Willo O'Brien

Lastnight Ali & I hit the Giant Drag/The Like show at Cafe du Nord & it was sooo good!! I love Annie from Giant Drag. She’s quirky and says stuff you don’t expect to come out of her because she’s somewhat innocent looking. They were FANTASTIC live. Eric showed up just in time for The Like, and it was good to see him.

The Like was great, too… I didn’t realize they’re all under 21! The lead singer looks older though, mostly due to her horrible 70’s hairdo. And although her voice is amazing (think Bjork meets the Sundays), her trailer trash outfit was gastly. We’re talking not even campy trailer trash, just plain out *mistake*. hahaa. Anyway, they were good! And turns out the bass player in The Like is actually Annie from Giant Drag’s little sister! awww yaaa family of rocking girls!

After The Like’s set ended we stayed and had another drink just to enjoy the fact that he finally made it out. Ted was supposed to show up too, but he was MIA. It was great to be out of the house & hangin w/ Ali again. She went to 2 shows w/o me this week (gasp!) and so it was important that are “duo of spunk & energy” (as Eric put it) was reunited! GO GO SHOW HO PROS!

Quote of the night was when Ali commented on how much blogging I’ve done recently. She called it a Post-a-Palooza! haha! BTW – Shout out to Miss Ali who is now writing for SF’s Done Waiting Foghorn! Awesome!

Unfortunately my battery died about 5 photos into the show, but I was able to sneak 2 more shots out of it! (Mental note: Put “extra camera battery” on my Christmas wishlist)

Me, Ali & Eric enjoying a beer after the show

Notice my awesome new tshirt? There’s one more photo of us three & a few (bad/low-light ones) of Giant Drag in this album.

Now I’m off to enjoy some tasty Burmese @ Burma Superstar w/ my friend Kristin! yay!

I put some fresh catnip on Kazoo’s cat scratcher today, and since I knew he’d probably do this, I caught it on film. I’m stoked I did because it is *hilarious*! Check it out:

click to view quicktime video, 2.8MB

I also couldn’t help but export some of the funnier frames… view the photo album.

I just got a scary piece of spam, that for some reason wasn’t caught by my filters. It was presented as a question from a seller, basically saying I had won the bidding on their product (a home theatre dvd system, no less – so you can assume the price tag is big), and that they had been trying to contact me, and if they don’t hear from me they’ll contact ebay & give me negative feedback.

So, because I’m a skeptic and internet savvy, I know better – but there are so many people who don’t! So here’s a few tricks that I do to double check if something is spam, without even giving them a clue that I’ve read their email.

First, here’s a screenshot of the email they sent me. Note that using Mail, I turn off the automatic loading of images, because often spam/email marketers depend on your loading the images in order to track when and how many times you’ve viewed it:

(click to view larger)

The first thing I do to double check if something is spam, is to check what the links really are. Because this is HTML, they can make the links look like one thing, but they’re really another. So, as you’ll see on this image (above) I right click on the link & copy it, and then go paste it into my browser’s address bar. Another way to do this is to view the raw source of the email. Turns out all the links in this email go to the very same place:

http://signin.ebay.com.isapi-dll.info/ws/signin.html

First thing you should notice there is that it’s not https: – meaning it’s not secure (the s means secure). You can check to see if you see the lock icon on your browser – which if you look at the screenshot below, theirs is NOT. Any log-in page, especially for a giant as large as eBay, is DEFINITELY going to have SSL (what you purchase/activate to have that security). Granted, you should also keep in mind SSL Certificates aren’t that expensive, so never just trust the lock outright!

Another thing on that URL though, is that it may look like it’s signin.ebay.com, but actually the domain is http://signin.ebay.com.isapi-dll.info – tricky! They’ve basically purchased a .info domain name & created a subdomain on it to look like ebay.

Here’s are screenshots of the real eBay login page & the spammer’s login page (click to view larger):

Looking between the two of them, there are some other very small tip-offs that will tell you it’s fake – but the bottom line is don’t do what they want you to do: Don’t use the links in their email… instead go type the URL in yourself (in this case, simply www.eBay.com) and double check your account that way. More often than not a confusing piece of email like this will be spam… so don’t be too trusting. Spammers are getting smart – but do yourself a favor and learn how to outsmart their attempts to get your information!

Hope this helps someone. Now, I must stop procrastinating & work. :p

I’ve been working so much that all week, starting on Tuesday, I kept waking up thinking it was Friday. So here it is, finally Friday, and I feel like I should be really stoked about that, but I’m just plum tuckered out! And I have to work tomorrow…. so it’s really not even Friday yet. :*(

I went out to run errands today and there’s Christmas stuff everywhere, and I’m just not feeling very “in the spirit” of the holidays. Ug… today I’m just not feeling that great at all. Come to think of it, it’s probably due to my lack of sleep lastnight that I’m feeling so damn fragile right now. BLAH!

I did go to the gym yesterday which was good. I need to start going again more regularly for my mental health if nothing else. I’ve been so frickin crabby this week! Today got me thinking about how we’re almost at the New Year, and I’m so happy about that. This year has sucked in so many ways. I mean, business and friendship wise it’s been pretty amazing… but personal/emotional/family/relationship wise, it’s been really tough and I can only hope 2006 will bring better days. Some of the worst of this year got a tad better by June or July, but by then I’d conveniently gained a whopping 20 lbs. Yay for me!

Lately I’ve been just letting myself not freak out about the working out – mostly because I made an active decision to take on these 2 new projects and I knew it would make my life crazy for about 2 months, so I’m trying not to freak out on myself. I get a LOT done and I’m a little tired of how much I hear myself not recognize that & instead just push myself even harder. The empowered 30 year old bitch inside of me says “Get of my back! I am doing the best I can!”.

Anyway, I’m just venting. I actually need to head off to a client’s holiday party (weeeee!!). Normally in this state of mind I would bail, but I think it’ll be good for me to get out of the house & talk to people instead of being holed up in my house like I am so often. Plus, I love this client and actually look forward to hanging out with their team. Plus, there will be drinks, and boy do I need one of those!!!

Happy Friday, everyone.

OMG I’m SOOOOOO STOKED!!!!!! Ted just gave me the good news: Birdmonster won the LIVE 105 Not So Silent Night Local Band Contest and now they get to open up for all these huge bands tonite: The White Stripes, Death Cab for Cutie, Hot Hot Heat and Autolux!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!! If I were them I would be freaking out with excitement!!!

Misty actually just wrote up a great post on them, regarding a recent writeup they had in SFGate and just how *awesome* they are and how much we love them. xoxoxo

I’m SOOOOOO EXCITED FOR THEM!!! YAY!!!!!!

p.s. If you don’t have tix to the Live 105 deal (and/or hate the Bill Graham Civic as much as I do :p), you can go see Birdmonster play later on tonite at Hotel Utah!

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In other totally exciting local band news, Scissors For Lefty got signed to Rough Trade Records! Congrats you guys!!

Hijack & Birdmonster are next!!! It’s so awesome to know these guys & see them at the beginning of their kick ass careers. BIG HUGE HUGS TO YOU GUYS!!!!!

p.s. Check out Performer Mag’s latest feature articles: Hijack the Disco & Birdmonster. aawww yaaaa boys.