Exactly! Why would this person go to so much trouble to even find a "next course of action?" Having your own mail domain is pretty cool for this kind of thing, but why spend ANY time trying to ensure the integrity of a mail list for some other company? I think a generic letter to send out when this happens is probably the extent any good Samaritan should reasonably go to.

I would recommend the "next course of action" being to delete the email address that is part of a compromised list, make a new one for communicating with the company, and then don't worry about it anymore.

I agree 100%. My suggestion for waiting is due to the fact that you don't actually know how much money the insurance company will give you, until they actually give you the money. Why spend money you don't have, or mentally prepare to spend such money, on consumption of consumer electronics? Honestly, I think most people spend money they don't have, but it would be a better idea to know what your budget is before you spend it, or made decisions regarding spending it.

If I had to replace all the technology in my house, I would immediately replace my laptop (as an independent software contractor it is my livelihood) and my cell phone. There is nothing else I would start mentally replacing before I had the cash in my hand, and even after that point, I'm not sure if I would replace anything, since my electronics sound like they suck compared to yours, and my insurance company MIGHT give me $15 for my crappy speakers.

There might be something you enjoy spending 10k on more than TVs and electronics too. That's why I like the post I replied to. The above approach might help you find out if there is something you like more.

      -Brian J. Stinar-

Yes, 'worker' != 'ceo.'

Every single time I get a paycheck I am paying my tax bill. By now, it's not much of a surprise but it sure isn't zero...

Hello,

I always find it interesting when our IT person describes to me in great detail all the not-save-for-work pages people have been viewing at work. You could make this really, really interesting (hot seat style) by building up a lot of tension like you are about to 'out' someone for inappropriate Internet use, in front of everyone. If you wanted it to be all in good fun, you could use real inappropriate pages that people are looking at, and real data with number of times they have accessed those pages, but not actually name any names.

Anyways, I hope you like this idea.

        -Brian J. Stinar-

I like the solar powered idea - then you can throw your grenade and just leave it for a while.

I'm not sure if being a South Korean company necessarily means they build most of their stuff in South Korea. South Korea is a developed country, and has much higher labor costs as compared to China. Maybe they do, but I wouldn't think so (no actual evidence here to back up my suspicion.)

Apple is an American company, but I don't think they build most of their products in the United States.

Wait... We don't have diplomatic relations with Iran, so how is it we are making diplomatic requests? Do they get to make diplomatic requests of us?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations

      -Brian J. Stinar-

Are you kidding? 40k USD per year for that job in *AFRICAN COUNTRY RUN BY A DICTATOR* is amazing! He has three cars, two drivers, six maids, two chefs, a butler, a 15,000 square foot mansion, a private army AND parties out with *DICTATOR* on the weekends. Don't you remember the scene from Eurotrip in Eastern Europe?

Movie Name: EuroTrip (2004)
Quote:

Waiter: [Scottie tosses the waiter a nickel] Ah! A nickel! [waiter
    shows his manager] You see this? [slaps the manager] I quit. I open
    my own hotel.

When I went to Costa Rica, I bought three bananas for 1.25 cents (1 + 1/4 cents, not dollars). Costa Rica is rich for Central America, and is an agricultural power house, but that's still REALLY cheap. It all depends on the location, and possibly in this case, the exaggeration.

        -Brian J. Stinar-

*This post has been edited for content to avoid offending any specific Africans living in countries run by dictators, general offense is fine for humor purposes.*

Send me a message if you would like to talk about this. I have a few ideas which may be of use, but I have no idea if they are feasible, practical or desirable. Most of the ways that were discussed here with burying things can be automated with custom software (auto form submitters, anyone?) As well as a number of the other suggestions given. I have a small software consulting company, and I am very interested in talking with you (free initial quote) about how custom software may be used to help solve your problem.

I'm the Brian Stinar with blog posts on software development, not the Brian Stinar with a web page on being an opera singer. You can leave me a comment on my blog, a message on facebook, or check out any of the other forums I'm on.

Thanks and good luck,

      -Brian J. Stinar-

Hello,

I highly recommend "Ideum." (http://www.ideum.com/) They are based near Albuquerque, New Mexico and specialize in EXACTLY that sort of thing. I interviewed with this company during a job search I went through a few months ago, but after receiving an offer I decided to work with another small company that provided a better offer instead. Ideum has some cool table top, and desk top museum exhibits in place for major museums already. The founder, Jim Spadaccini, is an extremely friendly and nice guy.

They have a general software framework in place built using ActionScript and C++ to make building custom, interactive, touch-screen programs very fast. Their process was quite impressive, and seemed well designed to segregate the work between the hard core coder and the hard core artist in order to quickly make an impressive exhibit. One of the coolest products they were developing was called "GestureWorks." It is designed to make programming multi-touch displays very easy in ActionScript. As a programmer, I can add an eventListener to an object for "throw away" or for "click and hold."

If you give them a call, tell Jim that Brian Stinar referred you! If he gets busy enough, maybe I'll get a consulting or contracting gig on the side out of it.

I hope this help,

      -Brian J. Stinar-

Hey,

I ride my road bike around a lot. Due to that fact that I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the weather almost always allows bicycling as a means of transportation, I have been able to keep my goal of going through one tank of gas per month on my SUV. I'm also fairly into mountain biking, with the beautiful foot hills available for single track and Sandia mountain available for downhill riding.

So, I'm pretty into biking. The goal of the above was to add SOME level of credibility to the below...

I tried Expresso at the University of New Mexico gym and it was not that cool. I'm not certain what model I was on, or what levels were loaded but it definitely did not have triggers on the handlebars for shooting anything. It has about 15 boring levels involving riding around a race track. I thought the most interesting was "campus loop." At first, I was excited under the hope that collisions would recoil and there would be rumble strips build into various locations around the bike. Unfortunately, whenever I ran into something I just ghosted through it.

The gearing mechanism was pretty cool. Most of the time exercise bikes don't respond realistically at all to gearing, but the Expresso model I was on did more so than anything else I've been on. The lact of collisions, off-roading, and angry taunts from the nonexistent collisions were probably my three main criticisms.

Basically, I think I was disappointed by how cool the Expresso I was on COULD have been, but wasn't. Then again, the University did not provide ANY internet connectivity for the Expresso and probably didn't have the latest and greatest model. If I could race against people from around the U.S, interacting in a fun way, I think Expresso would have been cool as I tried it. Stand-alone, it was pretty boring.

      -Brian J. Stinar-