Ramblings of the Mildly Insane

Sometimes I think I go to the trouble of writing one for no good reason. I think I’m being helpful and on top of everything. But so many times, it has proven to be a complete waste of 15-30+ minutes of my life. So many questions and problems could be averted if everyone just RTFM.

I run a link directory on a couple of my websites. When someone adds their website, they get sent a confirmation email so they can verify their email address really exists and I don’t get automated sign ups and whatnot.

Well, this morning I received this in my inbox (names and identifying information have been changed to protect the clueless - I bolded it too):

=====
A message that you sent contained one or more recipient addresses that were incorrectly constructed:

11### North ## Drive: missing or malformed local part (expected word or “<")

This address has been ignored. There were no other addresses in your message, and so no attempt at delivery was possible.

------ This is a copy of your message, including all the headers. ------

To: 11### North ## Drive
Subject: The Clueless, please confirm your submission...
From: My Directory
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 01:31:31 -0500
=====

Just in case you didn't catch that - The reason the email bounced was because it was a street address. Last time I checked, my host's server has not yet figured out how to print, seal, stamp, and drop a letter in the mail (time for me to find a new host).

This event has prompted me to do 2 things.

1) Check my "add URL” form to make sure I clearly stated that it needed to be an email address - frankly, I don’t plan to visit any of these people personally and tell them their listing has been added. I’m nice, but not that nice.

2) Add some filters to verify the email address is actually an email address. I’m using a third party script, but I don’t think his programmer really thought ahead on this one

After checking the form sure ‘nuf, it says “Email Address”. I know there are some less than computer savvy folks out there, and I consider myself to be very patient when I’m teaching someone something new, but I’m fairly confident that if you can figure out how to get to my website submission form for the purpose of adding your website to the directory, you’d know what an email address is - would I be wrong about that?

Anyhoo, I’m off to actually start “getting stuff done” now.

New Law Encourages Tsunami Relief Contributions:

The new law enacted on Jan. 7 allows these donations to be deducted as if they were made on Dec. 31, 2004.

“There are no extra forms to fill out or any additional burdens for taxpayers,� said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. “As long as you send your check by the end of the month, the donation will be treated just like it was still 2004.�

If you haven’t already donated and you’re in the US, this is yet another incentive for you to do so. It’s not too late.

When your abuse@ email address is full, you know you have a serious problem.

It makes not a lick of sense to me. My near month end tallies show that I have received about 50 pieces of spam (give or take) across my 2 blogs. Sometime earlier this month, I’ve finally decided that each piece of comment spam I receive, I plan to report it to their ISP and their domain host.

But in trying to enforce my new self imposed rule, I’ve found that 99% of the sites have already been shut down by their host. So, why then, do spammers continue to spam for a website that is um…non-existant? It’s search engine suicide at best and it doesn’t seem very cost effective to me having to change hosts every couple weeks as people continue to report them.

I really would like to interview a spammer. I promise I’d be cordial and I wouldn’t lunge across cyberspace and strangle anyone - promise. I really just want to know how a spammer’s mind operates.

Well, the RSS Feedreader anyway. I love Thunderbird and I really don’t have any gripes about it. There are a number of features which I love and even with this RSS problem, I’d take it over Outlook anyday of the week. And now with 1.0 released, it was so nice being able to check my feeds while I’m checking my mail.

All was well for a while. I’d check my feeds, I’d see who updated and who didn’t and I didn’t need to open my browser or another piece of software - life was good - that is until I started getting duplicates. I believe it happened when the number of feeds I subscribed to went just over 40ish and the next thing I know, Thunderbird is downloading duplicate posts 1, 2, 5+ times for each feed.

Not only that, I set it to only download the excerpt instead of loading the website and for whatever reason, it decides to disregard that setting - usually happens on the duplicate feeds and only for certain websites. It’s very picky about that.

I know I’m not the only person experiencing this because this is apparently a known bug. At least feed reading life was sweet for a few months.

So now, I’m looking for another solution for my feed reading needs. I would love something I could integrate with Thunderbird so I can continue reading my favorite blogs while checking email, but if I have to use another bit of software, then so be it.

My sissy kidnapped me for lunch yesterday. Granted, I went willingly cuz I just needed to get out of the house and take a break, and we had a nice time. We started talking about, what, I can’t remember, but I do remember that it got me thinking about how we take so much for granted. I told her that this year, I would eat at Long John Silver’s. She looked over at me and said “oh, I’ve eaten there…” and I replied “I know, you’ve told me, but I’m actually going to park my car, get out, walk inside and order some chicken.”

She got a little quiet, then looked back over at me and said “I’ve never gone inside. I’ve always gone through the drive through. I’ve never gone inside.” and I could see in her face that going inside scared her too. So, this year, I will face so many of the things I was unable to deal with before. The list will grow I’m sure because it is by no means complete, but I’m trying to do this thing one step at a time. I’ll conquer the bigger stuff when I feel I’m better able.

1. I will eat at Long John Silver’s
2. I will purchase and actually chew a stick of Juicy Fruit Gum
3. I will learn to play guitar
4. I will make it through Amazing Grace without crying

I know I can do it, I’ve already proven that to myself by eating an orange again, eating Toblerone chocolates, buying and actually chewing a stick of gum from the “green pack” (I don’t remember what flavor it is because we always used to just call it the “green pack” - I know it’s Wrigley’s PenTpak brand and has 17 sticks of gum in it).

I know that the majority of you will not understand my list and many will be looking cross-eyed at it wondering if I’m joking - no, I’m not - but there are some who will understand the significance of each of the things on that list. I have not done any of the things on that list in 13 years, I can’t believe it’s been thirteen years already, it seems like it was just yesterday.

When I’m ready to talk about it, I will, but for now I’m going to focus on finding the strength to accomplish each task.

I love it when I feel like I’ve gotten a good early start to my day. Normally, I used to wake up around 7ish in the morning, but lately my sleep schedule has been $%&#ed to hell and I find myself waking up around 9ish-10ish (never later than 11ish) and when I wake up that late I don’t feel like doing much of anything and it feels like I’m dragging myself through the day.

Well today, I finally woke up at 7am on the dot :D. Granted, I didn’t fall asleep until 2ish this morning with this throbbing headache (I was literally in tears) and I had to wrap my eyes with a hanky to get total and complete darkness, but I finally fell asleep.

Anyhoo, sometimes mornings can be rough when you’re running on no or very little sleep - and so I found out rather rudely too. Everything was going good. I was motivated. I was excited. I was getting stuff done. I figured, things were going so well, why not multitask? Sooo, I set a couple of documents to print out and went to finish making myself a cup of tea. I opened up the patio door so the sun could shine in and the kitty could go out - life was good ’til I heard a loud noise and a man’s voice.

Panick was my first reaction. I felt like my heart was going to fall out of my chest it was beating so hard. Me in my nighty and scary sounding man coming from the direction of the patio - that is until I listened to what he was saying “Printing complete.” - damn talking printer. Don’t I feel stupid.

Well, I have insomnia. When I have insomnia, I watch t.v. instead of the ceiling. Since Celebrity Justice seemed like the only plausible show to tide me over until Dateline NBC started, I watched it. Then, it happened. It only lasted a few seconds - but they flashed a brief image of a website to illustrate one of their story line points and guess what browser they were using? Yep, that’s right - Firefox baby :D…

Tucker Max Tries BUTT SEX
Just so you can get a little taste of what’s in store:

I spent the summer between my 2nd and 3rd year of college suckling on the parental teat in South
Florida. It was the absolute prime of my “do anything to get laid” phase. I was recently freed from a 4-year long-distance relationship that began in high school and I wanted nothing more than to have sex with as many girls as possible.

After reading this, climbing back into the chair (I had fallen out from laughing so hard), I had to cotemplate what on God’s green earth this dude was thinking.