I could have driven home faster

Single Rider Tour 2008 — part six in a series

So you may recall that when I ended my last post, I was waiting to board my flight home. My flight was scheduled to originally depart LAX at 6:00 p.m. but Air Traffic Control up in San Francisco had issued a ground stop, or something like that (I'm not up on all that fancy-schmancy flying lingo). Well they ended up getting us on the plane by about 6:45 p.m. and within minutes of sealing the door and pulling away from the gate we were informed that SFO was re-issuing the halt for all inbound flights. How long were we going to have to wait? SFO wasn't saying.

There we sat, on the tarmac, watching our satellite TV (when it was working), and waiting for the green light to get home. I should mention that this was my first time flying Virgin America and I just so happened to be one of the first people to be seated in their brand new "Main Cabin Select" class of seats. How was it? I'll post a review of it in a few days. But overall I really have to say that Virgin America has the nicest planes; they don't smell like stale coffee and vomit yet.

Around 8:30 the captain gets on the PA system to let us know that SFO isn't giving them a clear answer as to whether or not the ground halt has been lifted, but even if it is, there are a bunch of other flights that waiting to land so they have plenty of other flights that are due in before we can even think of taking off. The waiting continues. While many other travelers are starting to freak out about the delay, I remain calm. It makes no sense in a situation like that to get all worked up. ATC doesn't feel it's safe for planes to land, and I appreciate that decision because I know they're doing it to keep me alive.

An hour later we finally get confirmation that we are cleared for departure and being taxiing to the runway for takeoff. And then, in a twisted moment of deja-vu we get word that we're being ask to hold. Again. At this point, even I'm getting restless. And I'm getting worried that my car, parked at the San Bruno BART station might be towed as my long term parking permit will expire at midnight.

We finally take to the sky around 10:30. We land smoothly about an hour later. By midnight I've claimed my luggage and wearily head to the SFO AirTrain to take me to the transfer station to catch the BART train back to my car. I arrive at the station to find that the BART station gates are closed and the station is closed. Crap. I'm totally confused as the BART website indicated that the train I needed would be running into the early morning. My only option is to take a taxi to my car. But getting back to the terminal would prove to me trickier as the AirTrain that would normally do that was taken offline for the night and the SFO facilities people gave me bad instructions on how to get back to the terminal. An hour after I've landed and I'm still no closer to getting to my car than when I first landed.

A $20 cab ride later I'm finally at my car. It's 1:30 a.m. and I've still got an hour long drive home ahead of me. And laundry after that. But, I'm alive. Though I'm not sure I'll be mentally alive at work in a couple of hours.

Is America F'd? If you're a graphic designer, you already know the answer.

A word of warning for those with virgin ears (and eyes). This post (both text and the embedded video) has the word fuck in it. Don't worry, it's completely justified.


America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

Basically this is labeled an opinion piece, but seriously, when the opinion is so categorically true, it's really a fact. A sad fact of how much some people are willing to pay for crap design, and that it devalues and discredits designers that really do deserve the big bucks. Are we as American's becoming ambivalent to Wal-mart quality design? Yes. Do we care? Apparently not, because as long as we pay top dollar for it, we must be getting our money's worth, right? I won't even answer that because the reality is far too depressing.

If you'll excuse, I'm going to go stab myself with Illustrator's knife tool until the Pantone 1795C bleeds into the gutter.

[via CreativeBits.org]

Scam artists…Fear my gay wrath!

This is Part 2 of my "I'm so in a gay rage right now!" post. If you haven't read the original post where this story began, you probably should read it now or the rest of this won't make a whole lotta sense to ya.

Yes I had no idea how deep my sweet li'l mom had gotten herself into this scam. But as we kept talking, I quickly learned it was even worse than I had imagined. Turns out the site link she had given me was her second online store, her first is what you can see below.



Mind you, it's tons prettier and more professional looking than the first site she had directed me to but it's still nothing but page after page of banner ads that was marketed to my mom as an online storefront. At this point I was speechless. Not only was one group of scammers after my mom, but there's a second set as well. (Just tonight I learned that the prettier site above cost her $7000. Good thing I had just parked my car or I would have driven off the damn road in shock.) Depending on the website being designed, it's not unrealistic to pay about $100/hour for quality work. Looking at the two sites my mom paid for, I simply can't see anywhere close to her getting her money's worth. As a designer myself, seeing this happen makes me physically ill.

My gay rage had mutated into a gay wrath. These assholes are going to pay. I told my mom — now quite overcome with regret and embarrassment upon realizing that she'd been scammed — to calm down and that I was going to look into this other company and then get back to her. Turns out this other company had actually contacted her first and set up the site, and then the she was contact by a second company who convinced her that the first company was run by untrustworthy people and convinced her she'd do better with them, which is how she ended up with that ugly-ass site from the first part of the story. Well I used my interweb research skills to be dead-ended because the first company used a proxy registrar to set up their own company's domain, and tracing them would be very difficult. At this point it was suggested that in addition to contacting her bank and the credit agencies, that she also contact the attorney general for advice on how to get all of her money back. I called her back and she with a crushed spirit said hello. I had her write down her "tasks" and tried to give her a bit of a pep talk as I was rushing into a meeting. She said she'd do what she could and to call back over the weekend when we'd have more time to talk.

During the meeting my mind kept drifting to my mom's predicament. I honestly considered at one point the scenario of hopping on the next flight to where these company's were doing business from (conveniently in the same metropolis) and confronting them in person. Then I remembered that I'm one of the least intimidating people on the planet so I put that in my back pocket as a "plan b."

Over the weekend I did a little more sleuthing to see if anyone else had fallen for this same scam. I've never heard of it before so for all I know it's something that's just starting. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to target seniors because of their lack of actual knowledge of how things work on the internet. My theory is that these scammers would want to do as little work as possible so they'd probably cut corners and just use a template for all of their victims websites. While I couldn't find a similar site to my mom's ugly site, I did find one that was nearly identical to the pretty site. Take a look for yourself.



I don't know if I should be thrilled or worried that I could think like a scammer in my sleuthing. I'll sleep better if I reason that it was just a solid use of logic and psychology. Anyway, I called my mom back tonight to get an update on how she'd come on her tasks, and give her the newest information I had found. She kept beating herself up for letting herself be scammed. I told her she shouldn't blame herself, and that what's done is done and now we need to focus on fixing it. She 's ready to tell them to keep whatever money they've spent and just give the rest back. I told her that's not an option, she needs to have all $12,600 returned but it could be a lengthy battle for it to happen. If the attorney general is a dead end (as I suspect they might be) I told her we need to go to the media, local and then national, and get them involved on bringing attention to this new type of scam…like 60 Minutes or Dateline. Yes I know it's sensationalistic journalism at best, but hell, if it might help my mom get her retirement fund back, and prevent other's parents from getting conned, then it'll be worth it.

Tomorrow morning she's going to call the attorney general for advice. We'll figure out the next steps after that. Something tells me this ain't close to being over anytime soon. And I've still got "plan b" in my back pocket. Stay tuned…

I am so in a gay rage right now!

First things first. How much would you pay someone to design an online store where you can sell name brand merchandise, never have to ship or receive anything yourself, never have to handle billing or purchasing, but basically just sit back and watch the "unlimited income" flooding in?

Hmmm… You seem skeptical.

Now, what if I told your website would be professionally designed to look like this, using the latest in design technology:



Interesting! You seem more skeptical than before. Let's continue.

And finally, what if the person cold-called you some random weeknight offering you all this for a "small" one-time investment. On your credit card. And he needs your 3-digit security code from the back of your card to process the payment. Oh, and your social security number for the W9 form. And just a few other personal bits of information to verify your identity.

If you're not yelling, "It's a scam! He's trying to steal your money and identity! Hang up…HANG UP!!!" at your computer display, you're probably my dear, sweet, innocent, naive mother.

Bless my mom's heart, she thought she was making a sound business decision to aide in her retirement years. But she's barely only been online for two years now — and only email at that — so how was she to know scams like this exist or that she could be taken to the cleaners. She only watches Christian satellite broadcasts, so she's not seen the countless Dateline and 20/20 and nightly news stories about identity theft and internet scams out there. Plus, looking back over my whole life, she's always been trying out the "get rich quick" and "earn unlimited income without lifting a finger" schemes that have come along over the years. She's an enteral optimist, where as I, having watched all this happen over the years, am very much not an optimist.

It wasn't until Tuesday night that I learned about my mom's new venture. I was driving when she told me so I couldn't exactly look at it right then or the rest of the conversation would have been decidedly different. And by the time I got home after 11 non-stop hours at the office, all I could do was nuke up some corn dogs and fall asleep while eating them. After years of watching her get rich quick efforts come and go with little collateral damage, I wasn't as worried as I should have been. It wasn't until Wednesday night that I remembered what we'd talked about an I logged on to check out her business venture. The moment the page started loading banner ad upon banner ad my heart sank and I wanted to vomit. Someone had suckered her into thinking pages of banner ads was an "online storefront" and she didn't know any different; she's never bought anything online before. Heck, I don't think she's even googled once!

Adding insult to injury, not only was she scammed into thinking she was joining the exciting world of online shopping and about to make an endless amount of money, but the website looks like shit! Professionally designed my ass, the little link in the bottom of the page pointing back to an online website creating tool proves that it couldn't have been. I've seen better design MySpace pages, and that's saying something. Adding to the nausea was a growing sense of panic and anger…I was feeling the onset of a gay rage. I spent the next 4 hours into the early morning researching as much about the perpetrators of the scam as possible and figuring out how to tell my mom without her thinking I was just dumping on her good idea or making her feel like a fool.

On Friday morning I'd gather as much information as I could and just decided I'd just ask her questions that would lead her to figure out she made a mistake and then help guide her on what to do next for damage control. I had no idea that how bad it really was.

I'm getting all worked up into a rage again so I'll post the rest of this when I've calmed down enough to type without breaking the keyboard and grinding my teeth. Stay tuned…