I have a number of email accounts I check on a daily basis.  I run different tools to help filter spam on most of them.  Web based accounts like gmail, hotmail, and yahoo mail have typically been plagued the worst by spam, but by far none is worse than my Marshall University email account.

In recent weeks, I have noticed a large dropoff in the amount of spam i am receiving to my web-based accounts.  This is a good thing.  I have a number of University emails too.  Some of these accounts receive very little spam, but as stated above the Marshall University account (which I have had for many, many years) is the worst.  Even this account is not receiving as much spam lately.  In fact, it seems to be receiving less than 10 spam messages per day.  These mostly come from Russia (based on the character set in the subject of the message).

I don’t know whats going on lately, but I hope it is a trend.  Any reduction in the amount of spam I receive daily is a good thing.  Hopefully, this is not just an unfortunate coincidence.

I recently sold some older drives on ebay.  I made a mistake in my listing in saying specifically that I do NOT ship to Europe, rather just the continental US and to Canada.  I generally change 10-15 USD for shipping via USPS priority mail to USA and $25 to Canada.  This price includes the box, packing material, insurance and tracking.  I think it is a fair price, and I do not make more than a few extra cents by estimating the cost.  In fact, often the shipping to Canada, I lose money.  This few cents is what I earn for my time spent waiting in line at the post office just to ask for a customs form — which in NYC can take upwards of 1 hour!!  No, they are not freely available here due to the fact that people steal them….

Here is where my mistake lets me know a bit about how Europeans think.  In the listing, I had $25 for international.  It should have read International to Canada (which it DID in the item description), but since ebay made some changes recently in their selling system, I made a mistake.  I admitted to the mistake, and asked if it would be possible to charge the extra $10 for shipping to Europe to the 4 people who won the auctions from Europe.

Each one of them accused me of fraud.  They said it doesnt cost that much to ship to Europe.  Well, guess what Europeans.  IT DOES COST THAT MUCH TO SHIP A HARD DRIVE TO EUROPE VIA USPS INTERNATIONAL PRIOROTY MAIL.  I am NOT using first class mail, which is closer to $25.  It costs about $38 USD to ship a 2.5 pound package to Western Europe.  I am shocked by this as much as you are, but I assure you it is not fraud on my part.  You can even goto USPS.com and check it.  It tells you how much it costs.

So, in the future, please think before you speak.  Use the internet, use google, and most of all check USPS.com for the price of a 2.5 pound package shipped via USPS International Priority Mail to your country before you cry, complain, and accuse.  It really makes you look bad in my eyes.

Since Starbucks is now offering free WiFi to users of At&T Cellular Broadband, I thought I would try to take advantage.  I was particularly interested in the option as 3G does not always work as advertised when I want to use the internet at Starbucks in New York City.  There are a number of reasons for this, but mostly I think its due to the nature of the large buildings.

Anyway, I have a Dell XPS m1330 laptop with an integrated cellular modem.  It is very nice.  There is nothing ugly sticking out of the computer which means there is nothing to break as well (I have broke a number of these add on cards in the past).  When I heard the news of the free WiFi, I decided to give it a try.  To my dismay, it didnt work at all.  Rather, when I tried to login, I was presented with the typical login screen any user would receive.  I gave up and decided to call AT&T a few days later.

I called the 1-800 number for customer service, and after being transferred 3 times, I was connected to a laptop/notebook specialist.  Along the way, my story must have been mangled, because the tech just thought I wanted to know how to use WiFi, not how to connect to the hot spot service for free.  I explained to him what I wanted to do, and I was quickly told that I could not do that as the AT&T communication software was not compatible with my computer.  I found this hard to believe as there is an AT&T sim card in my laptop that works just fine already, but I took his word for it.  I did try to argue that since I am paying the same as other customers for the same service that I should be entitled to the same free modem the other customers get which allows them to use the service at Starbucks.  He told me this was not an option with no explanation as to why.  I pay the same and get less because I provide my own hardware which they give for free (I even signed the same 1 year contract)….

During the conversation, I was told the reason my hardware would not work was that the AT&T communication software would not work with my computer.  As I stated above, I didnt totally believe this, so I gave it a try.  It works fine.  There seem to be no issues at all connecting to 3G.  In fact, the software is quite a bit better than the software provided by Dell.  I have not yet been to Starbucks to test the free WiFi, but I can see no reason why it will not work.  I will post more regarding my experience this evening when I goto Starbucks to work on some motion analysis data.