Midspot

Mark didn’t like how a Papa John’s pizza delivery guy was acting, so he paid the delivery charge but marked through the tip line on his receipt. Two days later, he discovered an extra $6.42 had been tacked on. When Mark called Papa John’s to report the theft, he spoke to someone who obviously hasn’t gotten our memo that “taking it seriously” is about as reassuring as “your call is very important to us.”

Here’s Mark’s story:

On Monday, July 28th I ordered a pizza from Papa John’s Pizza. When the delivery driver showed up, he handed me my Visa slip to sign with an ‘x’ written next to the tip line. To me calling any kind of attention to the tip line on a credit card slip is akin to holding your hand out and asking ‘where’s my tip.’ I didn’t like the presumptive tip, and had already paid an almost $2.00 “delivery charge” so I wrote a line through the tip line, rewrote the total and signed the slip.

This morning while getting ready for work, my wife informs me that Papa John’s Pizza had overcharged us by $6.42. Quite upset about Papa John’s Pizza stealing six-and-a-half dollars from me, I immediately googled Papa John’s Pizza corporate number. I was transferred to the finance department, and left a message expressing my extreme dissatisfaction. About 7 minutes later I got a call back from Papa John’s Pizza and the gentleman asked for the details of the transaction, etc. After promising the difference would be reversed to my debit card, he said that “Papa John’s takes this sort of complaint seriously.” To which of course I replied “Please do not ‘take this seriously,’ resolve the issue.” Then the Papa John’s Pizza guy got all defensive and wanted to know why I was calling him a liar. Anyway he promised to have a ‘field supervisor’ look into the situation.

Taking It Seriously: Papa John’s Is Taking Your Theft Seriously, And Gets Offended If You Don’t Believe Them.

First off, who they hell would go after a $1.00 mischarge (read the rest of the article). Sounds like this cheap skate almost deserved this. Who gets offended by some kid pointing out where the tip line is? Geesh!

MIAMI (WSVN) — A man who police arrested for stealing a 40-foot-long street lamp pole said the economy made him do it.

Miami Police stopped Elio Valero, 42, just as he was driving up to the recycling center located at Northwest Seventh Avenue and 21 Street with the aluminum pole belonging to Florida Power & Light strapped to the top of his minivan.

Just before 12:30 p.m. crime scene investigators could be seen snapping pictures of the evidence. The pole was tied down to the top of the van with ropes. It even had red rags attached to each end to let motorists know the van was hauling something huge.

Miami News, Fort Lauderdale News, Florida News & Weather Channel 7 Fox Miami WSVN-TV – Local News – Man arrested for stealing street lamp pole.

Alice Dewitz is a resident of Golden Manor, a nursing home in Steele. By the middle of next year, Golden Manor will be a basic care and assisted living facility.

Medcenter One leases Golden Manor, a 50-bed nursing home in Kidder County. About six months ago, Medcenter officials started talking to the Golden Manor Inc. board about changing the use of the facility because of a workforce shortage and need for nursing home beds in the Bismarck-Mandan area.

“Change is hard for people,” said Medcenter One CEO Jim Cooper. “This is the only way to keep it viable.”

Medcenter notified families about the pending change and held a standing-room-only meeting for family and residents earlier this month.

“Anger” was Dorlyn Hoffman’s response to how he first felt when he read the letter from Medcenter One.

“Disbelief,” said Nadine Hoffman, his wife.

Dorlyn Hoffman’s father, Peter Hoffman, will need to move to another nursing home. Again. As his Alzheimer’s progressed, he’s gone from living at home to an apartment to an assisted living facility to a basic care facility to a skilled nursing facility in Napoleon and finally Golden Manor in Steele.

“When we moved him to Golden Manor, we thought it would be for the rest of his life,” Dorlyn Hoffman said. “Each move is difficult.”

Bismarck Tribune – Local News – Golden Manor changing.

This is absolutely stupid. Why would you want to take a great place like this and move it to Bismarck? You think that they wil be able to find help at teh rates they are paying in a smaller town such as Steele?

Steele has been a retirement community for years. There will be no shortage of people that will need a facility like this in years to come in the Kidder county area.

Plain *** stupid. Way to go Medcenter One.

The Optimists Vacation, 2008 – Laugh Lines – Humor – New York Times Blog.

This has to be the most unique living spaces for miles around. Looks very neat inside, in fact better than some campers I’ve seen.

Bismarck Tribune – Bismarck News – Guard wants volunteers for paintball war.

Our local “brag rag” (aka: The Bismarck Tribune) announced this morning that the National Guard is looking for some paintball war volunteers. This sounds like a lot of fun but I’m guessing there will be hundreds lined up to fill the 20 spots with the chance to ride in a Black Hawk helicopter.

Yesterday I linked to a post on the DNS vulnerability that is looming over the internet right now. At the request of the author, I pulled that post shortly afterwards due to him posting before he was supposed to. I honored the request, but here is a few things that I think need to be said:

1. It’s not like this vulnerability was black magic or anything. I’ve only been in the security field for a few years, but teamed with many years of system administration, I was able to guess pretty much spot on what the vulnerability was and how to take advantage of it from the information at hand.
2. Let’s not kid ourselves. If we think we have something that is absolutely groundbreaking, it’s probably not in reality. Unless you just figured out a way to make cars run off of water or a way to wirelessly charge laptops and other devices, or some other revolutionary fix to some great problem at hand, it’s probably been thought of by others before. In approximately 2000 or 2001 while implementing a new DNS implementation, I spent some time with the intricates of how DNS works and thought to myself that the whole “ticket system” was weak and could be exploited. Low and behold only 7 years later it is confirmed. I’m not claiming to be God here, but come on people, anyone that has ever pulled off a man-in-the-middle attack has the knowledge to exploit this flaw if even only in theory. (edit: Please don’t read this as an attack on Dan or any of the other intelligent researchers that found this flaw. I have the utmost respect for Dan and the others involved and would never want to belittle their work. This and the other thoughts in this post are meant to be general comments on disclosure as a whole and not picking on anyone involved in this particular vulnerability.)
3. No disclosure is not necessarily a Good Thing ™. In this case, I found it a little hard to urge some individuals to patch ASAP without a known exploit in the wild or even documents explaining the vulnerability. (Some people want it all laid out so they can judge severity for themselves.)
4. Finger pointing is so Old School ™. Does it really matter who let the cat out of the bag? Even if you weren’t one of those “in the know” (I wasn’t) if you had any experience with DNS and/or security you had a pretty darn good idea what this was. If you are not on the up and up with being ethical on the internet, you were/are pretty damn close to a working exploit, if you don’t already have one.

I know this might cause some heartburn with some, but let’s face it, the “good guys” are usually one step behind the “bad guys” and I don’t think this was any exception. Maybe we (previously stated “good guys”) happened to stumble upon this particular flaw first, but as soon as anything was said, especially when the vulnerability was supposed to have something to do with the QID, it was pretty easy to assemble what was flawed and how to theoretically exploit it.

Remember to be civil in the comments. Focus all the negative energy on patching, which will actually help us as a whole at this point…

I could show you but I’d have to kill you!

Blurred Out: 51 Things You Arent Allowed to See on Google Maps – IT Security.

If you upgraded to the latest version of WordPress (2.6) and found that your permalinks no longer work (for anything other than default), I found a hack to get it all working again.

Visit Kevin’s site for details:

How to Fix Permalinks in WordPress When All Else Fails