While I was doing computer maintenance at a fashion company, the owner asked me if I knew any attractive young Chinese women who would be interested in earning some easy money legally. He opened an office in China a few years ago and wants to appear as a legitimate Chinese business at an upcoming trade show in California. He is Indian and most of his employees are too. He has a Chinese secretary who usually goes to these events with him, but she is currently pregnant, so he needs someone else. Since I am Chinese, he thought I might know some Chinese women who would be willing to do this, but I don't. I didn't want to create the impression that I was offended and I didn't want to explain to him that I am a hermit, so I said I would ask around. The gig involves spending 4 days in California with free food, hotel, travel, etc. plus $500-$600 cash just for standing around greeting people.

My neighbor seems to have some type of rare intestinal disease. I hear him going to the bathroom around 10 to 20 times a day, usually over a span of one to two hours. I have overheard him talking on the phone about the condition. It supposedly somehow relates to carbohydrates, but avoiding them hasn't solved his problem. To activate his bowels, he usually paces back and forth a lot. Occasionally, he switches from pacing to very noisy rhythmic stomping. I'm not sure if it's dancing or exercise. I suspect that he does this when the pacing fails. He is doing that very loudly now and the entire house is shaking.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad?sc=fb&cc=fp

Researches conducted a double blind study of the sound of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins with some contemporary ones. Professional violinists played them and could not correctly identify which ones were the supposedly superior classics.

This does not surprise me at all. It reminds me of something that a luthier told me. He does special fine tuning of violins prior to performances. The sound doesn't really change much. He just makes minor cosmetic improvements and installs new strings. Occasionally, customers are not satisfied with the supposedly enhanced sound. When this happens, he tells them to go for a walk while he does a bit more fine tuning. During this time, he does nothing to the violin. In almost all cases, the customer is satisfied after the extra fine tuning that never happened.

I got a call from someone who supposedly works at a restaurant where I had provided some computer services in July. He asked me for my social security number and said he needed it for taxes. This didn't seem right to me because I was certain that they had paid my corporation instead of paying me directly. I have subsequently verified that I remembered it correctly. Due to my psychological issues with phones, I couldn't think clearly enough to explain this to him. Instead, I said I wasn't comfortable giving such information over the phone. I asked him to send me an email requesting such information and I said that I would reply to it. This is actually less secure, but I wasn't really planning to reply via email. I just needed to get rid of him and get some time to figure out what to do. 7 hours later, he still hasn't sent me an email.