"What You Need, When You Need It"

Have you ever been surfing the Internet and stumbled across a website that looked like the picture above? Is the motto in my title familiar to you? If so, you've run afoul of the cybersquatter. Cybersquatters are lowlifes who profit off of foolish or ignorant web users and sometimes the hard work of others.

In order to make an independent website, one needs a "domain name" - the URL. Many websites, like the blog you're reading now, have domains provided by a parent ocmpany - Google - for free. If you want your very own domain with no ties to other companies, though, you have to pay for it.

What cybersquatters like to do is get good URLs before a legitimate business or person can. They then turn the website into a cesspool of advertising, but add a few things to try and trick people who aren't paying attention into thinking that the site is a legitimate resource for information or media. They'll also offer to sell the address to anyone who wants it - at a very high price so they can buy more domains to squat on. I sometimes fell prey to these sites when I was younger. If you click on any of their links or make any searches on their search bar, the cybersquatters make money.

One example of a cybersquatter is "Goggle.com", a seething mass of ads that seeks to trap people who accidentally misspell "Google" when typing in their address bar. A rumor made the rounds back in 2006 that Goggle would infect your computer with unstoppable viruses if you visited it. While not true, Goggle is not a website you should visit, as its owners are obviously profiting off of barely legal means and they know it.

Here's how to avoid giving these jerks money:

* Avoid typing addresses directly into the URL bar. Use bookmarks and search engines instead.
* If you see a website that looks like the one above (especially if it has the motto "What you need, when you need it"), immediately hit the Back button and do not visit that site again.
* Use a little common sense. If you find a website called, for instance, "cats.com" and it has pet care links but also links to movie downloads and sports news on the same page, it's a cybersquatter. (I tried cats.com to see if it was a cybersquatter, and although it doesn't have the unrelated links it is still very suspicious looking and I am certain it is not a real site. Do not ever visit cats.com.)
* Adblock and Noscript will protect you if you accidentally visit a cybersquatter.
* You can avoid "Goggle" by making Google your homepage. Then you never need to type Google into the URL bar.

Here's a great article about cybersquatters:
http://thecoffeedesk.com/news/index.php/2009/06/23/what-you-need-when-you-need-it/

The Robocall Squad Won't GIve Up

I really wish sometimes that nobody was gullible enough to fall for robocall scams. Otherwise, they wouldn't exist. Clearly, someone must be taking them seriously if they're still around.

Today's call was from "WCA", talking about health insurance. Looking up their opening line ("Hello, this is WCA calling") shows me that this group, like most of the others, has been active for at least a couple of years and nobody seems to be able to find them and arrest them. Looking at search results, WCA has also tried several of the other pitches other robocall scam rings use, like Home Protection's security systems and Cardholder Services' credit card debt assistance.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that there is not a single legit telemarketer left in the country. Non-criminal money is made on the Internet now... not to say that the Internet doesn't have any crime. Heck, just look at my previous blog entry. Stay smart and ignore robocalls.

How to Avoid Advance Fee Fraud

It used to be a frequent thing to see news stories about people who were scammed out of hundreds or thousands of dollars by online fraudsters who promised huge amounts of money. Most often called the "Nigerian banker scam", these dirty tricks affected hundreds of people every year, and undoubtedly even more went unreported due to the victims feeling ashamed that they fell for it. If you can believe it, these scams are still ongoing even today, and people are still taking the bait. Here's what I know about Nigerian banker scams - or, their proper name, "advance fee fraud".

The basic idea behind advance fee fraud is to promise a massive reward in exchange for just a small amount of money up front. Obviously, there is no reward, and the scammer cuts and runs after milking the victim. The scam is called the "Nigerian banker" scam because the most famous version of advance fee fraud is a claim that a rich man in Nigeria has died and his massive wealth is supposed to be split between the writer (scammer) and the helper (victim). The victim is supposedly needed because the scammer needs to move the money from one account to another, or some other nebulous reason. As for the "Nigerian" part being so frequent? The majority of advance fee fraud cases come from Nigeria. The country is a hotbed of crime, online and off.

So how does it work? First the scammer trawls the Internet for email addresses. Comments pages and message boards are common methods of getting emails. He then sends all of the addresses a form letter that lays out the details of how the victim can get a whole lot of money for very little work. If they reply and seem hooked, the scammer will start asking for money. For whatever reason, there are suddenly all sorts of fees that can't be paid with the huge stockpile of cash, or can't wait until after the money is free. Sometimes the scammer claims to be very poor and needs some money to stay safe. Other times the money is locked behind deposit fees or customs charges. The scammer hopes the victim will consider it an easy choice to pay a little money now to get a big pile of money later. But since there's no big pile of money, the scammer just strings the victim along until they catch on or go bankrupt. There are cases of victims borrowing from friends and selling possessions in desperation, constantly thinking that the prize is just around the corner. There are even cases of people actually flying to Nigeria to collect the money, and getting robbed or even murdered once there by the very person they were communicating with via email.

There are other, similar scams, too. Some scammers use fake websites that look like popular online stores to get people to enter their credit card numbers or passwords. Others pretend to be charities, soliciting money from generous people who think they're helping the poor when they're only lining the pockets of a crook.

Fortunately, if you have any idea what you're doing, you can easily avoid advance fee fraud. Here's a simple list of tips on what to look for.

1: Is the email from Nigeria? While not all scams are Nigerian, many are, and it's likely you wouldn't be contacted legitimately by Nigeria.

2: Is the email in ALL-CAPS, or does it use lots and lots of caps for emphasis? Professional people do not use all caps when trying to negotiate major business deals. It looks silly and is hard to read.

3: Are you being promised something for nothing, or a huge reward for very little work? If so, you're basically guaranteed to be looking at a scam.

4: If you reply to such an offer and are asked to give money or personal information, IMMEDIATELY stop contact and do not provide anything.

5: Be wary if the email throws around lots of religious phrases like "Greetings in Christ" and "May God be with you". Scammers will frequently pretend to be deeply religious to try and convince victims that they are legit. A victim may believe that someone so pious must be telling the truth. However, religion is very easily faked over the Internet. These people do not have the values they claim to. Stay away.

6: Scammers can't even send you an email if you don't post your address anywhere. A good piece of advice is to have two email accounts. Give one to only friends, and use the other whenever a website needs it. This will keep your personal address from getting any spam at all, not just scams. The other can use the Junk feature of most email services to keep suspicious mail quarantined.

7: Oh, and by the way: If somebody wants to give somebody else millions of dollars, they're not going to pick email addresses at random. That's stupid.

The Magazine Onslaught

Magazines used to be a nifty media form - every month, you'd get a book in the mail all about a certain topic, and you'd keep getting new issues throughout the year. It was a nice feeling of familiarity. You'd get to know the authors' names and look forward to recurring sections with excitement. You'd learn new things. You'd discover stuff you'd never heard of, and find out more about things you did.

Today, the Internet has neutered magazines much the same way it has newspapers. For magazines, the situation is actually worse - even the most frequently published magazines are weekly, while newspapers are daily. This means newspapers are more nimble than magazines when it comes to news. Of course, the Internet obliterates them both in speed and scope.

When I was a kid, I loved magazines. I subscribed to quite a few over the years. Here's a quick look at what I grew up reading.

Your Big Backyard
This was my first magazine. Your Big Backyard is aimed at young kids, and is about animals and nature. My mom correctly guessed that I'd enjoy the subject. I don't remember much about Your Big Backyard since I was so young when I received it.

Ranger Rick
This is the "big kid" version of Your Big Backyard. Once I'd proven my reading ability, I was upgraded to it. I subscribed to Ranger Rick for several years and loved every issue. I remember one night one of my teachers visited my house. She'd been cleaning out her home and had found a whole bunch of Ranger Rick magazines from the late 1980s. They were in great shape, and I eagerly claimed them. The magazines stayed with me for years.

Highlights
1996 was the Year of the Magazine for me. While I had only Ranger Rick before this time, in 1996 I suddenly was subscribed to a half-dozen magazines. I can't recall exactly why my mom enjoyed giving me so many, but I'll guess that it was lots of cheap and fun reading material - and I always loved reading.

Highlights is a classic children's magazine. Memorable for including a wide variety of content, from standalone short stories to modern-day news pieces to the guidance offered by Goofus and Gallant, Highlights was a grab bag of stuff that could vary wildly in terms of catching my interest from issue to issue.

Boys' Life
The only one of my magazines that catered exclusively to my gender was always viewed by me as the most "adult" of the lot. While it was certainly well within my reading level, it talked about some slightly more advanced subjects and included stories about things like the novel Brian's Winter - which is about a boy stranded alone fending for himself.

The two regular sections I recall best are the comics and the section near the back filled with old-school advertisements similar to those from old comic books, where gimmicky toys like x-ray specs are peddled to the kids. I never ordered anything, but I sometimes daydreamed about it.

Disney Adventures
As you might guess, this magazine (which was printed small, like how TV Guide used to be) had a Disney theme, although it talked about other things as well. The first issue I ever got featured Jurassic Park: The Lost World on it. There was a contest inside to win a life-size statue of the famous raptor dinosaurs featured in the series. I entered, and as you probably guessed, lost. I don't know where I would have put a life-size raptor anyway.

As time went on, the comics at the back of the magazine got bigger and bigger, eventually taking over roughly half or more of each issue. I mostly preferred the articles, and lost interest in the magazine as a result.

National Geographic Kids
This one was a little later than the others, I think - I remember getting issues from 1997, not 96. It was mostly about science and nature, as you'd expect from National Geographic. I don't remember too much about it, though. 

Nickelodeon Magazine
This was the first of the tidal wave of magazines to show up on my doorstep. My first issue was from October 1995. Nickelodeon Magazine grew to become my favorite of the many magazines I subscribed to. It covered many different topics, had a comics section in the middle, and frequently featured some sort of punch-out gimmick or prank label to have fun with.

The Magazine Extinction
As time went on, I got fewer and fewer magazines. When 1997 rolled around, I elected to drop Highlights and Boys' Life but added National Geographic Kids. Before 1998, my mom came to me one day. She was hard up for money, and told me that to save money she had to cancel my magazine subscriptions. I could keep only one. It was easy to ditch Disney Adventures and National Geographic Kids, but that left two: Nickelodeon Magazine and Ranger Rick. After some thought, I decided it was time to say goodbye to Ranger Rick, leaving me with only Nickelodeon into the next year.

A couple years later I told my mom to cancel Nickelodeon Magazine as well. I don't remember why, but my guess is that I wanted to help save her money and was getting bored with the magazine, so I offered it as a sacrifice.

Electronic Gaming Monthly
In 2003, I was a young teenager with no magazine subscriptions. However, I'd gotten into the habit of buying EGM, a video game magazine, off of the shelf every now and then. First, I bought one in 2000 because it had a news story on a new Pokemon game. Then, in 2001, I got another that talked about Nintendo's new video game system, the Game Boy Advance. As time went on I bought issues more frequently before finally deciding to go for it and get a subscription as a birthday present.

For several years I looked forward to getting EGM in the mail, but I noticed a problem. Slowly, features were being removed from the magazine. First the cheats section vanished, with a note saying that it was on the EGM website now. Then, interviews were truncated with messages at the end saying that there were more questions on the website. When the monthly comic strip left as well in 2007 I grew disillusioned with the magazine and opted to take them up on the offer of just finding everything about video games online - except I didn't use their website because I had been a member of a different one since 2003. By the end of 2007, I was no longer a subscriber. Incredibly, EGM went out of business just a few issues later - although it was later brought back.

It's been a long time since I last subscribed to a magazine, but time and technology marches on. The age of magazines is over, and magazine companies are making the move to online - or dying out completely.

Why I Use AdBlock

My Internet browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox. This browser allows downloading of "add-ons", special applications that add new functions and features to the browser. The most popular of these is AdBlock, a program that automatically removes and disables advertising on the Internet. Even the commercials played before some YouTube videos are taken out. Thanks to this, I have seen virtually no advertisements online for about three years now. Why did I do this? I have three reasons.

The first issue is a fairly personal one: I have been resistant to advertising since childhood. Through a few stumbling blocks in my early years where a toy seen on TV turns out to be not as fun in reality, I grew hardened against advertising claims, and began to treat ads as always lying and exaggerating in order to secure my money or my parents' money. For years now I have only trusted advertising to mean one thing: "This product exists". While sometimes impressed by given statistics, I prefer to research the product first to see if their claims are true. Since ads use fine print and exaggerated hype on every topic from usefulness to effectiveness to features to pricing, I can't trust them for anything except "this product exists".

While advertising may not work on me, that seemed like all the better reason to keep it around. It helped pay for the websites I visited, and some of them need the help. So why did I turn off the ads? There were two important things that made me use AdBlock. The first reason was that advertisers were trying too hard. Much of the advertising on the internet isn’t alluring, just annoying. Pop-up windows that take up most of the screen get in the way of your content. Pop-under windows make your taskbar flash with a new window alert, and require closing. Commercials interrupt your video experience and cause more loading and buffering. Flashing animated images can hurt your eyes and distract you from the website’s text. But worst of all, my absolute least favorite type of ad, is the ad with sound. Frequently I would be browsing a page, listening to music in another window, when my experience is ruined by a voice at high volume prattling on. "Congratulations! You've won a free Macbook Air." I knew darn well that I didn’t win anything and that the "free" Macbook was probably buried under a pile of nonsense "offer forms" and paying for shipping and handling, so in addition to interrupting my browsing and drowning out my music the ad was also insulting my intelligence. These ads frequently made me consider AdBlock, but I was always hesitant to finally pull the trigger.

The last straw was the proliferation of what are essentially cybercriminals in advertising. These are the ads that cause viruses to be downloaded onto your computer. Normally, they weren’t a problem, because all I needed to do was not click the advertisement. However, when browsing one of my regular web destinations, I noticed a news post where the administrators were apologizing for an ad their advertising service provided that could cause viruses to download to a user's computer just by them loading the ad, not even clicking it. With my computer at risk, that was the final straw, and I immediately got off the site and did not return until I had downloaded and tested AdBlock.

Through harassment, unwanted pitches, loud interruptions, and cybercrime, I was left with no option but to use AdBlock, preventing any website from ever getting advertising dollars from my visits. This is what happens when an industry seems to be built on frustrating and hurting its consumer base: The smart ones tune out entirely.

All About Game Shows

When I was a kid, I went through a lot of different phases. The Asperger's symptom of "special interests" applies to me in that I would get really into something for a while, then grow bored and try something else. While in the throes of an interest, I'd read about it, or watch it, or collect it, depending on what it was. Some interests I came back to over and over every so often, while others I've dropped. I've had many special interests over the years, from dinosaurs to politics. One of my shorter-lived interests was the game show. When I was around ten years old, I took a liking to watching game shows, trying to answer the questions, and hoping people could win big. Here are my thoughts and memories on some of the most memorable game shows of my childhood.

Legends of the Hidden Temple
I should clarify that my ten-year-old game show watching was not the first time I watched game shows. The difference was that the first game shows I watched were specifically targeted at kids - Nickelodeon used to show lots of game shows, and I followed most of them. Legends of the Hidden Temple was my favorite of the group. This game show had an awesome setting that looked like ancient ruins in the jungle. The two competing teams of kids were chosen from a pool of possible team names, so there were recurring teams, but you didn't see the same teams every time. I think there was a Purple Monkey team, a Silver Spider team, and a Green Parrot team, among others (all animals you'd find in jungle ruins, of course). Adding to the spectacle was the character Olmec, a giant talking tiki head who explained the rules of each game.

After one team got enough points to beat the other team, the main event happened - a kid from the winning team was sent into the "hidden temple" itself - an obstacle course with different paths every episode. Temple Guards (hired staff) lurked in the temple, and would try to catch the kid before they could reach the goal. Winning the earlier games gave the team medallions they could use as "extra lives" to hold off a guard attack. The whole thing was extremely reminiscent of a real-life video game, and that's why I was so interested in it. It was a hard game, too - kids escaped the temple rarely enough that it was really thrilling when they managed to win!

Jeopardy
This was probably the first "adult" game show I ever watched. I remember thinking the "phrase your answer in the form of a question" rule was weird, and chalked it up to being Jeopardy's attempt to stand out from the pack. I generally wasn't very good at playing along on Jeopardy, so I got really excited when I knew the answer to a question. Or is that the question to an answer? Silly Jeopardy.

Wheel of Fortune
I liked Wheel of Fortune because the puzzles, being word-based and gradually revealed, were fun to try and solve. I always got upset when someone hit Bankrupt, though. I felt so bad for them.

The other thing I remember from Wheel of Fortune is the constant applauding. Everybody would clap every time the wheel was spun. And the wheel spun a lot. I recall making fun of the overeager applause more than once. 

Who Wants to be a Millionaire
This was the game show that got me into watching game shows in the first place. I heard a lot of excitement over it when it premiered around the turn of the millennium, and I followed it fairly regularly for a while. Although I didn't enjoy how drawn out the show sometimes got (especially when they had to end the show on a tough question because they were out of time), I loved the fun questions at the beginning, the excitement of watching people win big sums of money, and especially the atmosphere.

Out of all the "adult" game shows, Millionaire had bar none the best presentation. Jeopardy was studious and techy with its wall of screens. Wheel of Fortune was glitzy and fun. But Millionaire was serious business. The enormous stadium, the dramatic lighting, and the music. Goodness gracious, the music. It made you feel like the world was at stake. I got the idea to look for Millionaire's music on YouTube this morning, and I found it. It inspired me to write this post.

Here's a few tracks from Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The 100- to 1000-dollar questions
The 2000-dollar question
The 64,000 dollar question (they actually use slightly different songs for these high-level questions, slowly increasing the pitch to make it more dramatic)
The million-dollar question
Contestant gets the million-dollar question correct
Contestant gets the million-dollar question wrong (it's suitably tragic)

More Stores I Can Never Visit Again

I've always had an interest in the slowly changing landscape of my hometown and the surrounding area. I'm interested in the arrivals of new stores and the deaths of old stores. Last time I blogged about places I once shopped at but now no longer exist, I mentioned New England Video, Blockbuster, and Ames. Here are three more places from my past that are forever relegated to the world of my memory.

Shop n' Save
Back in the nineties, we had two big grocery stores to choose from: Shop n' Save and Grand Union. Since Shop n' Save shared a building with the almighty Ames, my family would frequently visit both stores in the same day to get all of our shopping done in just one trip. We had no loyalty to Shop n' Save, though, and visited Grand Union frequently too.

I remember walking into Shop n' Save. For all intents and purposes, it was your average grocery store - the automatic doors led past a corkboard with ads and bulletins posted on it, then you grabbed your shopping cart and made your way through the produce section before wandering through the aisles. Now, for whatever reason, I strongly associate Shop n' Save with high ceilings and the color silver. Whether other stores featured just as much silver or had ceilings just as high is irrelevant to my wild childhood imagination. That's the weird thing about memories.

Shop n' Save's death was a sudden one. After the falling of Ames, Shop n' Save plugged along on its own for a while. Then, when word spread that Shaw's Supermarkets was going to move into Ames' old space, I wondered what would become of Shop n' Save. Surely two grocery stores sharing the same building was an idea doomed to fail. Apparently Shop n' Save wasn't willing to compete, because they vanished at the exact same time Shaw's showed up.

Circuit City
This is a unique one - there was never a Circuit City in my hometown. You see, even after my family discovered how easy it was to buy things over the Internet, I still liked to occasionally shop in brick-and-mortar stores. My mom hates shopping, as does my brother, but I don't mind it much at all, despite my aversion of large crowds. Shopping in a physical building provides a unique feeling, and you get a different experience with different stores. They're also good for when I don't know what I want to buy - just browsing the shelves can turn up things I didn't know existed, whereas when I'm shopping online I usually have a single specific thing in mind, or at least a particular brand (Like, I may want "a Godzilla toy" but have no further specifics).

Anyway, since I still liked to shop in real stores, and especially in the first half of the 2000s, before my mom was totally comfortable with buying online, occasionally we'd go on a road trip to more populated areas with big stores. In the early and mid-2000s, we liked to shop at Wal-Mart in New Hampshire. A little later we started going to Williston, which boasted a Toys R Us and a Circuit City, among other things.

I realize I've been talking a lot and not really mentioning Circuit City, but that's because I don't have too much to say about Circuit City itself. I got a lot of GameCube games there, and the last time I went there I got some on deep discount when the system was on its way out, although due to the distance we missed the big liquidation sales. I don't miss it much, since on our next road trip, which I think happened before they went out of business, was to the nearby GameStop. I'd completely overlooked the place and I like it a lot for buying video games, especially used ones.

Dollar Depot
Next to Ames and New England Video, this is one of the stores I have the most fond memories of. Dollar Depot, which I always knew of as just "the dollar store", had a green dollar bill for a logo. True to its name, everything inside cost a buck. I remember visiting it many a time, impressed by the variety of things I could get for only one dollar. Generally, whenever I visited, I'd head straight to the back of the store, which was where the toys were. After poring over the shelves, I generally would move on to the right-hand side of the store. This was where the art supplies and books were, and I would frequently get something here as well. My most common purchases were plastic animal toys and notebooks to doodle on. I still have a couple old, worn, and doodle-filled notebooks from the Dollar Depot, as well as many of the toys I bought there.

The most memorable Dollar Depot acquisition for me is when they suddenly acquired a horde of Pokemon figurines. These 2-inch toys seemed like genuine official products (they may not have been, but they seemed equal in quality) and they were even imported from Japan (I recall the packaging being loaded with Japanese characters and very little English). My brother and I flipped out at this tremendous bargain (Ames charged a good bit more for Pokemon toys than a buck) and gathered up a bunch before they all sold out within a couple weeks.

The reason Dollar Depot went under is simple - in 2006, Dollar Tree took up residence in our town by moving in where Shop n' Save used to be. Dollar Depot was only a few miles away, and it couldn't compete with Dollar Tree's larger selection. Dollar Depot attempted to branch out by adding items that cost more than a dollar, but it didn't last long. In less than a year, Dollar Depot was wiped out. I love Dollar Tree, and Dollar Depot had been declining in terms of stuff I liked, but I still collected plenty of fond memories of the place.

Safety Warning: "This is Your Second and Final Notice" Isn't Final

You've met Tom from Home Protection and Rachel from Cardholder Services, but there are even more robocallers running around out there, fleecing people without a care in the world.

I've just received another automated message. This one is a female voice who neglects to introduce herself and instead says "This is your second and final notice" and talks about lowering monthly credit card rates. Like all the other robocallers, these people are breaking the law and you should absolutely not respond to them. They will not help you, they will scam you.

I've also noticed that despite getting this same call many times, it's always my "second and final notice". There was never a first notice, and the "final" notices will keep repeating forevermore.

So, just another important reminder: Do not EVER believe a robocall that is trying to offer a service or product. There are much safer ways to purchase goods and services than over the phone (or through email, for that matter - I suppose I'll write a post about the Nigerian banker at some point).

Here's a newspaper article about a similar robocall dealing with extending warranties on cars:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=20090511&id=7nxdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VFwNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6296,1912987

The Chocolate Trap

Like the majority of the world, I think chocolate is delicious. It's the classic candy type, a great treat to unwind with. Chocolate bars were what I always wanted the most when trick-or-treating as a kid, and putting a bar of solid milk chocolate in my Christmas stocking is the easiest gift my mom can give. With Valentine's Day right around the corner and Easter next up on the list of major holidays, it's a good time to warn you about the presence of fake chocolate.

Yes, fake chocolate. It looks like chocolate, is packaged like chocolate, and is marketed alongside chocolate, but it is not chocolate. Whereas chocolate tastes delicious, fake chocolate tastes sort of like what chocolate would taste like if you replaced the deliciousness with revulsion. Perhaps you've fallen prey to fake chocolate. In fact I'd say it's extremely likely. Fake chocolate is cheaper than real chocolate, so bargain shoppers like me have fallen prey to it, thinking they were getting a deal.

So how can you tell if you're looking at real chocolate or fake chocolate? It's simple. Truth-in-advertising laws mean that a marketer of fake chocolate cannot call their product "chocolate" without a caveat. Look very carefully at the package. There are two ways these companies try to sneak around the rule.

The most common way is to call the candy "chocolate flavored". Most often, you'll see "CHOCOLATE" in massive letters and "flavored" shrunk down and sort of hidden. If you see this, immediately put the package back and walk away. It is unclean to you.

The second method, which is even sneakier, is using the adjective "chocolatey". Real chocolate doesn't call itself "chocolatey". It's a term used exclusively by non-chocolate wishing it was chocolate and hoping that you would kindly ignore that little letter y at the end. Do not fall for it! It's not tasty!

Here are a few examples of candy I see in various stores, and whether they pass the test.

* You have to be careful with Palmer. Despite being a fairly reputable company, Palmer deals heavily in the seedy black market of "chocolate flavored", and a lot of their cheaper stuff is fake chocolate. Stay away from the Christmas-themed North Pole Pals, which are labeled as "milky chocolatey candy". Generally, the hollow stuff is fine. If you're like me and also dislike Double Crisp, check carefully for that, too, because Palmer keeps making accursed Double Crisp rabbits despite there always being a bunch of them left over for the clearance bin when Easter ends.

* Hershey, Nestle, Reeses, and most of the other big names in the world of chocolate are safe. You'll always find real chocolate in the familiar brown-wrapper Hershey bar. Same goes for the Symphony bar, Kisses, Reeses' Cups, 3 Musketeers, and so on.

* Around Easter, you're likely to see those giant rabbit-shaped bars proudly advertised as being half a pound. They are fake chocolate and taste terrible. They have also invaded the holiday season as half-pound Santas. Do not buy them!

* At the Dollar Tree I've found a company called Landmark Confections that makes budget-priced chocolate bars bigger than the standard sizes at a buck each. While the chocolate is certainly not the highest quality, it is real chocolate and can fulfill a chocolate fix on the cheap.

* Other non-candy stuff labeled as "chocolate flavored" is generally perfectly tasty, even if it doesn't taste exactly like chocolate. Chocolate milk, chocolate cereals, and chocolate ice cream are all fine and are not the target of my hatred.

The Great Lunchbox Mystery

When I was in elementary school, for a few years I had a bit of a reputation as a mystery solver. Whenever something strange or mysterious happened on school grounds, I'd announce that I would "get to the bottom of this mystery", and that my fellow students were welcome to assist me in looking for clues. They frequently did - kids love a good mystery.

One morning, in elementary school, for some reason or another I opened the classroom's fire escape door (I believe I was placing something out there as part of a chore, but I no longer recall for sure) and was greeted with a strange sight. Before me on the concrete walk surrounding the school lay a shard of brightly colored plastic. Immediately switching to my detective persona, I announced my find and asked both the teacher and my classmates what they thought it could be. Nobody had any idea. Without leads, the case seemed closed, but a week later I got my first clue.

It was during recess in late fall. More plastic shards were discovered, these of a different color. This time there were enough to match up a few and determine what the shattered object had been. The answer was that these shards belonged to a plastic lunchbox, of a type many children had (including myself). These lunchboxes never struck me as being particularly fragile, and with this new clue the mystery had only deepened. We'd answered the "what". Now came the "who" and "why". Frustratingly, neither myself nor my friends could fathom an answer, and the mysterious box-smasher was continually claiming more victims – for months I would find familiar shards on the ground. My classmates, knowing I was trying to solve the case, frequently brought me more shards to puzzle over. The low point of the case was in midwinter, when I foolishly left my Goosebumps-themed lunchbox unattended outside, and it too fell to the box-smasher's scythe. Having my own lunchbox be claimed by the box-smasher just made me more determined. Now it was personal.

While I had a good overall record with my "mysteries", this one went unsolved, even though it was the biggest and longest-researched case I'd ever undertaken. Most of my other mysteries were simple, harmless affairs, but the box-smasher was destroying other people's property, and I would have loved so much to see my sleuthing bring them to justice. Sadly, it never happened. All I could conclude, after months of investigation during recess, was that the box-smasher was probably an older child from fifth or sixth grade. They always smashed the boxes outdoors and, while maybe scattering pieces, were very sloppy about leaving evidence behind, probably to traumatize the owner. The lunchbox thermos was never damaged, but it was sometimes missing or stolen. In late winter or early spring, the attacks ceased, and never resumed. It’s been over ten years since then, and this is one cold case that’s never going to be solved.

Holiday Surprises

I know it's a little late to be writing about Christmas (or really, REALLY early, depending on how you look at it) but I wanted to share a few memories of the holiday season that showed how my mom can occasionally get the best of me and surprise me with a gift I didn't expect.

Christmas 2000
It was customary during the great unwrapping of gifts for my mom to direct me to certain presents and steer me away from "the big one" that was to be saved for the end. The "big one" this year was a Game Boy Color video game system. However, as I was looking it over, I was hit by a horrible realization. We had gotten video game systems in the house before, and they had always come with a free game included so you didn't have to buy anything else. However, the Game Boy Color was packaged alone. Not only that, but the video game I wanted the Game Boy for in the first place wasn't here, and there were no more presents under the tree. I tried to explain the situation to my mom, and she just casually strolled over to the tree, reached into the branches, and pulled out another present. It was the game I wanted. You win, mom.

Christmas 2007
This year I was very interested in getting a game for my Nintendo Wii system. My mom said she'd try to get it. Along the way, she decided to try the old "they were sold out" trick. When she opened a conversation with me by saying "About that game you wanted..." I jumped to conclusions.

You see, this game was made for more than one system. I thought she had accidentally bought the PlayStation 2 version of the game instead of the Wii one, which was useless since our house did not have a PlayStation 2, never mind that I'd heard the Wii version was much better. I imagined she may have gotten the PlayStation 2 game because it was ten dollars cheaper, not noticing that it was for the wrong system. When I asked as much, she agreed. "Yeah, that's what happened. Sorry. You'll have to wait until after Christmas when I can return it." Of course, she'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for, and I wound up getting duped again. By a plot I'd come up with FOR her, no less.

I have to stop assuming my mom is a complete dullard when it comes to video games. She is generally aware of how they work and what you need to play, but she's tricked me more than once by feigning ignorance.