There is an issue that is becoming more acute every day, it seems…the OTR Digest, and other addresses on our server, are being spammed by - no, seriously - actual subscribers.

These users, generally with Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN/Hotmail addresses, have had their accounts hijacked by spammers primarily because of easily-guessed passwords. But the results are seriously bothersome; email coming directly from the subscribers’ accounts, what the server assumes are legitimate messages but are actually mails with spam links in them, are entering the Digest and other mailing lists with alarming regularity. I have been struggling with how to handle this, trying first to alert the users with information on the hijack and suggestions to fix, but I found this more and more work every week. Yet I need to protect the mailing lists from this garbage…even though the real subscriber is technically innocent, their account is being used to send multiple spam emails into our machines targeted to our lists.

So I am currently taking a more draconian approach. First, the user’s address is removed from the Digest subscriber list as soon as the first spam email is found (I say “first” because until the problem is fixed the hijackers continue to send spam out of the account to all addresses in the user’s address book) - hopefully, after not receiving an issue or three the subscriber will realize something is amiss…could be the subscriber’s friends will be alerting him or her to the spam as well. I am also blocking that user from sending any mail into our server, with a rejection note that reads something like:

Fix your AOL problem then contact me via web form

This protects other lists on the server from running spam emails. If you receive this, you will not be able to contact me via email; you need to use one of the web-based forms available on www.lofcom.com, www.oldradio.net, blogs.oldradio.net, forums.oldradio.net, etc., etc. - you’ll see one right here if you click that “Contact the Webmaster” button over on the left sidebar.

If you receive this mail, the situation is serious (the bad guys have access to your address book and your email!), so please contact your provider (AOL, Yahoo!, whoever) for instructions on how to reset your password to something that bad guys can’t easily guess and cannot be hit with a dictionary attack…after your account is secure, then and only after the issue is resolved contact me via one of the web forms and I will remove the block on your email address.

I know this sounds harsh, but I need to protect the mailing lists from receiving this spam while not spending more and more of my own time manually dealing with it. I am, of course, always open to suggestions on a better way of dealing with this; post a comment here, or contact me privately via email (addresses are all in the footer of every Digest issue).

I’m only sorry the slimeball scammers have forced me into such a thing.

P.S. While I’m at it, please don’t add the Digest address to any social-networking “friends” list…the Digest isn’t going to join Facebook, Feed Share, or any other networking service (it’s a computer, after all), but it does require additional work for me to remove/block/deal with the requests. This isn’t happening often, but it does happen sometimes, and I’d like to prevent it from getting any worse.

Check the comments on this blog post and please make suggestions for a good, free-for-personal-use, anti-virus software that doesn’t require you to deal with huge sales windows every day or demand every minute you restart your computer.

An incident I don’t want to detail has shown I need to briefly touch on what is and is not acceptable on the OTR Digest, or for that matter here on the Nostalgic Rumblings blog and on the Nostalgia Pages Forums, too.

Honest, it isn’t terribly restrictive…I mean, any discussion can become a little heated, especially when it’s as hot as it is here in the Northeast and we northeners are all a little cranky. Heck, disagreements can make the most interesting discussions to read…the trick here is to disagree with the points, not the person making them. Don’t attack the person, attack the idea. Do it politely even while being forceful, remembering the person on the other end is, above all, a person. Here on the Blog I tend to encourage more forceful discussions, and encourage you, my readers, to disagree with me and show me where I am wrong.

But I gotta tell you, swearing at another reader or subscriber, and frankly that includes me, is really not a good idea. I’m trying to keep all of the areas around here safe for folks of all ages, since it’s only by bringing in young people can we keep this hobby alive. So civility is required, and anyone forgetting this can expect a week or two “time-out” from the services here.
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Email scams are making the rounds again…unlike the annoying chain emails claiming that a president isn’t native-born or Bill Gates is giving away bazillions in an email lottery, these scams are designed to tug at your heart strings to help out a friend. Here’s a recent example, reported earlier today to the OTR Digest:

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,I came down here to [insert any foreign location] for a short vacation unfortunately i got mugged at the park of the hotel where i stayed,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off but luckily for me is that i still have my passports with me.

I’ve been to the embassy and the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all and my flight leaves in less than 3hrs from now but am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won’t let me leave until i settle the bills,I’m freaked out at the moment.

There are many variations on this horse-pucky, all of them designed to appeal to your desire to help out a friend.

I realize I sound like a hard-hearted b*stard, but don’t. The odds of someone you barely know asking you to bale them out of jail or send them money for living expenses are pretty darned low…and frankly, if they do, you need to question why they didn’t contact someone closer to them instead of you.

On the other hand, you may get this apparently from a family member, and be tempted…again, don’t. Pick up the phone, call other family members, check around…I mean, c’mon, if a close family member were stuck in some foreign land you can bet they will be making a whole lot of collect phone calls to a whole lot of family members, so verifying this should be simple.

Basically, I’m suggesting that any time you receive any emotion-packed email requesting funds, your default position is that it’s a bogus scam. Because it is.

For those of us in the northeast, this has been a miserable summer. It started with temperatures reaching the 90’s in the middle of May, and other than three days of blessed springtime weather last week, has pretty much stayed there. Watching the weather, and seeing temps predicted to reach triple-digits this week, it’s no wonder we easterners are all a little cranky.

So cut us some slack while we swelter, and swear a bit at the weather reports from Seattle with their highs in the 60’s and such.

Looks like AOL is rejecting the Digest (or at least the most recent issue) across-the-board; if you are an AOL subscriber and received Vol. 2010 #114, let me know, please.

In the meantime, please complain to them, not to me…there isn’t anything I can do about it at this point. No other system seems to cause as much trouble as AOL…

My wife and I both got new cell phones, almost on the same day. And this has caused all kinds of issues in the household, primarily divided into two groups of problems: the first, unfamiliarity with the new gizmos, and the second, a determination among various manufacturers to make absolutely certain it ain’t easy to transfer personal information like contact lists.

My old phone was a Sony Ericsson Z520a, a great little phone, but a little constricting when trying to make to-do lists, memos, and the like on-the-road…so I bought an LG Cookie (over on the left) at a great price; it’s a touch-screen phone that accepts java applications (so I’m not locked into someone else’s idea of what I can run on my own phone) and so far I kinda like it…it’s everything a modern phone should be (which tends to mean about everything except a telephone), and even handles importing vCard-format contacts, which I should have been able to get out of my old phone, but for some reason couldn’t. So I wasted a whole lot of time manually sending the contacts one-at-a-time from the SE to the LG via bluetooth. Once on the LG, editing was relatively easy what with the various input methods including phone keypad, QWERTY keyboard, and even handwriting-recognition (although there’s no programmer in the world good enough to program a device to recognize my writing!). Using down-time, I was able to get my contact list looking pretty good.
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You know, it’s getting to the point where anti-virus software is causing more problems than the viruses they protect us from…

My latest problem is with Avira AntiVir Personal. Yes, we all know their update nag advertising window is a pain in the rear end and relatively difficult for non-geeks to stop from appearing at every update, but there’s another “gotcha” in their defaults you really should know about before the next update. It seems the default when a system restart is required is to throw up a dialog box every two minutes to remind you to restart!

Seriously, what brain-damaged drone throught that was a good idea? Talk about becoming annoying really quickly…my computer is currently processing a video file (takes about eight hours to do a two-pass on these files), so I absolutely do not want to restart now, yet the d*mned thing just keeps popping up! It automatically updated, and then began this every-two-minutes nag to coerce me into restarting now, regardless of what my computer is doing at the time!

Gets worse…as I was typing this post into Wordpress a few moments ago, the dialog popped up and accepted a keystroke as “Restart Now” and began the process! I had to cancel out of it on a Windows level to keep from losing my work!

This is completely unacceptable, even in a free software package. To fix it if you are, like me, foolish enough to stick with this package a little while longer:

• Enter Configure AntiVir. Right-clicking on the tray icon is probably the simplest way, although you can also Start AntiVir and select “Configuration” from the “Extras” menu.

• Expert Mode Click the “Expert Mode” checkbox. Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it.

• Update:Product Update. Expand the “+” next to Update in the left pane, and select “Product Update.” Change the selection from the default, “Download and install product updates automatically” to “Download product updates. If a restart is necessary, install the update after the system restarts otherwise install it immediately.” This should be the default!!!

• Update:Restart Settings. Change this from “Reminder message for ‘Restart’ all - 120″ to “Query whether computer should be restarted.” Instead of nagging you every two minutes, this will ask you once if it should restart now, and if you say no, will simply wait until you do. This should be the default, too!!! I mean seriously, what person would want to be annoyed every two minutes while working on something?

• Apply the Settings. Click the “Apply” button, then close the window. Done.

With these changes, at least theoretically, Avira might be a tad less bothersome. But I swear, if any of you know of a good, free antivirus software, one that not only is efficient at protecting you from the nasties but one that doesn’t turn into a nasty itself because the programmers are so filled with hubris as to think they know what you should be doing with your computer when, please let me know. PCTools has become a resource-hog on my wife’s laptop, AVG has become so slow and bloated as to be completely worthless on any but the fastest machines, and now Avira is stepping hard on my last nerve, so I need something else, fast!

For quite a while, I have threatened to publicly explain why I do not now have, and do not plan to own, an iPhone. I have explained it numerous times to folks who ask, and it’s starting to get a little old; the release of the new Apple iPad has brought all the questions back again, so I figured it was time to explain this publicly once and for all…after this, when someone asks me why I’m not leaping at the latest Apple product, I can just point them to this post.

A little background; for easily a decade, I was a huge Apple promoter. My earliest Macintosh is a 512k (still in the basement, and still worked the last time I fired it up), I owned the Mac Plus (which was tricked-out with all kinds of stuff, like an internal hard drive), SE/30 (which was tricked-out with all kinds of stuff like an external color monitor and processor upgrade), and the 7500 (ditto on processor upgrades and other internal doo-dads)…the Macintosh I still use routinely is the PowerMac G4, the last Macintosh built that can natively boot into Macintosh OS9. However, when the original System 10 was scrapped and replaced by the thin-shell of OSX layered on top of FreeBSD, I pretty much gave up on the Macintosh. (Oh, c’mon…I’ve been running FreeBSD and linux since the 386 processor. Why would I pay hundreds of dollars in premiums just to run a free operating system? Besides, the real advantage to the Macintosh operating system pre-X was the complete lack of a command line underlying it…since it was built from the ground-up as a graphical system, there was little way for any hostile application to hook into the system in the first place. OSX is just as vulnerable to viruses as any other *nix derivative being operated by a non-guru…that is, very.)

All of this is to say that there was a time when no one was more of an Apple advocate than I was, so you can’t accuse me of being one of those Apple-bashers. My reasons for avoiding the iPhone (and other Apple devices) isn’t based on an irrational dislike of the company…it is instead based on perfectly sensible reasons. To explain the main one, though, I need to temporarily create an alternate universe. Hey, it’s got to be better than the idiotic one being spoon-fed to us on Fringe…
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It looks like an issue of the Internet OTR Digest vanished off the face of the earth. I’ve manual recreated the issue from the inbound logs and released it, but if anything you sent to the Digest doesn’t appear in the next day or so, please resend.

This is just a quick little story; the BBC had a news program (I should say programme) on I wanted to see. I went to the BBC website, which informed me I couldn’t, since they only allow streaming to computers within the UK. Now I could have found a proxy in the UK that would let me pretend to be within the country, but I said “the heck with it,” went to the newsgroups, found a cap of the program, downloaded it, and watched it.

Who wins? No one. I had to perform a mildly improper act just to watch a program I should have been able to see directly from the provider. And other networks are equally narrow-sighted, locking out whoever they wish without seeing that on the Internet, one can always find what one is looking for. I mean, c’mon, how many folks in the UK watch our drama series right after they air here instead of waiting until their country deigns to run the show. Do they think denying access really stops anyone who wants to see the latest episode of House or Heroes?

Look, this is really simple. Media companies can either make it easy for us to watch their programming, or we’ll find another way, one over which they have no control. Putting up roadblocks just encourages us to find a more direct route to the same target.

Today we’re making something of a departure from the usual Old-Time Radio podcast; these recordings were made earlier today, March 17, 2010 from various radio stations around the country. They all feature interviews with my friend Arthur Anderson, best-known as the original Lucky Charms Leprechaun. Understand, all of the interviews here are from various “morning zoo” programs, so the local talent may or may not be particularly knowledgeable about Old-Time Radio.

There are three interviews here; KZPS in Dallas, Texas, Ocean 98.1, The Best of Rock in Ocean City, Maryland, and WGTY Great Country 107.7 out of Gettysburg/Hanover, Pennsylvania.

You may stream the program using the player below, or download it with the link. Remember, by subscribing to this blog with any podcasting client (Juice, iTunes, etc.) the shows will be automatically downloaded to your computer or MP3 player!

 Arthur Anderson St. Pat's Interviews [22:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ok for those of you not nerdy enough to be in love with the CBS television program The Big Bang Theory (a show, I must add, that my daughter brought me to kicking and screaming), last week’s episode dealt with Stan Lee signing autographs, and Roj wearing the coolest shirt I have ever seen:

So naturally, I had to have one. Last evening, I ordered one from Think Geek, and d*mned if it didn’t arrive today. Other than being thirty years older, three times as heavy, and that whole not-being-born-in-India thing, I look just like Roj!

I added my theme song (written and performed by Jill Sobule), and now I literally can play my theme song as I enter a room, accompanied by tumultuous applause.

Wonder how long it’ll be until my wife divorces me?

So we’re getting more snow, on top of last week’s fun. A few pics, again to amuse those in sunnier climes, like South Texas.

	Here we go again... Standing on the porch, shooting toward the neighbor's house
	The driveway The car and the former path leading to the street
	The front yard You know, I might get my mailbox dug out by April...
	The back yard There's a small garden somewhere in that general direction
	The back pad A woodpile, a grill, and other stuff I won't see for a while

The Katester took some pictures out the front door of the snow still falling, so I thought I’d share them with my friends in Florida and California who are probably basking in the sun laughing at those of us in the snow-covered northeast.

Just click the thumbnail for a larger version.

	What driveway? Neighbor Larry Landis brings his snowblower into what used to be my driveway...
	Where's the car? Underneath that large lump of snow sits the car.
	More snow Haven't been out to measure yet, but it looks like a bit over a foot.
	The mailbox... ...which I don't think is going to be filled with bills today.
	The car. I think. Katie stepped outside to take a few pics from the porch. That used to be our car.
	The waste toter? I'm assuming she wanted to show the snow on top.
	The steps Buried in snow, the steps leading to the driveway. And someone's sneaker...
	Yet more snow What might be, by April, the front lawn.
	Side yard and neighbor's house Covered with snow. Everything's covered with snow.

I spend a whole lot of time on this blog whining about things that disappoint me…and it seems as one grows older, one is less tolerant of disappointment. But not everything in my life is a bother…some things make me actually smile, or pleasantly surprise me, and I don’t blog about those things nearly often enough. In the spirit of the most wonderful holiday season which I simply cannot let go, I’ve collected a few of them here, after the jump.
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I tend to use computers well past their useful lives…I add on hardware to keep them working and accomplishing the tasks I need, so I don’t purchase computers very often.

So imagine how appalled I am to discover that since I purchased my last computer, both the manufacturers and Microsoft have found seemingly hundreds of annoying ways to try to stick their hands in my pocket. (And don’t get cocky, Macintosh users…iLife+iTunes is even more obnoxious.)

I purchased a refurbished quad-core HP computer after Christmas for a really good price, with plans to use it as my video processing computer…it shipped with (ugh) Vista, but even refurbished qualified for a free upgrade to Windows7, so until I got the upgrade discs I didn’t do much with it (and as an aside, I kinda like Windows7, as embarrassing as that might be to admit). Now that I’ve upgraded the machine, I’m trying to get it straightened out so I can use it, but I keep running into stumbling blocks. Or, more accurately, programs determined to connect me to something I neither want nor need, all designed to take my money.
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In an apparent attempt to get their Live365 radio station canceled, the hosts of Radio Once More, Ken Stockinger and Neal Ellis, have invited Your Obedient Servant and the Worst Voice in Internet Audio to guest on their program this Friday evening, January 22nd, at 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time, 6:00pm in the west (and in Baltimore it’ll be 9:42).

Please join us at that time, when we will attempt to answer the question, “What the heck is he doing here?” Check out http://www.radiooncemore.com/ for complete details and to listen in.

The blog takes a break from the pressing news of the Jay/Conan/NBC kerfuffle to proudly announce your humble webmaster is somewhat insufferable right now. There is a story to be told, though, before we get to the good stuff.

As my regular readers know, I am a big fan of The Bob Edwards Show. So much so that I created a fan-based site before the show had one of it’s own. The show recently had a very talented artist, Jill Sobule, on the show to talk about the clever way she self-financed her most recent CD.

Now understand, I really pay attention to the show, its staff, and its website. And I noticed they decided to run a contest where Ms. Sobule was providing five lucky people a theme song of their very own…so of course, I entered, since let’s be real, even an old guy like me needs a theme song. I mean, imagine…he enters the kitchen in the morning, theme song playing in the background, while he makes his morning cappuccino to thunderous applause…

After I entered, I kinda forgot about it. Until I got a note from one of the producers that I was one of the lucky winners! (I have a suspicion that, considering my usual luck, there were only five entries, but hey, I’ll take whatever good fortune I can get.) He asked me to write a paragraph about myself, which considering my natural modesty was almost impossible, but I struggled through and finally completed it. (It won’t surprise anyone who knows me that the paragraph was written considerably tongue-in-cheek, although at the same time every word of it was absolutely true - I don’t know if Jill or the producer believe all of it, but I can provide references to back up every strange event and interest.)

Thanks to a screw-up in my spam filters, this theme languished in a filter file until I rescued it this evening. My wife and daughter are trying to decide what to do with me now, since I now refuse to enter a room until my theme is played.

All (or at least most) kidding aside, please listen to the theme at the bottom of this post - and yeah, plan on hearing this, or at least pieces of this, frequently here on the blog. And after you do, head on over to Jill’s website and listen to some of her songs - she makes a rotating selection of her work freely available to enjoy. I think you’ll agree with me that she’s well worth the listen, and if you do purchasing a CD would be a great way to help me thank her for this silly yet deeply personal theme song. I am grateful, and a little humbled, by this. Doesn’t hurt that it makes me laugh every time I hear it, either.

And before I let you get to the song, a special thanks to Senior Producer Chad Campbell. He doesn’t realize how in awe of him I am…I mean, the guy has people like Jill and Carl Kasell on his speed dial, for heaven’s sake. How cool is that?

 Charlie's Theme, by Jill Sobule [0:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download