Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by alkidance

A US Soldier's plea to help save adopted Iraqi dog

alkidance — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:32:17 +0800

US Military rips away pet of deployed US Soldier shortly before Baghdad Pups can send puppy to safety in Minnesota

One of my good college friends is in Iraq right now. A couple months ago, she told me about Baghdad Pups, a really amazing organization that provides medical care, clearance and transport for the animals U.S. soldiers have come to love during deployment in the Middle East.

There are some initiatives that everyone - regardless of their political views - can agree are fabulous. This is one of those.

Baghdad Pups [in association SPCA] gives soldiers hope by helping them send their pets home to safety. It's such a unique and touching idea.

My friend has been held in Iraq by the stop-loss policy for over 15 months longer than her original commitment to the military. It hasn't been easy for her--and the puppy she saved has been one of the few things that has kept her going.

Ratchet Puppy

Ratchet and Gwen

We've been hearing about her puppy, Ratchet, on Facebook for months. She's shared pictures of him as he grew from a frightened ball of fur to an adorable young dog. We learned when he was accepted into Baghdad Pups, and how her parents were going to take care of him until she returned home. She's kept us up-to-date on his travel schedule, and badgered us into contributing money to bring him home.

He was supposed to be on his way to Minnesota right now. Except he's not.

Last Wednesday, my friend's commanding officers seized Ratchet as he was on the way to the Baghdad airport en route to his new home with her parents.

Why? Because:

"It is against military regulations for active duty troops to befriend animals"

It gets worse. According to the Baghdad Pups press release on my friend's behalf:

"Soldiers can face immediate court-marshal [for befriending animals] and some even see their animals brutally murdered by a direct gunshot to the head from commanding officers who will not bend the rules."

It was so close.... Ratchet was on his way to the airport. And now he might be killed, just because some power-hungry officers decided to flex their muscles and punish an innocent animal because Gwen dared to care about him.

Rachet Younger days

And to make it even worse, she is under military investigation for caring about a helpless puppy--something hundreds of other soldiers do in Iraq.

She is absolutely devastated. I'm devastated for her. I can't imagine how horrid it would be to save and love a pet, to be full of hope that he will be a part of your life after you finally come home - and to have that cruelly snatched away.

I don't know why this has happened to her. She has been through so much already. It's just awful.

Please help me get attention for her. She hasn't asked, but I'm hoping that we can help her.

This horrible situation is happening to Gwen, but it affects all our soldiers overseas. They're in a terrifying situation every day, and it's not unreasonable to let them have the simple joy of having an animal that loves them. Is it?

As a soldier wrote to Baghdad Pups:

“I have sacrificed a lot to serve my country. All that I ask in return is to be allowed to bring home the incredible dog that wandered into my life here in Iraq and prevented me from becoming terribly callous towards life.”

Could you take a minute to help spread the word about what is happening to my friend? We want to get news out there about her case before the military decides to "eliminate the problem" by killing her dog.

Could you please Digg or Stumbleupon this post or send it to a friend. Or, if you're in MN, could you call one of our senators?

All we want to do is help Gwen send home the puppy that has made her sacrifices bearable... who was already on his way to Minnesota before the military decided to punish her by seizing him.

Thank you so much for your help!

HOW YOU CAN HELP

If you are in Minnesota, call one of our Senators. She's a MN native and Ratchet was going to come here.

Senator Amy Klobuchar:
(888) 224-9043 -or- (612) 727-5220

Senator Norm Coleman:
(800) 642-6041 -or- (651) 645-0323

(or, if you prefer) Candidate Al Franken:
(888) 908-2008 -or- (612) 344-2008

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE for my friend and other soldiers, donate to Baghdad Pups. It can cost over $4000 to bring back a dog or cat to the US, and Baghdad Pups receives 3-4 new requests from soldiers every week. Please help them to continue their mission.

For more info, please visit https://www.baghdadpups.com

Need help identifying this job position.

alkidance — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:58:21 +0800

I'm not sure if this position exists yet, since e-commerce in Malaysia is still in its infancy.

Basically this job covers:

- Internet payment fraud.
- Dealing with payment disputes
- Managing fraud levels by research or using technology.
Example: Reverse IP checking, Automated telephone verification systems, Fraud scores, etc
- Developing verification flows, and enhancing it over time.
- Perhaps along the line, consultation exists.

I don't think it's risk management. Perhaps fraud management, I don't know. Maybe someone here can help!

Thanks in advance.

Tunneling, Proxy, Proxycap, Freecap Gurus - Help!

alkidance — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:01:40 +0800

Dear LYN Techie gurus,

I'm in need of assistance connecting to a PlayNC game called Tabula Rasa using Proxy.

As far as it goes, it works for World of Warcraft, and I've been enjoying tremendous reduction of latency since using proxies. What I did was that I bought a service from Lowerping.com, who gave me access to one of their proxy servers. To connect, I'm using "PuTTy", as well as Freecap for tunneling packets through Proxy. Setup and configurations were given by lowerping.com and it works so far.

However, I've tried running Tabula Rasa through Freecap, and it just won't work.

As far as I know, the game uses a launcher (Launcher.exe) which checks for game updates and downloads em when necessary. Then it launches the game (Tabula Rasa.exe), which will connect me to the game login server.

Using Freecap, I've tried setting up rules to launch both Laucher.exe and Tabula.exe from Freecap. Unfortunately, the game doesn't seem to be tunneling properly because I'm connected to the game via direct connection (Streamyx). And I know that's the case because I've tried shutting down Putty, and I'm still logged on to Tabula Rasa. WoW on the hand, disconnects me from game after shutting down Putty.

I then tried ProxyCap, setting up the same rules.
World of warcraft works.
Tabula rasa starts without launcher, but doesn't log me in after entering my account name and password. Error "Unable to connect"
I've tried Launcher and it returned with the same Unable to connect error after entering my account name and password.

Now this is the part where I become lost because I don't know what else to do, other than trying different programs like Sockscap and Widecap. I'm not sure if it will work because I read that Sockscap is not compatible with Vista, which is the OS i'm currently using. I've also tried port forwarding, following instructions from port-forwarding.com, and turning off firewall.

Hardware spec:
Core 2 (not sure what kind, but i know it's a 2.13)
2gig ram
Nvidia 8800 GTS
Streamyx 1mb with Level one router.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

[addedon]January 4, 2008, 11:12 am[/addedon]bump for help!

maxid broadband and wow

alkidance — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:32:13 +0800

anyone using maxid broadband playing wow? how's the connection like?

I'm kinda frustrated with streamyx