no one will contact u for it again.Kindly
get back to me as soon as possible.
thanks..

My first instinct was to write back and tell him to bugger off. Instead I got the idea to waste his time. Ah, yes; a project! Lets have a look at the address he sent shall we…

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It’s the shopping mall in the lower left… These guys aren’t too bright. What fun! If you have any suggestions for time wasting techniques, please feel free…

So anyway, I’m hoping that this will provide some blog fodder in the coming days. Stay tuned for part 2…

Apparently this was made by a [tag]Microsoft[/tag] employee who was fired for his trouble. Seems about right…

[tag]Monkey boy[/tag] will never die!

So I’m retarded but you already knew that. Luckily my stupidity paid off in the end.

Wednesday, the wife and I were off to Japan. We made it to the bus despite a cab driver that deserved a beating. My beloved was ready to open a can of whoop-ass on him but we got out of the cab and the airport bus pulled up seconds later.

We arrive at Incheon go to check in and the staff looks at my ticket and goes “This is for Thursday” At this point I hear a bell in my head; “ding…” WTF… I looked at the ticket and yes, it is for Thursday but it’s not computing. “ding…” I guess I only looked at the flight number and missed that the date was wrong when I changed the flight. “DING! DING! DING!”

Me: “well, this is a mistake but we can change it right?”
JAL: “um, no”
Me: “look, I need to be on this flight, I’ll buy a new ticket to Japan if I have to”
JAL: “you’ll need to purchase a new ticket to Vancouver as well; the tickets were purchased together”
Me: *more dinging, the voice in my head goes nuts and a vein in my forehead starts to throb* “what? why? I paid for a layover in Japan. Can I get a refund on the old tickets?”

Cursing my stupidity, we go to the ticket counter only to be told that my original ticket is not refundable. I’m now standing there tapping my Visa and JAL cards on the counter and literally biting my tounge so as not to be arrested. Luckily MiHwa was able to talk to the clerk in Korean and all of a sudden everything is fine. Not knowing what MiHwa had said, we run back to check in again and indeed, everything seems ok. I guess they’ll take my Thursday ticket. Don’t know why and I really don’t care. “Let’s get the hell outta here”

Totally relieved, we start to turn away when the clerk comes running over and I figure the jig is up. She asks for our boarding passes back. I feel the vein in my forehead throb. What’s this? Upgrade? To Executive class?

Turns out my lovely wife explained that she had just married a moron and that we were leaving for our honeymoon in Japan. Heartstrings tugged and we were living large.

It was fabulous… These podlike seats that totally reclined like the finest LazyBoy. And the food… Oh my God, the food was so much better. Everything was better except that were weren’t sitting next to each other.

So in the end it all turned out better than we thought but the stress really wasn’t worth it. Oddly, the wife still loves me