I thought I had hit the mother load last night when I went on 40 meters and heard Asian voices speaking theiir native tongue. I figured that the band had opened up and I was getting the Pacific rim or something, yet something was a little odd about it as I listened.
Every so often I would grab a callsign and look it up in the QRZ database and it led to Philly, New Jersey or New York.
When they started to break up I threw my callsign in and one of them answered it with a definite New York accent. He sounded like a native, which he probably was.
I wasn't the only person fooled, just the quickest because after he and I swapped signal reports there was a little pile up of people wondering what it was.
I guess it was just a small group of Chinese Americans practicing the language they grew up with in their homes or something like that. Anyway, they fooled me and had me believing the band had opened up and I don't mind being fooled every so often. It keeps me on my toes.
In other news, Yesterday I went to renew my passport and thought I was on a government website. I wasn't I had been tricked into a government looking site that wasn't the governmental passport department, but was a private passport expediter that wanted a pretty good size chunk of change for doing what I can do on my own for free.
It would have been one thing if it had been aan obvious non governmental format, but it wasn't. It looked an awful lot like it was governmental and that's just plain dishonest when you represent Uncle Sam.
If I put on a police uniform and a GI haircut and wander around you are going to at least get hassled and if you do anything whatsoever to actually act like a police officer you can bet your ass you are going to visit the Cross Bar Hotel for a while.
It wasn't until I was well through the process when I figured out that this may not have been a governmental agency so I made a phone call and out and outright asked if this was a bona fide governmental agency that I got my answer and I had to fight for that because the woman started hemming and hawing.
I told her a simple Yes or No would suffice and I got a no. I told her to cancel the order instantly and made it clear that if I suffered any unauthorized charges or had any problems whatsoever that they were the first people I would have checked out.
Doing business like that is patently dishonest because it is a misrepresentation.
Today I'll get my own passport and although it may take a while, I'll get it. I'm not in a hurry.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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