I just got (and reported) a spam that was advertising a product to control spam. Yes, really. Among other claims, they say their product will:

• Completely stop "spam" email!
  
• Eliminate porn and other offensive email
  
• Control the email you receive
  
• Easily filter email using pre-set categories

This is just one more example of why I think spammers are STUPID. They may be cunning, always finding new ways to spew their idiocy and filth, but they're bloody morons for the most part.

Generally speaking, I don't have too much trouble with understanding an Australian dialect. I did when I first got here, but I've learned most of the quirks now, and I even use a number of distinctively Australian phrases and expressions.

Now and then, though, something will still catch me off guard or amuse me.

My greatest ongoing amusement is that Aussies (and Brits, too, as I understand it) use the term "pot plant" to refer to what Americans would call a "potted plant". In pretty much any American dialect, a "pot plant" is, well, pot. You know, cannabis, also known as marijuana, grass, wacky weed, etc. (furthermore, I grew up in the seventies and spent a fair amount of time in California in my early teens, 'nuff said). So when we go to a hardware store or grocery store that has a big sign that says "Pot Plant Sale" I am always amused on some level, despite the fact that I know they mean a "potted plant" and not pot.

And on drug-related topics, many Aussies also call what Americans call a baby stroller a "pusher". When I was growing up, "pusher" was slang for a drug dealer.

Finally, when I thought I'd mostly "got it" and didn't have too many "What are you on about?" moments, I got caught out just a couple weeks ago. I took the car to an automotive repair shop to get an estimate, and the guy I was talking to told me he needed the "reg-o" (REJ-oh, that typical Australian thing where they stick an "oh" sound on the end of words, no, I don't get it either). I just blinked. I thought, "Registration papers... hmmm..." and I went out to look in the glove compartment (which is, thankfully, still a glove compartment, even in Oz). See, in every U.S. state I've lived in (and that's a fair number of states), your "registration" refers to the actual registration papers, which are carried around with the vehicle, usually in the glove compartment.

Nope. No papers. Hmmm. There's a sticker on the windshield (errr, windscreen). I copied down all the information from it, all the numbers and weird little identifications, and then went back in with the info scribbled on the back of an envelope.

Turns out the "reg-o" is what I'd call the license plate number. *sigh*

It's almost four years I've been here. I've been conversing with Australians on a daily basis for a lot more years. And I still get caught out by a silly phrase like that...

Just got a spam in my filtered entitled:

The #1 modern ANTI-SPAM SERVICE on the market!

Because I was curious, I read what it had to say. It compared spammers to cockroaches and talked about how it's an ongoing battle to keep the stuff under control. It then suggested that I send my email address to some address with a .ru extension.

To quote Dr. Evil, "Riiiiiiiiiiiight."

32 women complain of groping, fondling during airport body searches. Apparently, one of the people who complained of inappropriate handling was a twelve year old girl...

First: Force my browser to full screen resolution (I have 1600x1200 screen res, so there's a REASON I keep my browser at less than full size!)

Second: From the newly forced open browser that is now stealing all my screen real estate, they make their entire site open in a much smaller popup.

WTF?! WHY does someone thing this is a GOOD design? It's bad enough forcing all your content into a popup (although I think it's a pretty stupid design choice), but why the HELL did they need to force my browser to full size just so I could open their popup? HELLO?!

This is scary. Since when is it in the interest of "security" to molest pregnant women?

My friend and lovely assistant, Sara, is linked and quoted in an article on MSNBC. How cool is that?

Shelagh sent me this link. Gee, I wonder if I should get bigger breasts for Christmas? My spam assures me I can get them... Nah. I've got nowhere to put them...

*ahem*

Is your PC full of garbage?

No, just my spam filter, ya moron...

I just got a spam caught in my filter that had this subject line:

RE: Your Bowels Cleaned!

Boy, oh, boy, did I want to read THAT message!

Not.

Maybe the admins at the system(s) that came through will be more interested in having their own bowels unplugged, though...

Great article at Wired. Go read it.

My best friend (also known as The Divine Miss B, but commonly known as Lori) has the most interesting life sometimes. She's done some bizarre and entertaining things, and had some bizarre and entertaining things happen to her.

The lastest, though, is pretty mind boggling. Warning, the story has a bit of strong language in it, but nothing worse than you might see on a t-shirt at certain kinds of casual social gatherings.

A man dies and ascends to Heaven, and is very surprised to find the Heavenly Gates tended by none other than Santa Clause.

"I thought Saint Peter was the gatekeeper," the man said, obviously confused.

"Ho, ho, ho," Santa replied. "Yes, that's his job, but he's on vacation. I'm filling in for him."

Before the man can reply, Santa adds with a wink, "But don't you worry... I know who's been naughty and who's been nice."

Some years ago, I lived in an apartment on the third floor that had a small wooden balcony. Late in Autumn, before we put the plastic weatherproofing sheet over the patio door, we put up lights on the balcony, sort of twisted around the railing. I thought it was kinda pretty, even though I'm not a big Christmas decorations type person.

Some time after Christmas, we noticed that the lights no longer came on when we flipped the switch (it was the balcony/porch light), but we couldn't get out to check because there was no way we were taking down the plastic film until spring (that stuff is a major pain to put up, especially over something big like a patio door).

Spring came and we took down the plastic and went outside and the lights were apparently just GONE. There was a little "tail" of the cord hanging from the plug, which was still in the light socket, but the string of lights was nowhere to be seen. We honestly couldn't figure out how anyone would get to the third floor to take them, but people have been known to do weird things...

Later in the spring, we went out to clean off the patio so we could use it, and there in the corner, tucked under some plastic chairs, was an abandoned nest, probably of a raccoon or a squirrel, and guess what was wound up in the nesting material? None other than our string of Christmas lights! It's a wonder the animal didn't electrocute itself chewing through the wire, and I'm really surprised we didn't hear the thing as it unwound the light strand, but we lived near a fairly busy street and I guess we just weren't paying attention (and the plastic on the window cut down a lot of outdoor noise).

There's no moral to this story, by the way. I just think it's kind of amusing.

If I were a wine I would be...


This quiz was created by Krazy K. Take it here!

You are the most universal mythical beast ever. Sightings of the unicorn have been reported from all over the world, even in these modern times. Unicorns are pure and incurruptible. In China, unicorns symbolised gentleness, good will, and wisdom. Christianity links the unicorn with Christ. It is said that unicorns would only allow virgin girls to see them, let alone touch them. They were easily lured into fatal ambushes by a virgin with some potchers waiting for the unicorn in nearby bushes. A unicorn's horn was a highly prised possesion, which was reputed to have great healing capabilities. With the touch of its horn, a unicorn could bring back a person who had been dead for several hours. But when disattached from the unicorn's body, the magic was suggnificantly reduced and could only protect against poison. The unicorn had the body of a horse, a unique spirling horn, and a lion's tail. They were pure white in color. Congratulations, you are a rarity amoung mythical beasts. There aren't enough of people like you in the world.

What mythical beast best represents you? Take the quiz!

A saleswoman is driving toward home in Northern Arizona when she sees a Navajo woman hitchhiking. Because the trip has been long and quiet, she stops
the car and the Navajo woman climbs in.

During their small talk, the Navajo woman glances surreptitiously at a brown bag on the front seat between them.

"If you are wondering what's in the bag," offers the saleswoman, "it's a bottle of wine. I got it for my husband."

The Navajo woman is silent for a while, nods several times and says, "Good Trade."

Sara just needed to let off a little steam.

This is from a spam I got today. I can normally tell immediately which ones are spam and which aren't, but now and then one looks like it might be legitimate and so I have a peek. My instinct (that it was spam) was right, but check out the lame and annoying attempt to get me to confirm my email address:

Hey Hows it going. Let me introduce myself. My name is Kara I just moved to the area from New York.
I saw your profile on the internet and was wondering if you were single? I'm looking for someone who can show me around town and to have a good time with.
If your interested email me at [deleted] and I'll send you some of my sexy pics..

Spammers, as I've said many times, are cunning, but they're universally stupid, as far as I've seen...

Don't you love it when you know more about the net than the tech support at your ISP?

On a couple of occasions, I've gotten good tech support, but most of the time I get total morons, and I have to explain to them over and over what the problem is (and no, it's not that I don't know how to use a computer, thanks).

Yesterday, cable service went out. Andrew decided to call them. First the support tech suggests reinstalling the drivers for the network card. No, Andrew says. We don't want to do that. Last time we did that (on the recommendation of tech support) it caused more problems and solved none. No, we also don't want to take the computer apart and reseat the network card. We really don't think that's the problem...

He went through a list of "things to try", all of which we'd already done (because we know what we're doing). Finally, he decided to send out an onsite tech to check what the problem was, and scheduled a visit for Thursday.

Then, as if it had only just occurred to him, he asked, "Oh, are you in someplace called Hopper's Crossing?" No. He names another place. No. Then, mispronounces the suburb where we live. Oh, yes, well, it seems we're in the middle of a network outage which is being fixed and the estimated restoration time was six o'clock.

Better cancel that tech visit, then, Andrew said. No, the guy insists, wait and make sure everything's working first. Uhmmm, okay... (I did call today and cancel.)

The thing is, if the moron had just checked our location against known outages FIRST, he could have saved himself a lot of frustration and us a lot of annoyance at having to deal with a total moron. And isn't it a good thing I didn't reinstall my drivers (again)?

So earlier today when I lost partial service (I could FTP, telnet, SSH, POP, etc., just not get any websites, which makes me think it was their proxy down), I didn't bother to call and ask. I figured they'd just tell me to reinstall my network drivers, despite the fact that I could tell them specifically what the problem appeared to be. After all, I'm just an end user. It's not like I know anything about how things work....

I just noticed that I've gotten some 2500 messages caught in my Spamcop spam filter in about a year's time. Some of those, of course, were legitimate messages that were caught erroneously (in which case I just forward them on and "whitelist" them so they never get caught again). I'd say that maybe 100-200 were legitimate messages (that's probably too high of an estimate, but I'll be generous), and the only reason so many get caught is because I opt to use the absolute highest possible level of spam filtering they offer. You can actually set it lower and get fewer false positives, but you then get more spam in your inbox, and I'd just rather have it all stay on their server.

Anyway, that's a lot of spam, and 100% of it gets reported (really easily, with a couple of clicks in the web browser). I know for a fact that several of the spammers who had me on their list have had their sites shut down (one of them has gone through about a dozen domain names because they keep getting shut down!). And even if they don't get "caught", that's still a couple thousand spam messages that never dirtied my inbox with their sleazy presence.

And people wonder why I'm willing to pay US$30 a year for this service...