The subject line said: Say Good-bye to spam
“Delete Mail Button”
Good-bye, spam.
My cable-fed IP address changed overnight. I have my DNS hosted for free at ZoneEdit, and I modified their dynamic DNS Perl script for my needs, so all my domain info was dynamically updated within 5 minutes of receiving the new address while I slept. Very smooth. Highly recommended. I only noticed because the DNS at a client site seems to ignore my short TTL values and still has the old address cached.
The Christmas tree came down this weekend, as it does every January 6th. Jan 6th is known as Epiphany. Apparently this was the day that the three wise men made their visit to an inn’s stable so many years ago, and came to the realization that things were not going to be quite the same from here on in.
A pretty good definition of epiphany from dictionary.com is:
A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: “I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself”
Usually, real epiphany is followed by another of my favourite words, vicissitude:
One of the sudden or unexpected changes or shifts often encountered in one’s life, activities, or surroundings.
The trick in life is that when an epiphany strikes you and knocks you into a vicissitude, you gotta have the presence of mind to steer out of the skid without too much intense shakeup.
That reminds me, my ABS brakes make a rattling noise when I hit ice. Gotta investigate that.
Now how the hell did I get from there to here? It’s like word association football!
USA Today brings us an article about the courts cracking down on ex-employees and their online bad-mouthing of their companies.
The two examples they give are of some guys who sent 14,000 messages to 100 newsgroups and another who sent out 35,000 emails airing his grievance with his former employer. Futher actions were against anonymous posters.
These guys cry that “A little guy like me comes along and says ‘I disagree’ or ‘the CEO is ignorant,’ and I’m squished. It’s a free-speech issue.”
No it’s not. It’s a “You’re a fucking idiot spammer who can’t make a reasonable point without having a baby tantrum” issue.
You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye.
I always knew there would come a time when it occurred to me that a line had been crossed. Maybe the first time I take the laptop to bed. Or when I get a network connection in the bathroom.
I think it may have happened tonight. I’m in my basement office doing some ‘pooter stuff and I see that my wife Clare has come on to Yahoo Instant Messenger from the kitchen upstairs to send some mail to her mother. We have an IM discussion about the hyperactive kids who are right there beside her, niggling each other as kids do.
How very Jetsons.
Shane McChesney, like me, is Skipping Dot Net. Shane’s from southern Ontario too, about 100km away. Must be something in the air.
My friend Tim Aiello and I have both been doing a lot of Linux learning lately. La La La. A Lot of Linux Learning Lately. Lovely alliteration.
I turned off my NT box last night. I’ll still bring it up a couple more times before formatting it for its new life as a friend’s home desktop, but it’s no longer the server I depend on for daily …well …serving.
It was a whirlwind week of learning. I wasn’t starting from nothing – I had dabbled with Linux before a bit – but in order to be confident in replacing my main machine, I had to do a lot of studying. Hard work, but all well worth the investment.
Although the OS cost me nothing but a download and some cd blanks, I did spend over $200 on books, each carefully chosen. Notable ones are:
The heaviest bits of learning and planning surrounded security and permissions, especially on exposed services. Not stuff to be taken lightly.
My family website was a treat to convert from ASP to Perl CGI because I had used ASP with PerlScript. Global replace “$Response->Write” with “print”, slap a “use CGI;” at the top, a couple more tweaks, and Brent’s a happy nerdboy.
I replaced my JSRS Select Box demo based on ASP/.MDB with a PHP/MySql version.
Cool tools:
The swimming’s great. Pull up a partition and I’ll meet you by the pool.
You are currently browsing the brentashley weblog archives for January, 2002.
