Month: February 2005

Uncomplimentary Spam

As is usual, I’ve been getting a trickle of spam comments most days. But this latest wave is a tad bizarre. It caught me off guard at first because they were generally short comments that almost made sense. Things along the lines “nice site” or “I’ll have to bookmark you” or even “I disagree,” but longer and in full sentences. Then I looked at the e-mail and sites they provided. Well, for now we’ll call this a family site and claim that I don’t want to say the sorts of sites they listed. But to be perfectly honest, if this blog were Ron Jeremy‘s himself I think he’d be too disgusted by their suggestion to repeat.

I really don’t care much – not a single one made it past the filters -b but some of the comments just became… well… odd, if not belligerent. Just the other day one of these jokers said, “OMG you must be totally retarded.” And today someone actually told me, “If I saw you in the street I’d spit on you.” Now, does this sound like a good marketing plan? I mean, the spam is already blatant, and I’m not giving them any free marketing, but now they’re basically insulting me, too.

Let’s face it, if you call into question my mental state, or threaten me with saliva, I’m not going to stand for that. So just go sell your freakish goat-blowing tranny porn elsewhere!

Mr. Sun

Everybody say hello to Mr. Sun – the latest addition to my regular reads. Mr. Sun puts together some pithy, yet thoroughly entertaining, observations about the world he shines down upon (and its crazed inhabitants):

Dante Chialvo, a physiologist at Northwestern University, says your brain is like the Internet. I know mine is — it contains mostly recycled opinions and images of nudity.

Just take a quick gander at his list of upcoming movie sequels or the composition of a a funny sentence.

Meeting etiquette

Here’s a little hint for you guys. When in a meeting – especially one involving a conference call – don’t start reading webcomics to pass the time. Beause when you come across certain strips, it will be difficult not to inexplicably start laughing. About someone else’s pain. In front of your co-workers. And another company, to boot.

And now while noting this (still during said meeting) I found myself unable to spell the word “etiquette.” I was so far off, that Dictionary.com was just throwing anything at me in hopes of figuring out my word. With that entry, the usefulness of that site has grown exponentially.

The Hoohoo Monologues

Whoops, I forget whether women have hoohoos or hahas… Not that I’m confused about the parts, mind you, just the nicknames. Anywho, that’s not the point. Tomorrow night my friend Sandy will be performing in “The Vagina Monologues”:

Eve Ensler’s THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES!
Friday, February 25, 2005
8:00 pm
DeBaun Auditorium
Hoboken, NJ
Tickets are only $5.

All proceeds go to charity (WomenRising Inc.).

I’m hoping I can make it, but that’s not definite. If anyone else in the New York/Hoboken area is interested, you can find more information at the DeBaun Auditorium’s website.

Simon Cowell is my hero

I’m dead serious here. Ok, crap, I’m actually admitting on my blog that I watch American Idol, but I just can’t hold it in anymore. My old roommates already know this about me, so I guess it’s time the whole world (or at least the miniscule portion that reads this site) knows it too. It went down like this:

Lisa was interested in watching last season. I was not. She’s the woman, so obviously she won out. We watched a couple episodes early on, and I tried to keep myself busy. But then it started to happen. Someone would sing, and I’d make a few observations. Then Simon would say the same things, only nastier. As the show progressed, I realized that I agreed with Simon most of the time. The main differences were that I was far more polite in my observations and could recognize when someone had a good voice that simply didn’t fit into the competition well. And so I got hooked.

Continue reading “Simon Cowell is my hero”

Images served right

I’ve been looking for a good photo plugin for WordPress. What I really wanted was a simple way to generate thumbnails for posts, but link a popup window for the full-sized image. This weekend I stumbled across David Seah’s Lazy Image Layout which appears to give me exactly what I need.

!@(images/broinlaws.jpg:R popimg: “Doin’ the dishes”)
So here’s my test. Lacking any real good pictures at hand to post, I present you with a photo of two of my brother-in-laws washing dishes.

UPDATE: Hey, waddya know? It works beautifully! Thanks a lot, and great work David. Hopefully I’ll get used to the syntax, and this will mean more frequent use of photos in my posts.

UPDATE 2: David changed the RSS functionality so the thumbnails now appear in my feeds, too. But only the full post ones – not that I really get the idea of excerpted feeds.

Great Googily Moogily

Holy crap, what happened to my webpage? Did I finally get off my ass and do a redesign? Well, sort of. I got sick of the default look to the point that something needed to change. And since I wasn’t likely to change my taste to accept such monotony, I decided to start editing. As you should be able to discern, I really didn’t change much. A couple tweaks with the sidebar, a new background color, and, of course, the new header was all it took to make this homepage a little more… homey.

I honestly miss my old, yet outdated, 3-column desing I did wayback in the early days of this site. At least it truly felt like my site when I looked at it. Now, I can’t help but realize it’s mine by looking at it. The changes were kept minimal at this point in order to afford myself time to work on the gallery, and other areas of great disrepair. But don’t be surprised to see things shifting about as the dust settles on my new endeavor.

A quick suggestion to everybody out there with WordPress installs currently using the default theme. Create a header image (about 760px by 200px) that represents a little about yourself or your site. Call it personalheader.jpg. Next, upload it to the wp-content/themes/default/images directory of your site. While there, delete the default images (you can always get them again if you need them). Voila, a personalized site. It will be a whitewashed rendition of the Kubrick layout, with your own header for that personal touch. Then you can take your time creating your very own theme to truly make it your site.

P.S. (To answer the question on all of your minds, yes, that handsome devil up top is in fact Teddy)

The mind is a terrible thing

Found today on a message board:

Here’s a recent study from Cambridge University that is pretty cool. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig, huh?

This one might not be new to you guys, since it originally made circulation back in 2003, but it was new to me. Sadly, the Internet brings us both intriguing snippets of information, and just as quickly shatters them with reality. Snopes is, as usual, a decent starting spot to find more information on this “legend.” But with a quick google I found a far more impressive write-up on this scrambled language meme.