Wayne and Erika Pfeiler

Have you received an email like this one? Usually these work by convincing people to hand over their bank account information to receive a "wire transfer" for the prize money. Then the criminals bleed your account dry. My favorite line in this one is where it says "we request that you keep this award strictly from public notice until the entire process of transferring your claims has been completed". What's your favorite/most hated internet scam?

QUEST LOTTERY GAMES INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS PROGRAMS
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675 DEFLOCKLAAN STRAAT 1657 JK
AMSTERDAM THE NETHERLANDS.
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PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT
DEAR SIR/MADAM,
RESULTS FOR FIRST CATEGORY DRAWS.
After a successful completion of the first category draws of QUEST-LOTTERY GAMES INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS.
You have emerged as one of the winners of the QUEST-LOTTERY GAME INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS, which is part of our promotional draws. Participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 30,000 email addresses of individuals and companies from America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Middle East, and New Zealand as part of our International Promotions Program.
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You/Your Company, attached to:
TICKET NUMBER:AS1-VC9-65LU
SERIAL NUMBER:TYP-LDD
LUCKY NUMBER:DSE-MJK-29RGN
REFERENCE NUMBER: QUI-UU4-5L
BATCH NUMBER:BXQ6-Y22UY-POQ
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As a category (A) winner, you have been selected by computer balloting system where only email addresses are soughted,from a total numbers of 30,000 email addresses drawn from all over the globe. After an automated computer ballot of our International Promotions Program consequently won in the first Category.
You have therefore been awarded a lump sum pay out of 2,000,000.00EUROS. Which is the winning payout for first categories winners. This is from the total prize money of 12,000,000.00Euros shared among the six international winners in the FIRST categories.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!
You have to contact the (File/Claim Officer) for immediate remittance your E-mail address won the lucky number.
To avoid mix up of numbers and names of any kind, we request that you keep this award strictly from public notice until the entire process of transferring your claims has been completed, and your funds remitted to your account. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants of this program required by the (QUEST-LOTTERY GAMES INTERNATIONAL).
We also wish to bring to your notice our End of Year
(2006) high stakes where you stand a chance of winning up to 13 million Euros; We hope that with a part of your prize you will participate.
To begin your claims process of your winning prize, please contact your claims agent through e-mail or telephone,fax immedaitely you received this notification for due processing and remittance of your prize money to a designated account of your choice.
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File/Claim Officer
MR.PIRES VAN MOORE.
manager International Remmittance/Credit unit Facility Management Region CITI Trust Finance & Security
98 Kimpering Straat
1263 Qx Amsterdam Netherlandse
Tel: + 31-644-759-xxx
Fax: + 31-847-535-xxx
EMAIL: xxx@aim.com

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Remember, you must contact your claim agent not later than july 20th 2006 after this date, all funds will be returned as unclaimed
NOTE: To avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please remember to quote your reference and batch numbers provided below in every one of your correspondence with your claims agent.
You are to provide the below details,to enable the speedy evaluation and processing of your winnings.
we advice that you adhere strictly to their procedures to avoid any disqualifications and subsequent cancellation.

1.Your full names:
2. your full home / office address:
3. direct telephone/fax numbers:

the above detailed information will be absolutely necessary to file in your claims.
Congratulations once again from all staffs of (QUEST-LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS) thank you for being part of our promotions program.
Sincerely,
THE LOTTERY COORDINATOR,
QUEST-LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS.
Sincerely Your's,
Miss.Tina Van Rouhdoff.
N.B. Any breach of confidentiality on the part of the winners will result to disqualification. Please do not reply to this mail.
Contact your claims agent.

Posted by Wayne at 09:55 AM | Permalink

We aren't taking any classes this summer, so we haven't had to study for tests and turn in assignments. However, since we're in graduate school, it doesn't mean we get time off either. Basically in research-oriented graduate programs around here, the students are expected to convert from the normal (20 hours of classes and studying + 20 hours of research) per week into 40 hours/week of research.

If you've never done anything like that, I'll explain it a bit. Research means lots of things. We have to find and read lots of technical journal articles to find out what other researchers have done and are doing around the world in our area of interest. Luckily, these are mostly available online, so we don't have to spend hours in a library. After we think we've learned enough about whatever we want to study, we come up with some new unanswered questions and design an experiment that should try to answer those questions. You know, all that scientific method stuff. So after we've got a plan about what we want to do, we order supplies and grow up cells/bacteria that we'll need for the experiements. When we've got everything together, we spend lots of time in the lab, and/or in front of a computer to run the tests. Often times the test don't go the way we expect, or they just don't work. This usually calls for changing the plans or repeating the experiements. Sometimes we'll stumble across something really interesting and the research will take a new turn, but that can't be predicted. So after we get losts of results from the experiments, we decide what all the data tell us. By the way, in science-talk, data is a plural word and datum is the singular. So we then we sit down to make lots of charts and figures and try to write a paper about what we learned and why it's important. This paper will then be sent off to a scientific journal editor.

You might think that's the end of it, but it's not over yet. The editor will send copies on to people called reviewers who will scrutinize our paper and decide what they think about it. They'll make suggestions for changes, or ask us to repeat or add more experiments to make the paper better. If we're particularly unlucky, the reviewer might just say the paper isn't worth publishing and reject it outright. So we typically have to wait 3 monts to a year to hear back about what the reviewers think, and then we'll make whatever changes they asked for. After a second round of review, the journal will hopefully accept the paper, and it will be published.

So that's basically what graduate students do over the summer. Not as much fun as trips to Mexico, or Caribbean cruises, but hopefully the stuff we work on will be helpful to people in the future.

Posted by Wayne at 05:30 PM | Permalink