I know, not many updates, I’ll try … I’m just busy.
But either way, onto a small update.
So my last post was a long time ago about trying to get davey.ca, but hitting walls with squatters. So right after I had my bout with them, they renewed the domain for another 5 years. It’s a real shame that the internet doesn’t have something to police this sort of misuse.
The story starts a while ago when my son was born, and the realization that reaper.ca/reapazor.com just isn’t very family oriented. I went looking to purchase davey.ca, but found it already taken. At first I thought maybe the American Davey Tree Company had purchased it, but quickly learned that they could not as they are not Canadian. After looking at the web page, I realized it was one of those annoying companies that pick up expired domains (or just buys domains) and just throws stupid search pages up on them; or that was my initial thought. I saw the expiry date on the domain, and figured that I would watch that for a while and see if I could pick it up that way. Unfortunately, I saw it get renewed so, I went out on a limb and decided to contact that owner of the domain. A simple WHOIS came back with some pretty basic information.
| Name | Christina Schilling |
| Job Title | |
| Postal address | 17618 Coral Beach Road Lake Country BC V4V 1C1 Canada |
| Phone | 250-766-2902 |
| Fax | |
| coralbeach1@okanogan.com |
I emailed ‘Christina’ a few times and explained that I would be willing to pay to purchase the domain for my family, however after repeated attempts of no response from email I decided it was time to make an actual contact. I called the phone number listed, only to have it ring indefinitely with no answer. This is where things started to get rather questionable as at the time (site is dead now) okanogan.com showed that it was a bed and breakfast business out in BC.
Something to note here is the DNS entries for okanogan.com:
| NS1.DIRECTSEEK.COM | 66.199.187.170 |
| NS2.DIRECTSEEK.COM | 66.199.187.171 |
I was put off and decided to contact CIRA at that time about the issue, which I got a friendly response saying there wasn’t anything they could do. For the most part I can understand this stance at this time, as it could have been easily taken as an attempt to high-jack the domain.
A few months past, and I decided to try down this path again, and made all the initial contact attempts to no avail. However, this time I took a few extra steps.
First and foremost, how many domains ‘Christina’ owns was quite surprising (these are just the ones I found – that she still apparently owns):
| ak.ca |
| apex.ca |
| blackbook.ca |
| blondes.ca |
| clerk.ca |
| dmv.ca |
| err.ca |
| encino.ca |
| fair.ca |
| harry.ca |
| jasmine.ca |
| jus.ca |
| mdf.ca |
| place.ca |
| south.ca |
| transfer.ca |
(knowing now who Christina is, I know this list is not complete)
Now, each and every one of them has that stupid ‘search’ site and is trying to sell the domain … I cannot stress this enough, it is quite clear that this person is a ‘holding front’ for the seller (to ‘comply’ with CIRA policy). A good example of this is the fact that the registered address of ‘Christina’ is actually for sale (search for her address on Google). I’m pretty sure that Christina isn’t a real person, simply a name used and an address picked because it was for sale. A search for her name with google shows that there is no tie with her name in Canada, but ironically (check out where “Proforma” is located) there is one in Ohio.
I decided to follow up with the company which seemed to be squatting the domain, knowing that they would be asking for money. At the bottom of davey.ca there is the footer:
A quick WHOIS gave me the following:
Domain, Administrator admin@nameadmininc.com Box 10518 A.P.O. Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands B.W.I. KY +1.345.946.6879
And coincidentily the DNS seems to match okanogan.com:
| NS2.NAMEADMINISTRATION.COM | 66.199.187.171 |
| NS1.NAMEADMINISTRATION.COM | 66.199.187.170 |
| NS3.NAMEADMINISTRATION.COM | 216.187.90.150 |
It was a pretty dead give away that this was going to be painful as soon as I followed the link. Their website smelt of the filth of squatters and people that just want to rip others off, alas I kept my feelings to myself and navigated to their contact section which clearly indicated to only contact them if you intended on purchasing a domain. However, even at that stage another curve ball was thrown, well really not so much thrown as exposed; a brokerage company. I recieved a timely email to my inquiry, as follows:
HelloProForma (Inc.) provides brokerage services to the owner of davey.ca. This name’s registrant has been investing in domain names since the early days of the Internet and was the first to acquire generic names like davey.ca, which visitors use to navigate the web. Names such as this are easier to brand and provide a simple, memorable email address for your potential customers.If available, davey.ca will not be inexpensive, but the benefits of owning this valuable descriptive name will flow to you for years to come.
Visit http://www.proformainc.com/welcome.php?cc=30283628846b9166a0b4f6b4ad045980 and follow the quick and easy steps. You could be just hours away from completing your purchase and permanently securing this valuable name for your exclusive use.
Now, I was getting rather frustrated at this point, because from what I could tell we’ve got a fake Canadian address used to qualify for the domain, then held by a company in the cayman islands; which is synonymous with ‘evasion’. Yet, I forged ahead and decided to look into this “ProForma” company, as usual a simple WHOIS shows them camping it out in the great US of A:
PFG Ventures sethomas@proforma.com 8800 E PLEASANT VALLEY RD INDEPENDENCE, OH 44131-5558 US 216 520 3631 x1007 fax: 216 520 6886
They seem to be simply a brokerage company to hide the true identity of their clients; either way, I played their game and put in a bid for the domain. I decided to play it fair and offered $200.00 (ironically they don’t let you put a currency in your bid, nor do they state what currency its in). Needless to say my bid did not even get filled, I got a notice instead:
The seller will not accept bids at that level and your offer will not be delivered. The minimal bid is $18,000. We suggest you try TDNAM.com, BuyDomains.com, or Sedo.com for naming options in your price range.
So now I was pretty much stumped so I started searching more into this ‘Christina’ person, thinking she had to be the clue to solving my problem. Enough ‘Google Cache’ links later, I found out a very important piece of information about Canadian domain names:
“Canada is connected to many world-famous domainers including Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, Yun Ye, Gary Chernoff, Raffaele Della Peruta, Richard Lau, and Shaun Pilford.”
It’s his family!! sister? !!!! Frank Schilling! … now we have something to move on, or more so something to start thinking about. A quick google of Frank Schilling turns up that “Name Administration Inc.” (from above) is his company!!! It seems that the circle is now closed on finding out whats going on here.
Thus, that brings us to the current. What do I do now? I’m faced with what everyone calls a ‘nice guy’ in the domain world, who from what I can tell is just squatting on the domain to make money. I think my only avenue is to talk to CIRA, which will probably turn me down. It’s rather disappointing to see the internet controlled in this way.
I have to ask the question of is it a companies responsibility to start thinking green? This isn’t an abnormal occurrence across Canada! I realize that people should be responsible enough to throw out their own garbage; yet we don’t, we are innately too stupid for our own survival it would seem. I’m just saying … maybe it’s time for Tim Horton’s to lead the charge with biodegradable cups, so that when folks forget to pick up their trash it doesn’t hurt our host; earth.
I love Tim’s, but I don’t love what we do with Tim’s.
While spending time at Linden’s parents this weekend, her mom asked me if I had heard of the Ubisoft expansion into Toronto. At the time, I had heard about it but hadn’t taken much interest in it, that was until I found out where the money was coming from.
A while ago there was a government initiative to help out the gaming industry in Ontario. Where they would match your investment and possibly throw in a little more (I can’t remember the exact details only that they were trying to effectively play catchup to what Quebec did). I being the naïve business owner decided to give it a shot. Upon contacting the agency administering the program I was quickly shuffled away stating that I was not big enough to qualify for this program. At the time I was rather small, two developers, a few artists, etc. I was really disappointed when I received this news, but took it in stride and kept at it.
Now I hear that the government is fronting 260 million to Ubisoft to create 800 jobs. It makes me question if that agency really was just a shell to trying to court the larger companies like Ubisoft and EA. I realize I’m small time, but I would hope to have a fighting chance; especially when they are looking at stimulating growth. I wasn’t asking much, I was looking to get some money to open a studio in Northern Ontario, to tie it in to local Universities to create some interesting placement opportunities, but no, the government decided to take tax payers money and go to the big guys.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the work Ubisoft does, and have many friends that work there; it’s just frustrating to see the government act all ‘righteous’ when if I recall correctly all my company was asking for something like 1.2 million. Now, by their standards I would have had to put up 600k to qualify for that, so clearly I being a small business just don’t have that sort of assets laying around, and of course there was an employee count requirement (150?) as well.
Why 1.2 million? I wanted to buy a building and renovate it to being a sweet creative space. Then start hiring some local talent and spend time investing into the Universities / Colleges. Oh well, some dreams don’t get enough air time.
Ironically we are on our third game right now, and hope to make many more. Just wish the government could be behind us a little more.
It even seems that some Toronto-nians aren’t happy as they will be footing the bill on this one. I guess it will be good for them none the less.
So I really haven’t been following the health care industry news much since my departure from making software for it. Yet, with this whole scandal thing with eHealth, I thought I would throw in something I commented on almost a year ago.
A great idea for making secure email, but dear god, why are you toting Microsoft Exchange as this great system you have spent millions on developing; you didn’t develop shit. If someone really wants to further the investigation into wasted funds, I would be looking right in that projects budget. There should be very minimal costs:
Thats it folks, thats the cost of the installation. As for monthly bandwidth, yes that is an addon, and every time they setup a VPN they need to pay a consultant for an hour of time (which really breaks down to 5 minutes).
Epic Fail! thats all I can say.
Words can’t really describe this video, just watch it and see what you think … remember this is out in public for anyone to watch.
Well I’m glad my little life stream works because ultimately I seem to just post more videos and pictures then actual text. It’s probably for the best as I’m working hard on other things and really don’t often find the time to type out long and extravagant posts about my life. Right now, in the company there is a huge push to get the site reworked a little to do some fixing up and sprucing up before our next major game project. We’re also working out 2 series of IP for our own possible games, but those are remaining under-wraps. On the commercial side of things, we’re awaiting budgetary approval and numbers on our next game, but its looking good.
So with that I’m going to go back to working on the ‘history of the company’ and trying to keep accurate records that way. On a side note our survey/green screen stuff seems to be at a standstill with our former clients. It seems that the economy has hit them hard, which is fine as its giving us a fair amount of time to rethink and recreate much of it in the way we originally would have liked it if time had permitted.
Oh and the video attached to this post his fantastic for all of you online gamers.
Well we finally did it … LoL … dramatic pause … we purchased new cameras today. Ever since Chris and Karens wedding we have been without a camera. Somehow my old point and shoot stopped working after a long night of drinking and partying, I doubt the two are related. Anywho, I had the privelege of using a Nikon D40 through some work for .bunny so I have somewhat been spoiled with using a DSLR camera.
Nikon D90
All that being said, we ended up getting a Sony Cybershot as a simple point-and-shoot solution which also is rather portable. Then because of using that D40 *sigh* we also picked up a Nikon D90 + the fixens. I figure it will be used to rewrite some of .bunny’s VDC software with LiveView support. Thus, it’s a business expense as well as a bit of a present for completing our last two games.
I got it home and took a few test pictures to use in the about section of the site. They’ll get put up tomorrow sometime.
As I write this on my iPhone’s WordPress app, Linden is “failing” at Final Fantasy XII (her words – she keeps dying on a boss). Twas a good night — I got some taxes stuff scanned and managed to get Chris & Karen to remove their fridge that we were “storing” here. Of course, there was also Cowboy Steaks involved *insert male grunting sound*.
Greetings everyone,
For a while there I was without a blog space, after shutting down reaper.ca, I found myself missing that ability to just write about random things. I drowned myself with work as to keep me occupied, but all through out I really wanted to just start blogging again. So this is a ‘new’ me in a sense when it comes to my personal space on the web. I found that my nickname of many a years ‘Reaper’ seems to be very not so unique on the net anymore, and a while back started playing around with the alias Reapazor. Almost a dinosaur version of my at the time nickname. It seems to have stuck and now I seem to enjoy using it more and more.
Anywho I’ll leave the rest of that for an about section, but never the less there shall be lots of random posts found on this new site including many snippets of code as I develop weird and wonderful things. Something to also be aware of, I have enabled all our previously hidden posts. Ultimately at this point in the game it would appear as if any agreements to take them down have been violated by the other party thus, that agreement goes out the door.
A while back there was that whole issue with a certain company getting all upset because I posted stuff (which litterally was from my grade 11 text book) on the web (yup said company was calling it their own IP). I always wondered how or why a competing company would be so ‘kind’ as to tell them about that post.
Yet, a little bird gave me a heads up that that competing company MedShare , has the wheels in motion to buy the other company now. I guess I’m glad that I’m not working there, because ultimately they definately didn’t buy the company for its software … maybe just one of the ideas in it? I could speculate for hours on the topic, but ultimately its good for the local company cause really its going to allow the owner to make a graceful exit, and the rest of the people there … well … I hope the best for them.
One final note that I find amusing, why is it that “every” small company says “we’ll take care of our own”, but when push comes to shove … and there is money on the line … it never happens. Sigh, predictable.
