I had the strangest experience at the doctor's office today, which went as follows:

"Well, your blood preassure is low, so we need you to eat more salt and fat."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. Maybe have a hotdog for lunch."

I think perhaps my doctor is making a joke at my expense.

Yes applying for jobs ardous, I can relate.

Knitting and napping? hmm... Maybe knitting under the hobby section, lets potential employers know you actually have hobbies and other interest. Napping probably leave it off. I'm sure you can figure out more skills you can add, you have a large wealth of them. I know after not writing a resume for a while I felt pretty darn rusty.

Or, Jesse, you could send them an email saying that you're going to rent from someone who is clearly not a scam. This is what I told people who wanted me to send them money for folkfest tickets that they would then mail me. It got them to leave me alone at least.

Jesse, I wouldn't pursue it any further. For all you know, whatever fake transfer number you give the dude might be somebody else's legitimate transfer number...

Maybe just say something like you found a place that's letting you SEE and TOUR the apartment before putting any money down. ... and leave it at that?





In other news, does anyone else have this problem? I'm refreshing my resume to apply for some jobs and the only skills I can think of right now are "knitting and napping" but I'm not sure my prospective employers will be at all impressed... Thoughts?

Also, why is the whole job application process so arduous?

I've thought about The fake transfer. Not totally sure if I can just give some random numbers and hope it works or if I need a moneygram-esqe email to send him. I've never sent one. Maybe I could drag it out with a long winded, "I'm not sure this is the right apartment for me," sort of email. Though I am a little tentative dragging this out too far, as I'm not totally sure who I am messing with. It isn't slick enough to be organized crime, I think. I want to go on, but I want to be plausible, yet ridiculous at the same time if that is possible.

On a possibly unrelated note. I received four calls from Japan today within a half hour. I didn't feel like risking the potential bills, though I am now intrigued. If they call again I'm gonna answer.

What else can you do from here?
I suppose you could send them fake moneygram transaction info to inconvenience them with a fruitless trip to the store. Depending on how gullible they are you could repeat it again apologizing profusely for the typo ;)

Someone is trying to steal my money, not my identity... shall I proceed further down the rabbit hole? I've received two more emails from my new West African friend. The address I gave is from the Chelsea Drake hotel downtown Toronto, and the phone # is made up. I hope you enjoy. If anyone wants pictures, I can post them as well.


Hello Jesse,

I have attached the pictures of the apartment to this email,Thanks very much for all your time and we appreciate all your promise to take good care of our apartment,also thank you so much for the information you provided,me and my wife deliberated on your profile and we are so pleased with it.

My instincts tells me that you are the right tenant.Everything is okay and we are pleased with it.I can see your willingness in this rent, So as I shall be giving you the apartment, please again take care of the apartment so that I might be glad when I come back, As I have earlier told you,the money involved is not the problem,but I only need my apartment to be kept clean always until I will be back,so the monthly rent is $700 including the utilities inside, it all depends on the period you wish to stay in my apartment,I would not want you to get worried okay.you only have to tell me the numbers of months in which you can be able to pay as upfront/deposit e.g 1 month:$700,2 months:$1,400 etc,but I will like you to make first month rent for now because the money will be used to send you the necessary documents and the key of the apartment through the address you provided for me at ( 33 Gerrard st w Toronto Ontario M5G1Z4.) And as a man of his word I always have this human feelings so I will not do anything to stress or be difficult to my fellow human and that is why am doing all this..As you can see through the pictures,the apartment is beautifully furnished and later if you have checked inside of the apartment and you have pack in then you can make the remaining payment at the end of each month,also i would like to send the following documents to you via UPS or DHL courier service and it will be home delivery,

(1) Entrance and the rooms Keys
(2)Paper/Permanent house form(Containing your reference details)
(3)Payment Receipt.
(4)Full address and description of the house.

These will be sent to you in the address you have provided to me in the application form and the tracking number will be sent to you so that you can possibly occupy the apartment immediately.Once again,I am giving you this based on trust and do not disappoint me and I promise you that you will love the apartment..So me and my family are really happy to find a good person to occupy the home and I still want you to promise that you will not disappoint us..

About the payment, you are making this payment to my Personal Assistant (PA) via Moneygram Transfer,you can look for any walmart store near your home to make the payment via moneygram and there is moneygram outlet beside my office,And am going to ship this to you through UPS or DHL COURIER SERVICE , so immediately the payment has been confirmed the packages will be delivered to you, because am going to ship this to you in an express way.

This is the information that you will need to make the payment via Monegram Transfer (Walmart Store)

Receiver's Name.................. OPE OLAMIDE

Receiver's address............20 GRACE AVENUE
City:..........................................LEKKI
State:.......................................LAGOS
Country..................................NIGERIA
Zip code.................................23401


and after sending the money I will be needing the following information from you:

Senders full name
Senders full address
The amount sent
The REFERENCE NUMBER and that is the control number which is 8 digits number, the text question and answer..so if they ask you about this just tell them that:

Question.. WHO IS GREAT
Answer.....GOD


So I really appreciate your effort on my apartment, and am assuring you that immediately you see the apartment you will really love it,

Thanks and God bless you
Hope to hear from you back


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and then I got this about 5 minutes later


Hello Jesse,

I called you twice but your phone was on answering machine. Did you receive the last email I sent to you with the pictures and the payment instruction?

My data was not stolen.

Jesse - looks good - send it off if you haven't already :)

AD - thanks for the info, that is the time period of my student loans...

For those of you who are not yet aware of this, you probably should be as it potentially impacts very heavily on all of us.

If you applied for, took out or had basically any dealings with student loans between 2000 and 2006, the Federal Gov't has "lost" a USB stick and an external hard drive containing the names, SIN #, contact information including phone #, credit information, birth date etc. (basically anything that was on the application form) for 583,000 people.

This is enough information to both steal your identity, and seriously defraud you by taking credit out under your name. According to the gov't they are contacting everyone, but since a lot of you may not be using the same mailing address, you may never see the letter informing you of the loss of this information.

There is a phone number (1-866-885-1866) you can call to see if you had your information "lost".

If you are one of those unfortunate people, I recommend the following:

1) go in to your bank and tell them you want to be informed ANY time that they are contacted with respect to your credit information. Any attempt to use the information to take credit out under you or to steal your identity will usually involve your bank being contacted in some manner.

2) have your account flagged by the larger credit ratings companies, Equifax or TransUnion come to mind. It is up you if you choose to have credit reports run by them as this costs money. At this point, the Feds are pretty much refusing to cover any costs associated with covering your back-sides.

3) Optional, but depending on how angry you are, there are several major class-action lawsuits being launched over this. You may wish to join one.

4) Inform EVERYONE who may also be affected by this. There have been reports of people on the list being victims of identity theft already though no direct link to the information from the lists being used in those thefts has yet been established. Honestly one person suffering because of this is too many.

I will be following this closely and I know a lot of people who will be doing the same. Keep an eye on your information please.