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I received this email at my work email address, it appeared in my Junk E-mail folder in Outlook. This is kind of unusual since I rarely receive spam at work, I think we must have pretty good spam filters.
-----Original Message----- From: by-joc@sympatico.ca [mailto:by-joc@sympatico.ca] Sent: Monday, June 16, 2008 8:56 AM To: winner@freelotto.co.uk Subject: Congratulation
You won the sum of $2,000,000.00 you arehereby advice to get back to us, to claim your prize.
Contact Mr. Richard Smith Email: (contactrichardsmith01@btinternet.com)
People who speak the English language rarely use the term "Congratulation" in the singular form, as in the subject field of this email.
The email address winner@freelotto.co.uk is not my email address, there's no reason why my email wouldn't appear on an email to me, unless it's a bulk email, and I don't think a large number of people won $2M.
The sender's email address is (purportedly) by-joc@sympatico.ca, which is a free webmail address from an ISP in Canada. A legitimate email would be from an organization.
You wouldn't expect an email from Canada for a UK lottery, or vice versa.
"You won" is kind of abrupt; most would use "You have won" or "You've won". "Advice" should be "advised", and the language "get back to us" is very informal compared to the rest of the sentence. Overall it looks like it was written by a non-English speaker, which is unusual for a British official but may be normal for a Canadian.
"Arehereby" is a typo, also the language seems overly stern for a congratulatory email. You would expect an email of this type to have been proofread.
If this is an email from a lottery in the UK, you would expect the winning amount in British pounds "£2,000,000.00" or euros "€2,000,000.00", not in dollars "$2,000,000.00".
The email provides a third email address for contact, from a third ISP which turns out to be a free webmail address from an ISP in the UK.
The weirdly punctuated list of personal information to be provided to claim the prize. It doesn't seem normal to request the sex of the winner.
Tony and I went to the Indy 500 again this year, this was our second time. Tony's really into it because he grew up in Indiana, but I didn't really know much about Indy racing. I've become a much bigger fan since we started going, it's really a great spectacle, with attendance estimated as high as 500,000, although no one knows exactly how many were there. Here's a picture Tony took from our seats. This is the back stretch going towards the start/finish line, you can see the pit crews watching the racing. And NASCAR fans can just suck it if they think their cars are fast.
I knew the first six, but I didn't know San Antonio was seventh. I wouldn't have bet that San Antonio was bigger than Dallas (that kind of devalues that expression, doesn't it?) I think most folks who don't live in Houston are surprised that Houston is fourth. I didn't realize that New York was as big as LA, Chicago and Houston put together.
Rank
City
State
Population
1
New York City
New York
8,250,567
2
Los Angeles
California
3,849,378
3
Chicago
Illinois
2,833,321
4
Houston
Texas
2,144,491
5
Phoenix
Arizona
1,512,986
6
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
1,448,394
7
San Antonio
Texas
1,296,682
8
San Diego
California
1,256,951
9
Dallas
Texas
1,232,940
10
San Jose
California
929,936
From wikipedia, the table lists the incorporated places in the United States with population estimated by the United States Census Bureau on 2006-07-01.
One of my favorite bloggers got started because she was fired for writing about her boss. And this editor resigned from her job at Gawker because of her compulsive oversharing. And Mark Jen was fired from Google because he blogged about the company.
I haven't blogged negatively about companies I've worked for because there really hasn't been much to write negatively about. I enjoy my job (people ask me if I love my job, I say it's great but if they stopped paying me I'd stop showing up. Does that mean I don't love it?) and I'm not one of those people who needs controversy or attention. I don't write (much) about politics or religion, it's like trying to teach a pig to dance; it will just frustrate you and annoy the pig. You're not going to convert anyone to your points-of-view, and it creates animosity and divisiveness.
I've had folks ask me to take their names or information off the site, some nicely, some not so nicely, and I've always agreed. Not because I believe their threats (I won't remove this post) but because there's no need for me to generate resentment. I wouldn't want to upset my reader.
I had a fight with a (now ex-) girlfriend about her not being on my blog, she thought if she was important to me I should blog about her. I've fought with girlfriends about dumber things, all pointing to seeming insufficiencies in their importance to me. In retrospect it's best that I didn't blog about her, we're still friends.
So I've tried to be nice-guy blogger, and that's probably why I have reader and not readers. But I'm happy with my life and I lovelike am satisfied with my job and I have no urge to mess it all up.
Drew's blog
by Justina Robson. Last updated 6/15/2008. See what I've been reading lately 