Not a week goes buy where I don't hear someone complain about having to give their credit card to some questionable merchant online or identity theft. Whenever I mention the concept of temporary credit card numbers, everyone always looks suprised and ask me "is there such thing?". Well yes, and I think more people should use them.

Basically the way it works is your credit card provider (Discover, American Express, etc.) must give you some sort of website or application to generate temporary numbers. Those new numbers will be restricted or limited in some way to the seller not the customer (you). The restrictions vary per service.

Say I purchase a $49.99 book from Amazon.com with my credit card, but I use a temporary/limited number. One possible restriction is preventing EVERYONE but Amazon from using that number. So if someone hacks into Amazon and steals it, it is of no use to the hacker. Also I can leave that card number with Amazon indefinitely. Another possibility is my service may allow me to create a credit card number that is only valid for 1 month, and has a spending limit of $50, which would be rendered useless well after Amazon makes the purchase for me. Both situations are in my favor.

Now services may vary, but speaking from experience I use this service with virtually every purchase I make online from both trustworthy sites and small sites. Furthermore, my credit cards allow me to do both of the above scenarios. I would stronly recommend people taking the time to see what protective services their credit cards provide. It won't be any harder than buying something online or paying your bills on the web. ... And it has been around a long time. I've had it for years.

Posted in: Internet, Technology,

I wore a new shirt to work today. Purple isn't a color I normally wear, but I received enough compliments for me to change that. But there have been times I wore something questionable and I received rather unfavorable response.

It was the early-to-mid 80's and times were a bit difficult adjusting to this new country. Someone had passed off some hideous jacket to my mother, and one morning while helping me get dressed for school she insisted I wear it. Now I'm being objective here. It was obviously a reject from the 70's. Some of those rags from those times should have been burned in 1979 itself, but NOOOO, some got through. It was this over coat/sports coat that fit snuggly (as opposed to a little loose) and it had light brown, orange, and light bluish stipes all over it. I think it had that zig-zag pattern that looked like 1-legged dancers holding hands in unison. Anyways, I wore it reluctantly and made it to the school bus.

Being in a private school, the bus pretty much carried everyone from kindergarten to junior high. There were two 7th or 8th graders, who immediately approached me. They were always clownish, but not even for one moment did I think it had to do with my attire. They said I had the absolute coolest jacket they ever saw. They said they wanted to get some just like it and they congratulated me for looking slick. After laughing at eachother a little, and giving me a pat on the back they walked off.

I was happy all day. I realized I was wrong for disliking the jacket. I felt good that day. Really good.

Posted in: Life, Funny,

A more appropriate title would be American Lives. Oh, wait, maybe I should be more specific: Value of American Lives. ... A coworker told me he saw firefighters in the street intersections collecting donations with their boots and hats for victims of hurricane Katrina, which at this moment the official death toll is now exceeding 400. I commented that I recalled firefighters in the same area doing the same after September 11, 2001 (2,752 dead). He asked me if I saw them do it for victims of the 2004 Tsunami (over 250,000 dead across 11 countries). I can't say that I did...

I'm not drawing any conclusion from this one incident ... but then again, maybe someone should.

Posted in: Philosophy, Politics,

Okay, if you haven't heard already, Opera is giving out free licenses for their browser in celebration of their 10 year birthday. I didn't even know they were around for so long. Anyways, I went to their website yesterday and I got a free license. Now the absolute cooincidence is that back in April I heard that they would give out a free license for anyone who could refer 250 people to download their browser (hence the little ad on my site) -- which I thought would be very easy. Anyways, I got an email last night that I had finally referred the required 250 downloads and hence I got a free license. This was only hours after I got a free license from their birthday party website.

What timing. Anyways, I still stand by my original opinion, in that I hope this helps spread another browser into the marketplace and thusly producing a better WWW for all.

Posted in: Internet,

Okay, my changes didn't integrate as smoothly as I thought they would. I think I screwed up the entire site. PLEASE LET ME KNOW if you find a problem. I think I got enough of them to make the site work, but there are still some issues lurking in the background.

Posted in: Website,