Recently in posts Category

So, we got off to a late start - like leaving my house at 8:30pm or so. A quick trip to the store to get some snacks, then off to see what kind of trouble awaited us. Traffic was fine, except the part that I dreaded - rightfully, it turned out - in New York, before we got on the George Washington bridge. I'd driven through this part of the Bronx once before: a trip to Sesame Place with another family, in two minivans. I managed to see the EXACT SAME GAS STATION this time that we stopped at the last time. To say it was weird is an understatement.

Our stop for the night was a hotel to be named later in Edgewood, MD. It's to be named later because, despite me calling Thursday night to confirm and double-check the reservation, they got it wrong. When I called, they said that they had a King non-smoking room set for us. I corrected them and told them it was to be a double queen non-smoking room - and the person I spoke to said they'd take care of it. They didn't. The woman at the reception desk looked in the computer and couldn't figure out what the problem was, and asked if I had called to make a change to the reservation on the 8th of this month. I didn't. She also didn't see any indication of me calling on Thursday night, which cheered me up no end. Besides offering a double queen smoking room - NOT acceptable - she was able to get us a king non-smoking with a sleeper sofa. Guess who ended up on the sofa? Me. To say that I was unhappy with the arrangements is an understatement, but considering it was 1:30 in the morning, I just wanted to go to sleep. Like, now. So we took it. The woman at reception said she'd tell the manager so they could look into it, and then provided us with sheets, a pillow and a blanket "just in case" the sofa bed wasn't made.

As the photos below attest, it wasn't made.

I also found the "no-smoking" sign AND the ashtray, in the same room, to be a nice "yin-yang" kind of indication of the night. Messed up.

In the morning, I talked to the day shift supervisor - who was aware of the problem, and looked at the computer again. She said that I had talked to her when I called, and she made the changes - so she wasn't sure why the reservation change didn't take. Since the manager isn't going to be in again until sometime this week, I'll have to wait and see if the call me. If not.... I'm not sure. I want to give them a chance to do "the right thing" but I'm not really sure what that would be..... Time will tell, I suppose.

It was just a very long, tiring day.

End of line.

I came home from Noah's baseball game yesterday to find a "Sorry we missed you" note from the fine folks at the USPS. It seems that someone is trying to send us a certified letter and no-one was home to sign for it. Now, for most people, the question becomes: who's sending us a certified letter? And even more importantly, why?

Did we inherit some money? Are we overdue on some bill? Is the town about to take our property and turn it into a park? Did my letter to the furnace maker have something close to the desired effect? Except for the last one, I'm not sure. The furnace maker actually had something in the mail that same day, telling me I was foolish for neglecting to include the serial number of our furnace. Silly me, thinking that if my name is the same as the one that paid for the dang thing, that they'd be able to look me up. But I digress.

The problem here is that I can go to the USPS website and track the certified letter - it's got it's own tracking number and everything. But when you go to the page, you learn more about the letter and where it's going than you do about where it's supposed to end up. While I can see that this would be useful for the sender, it seems that having even the city and state that it's coming from might also be helpful.

For the sender, to maybe make sure they entered the 20 digit tracking number in properly (especially since it can be hard to read the handwriting on the little slip).

For the recipient, to maybe give you a small clue as to who's trying to get in touch with you. Granted, something like "New York, NY" might not tell you much, but it's a little bit more than knowing that someone from somewhere is trying to send you some bits of paper and really wants to make sure you have it.

But that's just my thoughts on the matter.

Oh, and Noah's team won, in case you were wondering.

So, the problem with the new version of the backend that runs this site? It's that it requires a version of MySQL that I don't have access to. That's all geek to you, hopefully, but the long and the short of it is that an upgrade would need to be done to the server before I can upgrade my software. I don't really think that's going to happen anytime soon. This leaves me flustered, flumoxed, and irritated. But enough about that.

I bought a SATA drive a few months ago to go into a USB enclosure. It's super fast, but... not quite fast enough. So then I recently managed to get an external SATA enclosure (two drive) and an SATA Express Card for some super-duper high speed fun (editing a few videos, mostly). I tested it out a couple of times, and it was very nice.

Today, for fun, and since I don't use my computer much at work, I decided to see how long it would take to backup the computer via this new highspeed connection. A long time, apparently.

RIght now, it's doing about 130mb/min. I started it almost 3 hours ago, and it's done just over 20gb of backup, which is about 6gb/hour. That means that for the other 115gb, it would take about 19 hours. That's not... optimal. Of course, I have Mail, Photoshop, and a slew of other programs all running in the background, so that's not helping things. Regardless, it's not as super-duper fast as I had hoped it would. It is, however, still fast. And faster than the USB connected drive.

Now if only I could afford the 3TB of storage that I would probably need for all my data.....

A quick note to say that I'm now completely off the internet. For a whole weekend. Part of me is really cranky, and another part doesn't care simply because Cablevision no longer gets my money (well, after they finally send us a bill for the correct amount).

The problem stems from cancelling the TV service - the phone rep didn't understand me when I said "I also have a cable modem provided by Cablevision under a separate account" and I didn't realize fully what "disconnect you from the cable system" meant. Mostly my bad, but I feel that the phone rep should share at least some of the blame. What happened is that Cablevision feels that since I'm no longer a paying customer, then I shouldn't be on their network at all. You see, you can get basic cable for free if you're still connected - they can't stop the signal without a physical disconnect. The problem is, as I said, that I get my internet from them too. I hadn't fully fleshed out all my options for a replacement for them when it came to the fore on Thursday night - no internet. I called to complain, and Cablevision was nice enough to offer to send someone out between 10 and 7 the next day - provided I would be home in case they needed to come inside the house to check things.

Not for nothing, but if the internet stopped when you disconnected me from your wires, why would your tech need to come inside the house? Needless to say, I declined. They said that they could see about getting someone out on Saturday, but that was also not much more than a "we'll see what we can do, but no promises unless you're willing to stay on hold for 15 minutes" sort of thing. I passed on that too.

I called AT&T from work and signed up for a DSL package. I'm not happy about it, but I think I've made it clear that I want Cablevision out of my life. They overnighted me a kit, and I hooked it up, and.... nothing. A call to their tech support for new installs reveals that they can't hook me up for some reason, and they'll get back to me about it. I expect to get a call on Monday, but who knows. I'm not happy, especially since what I received from them (a wireless router/DSL modem) is not what I requested (a DSL modem) since I have all the extra fancy stuff I need already at home.

At this point, I fully expect them to tell me that they need to replace the equipment outside the house (a terminal, I think it's called) since it's a few years shy of being ancient. Oh, and quite dirty. But we'll see how that turns out on Monday.

More updates as events warrant.

Oh, and thanks mom and dad, for letting me use your internet while Ethan took an entirely too long nap.

42%

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

I think I scored so "poorly" because I decided should Zombies attack, I'd try to save Jen and the kids. Obviously when I say "save," I'm referring to non-zombie attacked people - if they're bitten/infected/touched (a new variant of zombie, apparently) then I'm not going to be in denial and hope they can be saved. Zombie lore says that once they're infected, they're done for. Sad but true!

So, it's been almost three weeks since the last post. Wow. Time sure flies when you're having fun.

Well, not exactly. More like been super busy. At work I had to help make sure all the labs were up to date before we started the semester - since the last post was on 1/18, that only left a few days. It wasn't hard, especially with the very helpful student workers, but that's on top of the normal workload - so the extra work isn't cool. Regardless, we got through it, and I think we did a good job in the process.

Personally, we've had to deal with a stomach bug (which I detailed a little earlier in the month) as well as just the normal fun and games involved with running a family.

Today, however, was the icing on the cake. While a friend and I were at Target, I walked into a display. In retrospect, it might have been sticking out into the aisle a little bit, but I might also have walked off the aisle - we were almost at the end, so I might have just been trying to get ahead of myself. Regardless, I bashed my shin - no big deal, except for the pain. Or so I thought.

I've now got a HUGE swollen cut. I've got anti-bacterial junk and a band-aid on it, sitting underneath a big ol' ice pack - I just hope it doesn't hurt like heck in the morning.

In less painful news, although :ethan: is still spending more time in our bed than we would like, he's developed a fun new habit: giving everyone goodnight kisses. He's very irritated if someone tries to go to bed without getting a kiss from him, and he really seems to enjoy the process. First he goes into :noah:'s room, where he can just lean over and get a kiss. For :emma:'s room he needs a boost to get up to her for her kiss. Up in :abby: and his room, he climbs up the step and then onto her bed to give her a hug and a kiss. Since she will, more often than not, already be asleep at that time, he usually gives her a kiss, looks over at me and says "Ssssshhh!" and then kisses her again before climbing into his bed.

He doesn't stay there, of course, but I think he's starting to get our bedtime routine, and Jen and I hope that he will soon try sleeping in his own bed for more than a nap here or there, or when we stick him in his bed.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Rare stamp 'used on US post vote'

A rare stamp worth as much as $200,000 may be on an envelope sealed in a ballot box after the US mid-term elections, poll officials say.

Officials in Broward County, Florida, say they saw a famous "Inverted Jenny" stamp while reviewing postal ballots.

About 700 of the stamps were mistakenly printed in 1918 with an upside down illustration. Just 100 went on sale.

But it will be 22 months before laws will permit the box with the envelope to be reopened and the stamp checked.

The original stamps bear a picture of a Curtiss JN-4 plane, known as a Jenny, which was used for training pilots in World War I and later became an airmail plane.

I can only imagine that any and all philatelists (stamp collectors) in Florida are rushing to their collections to see if their stamp is missing. Well, if they had one in the first place:

Four "Inverted Jenny" stamps sold for almost $3m last year

Two out of four kids have ear infections. Nice.

Lamont lost to Lieberman - I'm sorry, but I'm not surprised. I really don't want to get into the debate about all this crap, but I agree that Lamont lost because he made the election about Lieberman, not the issues. Either way, we're not going to leave Iraq anytime soon, and I honestly don't know what the heck Lieberman has to do with that - HE isn't the one who got us into this quagmire, Bush is. Let's focus on getting him out of the Oval office, then we can address Joe's problems.

Britney Spears: yes, she's getting a divorce. Yeah. I think I already addressed this. The reason I mention it: she drives a lot of traffic to my site. Not her personally, of course..... People looking for photos of her. I'll save you the trouble: look here - they're all in one place. I might add some to the page. Why?

I used to include the posts about Britney in the "Posts" category. Now that page is about 2mb in size. When the search engines spider the site, they put that page in their index under Britney Spears, even though it's not really appropriate. I've taken the liberty of removing those posts from the page, but also of using a robots.txt file to block spider access to that page. Since doing that, traffic to that page - and my monthly bandwidth usage - have shot way down. Coincidence? I think not.

I've noticed that the Britney page is making it's way up the "popular pages" list, but not quite as quick as I expected. I wonder how long it will take for the photos page to make the list? Let's find out.

Having not posted anything of substance in a while, I thought it was about time that I did so.

Brianwho?, of Miles, etc sort of sums up part of the problem:
Miles, etc.: To The GTWD:


SAHM's get a good amount of attention these days, and sympathy. It is much deserved, as they've earned it - and from time to time I've been right there with the rest of the left-leaning tree-huggers patting my wife on the back. And, lately, SAHD's are even getting their 15 minutes, and they deserve it, too. But this here, this is my little shout out to the guy who loves the shit out of his family, and who works his ass off for them. In other words, this one goes out to all the Go To Work Dads.

I never really considered the plight of the GTWD (Go To Work Dad) - which is odd, considering that I'm one of them (us?).

So, the Olympics are here. It's nice to see that nothing too outrageous is going on at the moment, what the potential for terrorists, Olympic controversy and all sorts of other "fun" things.

Before I vent, I'd like to share a URL:
DFL

An interesting blog that looks at the other side of the coin: the folks who've worked for years to make the Olympics, only to come home with nothing but the satisfaction that they made it that far. There's some interesting commentary, and lots of info about the other people competing - because let's face it: just because you're the world record setter doesn't mean you're that interesting.

On to the big gripe: during the Blizzard of '06 (last weekend), there was plenty of time for the NBC folks to shower me with Olympic loving. They didn't. I found some of the lesser known/popular sports playing on some of the non-NBC branded channels (aka USA), but that was it during the non-primetime hours. I had to wait until 8:00 at night to start getting the good stuff, and even then, it's the usual "now that we've gotten you interested in what happened in men's snowboard half-pipe, let's switch to the couples ice dancing for a bit" bait and switch.

Not that I don't get it - they have to vary things, otherwise people will only watch the stuff they care about. But is there that much on during the day on a weekend that you can't pre-empt it for the one time every 2 years that the Olympics are on? I don't think so. You know that they get top dollar for the advertising during this time, so why don't they capitalize on it? And just because they showed it during the day doesn't mean that they can't replay the same footage - or even do highlights - later the same day. It's just plain crazy/stupid.

I also don't really see the need to repeat the footage from 1:00 am to 5:00 am - if I didn't watch it the first time, odds are good that I wouldn't watch it then either.

I did manage to watch some of the Curling that was on at 4:00 the other day, but that's because Ethan didn't want to go back to bed then. Of course, the Curling - which I still think COULD be an interesting sport - put both of us to sleep. I think it's time to get "Curling for Dummies" from the library and see if I'm right....

So, yeah, it's Christmas time once again. Many things were bought for the kids, and let's just say that the mess in the living room rivaled years past. But it's all good. I've got some photos that I'm going to be posting online at some point, but I wanted to mention how much fun certain things were - like, for example, how much more complicated Transformer toys are these days.

When I was a kid, it was in the box as a robot, then you turned it into a vehicle, and then it was back to a robot again. Simple. Occasionally there was a "super" robot that took a couple robots and turned them into a big robot. That was it.

:noah: got some kind of super-omni-mega robot - it came with two trucks (a firetruck and a car carrier), which individually turn from robot to vehicle and back. But then you can also take some of their "extra" bits and make them mega-robots. Or.... Take the two, and their extras, and make a super-omni-mega robot. Or something. Two tabloid sized pages (that's two 8.5" x 11" pages side by side) with instructions on both sides - approximately 500 total steps for all the things you can do. With just one set. Awesome. Just awesome.

Next up was the MegaBlocks G.I. Joe armored vehicle thing. It came with a part that was semi-melted (it still worked, but....) and several of the pieces don't stay in place - one of my sticking points with MegaBlocks. Lego or nothing, I say.

We got the kids two DVD's for Christmas: The Polar Express about a week before for a Christmas party with some friends and then Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the big day. We saw Polar Express in the theaters and loved it, but Charlie was something that the kids but not parents had seen. I got a chance to watch it today, and was quite pleased with the movie.

Like many people, I've seen the original movie (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) more than a few times, so I had some pre-conceived notions about how the movie should play out. I'm pleased to say that for the most part, it was just as I expected. I particularly liked some of the casting choices - Johnny Depp once again proved his acting abilities, and the kids did quite a good job acting like their previous incarnations. Overall, a very good re-make.

:abby: got a "My Little Pony" Butterfly Island set, and it was quite a sight to behold - all colorful, with sound effects and music for the full audio/visual overload experience.

:ethan: got some new toys and a new "Baby Mozart" DVD, which we hope will keep him entertained a bit - he seems to like the others so far, so this will only add to his enjoyment - and lead to another kid addicted to tv, no doubt.

:emma:, who's supposed to be reading at a level 30 by the end of this school year, is currently at level 32 now. When pressed for book suggestions (Grisham, Clancy, King?), her teacher suggested the "Lemony Snicket" series - always a good choice, I gather. We also got her a nice set of jammies.

Due in large part to the assistance of Secret Santa, I managed to send a book to Heather over at Goofy Girl Blog. She wrote back to say that she liked it. Very good - and leaves me feeling kinda warm and fuzzy inside.

But what of me? The other side of the Santa equation, so to speak. Thanks to Paula, I'm the proud owner of Serenity on DVD. Paula, it seems, stumbled upon my Amazon wishlist mere moments after I added Serenity to the list. Being a fellow Browncoat, she decided that it was something that I needed to have. I thank her profusely for that. Now if I just had some time to watch it.... Anyway, thanks a ton Paula!

I normally wouldn't do this, but I'm curious to know if anyone will actually donate. I figure enough people come through here looking for things (the current Top 10 being: celebrity oops, ass pennies, peanut butter jelly time gif, snl transcripts, dell sucks, snl transcript, pc load letter, fox sucks, firefly cancelled, funny fortune cookies) that enough might find the site useful enough to donate a little bit of money. More of an experiment than anything else, really. If you feel like donating, then I thank you. Leave a comment and I'll try to mention you.

I haven't linked to Secret Santa this year, partly out of not enough time, and partly because while I like the idea on the whole, all it takes is one Scrooge to mess it up. I got Scrooged twice.

So, since it's possible that my Secret Santa happens on by, I'd ask that if you're not going to actually participate, let the Elves know and do the right thing. Otherwise, you know the drill - and hopefully who you are!

I stopped by my victim's site today and was pleased - a nice college student, with a nice site, and it looks like it will be some good reading before I make the choice of what to buy them.

Anyway, off to do computer things - hopefully I'll have good luck and then come back here and write it up to share with the rest of the class. It's geeky, but interesting and potentially useful for others.

Bank of America | Keep the Change

So, the premise of this is that when you pay for something with your ATM card, they'll round up to the nearest dollar and then take that rounded amount and stick it in to your savings account. During the first three months of the program (or it might be each persons first three months) they'll match your amount - so if you put in .51¢, they'll put in .51¢. After the first 3 months, they'll match 5% - which isn't much, but like money in a 401(k), every little bit counts.

I'm sure part of it is a drive to get new customers, but they sure as heck are thinking outside the box on this one!

So, when you have big feet - like I do, with size 14's - then you tend to have a hard time getting shoes of any sort. Unless it's a store that I've been to before and know for a fact has my size, I tend to get a funny look when I ask for size 14 shoes.

They generally ask me what I'd like to see in that size, and they have a hard time grasping the concept of "find what you have in size 14, then I'll choose from there." Have a hard time, that is, until they go in back and find the whopping two pairs that they have in back. Suffice it to say, I often leave very disappointed.

Most recently, I decided to get some "normal" sneakers - something they now call "classic" sneakers. Only I can't get them, on account of my feet being so freakishly big. I know that they make them - I used to have a very nice pair of "New Balance" shoes - but that's not what they're selling at the store. Lies, all lies.

Anyway, I ended up getting a very nice pair of Adidas. My first non-soccer cleat Adidas, actually. They're comfy, and oh so much fun. A little tight at the moment, while they adjust to my gargantuan feet, but that will change with some time. Surprisingly springy, and very stylish. I was intially concerned with the lacing system - the laces go through loops of cloth instead of holes in the shoe "leather", but I think that the quality of the work with these is better than the $10 special that gave me the problem oh so long ago...

Too bad they're white....

NRDC: OnEarth Magazine, Spring 2004 - Six Brilliant Megawatt Ideas:
Six Brilliant Megawatt Ideas
by Evan Ratliff
A few very smart people came up with some very smart ways to curb our energy needs. You can even try them at home.

It's quit cool to be "green," and I don't just mean keeping up with the Jones's. Making simple changes to your home - although a new roof isn't quite "simple" - can change not just how comfortable your house is, but your energy bills and the environment around you.

Since we remodeled the house, I've noticed that it's not quite as hot upstairs. Sure, part of it is the central air conditioner, but a large part of it is the new roof we had put on. Additionally, the crawl space at the front of our house is now open to the attic area, and the attic area has a thermostat controlled fan that kicks in when the thermometer hits 85. It pulls the hot air out of not just the attic, but the crawl space in the front of the house - aided by a Vornado fan we had laying around - and the breezeway at the apex of the roof. I think that just the fans alone are pulling cooler air in from outside, and the new shingles are making things less hot - good all around.

Anyway, it's worth a read and some considering.

So, I had high hopes that I'd be able to continue my posting schedule - I was doing pretty well up until Ethan was born. Darn kids, always messing things up.....

Integrating number four into the household routine has been a little easier than I expected, but only in some ways - he isn't the cause of much sleeplessness, but it's because of him that we've been dealing with that. When a new sibling comes along, there's always little setbacks and jealousy issues - and they're starting to rear their ugly heads.

:abby:, for example, has gone from being a semi-reasonable toddler to a semi-hell raising little toddler demon who shreiks like a banshee when she doesn't get her way - just about every minute of every day. She's also regressed, potty training wise, to the point where she's now wearing pull-ups more often than underwear. It's a bit of a setback, but we've been dealing with her lack of desire to "poop" on the potty for long enough that dealing with the pull-ups isn't that big a deal anymore.

:noah: and :emma: haven't really reverted to anything - they've been on a fairly even keel so far, and so they don't really have anywhere to go just now.

Ethan has, however, re-introduced us to the hazards of diaper changing - it's not that it's hazardous, per se, it's that he's totally unpredictable, so you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes his hands/feet end up in places you'd prefer they not be - i.e. in the gob of A&D ointment you're about to apply - or he just plain up and pees on you when your guard is down - and the diaper isn't in the right position. There's also the chance you take when you take the dirty diaper away and don't quite have the new diaper in place right away - he's taken advantage of that coverage gap on a few occasions.

Aside from a cold he's trying to kick, Ethan has been doing quite well, and even sleeps for 3-4 hours at a stretch at night - probably a plus to having a 3 week old who's the size of a 2 month old....

Removing your hot water radiator system, installing duct work, converting house to central air: $17,000
Needing a blanket inside when it's 85 degrees and 100% humid outside: Priceless

(And if you work for MasterCard: It's fair use/parody, so don't even think of sending a letter to me, mmmkay?)

Music: the sound of meme
So, Rudi's doing a meme thing that someone else did that someone else did.... well, it's a meme, so you get the drill. Anywho, Rudi, who's knowledge of things musical eclipses mine like the earth eclipses a golf ball in orbit, thinks back about his musical choices and whatnot: I used this as a short opportunity to examine my own personal musical anthropology. I don't think I'll be doing a dig that matches the extent of Rudi's, but I'll do a little poking around. (Turns out I wrote more than I expected - you can skip down here if you want.)

EKTORP sofa bed

So, I pop on down to the new IKEA in New Haven and pick up a new sleeper sofa for the guest room. It's big, but do-able by one person - maybe. After lugging it out to the car - made easier by the shopping cart provided by IKEA - I managed to get the beast into the car.

Getting it out again..... well, it was easy, but getting it into the house was another matter. It didn't fit through the sliding door as well as I'd hoped - a mere 1/2 inch of clearance stood in my way - so I had to carry it from the sliders over to the back door - fun.

After that, it was all good - slide it into place after all the packaging crap is removed, put the slip covers on, and it's a nice comfy couch there to be enjoyed by all. And slept on by a select few.

my constant use of "Y'all". Sad, very sad.

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English

40% Yankee

15% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

Deroy Murdock on Patriot Act on National Review Online:
These dangerously naïve or clandestinely seditious librarians are beyond foolish. They potentially jeopardize the lives of American citizens.

Who are these dangerous people? Yes, that's right, he said librarians.

I really don't understand the conservative Republican's way of thinking. Wasn't this country founded in part on the idea of having personal freedoms? Doesn't that include the right to go to the library and do research without fear of being questioned by the police about it?

If you think about it, the 9/11 terrorists could have just as easily taken books out on the various topics. Or just read the books while at the library and never actually checked them out.

When I worked in the local library in high school, there were people who would show up in the morning, read all day, and the just go home - how would I have known if they were a terrorist? It's not like reading a specific type of book defines who you are, right?

Oh, wait - Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski's September 1995 manifesto, published in U.S. newspapers in exchange for his stopping his attacks, referred to L. Sprague De Camp's "The Ancient Engineer".

When NYPD detectives suspected Scottish occult poet Aleister Crowley may have inspired "Zodiac Killer" Heriberto Seda, a Queens grand jury granted them a subpoena on July 3, 1990, to see who requested Crowley's books from NYPL's Bryant Park headquarters

So apparently reading Scottish poetry and non-fiction about the history of engineering are now seditious acts?

Look, I'm not saying that I'm a fan of the people who like to make buildings blow up - quite the opposite - but how are we doing anything but making our lives miserable - one of the terrorists goals - if we restrict personal freedoms? Aren't these same freedoms one of the reasons that we are so hated? Our women walk the streets without burqa's. They get educated - hell, we treat them (for the most part - some men never learn) like equals. People are allowed to practice just about any religion they want. People can say almost anything they want to without fear of reprisal from the government - note I said almost anything. If we start taking away these rights, these freedoms, then we start to make our society start to be more like theirs - and then that means that they're starting to win. We can't let them - so stop being an idiot, get your head out of your ass, and realize that making the librarian keep track of who used which computer when isn't going to stop anyone from doing anything.

First and foremost, I love having this blog and all the chances it gives me to vent/share things. But if there's one thing I hate about it, it's all the idiots out there who seem to think that my website is there for them to spam and take advantage of. You know who you are, and cut it out.

Having said that, I've found a new resource in my battle against said idiots: MT-ProxyPlug. It checks to see if the commenter is coming through an open web-proxy and shuts them out. I don't really like that part - I'd rather have it moderate - but the consensus on the page of the plugin seems to be that when they come in this way, it's for no good, so what the heck.

I'm also happy to report that MT-Blacklist, which I've been using almost since it came out, is kicking ass and taking names.

Some stats:
Comment spams blocked: 19923
Comment spams moderated: 3600
Duplicates blocked: 84

That means that out of all the posts I've dealt with personally, 3600 have been moderated because they fit MT-Blacklists profile of spam - and I'd say about 99% of the time, it's dead on. It also means that 19,923 times someone tried to "comment" on my site and link to their site, a site that was intended to make them money or sell some cheap ass product or just generally take advantage of the interweb thingee. That's 19,923 comments that I never ever ever ever had to see - it just took care of them. That's like 40 hours of work that it saved me. Maybe less, I don't know - but that's not the point - it's that the plugin not only works, it KICKS ASS.

I've very glad that Jay now works for SixApart.

Sort of. The company I work for has many clients, one of whom is a local real estate management company. One of their buildings, where I've spent a bit of time both for that client, for another client in the same building, and for my physician, is dealing with a small problem: asbestos. The asbestos is in the ceiling, and normally wouldn't be disturbed, but they got money to install a new fire detection system, so of course they wanted to use it - and therein is the problem. Apparently none of the current residents knew about it, and the management company didn't know about it, but the installers found it. Now that they know it's there, they have to be careful, and it of course makes things a lot harder to do, and on and on and on. The residents, of course, are not happy.

At one point, they started a newsletter and even a website to give the building management and the board of trustees a hard time about it and to share what little info they had on the issue. The problem was that the discussion boards weren't monitored by anyone, and things went from bad to worse - including some slanderous and libelous statements. Not surprisingly, the management companies lawyers quickly went to work and had the site shut down - and now, of course the website people are complaining about their first amendment rights being trampled. You can see that on their site here.

In other interesting news..... An experiment by Michael Buffington that is a blog based on the keyword of asbestos. He's got a tool that checks Google's news alerts for stuff about asbestos, then posts it to the blog. He writes:

The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It's not that I don't have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google's Alert system. So far it works wonderfully.

But there's a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through revenue while still providing a somewhat valid service to people who might arrive by search results.

What an interesting concept he's got going. I don't know how Google will feel about him discussing stuff about the Adsense program - they take a dim view of that - but it's not like he's cheating - it's a blog about asbestos, and it could help people find info they're looking for.

Apparently another hot keyword is Mesothelioma. It's closely linked to asbestos, since one causes the other, and it's popular with the lawyers - I see ads about mesothelioma in the paper, local lawyers pay for ads on the local tv channels (or in the deep-waters of the cable offerings) - it's everywhere, apparently. And yet, until today, I had no idea what mesothelioma was. Interesting.

First and foremost, for all you blog spammers out there: cut it the hell out. I'm sick of your links, your insipid attempts to make things look "legit", and the fact that I have to take time out of my life - time I don't usually have - to clear your crap off my website is not amusing me. One. Bit.

I made this analogy of the problem to my parents one day:
It's like when you come back to your car after shopping at the mall, and find that someone was kind enough to shove a menu for a new restaurant under your windshield. Only with the blog spammers, you come back to your car and find that your whole windshield is covered with menus, five or six levels deep. NOT AMUSING.

I took it a bit further, adding that the spyware and virii I've been dealing with at work have me on edge - if I see a PC now, I avoid it unless I have to touch it - and then I feel all dirty after. Anyway, the continued analogy.... You get back to your car, and after getting rid of a metric ton of crap from your windshield, you then find that someone has broken into your car, moved the seats and mirrors, and then taken the liberty of changing all the presets on your radio too. Dirty low life scum sucking idiots.

Second order of business: this website as you know it. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this blog. Well, not a lot really, but it's been a background process that's been processing while I'm busy doing other stuff - sorta like how your computer will continue to print something even though you've moved on to another website. Anywho, here's the thing: I don't do this enough.

Add to that the other blogs I try to maintain (computerboy comes to mind, among others) and you can see that my goal of at least one post a day to at least one blog is failing. Miserably. I also have a photo album blog thing I've been trying to update, and the "family news" site for the family website - not super-important stuff, but it's there, and I'm not updating it like I should - or feel I should - and it's grating on my nerves. Or nerve - might be the last one... ;)

So, I'm going to embark on a tear down of this and some other sites, and re-do and integrate and mess around with and just generally break some stuff. It's going to get bad - much worse - before it gets any better. The long-term goal is to have one site for me, one for the family, and have my site publish to some of the other sites via some tricks I have up my sleeves. I realize that no-one out there cares about this stuff, but unless I write it down, I won't feel motivated to do anything, so what the heck, here it is. Call it a late New Years Resolution - number one in a series, collect them all.

I've also been checking out some other blogs lately. Sure, I've been doing that for years, but it's been a while since I looked at some of the other parenting blogs, and realized just how little I blog about the kids. Part of that is a privacy concern, what with the way the world is all messed up now, but I think I might be able to get away with it. Maybe.

Another thing I noticed is that when I blog, it's not the same as it used to be - I used to put up links throughout the day, and casual observations at the drop of a hat. Now-adays it's these longer posts, usually after I've dealt with some hairy computer problem, which of course makes me NOT want to post at all. It sucks, but that's life, right?

End transmission.

(this is in regards to tonights episode of CSI)
Hey buster, guess what? Sara's pissed at the world because a) she has some dark personal history involving abuse and b) she wants you in a way that's not possible. Deal with it.

UPDATE - 2 minutes later - hey, guess what, I was RIGHT! History of abuse - her father was stabbed to death. Sure, it wasn't her directly, but that kind of stuff will mess up a kid. And then the whole foster care thing.... Sara's got some issues to work out, me thinks....

Micro Persuasion: Sign Bloggers to Endorsement Deals
Micro Persuasion: Product Placement Advertising Invades Blogs
Marc's Voice: Marqui product placement ads

As I said in a comment on the first link.... I don't have a problem with it, as long as the endorsement is on the record (aka on their about page or something there's a note saying that XYZ Corp is giving me bling/ducats/schwag for shamelessly plugging their product) and as long as the blogger is shilling stuff that they actually use and recommend. Of course, I guess that's how epinions got started.....

I mention brands and whatnot here all the time - the stuff I hate and the stuff I can't live without. I don't see the harm in getting a little bit of money - or, preferably, some free product - for doing that.