obstinate.org

Well ladies and gents, another year another new series of useless attempts from Certfirst to discredit me. You see, a year and a half or so ago I attended a Certfirst PostgreSQL training for a previous employer. It was bad, real bad. I won’t bore you with the details here, as I summed it up pretty well in my previous postings

• http://obstinate.org/computing/full-review-of-postgresql-certfirst-training-course/
• http://obstinate.org/journal/an-update-on-certfirst-the-postgresql-training-company/

Back while I still worked at said company, Certfirst was pretty agressive in trying to get me to take down my blog posting by leveraging a refund contingent on them asking me to take down the above blog postings. I agreed, but after I left said company (ironically I wan’t fired!) I re-posted the above, very useful information about Certfirst. In the interest of full disclosure:

Today COMPNAY received a partial refund from CertFirst for its failed training. Together with this refund, each party agreed to use “reasonable efforts” to protect the reputation of the other. Part of Tone’s “reasonable effort” involves my notifying relevant parties that the agreement includes such a provision, and further urging you to be conscientious in any discussions you have re: CertFirst/SaiFirst with third parties.

Today, I noticed that over the past few months my fairly unnoticed blog has had a flurry of comment activity. Specifically lots of comments on my Certfirst postings! I thought I would share them with you:

Now, you may question the ability of the above person(s) to post in complete sentences, and without caps locks. However, you might not question their ability to use different computers, and to not be SaiFirst / Certfirst Employees:

Wow, they are both the same person! Souchon B, and Alice Martin! Never mind that they posted 4 minutes from one another! It should also be noted that this website has gotten maybe a dozen comments (including these) in the past 4 years.

So if we check out these IP’s that the submissions came from:

#host 24.12.109.172
172.109.12.24.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer c-24-12-109-172.hsd1.il.comcast.net.

#host 173.15.103.142
142.103.15.173.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer 173-15-103-142-Illinois.hfc.comcastbusiness.net.

It is very interesting that both of these supposedly anonymous posters are either duplicates, or from the same region! It is also interesting that both are from the very same region associated with CertFirst!

Certfirst mentions on their website that they are located:

CertFirst
2215 York Road, Suite 108
Oak Brook, IL 60523
PHONE: (877) 724-3477 [USA]
PHONE: 1-(630) 684-0355 [INTERNATIONAL]
FAX: (630) 684-0344

Looking at the whois records for saifirst.com and certfirst.com results that the Administrative contact for both of these domains are:

Soni, Sonia  sonia.soni@comcast.net

This seems to be the Owner / President of Saifirst / Certfirst. She uses Comcast residential cable modem service, she lives in Illinois, and has an extreme interest in trying to discredit me. The bummer for her is that I have no credit to begin with!

A few quick phone calls in the Telecom community would / will result in finding out who owns those IP addresses. Once I get a few moments to do so (luckily for me, I work in the Telecom Industry) I will report back!

Today the CTO called his regular mobile detailer to pamper his 996911t. My car was in dire shape, having never been waxed in it’s life. The conversation with the Wax Nazi went something like this:

Mikey: Hi there, I’d like a wax
Wax Nazi: Yeah okay – yours the white M Roadster parked next to the 911?
Mikey: Yeah
Wax Nazi: When was the last time you had it waxed
Mikey: …
Waz Nazi then pulls out a little device, it looks like an oversized pager, it has a laser shooting out of one side and presses up to the paint on the hood, then shakes his head.
Wax Nazi: I am going to need to clay it… and what is this film all over it, its like a dusting of rubber???
Mikey: …..
Mikey: How much?
Wax Nazi: $75, be done in 3 hours.
Mikey: Here’s $80, Thanks!

mikey: *insert picture from Halloween*
mikey: she was a vampire
krisi: she’s very cute… but what about her outfit makes her a vampire? her boobs?
mike: right, i was going to comment: dressing like a slut and wearing ears makes not a kitty!
krisi: hahaha, to be fair, every girl does that
krisi: and most dudes like it
mikey: right
mikey: most girls are sluts, and most guys are retards when presented with boobs, a match made in heaven
krisi: you and I are the weirdos
mikey: seriously

austie: is it ok to mention things about your interviews that you read on their linkedin profile?

mikey: i would tone it down to mitigate stalker status

austie: i’m dying to ask this guy about hurricane katrina.

austie: his job in LA ended right when that hit.

austie: that could be a very touchy subject, better to skip.

austie: maybe his dog died or something.

mikey: or his wife

austie: ha

austie: that would suck

mikey: “NEXT!”

austie: “i’m going to hang up now.”

Over the past year there has been repeated news stories about the tightening budgets that the BBC would enforce on Top Gear production costs. Sunday night, Top Gear Season 13 came to a close with the Airing of Episode 7. In the closing episode of the series you go the sense that it would be the last, the last 5 minutes of the show was a cascade of Aston Martin V12Vantage visual-porn over the backdrop of some ridiculous British countryside. In this segment, the usually hyptertastic Clarkson only has a mere few sentences to say:

“Weeeelll.. it’s an Aston Martin Vantage…. With a V12 engine… what do you think it’s going to be like?”

“It is fantastic….. it’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”

“What it makes me feel though…. is sad.”

“I just cant help thinking, that, thanks to all sorts of things: the environment, the economy, problems in the middle east, the relentless war on speed, that cars like this will be consigned to the history books.”

“I just have this horrible, dreadful feeling that what I am driving here, is an ending.”

“Good night.”

I have gotten the sense over the past year or so that this was coming, that Top Gear had slowly been losing it’s soul. With each season a bit of the sparkle had gone. With whatever has been happening behind the scenes it looks like there might be a final nail in the coffin. If Top Gear did come back for Season 14, and I think that really is a big if, that it would be souless and thoughtless that it might not even be worth watching.

I want my Season 10 & 11 back.

So this weekend I went out with the bestest of friends. One of the topics discussed over delicious seafood combined with a crisp, mineral white was the topic of my birthday. It is coming up, and I will very shortly be 26.

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Recently I thought I was in the market for a new car, or an upgrade to say the least. Specifically I was thinking about upgrading my Z4M to an M5. Used M5’s, and BMW M cars in general depreciate faster than a brick falling into a black hole. As such I was able to find a wonderful M5 with less than 20k miles on carmax for ~$45k. This is around half of the asking price at a dealer for a new model.

Anyways, I went down the the Carmax dealership that had this particular car to go for a test drive. Lucily for me, the person I was set up with was under the impression that this was  “5 Series BMW”. A few days earlier I had test drove a brand new 2010 M5 at a proper BMW dealership and they neutered the car with only 400hp. I had no problems putting the car into sport mode and then use all 500 hp.

Now after I explained to the sales woman that I was going to drive this car aggressively and that if she had any issue with this that she could politely ask me to slow down, she agreed and I nailed it and left 2 black stripes 1st gear long.

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As you may have read prior here. I attended a training seminar hosted by Certfirst / SaiFirst – a company that among other things, trains in PostgreSQL. I posted a full, and accurate review of the course prior on my site, which can be located here:

http://obstinate.org/computing/full-review-of-postgresql-certfirst-training-course/
http://obstinate.org/technology/certfirst-postgresql-training-course-avoid-at-all-costs/

The company I was working for was in negotiations with Certfirst in order to organize a refund. Certfirst located my original posting and demanded that what I had said was libelous and insisted on me removing my posting of my personal opinion, on my personal website, in order for them to agree to a refund on a failure to deliver services.

Certfirst and the company I was working for agreed, and asked me politely to take down my posting. In the effort of avoiding drama. I did such that.

However, I no longer work at said company and I am no longer obligated to keep my opinions off of the internets. As such – let this be a reminder to avoid the usage of Certfirst in any engagement at all costs. They failed to deliver on expectations set. So again, avoid doing business with them at all costs!

What are your motives? Are they pure? How would one even know? One thing that I have always tried to do with my life is to do the right thing, whatever that is. Sure, I have made mistakes – lots of them. I take solace in the fact that I think I have done my fellow humans well by always doing the right thing with the information I have had at the time. I am not one to take revenge or to execute furious retribution, despite the fact that I may have good reason.

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I happen to think that there are two modes of thought “all the way” or “not at all”, and half assed is just a way of up-selling the latter. Lets give some relevant examples. If you are sitting and enjoying some TiVO and decide that you would like a glass of wine, are you really wanting a glass of wine? or 17? If you are like me, a glass of wine does nothing to you, and instead you need to pull out 4 bottles in order for it to make the impact on your life you are hoping for. As such there is no point in having one glass, or even 2 or 3, it’s either 17 or nothing, balancing in the middle only ends up with getting fatter and no buzz.

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