Is Chrislam Another Nigerian Phishing Scam?

This week I've been introduced to a new term: Chrislam. It's an attempt to fuse Christianity and Islam. Since these two religions are seemingly irreconciliable, I decided to do some reading on it.

Chrislam was founded in Nigeria in the 1980s. Nigeria. As an IT guy, 'Nigeria' makes me think of the many phishing scams that originate there. Is Chrislam another Nigerian phishing scam? I think so! The target of this scam, however, is not your financial resources. It is your soul.

Jesus was very clear; there is no way to heaven except by his atoning sacrifice. Like oil and water, Islam and Christianity cannot blend.

Support Arrogance

Everyone in IT has run into this.  While it's frustrating, it also makes for great jokes and lots of laughter-- later.

Geniuses
One example is Apple's naming of their support people "Geniuses".  Really?  I've rarely found one who was more than entry level.  I have many stories to tell of talking with Geniuses who didn't know what they were talking about.

Today:  Lion
I bought Lion via the App Store this morning.  It quickly accepted my purchase, then began downloading.  The download was crawling, even though we have very fast connections in failover configuration.  Finally, the App Store told me I lost my Internet connection.  A quick check proved that I still had a robust Internet connection, so I called Apple Support.

The AppleCare Genius I spoke with insisted that I had lost my Internet connection.  The problem was not Apple's.  I explained that our phone lines are not traditional lines, but are SIP trunks that connect over the Internet.  Thus they could not have told me our Internet connection was down in the call if it, in fact, was!  That didn't matter.

I suggested that Apple was merely being overwhelmed, causing the error.  I was told, after being put on hold and checking with their level two folks, that the problem was not Apple's.  It was definitely my Internet connection.

I just checked again, and I have more than 20mb of free bandwidth, but the App Store says it will take another 23 days and 14 hours to complete the download.

New Article: Changing the Username on a Mac

Have you ever wanted to change the username on a Mac? We need to do it fairly often, and though it's not as simple as one would think, it is easy if you know the steps.  I just released an article detailing them, and you can read it by clicking here!