I Don’t Work For Yahoo
The first post of this blog told the story of how I recovered my Yahoo account after it had been hijacked. The subject actually turned into a 3 part series.
I wrote these posts because I knew I wasn’t the only one who had lost control of their Yahoo account and couldn’t get it back by the standard password recovery method offered by Yahoo. Message boards and forums were filled with posts by panicked people looking for ways to recover their Yahoo accounts. There were even many websites offering to hack the account in question in an effort to recover the password so users could get control of their accounts back.
I didn’t want any part of that. Though I didn’t want to lose my Yahoo account forever I also wasn’t going to hire a hacker to recover it for me. So I set out on what I felt was a more logical course and got control of my account back in about 5 days. I decided to share my story as it unfolded to show others another way to do it. My method may or may not work for everyone but it worked for me and was (is?) certainly worth trying.
The first post in the series is the second most commented on post ever on this blog. In fact I still get comments on it today even though the post is already over 6 years old. The problem is that most of the comments I get ask me to help the person leaving the comment recover the password for a particular account.
This type of comment is my biggest frustration with managing this blog. My second biggest frustration with managing this blog is the dramatic drop in comments from part 1 to part 2 to part 3. People were obviously experiencing this problem and instead reading the whole way through to see how it turned out they figured that if I did it for myself I’d be able to do it for them. It’s like reading the first chapter of a novel then emailing the author to ask them how it ends.
To anyone who thinks this way I have one thing to say: I don’t work for Yahoo so I am unable to help you recover your password for you in a legal way. And I cannot and will not help you recover your password in any other way. (Okay, that was really 2 things but you get the idea.)
As mentioned above I wrote the post to tell the story of how I successfully and legally recovered my account. The hope was that it would inspire people to think out of the box and empower them to try methods that were different from the ones supplied by Yahoo in the box. Though I occasionally let one of these comments on the blog (with a reply that says I can’t help) my standard response is to ignore them. Considering the drop in comments from the first post onward I’m guessing that nobody who leaves these kinds of comments will be reading this. But in the off-chance that any of them are please take heed and waste your time by leaving a comment like that or my time by causing me to have to delete it.
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Find Your Voice?
Yesterday’s post about my desire to blog more often generated only 1 comment but several ‘offline’ discussions (if you count Twitter and Facebook as offline). The main term that kept repeating itself is ‘find your voice’. I’ve heard this term many times in relation to blogging and even to writing in general (before the blog era). But what does it really mean?
I’ve always enjoyed writing despite an education that didn’t emphasized it. I remember having a conversation with my brother while I was in high school complaining that I hated reading the books my English teachers would assign. “If only I could write the reports and essays without having to read the book,” I said. My brother, four years older and wiser than I, replied “I like the reading. It’s the writing I could do without.”
As mentioned yesterday my problem was always coming up with ideas of what to write about. Even when I did read the books I still struggled with this issue. But when I knew what I was going to write about the words flowed quite easily. I’m still like that today.
When I first started to blog in 2004 (predating this blog) I picked a subject I was passionate about and blogged exclusively about that. I started this blog about 7 months later as a place where I could blog about anything I felt like writing about. Through the years I’ve ranted on politicians (while trying to avoid politics), instructed on technical issues and reviewed music. This blog has been a place to vent, ply my coding skills and build my own personal knowledge base.
I still don’t know what ‘find your voice’ really means but these are the types of things you can expect to see here when you visit. And if you have any ideas for what I should write about feel free to let me know through the contact form.
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Writing Aspirations/Lamentations
I’ve blogged off and on for several years. Mostly off because I find it hard to come up with ideas of what to blog about. I like to write but I’m just not that creative. I certainly want to write more often than I do but find it hard to do so.
This morning I was referred to a blog post by Fred Wilson about writing. Wilson’s take is different from mine. He laments how he was never properly taught how to write. I don’t think I was properly taught how to write either but it’s always come easy for me when I’ve had the right idea.
Despite the difference I now find Wilson to be a kindred spirit and a bit of an inspiration. He started blogging daily at the age of 42. I’m not that far away from that age and aspire to write much more often than I currently do. Not necessarily daily but perhaps several times a week. If Wilson can conquer his writing skills then certainly I can conquer my imagination skills (or lack thereof). It’s certainly something I plan to work on.
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Review: William Shatner’s Seeking Major Tom
I’ve enjoyed many of the tracks on William Shatner’s Has Been for several years now (it was released in 2004) and felt I owed it to myself to give his new album, Seeking Major Tom, a listen. I wasn’t let down but I wasn’t overwhelmed either. The lineup is a bit inconsistent and the gimicks of reprising tracks at the end of other tracks and adding ground control & air traffic chatter to tracks gets old fast (it’s done several time here).
The album did not have the originality and appeal of Has Been which included such memorable tracks as Ideal Woman, I Can’t Get Behind That, Common People, Real, That’s Me Trying, You’ll Have Time and, of course, the title track Has Been. Seeking Major Tom is made up almost exclusively of cover tracks (the one exception being a track called Struggle) which, as noted above, are inconsistent.
The inconsistency is in tracks that seem to switch between really good Shatner (Peter Schilling’s early 1980’s hit Major Tom (Coming Home), David Bowie’s Space Oddity, Steve Miller’s Space Cowboy, Deep Purple’s Space Truckin’, Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science), Shatner doing an impression of himself – in a bad way (a version of Queen’s Behemian Rhapsody that’s reminicent of his version of Rocket Man from the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards), Shatner doing karaoke (U2’s In A Little While, a version of Elton John’s Rocket Man that didn’t need to be done, Pink Floyd’s Learning to Fly), Shatner almost singing (Black Sabbath’s Iron Man) and Shatner not even being on the track (K.I.A.’s Mrs. Major Tom sung very nicely by Sheryl Crow).
One of the tracks I liked but haven’t mentioned yet is Golden Earring’s Twilight Zone. Also, his version of Duran Duran’s Planet Earth seems to work.
All of the above would have worked fine for me on an album that was ten to twelve tracks long. But with 20 tracks the fun parts are diluted and the whole things comes off as Shatner trying too hard to be Shatner.
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Investing in Apple in the Post Jobs Era
In the wake of Steve Jobs resignation there have already been questions raised about the future of Apple and new CEO Tim Cook. These questions have affected the company’s stock price but not as badly as most reporting on the issue would have you believe.
Apple’s stock had, indeed, dropped about 7% in after hours trading following the Jobs announcement and was tracking in the mid 350s after closing at 376.13. But over night that price rose again to 366.85 as smarter investors hung in.
You see Jobs leaving has very little affect on the company, it’s marketshare and profits for the forseeable a future. Smarter investors who had bought Apple’s stock in the last few years did so knowing that the company’s CEO was ill and his time with the company would be limited. A plan of succession would obviously be in place long before Jobs had to leave his post.
Likewise the company’s product pipeline, an area where Jobs was incredibly involved in considering his title of CEO, must be set for at least another two years. This has little to do with Jobs health but is a fact of corporate life. Though features may change the basic product line and new models are planned well in advance of their manufacture. The first Tim Cook products won’t come for at least two years. Possibly more.
Jobs staying on as Chairmain is something I that was likely done to make less savy investors feel more comfortable with the change in CEO. Though his day to day involvement will be minimized (and possibly not even exist) the fact that his name is still related to the company will appease some investors and a move that was probably designed to head off a market sell off.
So don’t believe commentators who talk down about Apple as an investment by citing that the stock is down about 5% from yesterday’s close. Apple is still going to be fine.
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