Blog Spam I Don't Understand
A couple of days ago, asisaid was hit by blog spam (something unusual for my blog, for whatever reason). Most of it was at least semi-explicit, but it also had a peculiar quality to it: none of it seemed to actually point to anything. Several of them seemed to include phone numbers, but with the wrong number of digits. When I looked in my database, the poster left neither an e-mail nor a web site in the contact information. This left me wondering: why spam a blog if you don't even link to a product or service?
Is this just the twenty first century equivalent of graffiti?
Water, Water Everywhere
“When it rains, it pours.” After essentially no rain in weeks (other than a small drizzle last week), a big thunderstorm passed through tonight. I had just headed out for a short drive over to and around Creve Coeur park — about the only decent outdoor activity with the 100+ degree Fahrenheit temperatures —when a bit of a storm started to appear on the northern horizon. I tried to go around it, but given that I needed to head back north to go home, that didn't work so well.
I was on the river bottoms in St. Louis County, but went up and around to try another approach. When I came back down, what I would say were straight line winds (based on later examination of area damage) were stirring up gravel, debris and dust — not the kind of stuff I wanted to drive my car through. So, I made a u-turn, went back up the hill and holed up under the shelter of a Philips 66 at Hog Hollow Rd. and Olive Blvd. in case it hailed. I spent about an hour there, watching the front come in, the rain pour like crazy and the power go on and off. I switched between XM's Instant Traffic and Weather and KMOX (“the Voice of St. Louis”) trying to find out how the storm was doing, but I think for the most part they were taken aback by the intesity of this storm as much as I was. The KMOX news editor didn't even have time to prepare for the hourly local news because he was too busy reporting on this storm.
The poor station attendant at the gas station kept having to turn people away from the gas pumps since they apparently take 10 minutes to start up, and the power wouldn't stay on for more than 10 minutes at a time. One fellow stood there for probably 30 minutes trying to finish filling his tank before giving up. One time that the power was on long enough for the registers to work, I went in and bought a bottle of water to drink. The sirens went off, but I never heard on the radio where the tornado was.
Back home, the storm has definitely left its mark on the subdivision, taking down large parts of trees, siding, and so on. Traffic lights are on the fritz and power is still out to several hundred thousand homes (especially on the St. Louis side, it seems). Apparently, part of the roof on Lambert-St. Louis International Airport's one concourse blew off and was laying on several lanes of I-70.
This was suppose to be just a small storm for those of us north of the city, I was told. Conversely, another storm system coming in tomorrow afternoon is suppose to be severe. I think I'll try to avoid that one.
Need a MacBook Pro? Sure you do.
Well, I'm pretty good on computers right now, but if you need one, CNET found quite a bargain on a MacBook Pro at Amazon.com. The system, a base model MacBook Pro (which isn't exactly a “base model” by any other metric), is only $1,650 after a $150 rebate.
While that's not exactly cheap, it puts the MacBook Pro within $150 of a Black MacBook, and while the premium MacBook has a faster processor, the MBP adds a dedicated video card, a larger screen, an ExpressCard slot, a lighted keyboard and other goodies worth considering.
Just an FYI.
More SAFARI Fixes
Just a heads up: I've corrected a bug on the “Recent Comments” page that caused the entries to be semi-randomly sorted. With this fix, the latest comments are again placed at the top of the page.
The road to 3G SAFARI is progressing! Let me know if you see any bugs. For those of you who read Ed's blog, I'm hoping to get this and some other fixes deployed there very soon.
Jordan
I've not posted much in the way of poetry on here recently, so to remedy that, here is a fun little poem from my metaphysical poet “friend,” George Herbert. There is something melancholy about Herbert's lyrics, especially when you compare them to the lines of fellow metaphysician, John Donne, but that is not to complain so much as to observe.
JORDAN. (I)WHO sayes that fictions onely and false hair
Become a verse ? Is there in truth no beautie ?
Is all good structure in a winding stair ?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
Not to a true, but painted chair ?Is it not verse, except enchanted groves
Shepherds are honest people ; let them sing :
And sudden arbours shadow course-spunne lines ?
Must purling streams refresh a lovers loves ?
Must all be vail’d, while he that reades, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes ?
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for Prime :
I envie no mans nightingale or spring ;
Nor let them punish me with losse of ryme,
Who plainly say, My God, My King.
Sorry for the Delay
I think the heat is getting to me. After meeting with a client today early in the day, I had very little spunk to do the other things I wanted to do. I ended up going for a short ride and eating an ice cream cone. Talk about hectic!
According to my car's thermometer, it reached over 100 degrees today — I'm not sure what the official temperature count was. I'll just say it was hot, and by all indications, there is plenty more of that coming up over the next few days.
Muny and Other Exciting Stuff
Today, I took the day off and yet it was packed full trying to do various things, finally topped off with a delicious “cherry” of going to the Muny. Unfortunately, I'm far too tired to talk about that just now, so I guess I'll just not say any more right now.
Hopefully I'll push myself to do a review of the Muny production the Wizard of Oz tomorrow.
Web Sites, Web Sites, Web Sites.
This is Mark's new Thursday Question meme. Last week's I answered on his site, but I thought I'd answer it here this week.
1. What is your favorite site to visit? (portals, blogline type readers, etc don't count)
It depends what I'm in the mood for. News.com is probably my most regular non-portalish read, along with various blogs. My regular routine is News.com, then OSNews, then MacNewsBytes, then Drudge, then my asisaid Recent Comments page, then using my blogroll to visit other blogs. If time permits, I might go to CNN after that.
2. What site is known to be popular but you just don't get it?
I'm having a hard time digging Digg. It just doesn't do anything for me.
3. What is your biggest pet peeve regarding web site design and ease of use?
Overzealous use of stuff like JavaScript menus and Flash that just get in the way of letting me get where I want to go.
4. What speed do you surf the internets [sic] at? Reality vs ISP promise.
I surf at a promised speed of 3 mbps thanks to Charter High-Speed Internet. In reality, I get somewhere between 2.5-2.8, according to Broadband Reports.
5. What web site, which is no longer with us, will you forever miss?
I'm not really sure. Just for old time's sake, I'd go back a bit farther and say I miss the odd charm of Prodigy Interactive Services.
6. What gem of site have you just found?
SAtechBlog is run not only by a guy that loves the Mac, but more importantly, is obsessed by AT&T's U-Verse (Project Lightspeed). Suddenly, I can go to just one place and keep up-to-date on this fascinating technology.
Your Legislators at Work
Well, it seems that our government passed a bill offering tax credits for purchasing diesel engine-powered vehicles, since they are much more fuel efficient. Nevertheless, based on cleanliness requirements, no 2006 vehicles qualify for the credit. (Hybrids do, despite all the toxic stuff that goes into their batteries that will eventually have to be disposed of.)
Yes, that makes a lot of sense to me.
A Smart Idea
I've noticed more and more places that have complementary bottled water are branding that water with their name. This strikes me as ingenious, since typically one might carry a bottle of water around for several hours, and, in doing so, unwittingly serve as an advertisement for the company giving out the water. This seems to be a win-win situation, really, since the customer appreciates the water and the company appreciates assistance in “spreading the word.”
Ultimate Electronics use to give out complementary water, but ceased when they ran into financial difficulties. They seemed to be a bit ahead of the curve on the whole complementary water idea, at least around here. Maybe they should try again, but this time use private label water. it might just work a bit better for them.
