Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Blog referer spam

Interesting.  I'd never heard of this before this morning.

You think people are willingly viewing your web pages, but they are not.  They are being redirected to your website by a virus toolbar, or your traffic is simply something similar to a virus checking your website on a daily basis.  It's automated, so it looks like you're getting hits, but you're not.  It explains all the traffic to this blog from the Soviet Union.  It explains all the views of the very first entry in the blog.

This has nothing to do with cab driving, but everything to do with the internet.  And blogging.  And scams.  So, it should be of interest to a wide spectrum of people.  I'll read up on it, and post some entries addressing it, and after they've been up long enough for my legitimate readers to read them, if they want to read them, I'll take them down.

Certain subjects are like a magnet for these web traffic fraud people.  They love guns.  They love violence.  I'll add crime in the labels, and let all of you know how this works out.  This is a distinctly uninteresting blog post, it shouldn't attract ANY interest, what so ever.

Monday, July 29, 2013

An absolutely PRICELESS link to another cab drivers comments!!

This link belongs to a driver in Las Vegas.  It's a question and answer thing.

http://jobstr.com/threads/show/3661-las-vegas-cab-driver

His answers are VERY TRUTHFUL.  I found this thing while tracing some traffic to this blog.  It seems that a whole lot of people on the web want to know if cabbies carry guns.  My most recent post, posted just a few hours ago, gives my opinion about this matter.  The answer is, yes some carry them, and if they ever use it, they will regret carrying it for the rest of their life.

My dad's sister was married to a fellow who shot some people who held up his liquor store.  They tied him up, he got lose, and he killed a couple of them.  Their families harassed him for the rest of their lives.  Anonymous threats, but it was obvious where they were coming from.  Is that worth a couple of hundred dollars?  No.

Some people point to murders, and say, if the victim had a gun, it might have been different.  I read that in New Orleans a lot of cab drivers have been murdered.  It wouldn't be different unless the people doing it are morons, and they're not, they're criminals.  Why do I say that?

A guy came up behind me once with a big shiny impressive looking hunting knife and demanded money.  I thought to myself, if he was going to cut me, I'd be cut.  Obviously he doesn't intend on using that thing.  I walked away from him, he was shocked, and he didn't cut me.  Moral?  If somebody is going to kill you, they won't give you a chance to resist.  They might go through the, where is the rest of the money routine, but you're dead either way.  Giving them the extra money might buy you 90 seconds of extra terror, but you're dead either way.

The carrying guns post.

For some strange reason there have been over 1,000 views of a post I did quite a while back, which says carrying a weapon is a real bad idea.  It specifically says, carrying a gun is a bad idea, but carrying any weapon is bad.

Have I known guys who carried guns?  Yes.  Knives?  Yes.  Clubs?  Yes.  Fools.  Do you need a weapon?  Aren't you driving a rather large one?  It's the best bet you've got, the only one you can defend using.  Defend using?  Sure.  The cops assume ALL participants are the bad guy, do you want to be an armed bad guy?

Consider:  Somebody tries to rob you, they get hurt, and they file assault charges.  Now what happens?  They are going to ditch their weapon before they talk to the cops, unless they're dead or close to it, and even then, can you prove it was their weapon and not one you planted in their hand?  If you were armed, and you hurt them with that weapon, the cops could very well take you to jail.  This happened recently in Florida.  Some neighborhood watch guy killed some kid, claimed it was self defense, and the trial was the biggest news event in the United States for how long?  A week?  A month?  It's ongoing.  The current result is, the guy was acquitted, and there are huge demonstrations going on all over the country.  Thousands of people want the guy in prison.  Do you want thousands of enemies, for any reason?  Probably not.

What happens if they take a cab driver to jail for the injury of a passenger.  Is the cab company going to bail you out of jail?  Unlikely.  Do you have a permit to carry that thing?  Unlikely.  Is that weapon consistent with cab company policy?  ABSOLUTELY NOT!!  Will they let you out of jail on a signature bond?  Unlikely.  If they did let you out of jail on a signature bond would the company let you go back to driving before the issue Is resolved in court?  Unlikely.

How much money did you stand to lose?  $100?  A little more?  The most cost effective thing to have done would have been to have given the bad guy(s) the money.  You are at work to make money, from a risk perspective, it's the most cost effective course of action.  All this said..............

Some number of drivers have to resist having their money forcibly taken from them.  This is necessary for the safety of ALL DRIVERS.  Was I one of those drivers?  Yes I was.  Would I be one of those drivers in the future, if someone lets me drive again?  No.  It's no longer my turn.  You are at work to make money.  The most cost effective course of action is to go back to work right away.  The cops are a dead loss of at least an hour of your time and they will make no effort to catch the guy(s) anyway, so why even tell them about it?  It's not profitable.