As always I had a great time playing with saxophonist Louie Belogenis and drummer Billy Mintz last night at Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village. I hope this great trio can perform more. It’s a pleasure to play improvised music with such sensitive, creative and disciplined musicians.
Music Review: Five Spot – Poltva – Blogcritics Music
Nice review of the Five Spot CD we recorded live in Ukraine a few years ago:
Roberta Piket Trio in NYC Monday July 26th
Today
Fall West Coast Tour
September ’09
May 2009 in Cologne and Lviv
Poltva is being distributed by Qualiton in the US.
Do NOT download “XP Anti-virus”
When I logged into my myspace account today I was surprised to get hit by several “XP Anti-virus” popups. This is a fake program that actually infects your machine if you choose to install it.
This was not just a simple pop-ups that went away when I closed it. I actually could not get the pop-ups to stop or the browser to close until I went into the Task Manager and ended the process from there.
This happened despite the fact that I have all Windows and IE7 updates, and my browser is set to reject most popups. (I subsequently changed my settings to reject all pop-ups and when I logged back in there were no popups.)
DO NOT install anything called “XP Anti-virus”, or “Vista Anti-virus”. There is no such thing. (In fact, you should NEVER download any program or file unless YOU initiated the download and you know what you are trying to do.) If you see pop-ups that look like system messages warnings saying that you have a virus and asking you to download anti-virus software, don’t do it. Windows has no such system messages.
I am very disaapointed that myspace would let their code get compromised this way and not do anything about it. This malware has been out for months now. My Space should be responding to security holes in their scripts. A lot of people are going to get infected from logging into their myspace page. Please don’t be one of them!
Hit and Run (literally) by AHL Tone Communications
Driving up the crowded West Side Highway last Friday on a clear and dry afternoon, my car was slightly side-swiped on the driver side above the rear wheel by a commercial van. I signaled the driver (a portly middle-aged man with an unkempt grey beard) to stop but he ignored me. After a mile or so we had to stop at a traffic light. I got out of my car and approached his window. He kept the window rolled up and stared straight ahead. I was able to get the name and contact info for the company that owned the van. I called the company, AHL Tone Communications, which apparently has locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and told the woman who answered the phone that I had just been side-swiped by one of their vans and the driver had left the scene of the accident. She was remarkably casual and unapologetic about the incident. She asked for my cell number and said she’d have the driver call me. Thirty minutes later, still no call. I called her back and she was uninterested in speaking with me further, to say the least. In fact, she hung up on me.
I considered calling the police but decided it was not worth the hour I would have spent waiting for them to show up. So I cut my losses, reported the incident to my insurance company (not as a claim, just for informational purposes), went home and ate Green and Black’s hazelnut and currant dark chocolate.