dgoodwin's blog

I made a few mistakes this week when a salesman from Protection Plus Security (a company name that seems too common for me to identify a link) showed up on my doorstep.

When told they contract and install security systems for ADT and were running a promotion for cheaper installation in return for logo advertising, despite having been thinking about installing one, I should not have assumed it would be a convenient time to get the information.

When presented with the rather shocking costs of equipment I'd be saving as a result of this "promotion", I should have inquired exactly what the "normal" installation fees are. (according to ADT's website the normal price is virtually indistinguishable from what I was presented with)

When (following a reasonably decent discussion of the systems specifics) I mentioned I was interested but wouldn't be making a decision on the spot and was told in vague terms that he was only in the area that night after which they wouldn't be able to offer me said "promotion", I should have immediately become suspicious.

When told that I could sign the contract now and then cancel within 10 days if I change my mind, I should have become more suspicious.

When told that I could not be given a "blank" copy of the rather lengthy contract to review while considering, I should have inquired why an unsigned contract is dangerous to them, or if there's just something in there they don't want customers to uncover.

When told that the contract wouldn't make sense to me anyhow as I'm not legally trained, I should have told him to get the $*%^ out of my house.

When told that by not being willing to sign I was telling him I'm not ready for a security system (and implicitly, just wasted his valuable time), I should have pointed out that perhaps I'm just not ready to sign a long 3 year contract I won't be able to understand on the spot for a guy who spontaneously showed up on my doorstep 20 minutes ago and refuses any possibility of letting me consider the prospect beyond the evening.

During this I did manage to do two things right, refuse to give him the name of two family or friends who might be interested in a security system in exchange for free fire detection (which magically was still included after I refused), and ultimately get this assclown out of the house with nothing but my first name.

I don't know how much of the blame for this rubbish is actually on ADT vs this lame local contracting company, but guilt by association, I won't be buying ADT.

And so begin the lessons in home ownership, NO SOLICITING.

Some things I've been tinkering with lately:

For those of us who spend heinous amounts of time online, cryptography and it's applications are both interesting and increasingly relevant. Stopping to consider the information we transmit and receive over the course of a day and then analyzing the potential ways that information could be exploited can be a little scary. The following are some freely available open source tools that can be used daily to protect your privacy and reduce some of the risks for information abuse.

Spent most of the day today trying and failing to get a virtualization project off the ground with my home network. I've been running two machines 24/7 for quite awhile, one older Duron 800 (512M RAM, 80G disk, Debian unstable) as a firewall and webserver, and my AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2G RAM, 320G disk, Ubuntu Edgy) as my main desktop system. I'd like to get it down to just one machine running all the time, the desktop's got plenty horsepower to do both jobs just fine. Problem is I don't want it sitting directly on the internet, and I have a few friends who make use of the server as well, so it only seems logical to keep it isolated on another system.