Doesn’t Pat Sajack looked pissed here? I’m sure it’s part of the act.

Wheel of Fortune has been running since 1983. Pat Sajack is 71 years old. None of this is relevant to this absurd idea you are about to read.

I was watching when I was on the treadmill a few days back and it was the final round where they give you RL Stine and you pick some more letters. The lady couldn’t get the puzzle and Sajak shows her the prize she missed $25,000. I thought to myself, “who cares what prize she missed?” I think the prize may be eliminated as each day of the week goes on, but it would make for a way better show if they created a prize that you missed in a humorous fashion.

Tell me this isn’t funnier?

How do you keep a show that has been running for 34 years fresh? You do this.

A non-drinking weekend have allowed me to spend extra time thinking, instead of drinking. I was able to:

• Devise a kick ass bowling payoff and playoff structure (a sponsorship perhaps) that will admittedly be lost on the people of the league. It’s difficult to care the most and impress the least.
• I ran for 64 minutes straight which is nearing me closer to Broad St shape. Going from 40 minute to 60 minute shape is not ideal in a single run, but what the hell. I survived it and no injuries are apparent.

• I came up with a new structure to the website moving forward. I’m going to inquire to see if my guy in Romania can build a new, professional looking, site and then bring in some more people to create posts and info. Is it one of those projects that will never get off the ground? Or one that starts to fly and inevitably flies into a mountain? Most likely. Either way, I’m looking forward to a change.
• My betting has hit a wall of ill timed bets. The Action Network makes “suggestions”, but these are not necessarily recommended plays. What gets even worse is that sometimes they’ll have 3 people pick a game and they side differently. I’m not getting discouraged though because I don’t feel like I’m playing above my head or losing money that I can’t afford to lose. Gambling doesn’t work like investing. You don’t look for a 3% return a year. You may lose 10x until an investment returns 50x like DraftKings. Or you can lose 10 in a row before you win 20 in a row. I’m stating a case here lost in a whirlwind of misconception, but if your life can afford it, why not.

It’s 1:59 am and I decided to write a post just because. First a little about tonight to set the stage for the post.

I needed a strike in the 10th to seal a sweep and I left a pin. That pin was the 10 pin. I whiffed it left. I was 1 for 4 on the night and need a new strategy. The team finished 3-1 which was fine, but not that it all could be. It was a 580 series.

I went 1-2 on picks today losing the PSU-Utah under, the D-Backs – Rockies under, and winning the Spurs -1. It was a – $35 dollar and life moves on until tomorrow.

What I wanted to address was the blogs coming together after the aftermath of what I went through. I still don’t know where the information for these sites lie. Some on StableHost and some on Hostmonster. My guy, from Romania, has me confused. I have a hard time believing he’d do any act with malcontent, so I do trust him. I just don’t understand what happened.

With Sam being put on his own again, and his lack of posts, it would make sense to create a new URL to combine our thoughts. Our readers will continue to decrease as we age. We have to combine readers and then search for new readers among the group we establish. It only makes sense.

I can contribute with bets from the networks I belong in which should be valuable considering I pay for it. Sam can up his post with what middle 20’s people can relate to. There is a lot we could cover that as individuals, we don’t. We have to up our game. The effort will be put into the new URL with hopes of growing it.

I have a tremendous post on Silicon Valley and Rick and Morty coming up. Hopefully it can make it’s debut on the new site.

I’m seeing a lot of Philly gear on fans who I have to question if they are new fans or actual fans. Eagles hats. Sixers shirts. Phillies jerseys. Flyer whatever hockey fans wear.

There’s nothing wrong with wearing the apparel of your city. It’s a bit bandwagon to start wearing it now that the Birds won the Superbowl and the Sixers are crushing lower class teams on a run to the playoffs. Here are a few simple questions that you have to be able to answer if you want to wear a Philadelphia sports team’s gear.

• How many games are in a season?
  • If the answer isn’t 16, 82, or 162, you shouldn’t be wearing sports attire of that sport. I honestly don’t know hockey, I’d guess 80 without looking it up).
• Can you name the best player on the team?
  • If you can’t name Carson, Jojo, Ben, or guess Mike Schmidt or Chase Utley – no dice.
• Do you know where the stadium is?
  • Acceptable answer is South Philly, near the Xfinity center, right off the subway on Broad.

That’s it. If you know that much, support the team as much as you want. If you don’t, you’re a fair weather fan who shouldn’t participate. I’m not saying you can’t go to a game, I’m saying you’re a huge phony who should re-evaluate their life because if you can convince yourself that you are a Philly fan, I’m sure you have WAY bigger life issues that go deeper than that as a human being.

I’ll be the first to say that I haven’t supported these teams to the degree I know others have. The difference is that I don’t fake it. If you asked me if I was an Eagles fan or a football fan this season, I’d 100% say football. I cared more about my DK lineups and fantasy than the Eagles. I didn’t think the Eagles had a chance with Foles as the QB. This didn’t mean I root against the Birds, it means that I don’t cry myself to sleep if they lose. I can still enjoy rooting and supporting them when the time is right. I’m a fan. I know the game. I know when to cheer. I can make educated opinions on what I’m viewing. I’m a sports fan.

People in the city now are riding the wave of success which has been long overdue. Philadelphia has always been a class city that didn’t get the respect it deserved because the sports teams didn’t get it done. We are seeing an age where Philly is delivering and it’s awesome. The die hard’s will always be around. The next level of fans are the people we need to worry about to maintain the authenticity that Philly is.

Comcast Customer Service

Press 1 For Sales, Press 2 For Support
*Presses 1*
How can I help you?
*Presses 2*
Automated response – Your wait time is 26 minutes.

What gives?

The answer is obvious, sales makes a company money and support costs it. My take on this is that businesses don’t handle this concept appropriately. Sales are the brain, but support is a company’s backbone. I honestly don’t find Comcast support that bad. Sorry Evan.

The Case For Caring More About Sales

• Makes a company profitable.
• If you don’t answer a consumer ASAP, you may lose the sale. Live chat when web shopping has become the norm.
• Sales are the most important part of every business.

The Case For Disregarding Support

• They are already a customer
• Support agents have no incentive to do their job well. Not compensation based so who really gives a shit about job performance as long as you do your job well enough to get your salary.
• If the consumer can’t figure it out themselves, that’s what Google is for. Support rarely gets penalized for not solving the problem, it’ll be on the customer for having some problem on their end.

Real World Example

Sage Software is who we use for our business accounting and is a major culprit of this take. If I want to buy an upgrade, no wait. When I need support, 45 minute wait. I’ll will add that they’ve added a call back feature which is better than sitting on hold, but still annoying because if you miss the call back, you’re back in the cycle. The worst support is when dealing with the credit card / fraud department where support excels at keeping you on hold while they “check” on the situation.

Why do companies put their best people in sales and the worst in support? Frustrated customers don’t lead to a profitable business. Usually upset customers write scathing reviews and bad mouth the product. What’s the point of having shitty support?  We recently had an annual support charge for enough money to make me say, “this is ridiculous. We give you 30x that in credit card processing fees and you treat us like a sack of potatoes.” They didn’t budge. They are a soulless company.

My IT Experience

I worked with StableHost in order to get our sites pointed to different servers and exclusive from one another. I had tickets that would have 20 back and forth’s on them. IT doesn’t want to solve the problem. They want to tell you how to solve the problem. What they don’t understand is that if I knew how to solve the problem myself, I’d do it. They have all my credentials. I tell them what I want to do. They refuse to use the credentials and solve the problem repeatedly coming back to me with what “I have to do”. Extremely frustrating to say the least and I’ll be honest, I still don’t understand where this data is on which server.

I could tell that they didn’t want to do their job well. They have no incentive to do so. What’s the point? I know with our business, we treat our customers like gold. It’s the smallest type of company possible, but we answer every phone call. We call you back. We answer your emails. We solve problems. It’s not that hard. Support needs to be supported by better pay or else it will continue to get a negative reviews and be looked at as unimportant. I would make the case it is more important than sales. Websites can sell products in today’s age. They can’t fix specific issues like my fucking Outlook moving recently sent emails to my draft folder or why it searches through my earliest emails first. Infuriating.

Starting on March 15th, I lost a $59 dollar wager on Wright St vs Tennessee. Since then I’ve been 24-14-1 for a total win of $325. I’ll also say I’m 11 of the last 14 after joining the Action Network. How can someone who is 24-14-1 only be up $325 you may ask?

• One of those losses was a $300 play at Duke on Saturday night.
• My online blackjack lesson isn’t quite learned after sputtering $264 in a 3 minute window with a rebet x2 that lost 6 in a row.
• I took Bubba Watson at 12-1 for 10 dollars to add to the roll which did hit. Unfortunately, I hedged on JT for $75, so I didn’t nail that.
• Duke losing yesterday also cost me a shot at $800 in our 9 man pool.

Bovada gave me a free $200 deposit bonus so I’m still running around even after all this. At this point I’ve paid for my entertainment but if you had to ask if my $400+ is going to be in my account by the end, good fucking luck.

This is how I felt after Duke lost yesterday.

 

Blogs are a few days from being fully recovered. I’ll help Sam get back to a better theme and then we’ll be back to normal posting. I’m sorry that I got hacked and the entire network was taken down, it shows the vulnerabilities of owning a site with little understanding of security. I am learning more about servers though.

I spent $99 dollars to a random human being in Transylvania to get my site back online and free of MalWare. To expand, and I can’t say with full certainty, the site was infected with a virus on the same day I opened up a CoinBase account. If you don’t think that treading into Crypto currency can be dangerous, get your head checked. Essentially a Trojan horse was uploaded into my WordPress files. This caused Google to return back to anyone who tried to go to the site that it was dangerous. I’m actually waiting for a response on how it happened and I’ll return the details.

Bansheemann7 is currently offline as my account is the primary and his is an add-on. I’m told having 2 sites under one main domain is not safe and we’ll be changing it in the future. This has been a headache. Targeting this website is pretty useless. At first I thought I was providing too much racy material and I was being flagged (this is actually what the guy at Sitelock told me which was a complete lie). I removed a few posts that I thought may have gotten me in trouble but it was bullshit. Now that the trojan is all cleaned up, life can move forward. Sam and I have yet to iron any true idea of how we are moving forward so you’ll have to stay tuned. Everything would have to be more expensive and I’m not sure where we lie exactly.

Below is a humorous transcript with a company I was looking to do the website work before I found a guy who would do it for $99. Think about that carefully though if you read through it.

—————————————–

On Wed, 14 Mar at 1:36 PM , Tom Stortz <tom@stortz.com> wrote:
We’ll go ahead with the cleanup of 2 sites, rnningfool.com & bansheemann7.com. There is a 3rd site on there (southbowlleagues.com) that I don’t care if it survives. It’s not urgent so you can bill the card for $160 (I don’t think there is anything wrong with Bansheemann7 so if you want to charge $260, I’m not for that). I don’t know if I ever intend on writing on these websites again and think I’m going to start a brand new domain and move the Wordfence API over. How do you prefer I send the access for the control panel?

—
Tom Stortz

—————–
From:
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2018 7:00 PM
To: tom@stortz.com
Subject: Re: [#65171] Site Cleaning Request

Hi Tom,
I am performing an initial review of your case, and I verified that I’m able to log in with the usernames/passwords you provided. I did find that there are 3 additional installations of WordPress in the hosting account. In a hosting account like yours, one hacked site can be used to infect any others, so it’s our policy to clean every site in the account. Otherwise the hackers can just undo our work after we’re finished.

You have a few options to continue with the site cleaning:
– Add the other 3 sites to your order. We have volume pricing for this service that is dependent on the number of sites. The discounted price in your case would be $75 for each additional site, which includes a one-year Wordfence Premium key for each one.
– If you don’t use them, delete them from the server.
– If you do use them but don’t want them to be cleaned at this point, you can move them or your primary site to another hosting account, such that the primary site is the only one there to be cleaned.
– You could cancel the order entirely.

Thanks and have a great day!

Chloe

———————

On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 7:11 PM, Tom Stortz <tom@stortz.com> wrote:
How about this question, are the other ones currently infected? I’ll move them to another domain if they are not.

——-
On Mar 14, 2018 9:00 PM, wrote:
To give an idea of what’s going on here. It’s a personal site that I have years of data on which is the only reason I want to clean it. I plan on buying a new domain name and moving all the info on this current site over to the new domain name. Spending hundreds of dollars to make it happen doesn’t make sense. I’ll just get a back up of the current info and then I’ll see what happens moving forward. I have to imagine you can see if the other domain names are infected the same way a random representative from Sitelock told me mine was. He wanted to sell me on a package for 140 / month if you want to know how I even got started on this path. I’m just a dude with a personal website. If you can’t do the work for the $180 I paid already, just refund me and I’ll figure it out because the whole thing seems outrageous to me to begin with. I’d create a backup and then manually delete the files the same way WordFence tells me. Rather than try to money gouge me for 2 sites that aren’t even affected, how about you just clean the site and tell me what to do. If you can’t do it, let’s move on.
————–
On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 8:50 AM, Tom Stortz <tom@stortz.com> wrote:
A final thought on this matter, if it’s your “policy” to do the other sites, then please refund me the $80 and I’ll figure it out myself. I’d like to get this moving.
————–

On Thu, 15 Mar at 5:12 PM , Tom Stortz <tom@stortz.com> wrote:
Is Wordfence a professional company or what? When I was a customer you were going to make money off of I got a reply in 5 minutes. Now that it’s not going to work like that, i’m down on the list. If you don’t want to do the work, refund the money. If you want to do the one site, do the one site. If not, refund the $80. Let’s make a decision.
————-

On Mar 15, 2018 9:00 PM, wrote:
Hi Tom,

Chloe had presented you with several options. She explained that we can’t exclude other sites from the cleanup. The reason is simple. One malicious script can infect all 4 sites. We see this all the time. Now, if we want to exclude sites, there are ways. You could move the site you want us to clean to another server to that it is the only site in that account. In that case we can clean one site.

You asked if the other sites were infected. We don’t know. That is exactly why we need to scrutinize them in the same way as the one site that we know is infected. We do back our work with a 90 day guarantee. We can’t do that with other potentially infected sites left behind.

So again, we have a few options:
– Move the site you would like us to clean to another server
– Delete the other sites
– Add them to the order for a fee
– cancel the order and get the refund.

Please let us know what you would like to do.

Regards,

——————-

On Thu, 15 Mar at 9:05 PM , Tom Stortz <tom@stortz.com> wrote:
Please refund the $80.

Tom Stortz
—————

On Thu, 15 Mar at 9:10 PM , Tom Stortz <tom@stortz.com> wrote:
Prorate the api too. I don’t need that either. Whatever you think is fair for my use.

Tom Stortz

———–
Nice negotiating though. Really proving your worth.

Tom Stortz

————–
The final thought I have is that I bet you guys can fix it in 5 minutes. You see it all the time and the other sites have no infection warning. I’m going to dispute the charges with no service rendered (aside from one scan) and we can see what happens. It was never about the money to me. I just wanted it handled by professionals. Perhaps I’m wrong here, but I promise you we’ll be getting a few opinions. Thanks for the effort and I apologize for the time spent.

Tom Stortz

—————–

From:
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2018 1:10 AM
To: tom@stortz.com
Subject: Re: [#65171] Site Cleaning Request

Hi Tom,

It takes our site cleaners 2-6 hours to clean an infected site depending on the infection as they manually go through by hand to inspect, remove, and ensure everything is free of malware. I’ll be happy to help. We have canceled your order and issued you a full refund to your credit card. I have also went ahead and deleted your key and provided you with a full refund. You should soon receive a separate email with a confirmation of the transaction.

Thanks and have a great day!

Chloe

————————

Rnningfool.com has been blocked by Google. I have an inkling what the issue was and have since removed the post which took the entire site down. Sitelock is trying to sell me on $140 a month and I’m not doing that. I paid $100 for a yearly subscription for a web firewall and this is what it feels like to get really scammed. I’ll report back but there’s no sense posting on the site if no one can read it. Creating a new site may be my only option. Doesn’t seem fair.

Sam and I haven’t actually ironed out any details and I think the storm is brewing. I don’t think I will ever see Rnningfool.com die as I have a many year attachment. I only feel that my time is better spent on a collaborative effort. I think Sam must agree because he was the one who introduced the idea. I didn’t think about it much and want to run with it.

Coordinating the website will take a bit more effort because we are going to have to be on the same page with regard to content. I see it as a debate like issue on certain topics. Some current events. Some philosophical. Some sports. Typical everyday thoughts. What I’d like to see happen is that more people get involved. Start small and try to bring in more thoughts all the time. That means that we are going to need some people who make comments. You know who you are. You’re called lurkers. Not the Starcraft character who was known for hiding. I would never force anyone to comment. That’s not the game. It’s if you see a point that you may feel strongly about or can add a viewpoint, take the 30 seconds and comment. It helps tremendously.

I finished Altered Carbon and this would be a point of discussion that I’d bring forth as an idea. The show takes place 300 years in the future and the wealthy don’t die. They become “godlike”. What this means is they have “stacks” which are their (I have no idea how to describe this) lives. You can transfer your stack to different “sleeves” and essentially live forever. They put people on “ice” which is where the story begins with an “envoy” being brought back to solve a murder mystery. I liked it and don’t think many people will watch it.

That being said, the idea of a future is a great topic. What to actually do with these ideas…I don’t know. I try to visualize how I see it happening and it’s not so easy. The idea is that it’s not being done for money. It’s being done for truth. I relate to Catcher in the Rye and the term “phonies” used a lot. I’d like to think that what we would deliver would be as real as it gets. People in today’s age are abusing this notion. You don’t know what’s real or fake any more. I believe 95% is bullshit. That’s why this site could succeed. We want nothing. In return, we’ll deliver whatever facts we can bring to the table. I see Crypto being entertaining. I use Labs for insider info that has to be valuable to some people. It can become a a SITE and not just a blog. Picking the title would be done carefully.

Is it possible we lose an entire fan base going this direction? If you’re already reading this and I stop posting on it, are you seriously telling me that you wouldn’t read what is going to be better information on a different site? I’d like to hear any downside I may be missing. I have no problem with the way I’ve been handling the blog since it started but it’s time for a change.

Read Sam’s Take

Why would a well established blog like myself join forces with a blog with the name Bansheemann7? The owner would have had to have had a stroke to make a decision like this. That, however, is not the case.

What I learned in life is that 2 is stronger than 1. Do I find many flaws with Sam’s blog? F5’ing the front page. Lack of attractive side bar. Probably hasn’t even looked at the customization of the theme since inception. These details are all parts of blogging that I probably look at with a tad more frequency than he does and we can make some joint decisions with the idea that they’ll come to fruition.

Sam is worried about a strain on the relationship…I’m none too concerned. I don’t think I care enough about it to ever be a strain. Now if he starts shit talking my work or gets a big head if the blog explodes, you never know. I don’t think it’ll matter.

What will the website become? This is where I get a little excited. I have no idea. I’ve been maintaining an individual blog for years on years and nothing ever came of it. The vision was cloudy. Will a new duo have different results? I think so. We’ll have to hash out the details if we want to keep both personal blogs and start a brand new site or sort of merge all the posts which I don’t think will go over too well.

I like the idea of being more topic oriented and less personal oriented. We could even pick topics and both give points like Around the Horn. I honestly don’t know. It’s smart to keep it fresh though and I think it also gives us the ability to grow whereas this is too individualized. I’m sure if anyone wanted to participate, we’d be open.

These are my initial thoughts.

2 missed birthdays to the Sheee (3/4) and J-Smash (3/6) over the last few days. Apology for not knowing, but I don’t know if this will change much moving forward, so don’t get your hopes up. If i’m a bad person for not knowing the day you were born, egg on me. My priorities lie in other areas of life that have nothing to do with birthdays. If I was sitting home all day eating bon bon’s and watching soap operas, I’m sure you’d get a card from me.