...more recent posts
From 7CR:
"... I have to give professional spammers a point for creativity with the recent flock of email that says, 'Is this XXXX, if not sorry for the bother.' I can only imagine how many valid email addresses that must have harvested. Still, should I ever meet the purpetrator on the street, I can think of some fine action involving a ball-peen hammer and really bad opinion of direct marketing. It's the cowardice. At least beggars have the courage to look you in the face and ask for money with no suppositions..."I got one of these too. I was going to mention it, as this was probably pretty effective for them. As I've said once before - DO NOT REPLY to any message that you do not want, or that you don't know what it is. Spammers want to get lists of active email addresses to sell to other spammers who want to fill you mailboxes with useless offers for off shore tax havens, and various get rich quick schemes. If you reply to a message like this, then they know your address is good, and YOU WILL BE SOLD and resold untill your mailbox is no good to you anymore (unless you are really lonely, and you'd rather get these spams then nothing, in which case you are in luck...) No one will ever read your message, so all the cursing or pleading or whatever you try to do is all to no avail. Just ignore them, and while they won't go away, they might not bother you as much. And just for the record, although I do hate spammers, and would love to meet one in real life, I'll take them over a total government monitoring program that would be needed to stop them. Stiffer penalties might be a good way to go though. How about $250,000 fines for convicted spammers, and the money goes into funding existing and new MAE nodes (is that what you would call them?)
Yes, hello, I am still here. Just barely. The Wheel throws a mean party. I'm going to put it in the top 5 on my all time best time list, although I'd be at a loss to pick out the other four. My monitor is still causing me problems, and while it occasionally (like now) does work, I had moved it to the floor, and now my back will not have anything to do with moving it either back up to the desk or out to get repaired. My kingdom for a flat panel display. Maybe I'll just wait for the powerbook g4 announcement later this month and jump to the portable world.
Talked to another old friend from Montana a few days ago. Always makes me feel good, although now there is a certain vertigo associated with thinking back so long in time. I guess I'm still young enough that this is a novelty. Not so long ago there was no such thing as "long ago" or if there was it involved me as a child. Now I'm starting to have a long ago where I was out on my own, ostensibly an adult, although I have to admit that the person I remember as me was pretty lost and clueless. Still am, I guess, but now I'm a little more clever about it. I guess that comes with the "long ago" bit. Anyway, it's nice to hear from the past. Especially from this person. I lived for a few years with her and two other guys in college. All four of us combinded had maybe the motivation of one regular person in terms of thinking or planning for future careers. I guess this was something that drew us together. Sort of like a black hole. Fun fun times though. Now one of us is a big shot money manager type guy, the other male is a high powered computer consultant, and now she is in law school and loving the work. Go figure. I guess everyone gets it together after a while. Maybe there is still some hope for me.
Sitting at our table on New Years Eve, a girl to my right was asking people about new years resolutions. None of us had any, of course, but Alex had the best reply: "I'm low resolution this year." Cheers to that. I'm feeling a bit pixilated myself. When's that Montauk vacation?