Wonderful animation from Truemajority.org about government spending in America, social spending needs (and lack thereof) and a call to join a group who are the real “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Click on the link to play the video even if you dont join. 
I have made some changes to the WordPress Backup procedure and added the Restore script to it. Now you have the ability to backup your MySql database and download it locally, backup your WordPress folder and download it locally, and restore your MySql database, all from the comfort of a web interface (which can be integerated into the WP admin interface). There is added password protection thrown in as well.
I had the nasty fortune of using my own backup and restore script this morning which forced me to code some bugfixes and finally emerged into a completely different way of backing up and restoring.
Please download the new version from the same link.
This has not been tested on a Windows web server (and I am not sure if the applications that I use are present in a Windows/MySql installation, but I need some feedback)
Please let me know what you think. OH Yes….and A Happy New Year to Everyone!!
Peace
I made a terrible boo boo with my MySql server and lost all my posts and links and everything for a few minutes there. My own backup script came to the rescue!! I was so glad that I had tested it on my own blog! In the process I found some errors in the code and am in the process of fixing it and creating a restore procedure for it. You will notice a couple of posts and a couple of comments missing. I apologize if they were yours. However, while the blog was gone I had a tremendous feeling of loss and emptiness. A lot of my time and effort goes into programming this blog and learning the code (for professional interests, but time nonetheless) and I LOVE backups! As soon as I have the backup and restoer script tweaked, I will post a link to it on here. Again…Happy Holidays!
I saw this on the mac homepage meant for Safari users (Apple) and thought I would share it with my readers. So here are the top 20 (well 16) ways to monkey with telemarketers.
Speak to the little lady of the house
We have a 5-year-old daughter who loves to talk. If I answer the phone and discover a telemarketer on the other end, I just quietly hand the phone to our daughter … and let the fun begin!
Give them the man of the house
When they ask for the man of the house, I ask them to hold; then I put my 2-year-old son on the phone.
Have I got a deal for you
Interrupt the telemarketer’s sales pitch and ask them if they would like to buy something from you (could be anything that you’re selling). That will usually get them to end the call.
Continued below
I do
Ask the telemarketer to marry you. Seriously, this will probably shock them and they won’t know what to say.
You have reached my voicemail
Say: “Hello.” (Wait on them to start talking.) “I’m sorry we can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Beep.”
Funny you called
“You know, I was just thinking about (doing, buying) just that very same thing. So, I said to myself, ‘Self, why don’t you just (do, buy) it and get over it.’ To my amazement, self replied with a loud, ‘GO FOR IT!’” (Keep talking to take control of the conversation, never letting the telemarketer speak so he or she can’t actually try to sell you anything.) “Well, me and myself will discuss it more and we’ll get back to you.”
From a country song
“I’d love to, but my wife just left me, she cut the tires on my truck, I had to bury my dog, and I only have half a Bud Light bottle left. I’m not worried about the rest, but if you start selling beer, give me a call.”
Have you planned for the future?
When I see “out of area” on the caller ID, I answer the phone with the name of a made-up insurance company. Then I try to sell the person life insurance. I’ll ask questions like, “What if something happened to you?” or “Are you sure your final needs can be met?” Usually, they end up hanging up on me.
Reply in gibberish
Answer the phone in a pretend foreign language.
She’s not … here
I have told people that the person they were asking for was hideously mangled in a train wreck. If they ask for my wife, I sometimes say that she recently left me, then tell the caller she sounds cute and ask her out.
And you are?
I’d love to hear more about why you are calling me, but I’m in the middle of dinner right now. Why don’t you give me your home number so I can call and irritate you in the middle of your meal?
Keep talking
Rather than find creative ways in which to hang up on telemarketers, I decided many years ago that I could provide a public service by keeping them on the phone for as long as possible. The longer they spend with me, the less time they have to call other people. Often, they’ll hang up on me before I can hang up on them!
What did I win?
Sometimes I’ll act as if the sales call is one to inform me that I’ve won a prize. I’ll exclaim, “I’ve never won anything in my life!” Then I’ll ask for details on when and how my prize will be sent to me. And no matter how many times it’s explained to me, I will never quite understand that I’ve won nothing and instead am being asked to buy something.
I’m already connected
If I’m being offered a loan or mortgage refinance, I’ll ask if it can “fly under the radar,” because I have a large loan at a very high interest rate from “family” who would become very upset if I obtained loans elsewhere. I’ll suggest that we meet somewhere discreet to discuss details.
Ever hear of women’s lib?
My wife is especially perturbed when they ask for the “Man of the House.” So she then starts talking in hushed tones and saying, “Oh, no sir. The Master isn’t here. He keeps me locked down here in the basement when he goes out, so I can’t check for him now.”
Phone flirting
I am big on the phone flirting. Use your best Joey voice from “Friends”: “How you doin?” or, “You sound really attractive. Do you call here often?”
How long do you have?
Say: “Sorry to interrupt you. I really want to talk to you, but can you hold on for a few minutes? I just need to finish up the call from the last telemarketer. He called me about an hour ago.”
What’s it worth?
“Now before I listen to your pitch, there are a few things we need to cover. My minimum rate for listening is $35 an hour. Of course, I can offer you upgrades that give you additional benefits, as well as a greater chance that I may buy what you are selling. The deluxe package is $55 per hour and offers a 2 percent chance of purchase, and the super-deluxe package is $75 per hour, and offers a 3 percent chance of purchase. Now before we get to that, I will need you to send in an application as well as a minimal application fee of $55. You will also need to include with your payment a $35 payment for a credit report. Once your credit has been approved, I will be able to accept your non-refundable good-faith security deposit, which I require, of $100. After closing, and you have paid my standard closing costs of $250, we will then be able to proceed with your sales pitch. Can I sign you up?”
Call the cult
“Sorry I can’t talk, I am about to cut off my tongue to achieve ultimate power.”
It’s good enough for Cuba
I always get them to scream, “Show me the money!” like in “Jerry Maguire.”
Did you enjoy it? If you did, or have some more, please leave a comment for everyone!
Overachiever:
Profile: You work hard and let it be known. You stay up late at night to make sure your assignments are complete, there are no grammatical errors, and occasionally you will head out to a party or hang with friends, but when you do, you make jokes based on school.
Type of Drunk: You are a crazy drunk. Since it doesn’t come often you tend to go overboard and doing CRAZY and wild things that you won’t remember in the morning.
Try it out yourself!
Here is what I need them for. I was listening to NPR in the car this afternoon and they were talking about schools (somewhere in the country, im not sure where) where school teachers were looking for donations from the community to get supplies for their classes because they simply did not have money in their budgets to buy extra supplies. I am thinking of starting a blog/ad board for school teachers nationwide to look for extra donations, funds and supplies for their classroom activities. The donors could be everyday people looking to do a good deed, people with extra supplies they want to get rid of, or companies looking for a good way to spend tax-free dollars and get some extra publicity for it. This could really help out school districts in their time of financial crisis. I am thinking that there could be a signup for schools and a signup for donators and we could split the schools (for the time being) by zip code within the US. There are lots of possibilities for this project and the final goal will still be getting the funds and supplies to the students. I am proposing a completely non-profit organization. I am sure that this lofty goal will be impossible for me to reach alone and thats why I am looking for a couple of people to share this burden with me and give it a shot. Startup should be relatively inexpensive. Please let me know what you think. I need to bounce around some ideas and get some feedback from my readers (many of whom I know, are resourceful and are civic minded) Let us make good of this time of joy and bring some charity to our own homes (and schools in this case, bad use of the quote but oh well)!
I saw that I was getting liked from Blinkar.com and I wanted to see who they were. The site is in potugese but the Google translation brings this up. Here is a short gist of their services, very interesting.
The BLINKAR is a system of addition of favourite its links to its blogue. It reads the FAQ .Sounds interesting enough. It might just be another blogroll like link whoring system, but they promote me and I promote them. Take a look…
This is not sexual...I promise! I saw this link to the horniest man alive on someones’ weblog (I think their blog is in some South American language, not sure) and thought it was very cool. The reason I read that post was because it was the only item in English! 8-O:smile:
I have started MyWoosterFamily.org as I had promised. I have already found a long lost friend and he is as close as Ann Arbor! Check it out when you get a chance. I am using Drupal in this case because it has a lot more modules for this kind of use and it is highly customizeable. If this does take off like I hope, I will purchase the domain and might even move it to a new server to get the bandwidth I need. For now it is still pretty cool. FYI the url is http://dinki.mine.nu/wooster/
I am looking for a couple of (paid) Programming Projects for the next month or so. Some of the stuff I am capable of doing includes webpage re-design, complete CSS overhaul, XHTML and CSS compliancy, custom programming in languages including perl, PHP, ASP, VB.NET, C#, VC++, Cold Fusion, Linux/UN*X shell scripts and javascript. If you need a custom design for your webpage, graphics template generation, logo design or need a Linux/UN*X/Mac OS X server/workstation installed or setup, please send me an email or leave a comment on this blog. This month should be realtively free for me and I dont charge too much.
This is a post to test threaded comments on. So please comment to your hearts content, I would only appreciate it! 
:):grin::oops:
Oops … here is the link to the hack for anyone interested! 
All the people from Wooster that read this blog, please leave a comment. I would really like to know how many people are into blogging and this blog in particular. If you are a College of Wooster Alumni, look for a special Wooster site coming soon to computer near you!:lol:
I had intentionally neglected this blog for the last week or so to get some of my own work done, but now I am back with full gusto! I am finally all done with classes, tests, homework, teaching and grading! Jennifer and I went for a little Christmas shopping today. She bought a couple of things for her mother and her Busia and I tagged along for company. Most of my shopping is done and I hope to finish by the end of this week. I received a package from my parents today with all kinds of goodies. Jennifer loved the wool top my parents have sent for her. I had originally wanted to send them a package as well, but shipping prices are completely unaffordable. So I am going to hang onto the little gifts for them till they come back to visit me. I feel extremely Christmasy…maybe for the first time in my life. I have the bug of the season! I might even put on a new CSS for Christmas!
In other news, my cell phone number has not switched over to Sprint yet. But I am excited about sprint’s possibilities. I have signed up as a SprintPCS developer and might work on some WAP and JHTML stuff for them with blogging tools. I already have a WAP page and the code/syntax is not all that bad. Plans for this winter include some J2SE 1.4 learning, lots of nice wine and cigars, some PHP 4, some nice cheese, WordPress hacks, Honey Baked Ham and Javascript DOM research (I forgot my parents, Jennifer, Luckey and Roxy, they are a major part of my plan as well). 
I have held off talking about the capture of Saddam because every other blog in the nation is ranting and raving about him already. However, instead of talking about how his capture is really good news for the Iraqi people or how his capture will affect the political outcome of next years’ elections, I would like to talk about what he can do for us. Or more specifically, what his capture (and other good news of similar nature) can do for our country. What is the one topic of conversation that every person has breached over the past couple of days? Saddam’s capture. Have you noticed yourself opening up to the Republican (if you are anti-republican, democrat etc) in your office or the Arab student you thought was a no-good-bum (censorship on purpose) and sharing this good news with him/her? Have you noticed that in spite of all our differences over the war and the all our political differences, we have managed to celebrate as a nation over our victory? This coming together of ideas and thoughts is something that political strategists should aim to achieve. Rather than trying to find issues which can be disagreed over, they should try to find topics over which people agree. I have found that it is easier to get my own way or to get accepted among people if there is a common goal or some commonality (which I had to try to find). I am sure it sounds really obvious when I out it this way, but it is really difficult in practice. The next time you get really peeved at a certain group of people and start to feel the resentment rise up when you are in close quarters with them, try to think about something that you would have in common with them or you would agree upon. If you can come up with something, (even as miniscule as liking 2% milk instead of the whole kind) share it with the person and see how it feels inside of you. I would wager that not only will tensions ease, your job will get done quicker and the next time you are in the same position, your resentment will be that much less.
If there is one thing we should learn from people like Saddam Hussein, it is that animosity, anger and cruelty are terrible qualities to posess and can only lead to further pain and suffering. We need to know that we are all very different people (inside this country as well as outside) and our diversity makes us who we are. If we recognize that we are different, and that we are still good people inspite of our differences, we can only turn out stronger, happier and more fuliflled. Thats enough preaching for today. Try out my suggestion today and see how it affects your outlook in life.
All done with finals. I just have to contend with a project with Pov-Ray and I am finished with classes (till I get into a PHd program in a couple of years)!! 
I cant wait to have some time off!
Linda, Jennifer and I went this morning to get Jennifer’s new puppy. 
She is a jet black cocker spaniel with a little bit of white around her chest. She is the cutest thing and is very mischievious. She prances around with leaves and pine cones, loves to be outside and run around with humans. Luckey accepted her pretty well. Luckey, in general, does not like puppies and is almost scared of them. However Roxy (Duchess Roxy, thats the new puppy’s name) got a really nice reception. Luckey sniffed her all over and watched over her like a hawk, making sure she did not get into any trouble. She even let Roxy snap at her and play with her toys(!!). We went to the pet store to get Roxy a collar and get her some Puppy Chow (for now, I suggested IAMS for the long run). Roxy is so pooped from her long day that she slept all the way home! I have a feeling that this puppy will be a very happy addition to Jennifer’s life. Better pictures coming up.
This post has sat as a draft for a couple of days and I thought I should finish it and post it. So here are my answers to the Friday Five from last week. This might just become a weekly occurance!
1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
Heck Yeah! I CHOSE to come to Ohio where it is cold and snowy. I love snow, own a snow-dog and the cold makes me work harder, longer. Dont get me wrong, summer is wonderful too, but summer would mean nothing without a snowy, cold wind blowin winter!
2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
Well, I am Indian and a Bengali. So my ideal holiday celebration is Durga Puja. I would spend it with Jennifer, my parents and Luckey. We would drive around Calcutta looking at the wonderful decorations and the preparations for the Puja Celebrations. It has been almost 5 years since I saw my last puja. Distance makes the heart grown fonder. Christmas would be my second choice, without a doubt!
3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?
Not any more. I did back home. Mmmm…home cooked food with lots of family at Puja Bijoya, blessings from my Grandmother on my birthday….too many to name here. I make my own traditions now.
4. Do you do anything to help the needy?
I cant brag. I do get toys for children every christmas. Enough said.
5. What one gift would you like for yourself?
Ha! Did you know that every time I find an eyelash I make a wish. The wish I ask to be fulfilled would be the same one I would put in here. But since mentioning it would make the wish not come true, I cant say it out loud! The only other thing I ask God all the time is for Peace and Goodwill on Earth. So I guess that will fit in here.
From fridayfive.org and Southern-gal
This is definitely worth a long post. I read about this on eWeek and really wanted to see what they were about. 1and1.com has a Free Web Hosting package which lasts for a full three years. i have not figured out what their deal is, as of yet, but they seem to pitch a good story. Three free years of hosting, no obligation, no ads, nothing. I signed up with a phony address, phony name and my real cell phone number. They use this number for authentication rather than just using the email address (they send you a “PIN” which you put into a secure page to get your service). I think they might be playing some game with the phone numbers. But if you are willing to put up with this nuisance or are willing to risk giving someone your phone number, give it a try. I have not gotten done with the authentication process yet, but I cannot wait (I really want to implement http://www.mywoosterfamily.org – my alma mater). They also seem to have a long list of disclaimers (which I did not read, I know…that was my fault). Anyways, if all of this is true and they are not a bogus company, you could possibly end up with the following incredible features!
: Webspace – 500 MB.
: Your URL - Domain,Subdomain.
: Upload Method – FTP,Telnet.
: Forced Ads – No.
: Your Ads – Allowed.
: Scripting – CGI,Perl,PHP,SSI,FrontPage Extensions.
: Email – POP3.
: SSL - Yes.
: Database – MySQL.
: Statistics – Yes.
: Custom error pages – Yes.
: Advanced Password Protection
: 5 FTP accounts
: Cron Jobs
: SSH Secure Shell Access
Last date is January 14th and there is no obligation to get anything after your three years is up. This is really too good to be true. I wonder if I am setting myself up for some hurt. Nothing in this world is THIS free! Hmmmm….
Interesting, this site takes a while for things to sync up. Takes about 3 hours for my domain and service to come online. I wonder how long will it take for web page changes to propagate. It looks good for now!
If Sun gets its way, you might see Java Desktop PCs sitting on Wal-Mart and Office Depot shelves, right alongside Windows (and Lindows) machines in the not-too-distant future.
...excerpt from: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,0,1409158,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535
I am sure most of you have heard about the three-click rule. The rule simply states that every piece of content on a site should take no more than three clicks to access. Well, it seems that Josh Porter is attempting to debunk the three-click rule through known facts acquired in user testing. [from Nick Bradbury]
...excerpt from: http://www.digital-web.com/new/2003_12_01_archive.shtml#107039925342904431
This has been one of the busiest days of this year and I still have till the middle of next week before I am completely done with the deluge of finals. There is a small silver lining in the dark clouds which I would like to mention, mostly for the benefit of my parents. Looks like Jennifer is going to get another Cocker after all. I was pretty sure thats what she was going to do, but she needed to come to that conclusion on her own. I am glad for her. It has had a little bit of a calming effect on her and she needs to get through finals. The new puppy makes me very happy as well. I LOVE dogs! (like you couldnt tell!)
I am also switching phone companies (now that I can keep the same phone number). I am not going to know for sure until everything is processed, but it looks like we are going through Sprint. We are getting a hefty discount which will help my meagre student’s salary. I have opted to get the Sanyo 8100 cameraphone and I get a couple of months of free internet. So moblogging, here I come! This also gives me the chance to write the moblogging hack for WordPress that everyone has been hankering to get developed. I will miss my speakerphone, but instead of spending a lot more moolah to get a better phone, I will just get a good handsfree set. Heh…now off to school for my last class!
