June 13, 2008 in the Journal of Frank Farm

Friday, June 13, 2008

After my attempts to troubleshoot Spotlight not working on network drives, I found this morning that on my Mac at work Spotlight no longer works on Entourage messages when it used to work before. Found some spam in my inbox this morning that will probably fool some people:

From: HP Direct Customer Experience <hp.survey@hpdirectsurvey.com>
Reply-To: <hpsurvey1@hpdirectsurvey.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:01:53 -0500
To: Frank Farm <farmf@pharmacy.ucsf.edu>
Subject: Thank you for your recent order with HP Direct

Thank you again for your recent order [insert long number here]/[insert long number here]. At HP, customer satisfaction is a key element of our core values. Learning about your experience with HP helps us identify ways to serve you better in the future, while giving you the opportunity to instantly alert us to any issues or concerns you're currently experiencing.

We would appreciate your time completing the following survey based on your recent contact with HP. The survey should take approximately 5 minutes to complete. If you already completed the survey, please ignore this message.

You can access the survey managed by Mindwave Research, an HP-authorized independent third-party research company, by clicking on the following link:

http://survey.mindwaveresearch.com/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=[insert name here]&lLoginId=[insert long ID code here]

Thank you for your participation!

Best Regards,
HP Americas Volume Direct Operations
Direct Customer Experience Team

NOTE: Your individual responses and contact information will remain completely confidential and only reported in aggregate with others who completed the survey.

You will NOT receive ANY sales solicitations (sales-related materials or phone calls) as a result of your participation in this survey.

This invitation is sent to you as a result of your recent contact with HP. We respect the many demands on your time, so if you prefer not to receive email invitations from HP, please send an email to remove@hpdirectsurvey.com and include your email address and we will not contact you again.

How I came to believe this message was untrustworthy:

URLs should be on hp.com—nowhere else. Why should I trust mindwaveresearch.com when I know e-mail can be easily forged?
The header graphic used a typeface that I know HP would never use.
The HTML e-mail was too simple; HP usually pays more attention to visual design than this message provided.
The message did not include any obvious information that I know HP knows in my relationship with them. There are order numbers, but these are not instantly recognizable—I would have to go look them up, and I don't have time to be bothered with that.

Dean's breakfast 3 of 3. Helped student LP with a question about POP connections to our mail server. Lunch with Ena at Pomelo. Followup work on a second recent poster project for Cindy. Chatted briefly with recent graduate Troy D, talked about Seattle. Updated my projects list with stati. DLS transition work. Reinstalled VMware Tools in Win XP because I couldn't remember if I did that following the Fusion 1.1.3 upgrade. (This is at work.) Home. Dinner at home with Patrick: mini bow ties with leftover chicken. Why doesn't someone make necktie pasta? People make pasta neckties and bowtie pasta—why not necktie pasta? Cut my hair, showered. Nap. Picked up Danny, picked up Nate. We went to Club Dragon at Club Eight. Briefly happened upon Jordan de P, met an annoying man named Benjamin who wanted to introduce me to his cousin, but I was not interested. We also saw Tuan and Tuan and chatted briefly. The upstairs DJ—DJ Proctor according to the flyer—had very good mixing skill but selected songs that on several occasions cleared the dance floor completely. Some of the unpopular stretches were very deep trance tracks that were so repetitive they seemed like mixing tape loops to me. Afterwards I dropped off Danny and Nate at their homes. I wasn't tired yet, so I went to the Castro and went briefly in to Badlands and then walked around Castro Street amusing myself with the clubgoers discovering the fluidity of the sidewalk. The clubs closed at 2, and the party people were flushed out onto the sidewalk much like roaches in Hawaii from a rock wall with a garden hose. Met and chatted briefly with Joey outside The Cafe. Got 2 slices of pizza at Nizario's (one mushroom, one hawaiian)—realized I prefer Escape From New York more but I don't think it's open late like Nizario's. Chatted briefly with Dan F inside and out. Home very late (early). Patrick went to bed early tonight, so he didn't join us.