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http://www.yac.com

The YAC company, which stands for "You're Always Connected", will give you a free phone number in London that you can set to forward calls it receives to your phone number in the U.S. or many other countries around the world.  There are a couple of skulking uses for this that we have come up with so far.

(1) The most obvious, of course, is to make people think you are in London:  they dial a number there and you answer the phone live.

(2) YAC claims that they will forward calls "to almost any phone in the world", but this is not correct because if you go to their FAQ page and look down about a third of the way, you will see the list of only 24 countries.  But that's a lot and you can play games with this.  Long distance plans with rates of maybe 11 cents a minute from the U.S. to London are readily available, but rates to the other countries can be much higher.  Suppose you frequently call a friend in Liechtenstein at a higher rate per minute.  Set your YAC number to forward to that person, call your YAC number in London at the low rate, and end up talking to your friend in Liechtenstein.

You can log on to their web site and change the call forwarding numbers any time you want, or do this by phone by calling your YAC number and entering 0 at the prompt.  For U.S. numbers, enter "001" plus the area code and number.  You can actually set two forwarding numbers and the system will try one, then the other.  If you can't be reached, it will take a voice mail message and email it to you as an audio attachment.  Your YAC number will also accept faxes and email the images to you, and there are other neat features you can read about on their web site.

Thanks to Jr. Skulker Batteryman for telling us about this.

http://www.shoppinglist.com

http://www.shoppinglist.com/sl/p?p=n&by=store

WebSkulker ran across this site in an unusual way.  He and a couple of jr. skulkers were having dinner in a restaurant in a mall in Sunnyvale.  While skulking around the parking lot on the way back to the car, they noticed an office that said "shoppinglist.com" on the sign.  WebSkulker was curious about what such a company would do, so he asked Ms. Cat to check it out.  She assumed that this would be some dumb site for humans to do mail order shopping, but she was very wrong.  She entered "catnip" into the search form as a joke and got a hit for "Catnip Bubbles" which "have the power to turn an average cat into a back-flipping acrobat! It takes 28 pounds of catnip to produce a mere one ounce of nepectalone oil - the active ingredient that makes cats ecstatic!"

Shoppinglist.com is not about mail order at all, but rather they tell you the special advertised prices that are currently available at most of the chain stores in your neighborhood (see the second link above for a list).  You enter your zip code and a category of product or search words, and it will come back with a list of all matching items on sale at the stores near you.  Click on an item to get details and the dates this sale is available, and there are links to help you find the store.

http://belps.freewebsites.com

Jr. Skulker Chris Gray told us about this site that may well be a hoax, but it's fun reading nevertheless.  The author was supposedly the victim of a company that specializes in sending out spam email.  They kept forging their headers to make the spam look like it was coming from his account, which got him so annoyed that he hacked into their computers and spied on their software and the people for a couple of years.  He tells all, including supposed snapshots of the spammers in compromising positions.

http://www.illusionworks.com

WebSkulker mentioned a site about optical illusions in the 3/23/00 issue, but this one submitted by Jr. Skulker Captain Proton is a lot more comprehensive.  Many of the illusions are illustrated by Java applets instead of pictures, so you can vary aspects of the illusion to get a better understanding of how it works.  You can navigate the site at either the introductory level or the advanced level.  Both have the same set of illusions, but the advanced level has a higher level of scientific explanations.

Submitted by Jr. Skulker Sidney Bernay

Six Jewish gentlemen were playing poker in the condo clubhouse when Meyerowitz loses $500 on a single hand, clutches his chest, and drops dead at the table. Showing respect for their fallen comrade, the other five complete their playing time standing up. 

Finkelstein looks around and asks "Now, who is going to tell the wife?" 

They draw straws. Goldberg, who is always a loser, picks the short one. 

They tell him to be discreet, be gentle, don't make a bad situation any worse than it is. 

"Gentlemen!  Discreet? I'm the most discreet mensch you will ever meet. Discretion is my middle name, leave it to me." 

Goldberg schleps over to the Meyerowitz apartment, knocks on the door, the wife answers, asks what he wants. 

Goldberg declares "Your husband just lost $500." 

She hollers, "TELL HIM HE SHOULD DROP DEAD!" 

Goldberg says, "I'll tell him."

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