mcgees.org

Our email addresses are precious.  My 5,166 spam messages received per day show the importance of good stewardship of our addresses.  But there are lots of times when you might want someone to contact you later: you meet someone at a party you maybe/maybe-don’t like, or you enter a contest for a free Audi — whatever — and you want a “no-commitment” email address to use.  Bingo, in steps Mailinator.  Think up any old claptrap address (such as, say, anyoldclaptrap@mailinator.com) and go back to check it once or twice, or when the contest is scheduled to end, or whatever.  If it gets swamped with spam, or the guy/girl at the party ends up to be psycho, c-ya!  No commitment: walk away from the address and never look back.

In the example above, the anyoldclaptrap@mailinator.com, some robots are going to come breezing through mcgees.org and pick up that email address, and add it to spam lists.  Bookmark this post and check back in a week or so to see if I’m right.  As I write this, the mailbox is empty.  To check it, go to Mailinator, enter in your mailbox name (anyoldclaptrap), and see your/my/our mail.  Voila!

Problem is, everyone else can see your mail, too.  So if you want a throwaway address to use for a while, on multiple sites, pick something longish and complicated (anyoldclaptrap-4032470234 or whatever), and now, Mailinator will generate an alternate “To” address for the mailbox (in this case, M8R-gk4u4f@mailinator.com.)  Now you can give that out, and there is no way to recover your actual address from it.  Have your mail sent to M8R-gk4u4f@mailinator.com, check it at anyoldclaptrap-4032470234, and when you’re done or tired or swamped, just drop your drugs and walk away, fairly confident that no one else has read “your” emails (They could, of course, if they successfully guessed anyoldclaptrap-4032470234.  But not likely.  It’s just security through obfuscation, which is much better than no security at all.)

In other news, days are now one hour long:

The Moxi DVR is great.  Really, really great.  It took almost a decade, but a company finally came out with a UI better than that of my Series 1 TiVo.

One neat thing about the Moxi is the ability to add an external hard drive.  I tried adding a 750 GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro drive to the unit.  It is recognized, formatted, and ready-to-go.  Problem is, after a certain amount of idle time, it will stop functioning.  When you try to play a show on the EHD, you will get a prompt — twice, oddly — that says “Do you want to keep this episode?”, with “keep” and “delete” options.  Also, if there is no room on the internal hard drive, the unit will fail to record episodes, and in the “Canceled/Deleted Episodes” log, the (unhelpful) reason will be given as “Failed (No Signal)”.  If you go to “Setup”, then “External Hard Drive”, select “Disconnect”, then physically disconnect and re-connect the drive, it works again.

The problem is that the Seagate EHD goes to sleep, and the Moxi cannot wake it up.  The fix is to connect the EHD to a Linux box via USB, and use sdparm to clear the “Standby” flag on the hard drive.  See the flags on the hard drive by typing:

sdparm -a /dev/sdX

where X is the letter assigned to the device (type “tail /var/log/syslog” after plugging in the drive to see what letter it’s assigned.)

To clear the flag, type:

sdparm -c STANDBY -6 /dev/sdX

The “-c STANDBY” clears the “Standby” flag, and the “-6” does it in six-bit mode, which is apparently required.

Answer for how to keep these drives from going to sleep was found at the blog My Slice of Reality.

Gimme a “G-R-I-T-T-E”!

Touch-ups are expected in pictorials these days.  Covering freckles and imperfections, lengthening limbs (true!), that sort of thing.  Oh, yeah, and breaking the laws of physics.

As discussed previously, I don’t usually go for blondes that much.  But Jessica Trainham of the Atlanta Falcons cheerleaders is a cutie.  She’s there on the right:

For, um, academic interest, study that image for a moment.  Here’s a close-up:

What the heck?  What’s going on with the arm and the pom-pom?  Cerna’s arm appears to be entering Trainham’s abdomen, but then — what — making a 90° turn at her pelvis to hold a frilly pom-pom in front of Trainham’s naughty bits?  Frustrated art student, maybe, with a hankering for this?

I got the pharmacy troubles straightened out, and I’m feeling much better, so I deleted the last post.  I should be relatively human again.  I get to see Niall on the weekend.  I’m still in constant, terrible pain, and found out I will probably need spinal surgery, but I’m better.

Thanks, everyone.  I should be back to posting now.

So, I made a blunder today.  But let’s go back twenty-something years to start.

I was in love with Victorinox Swiss Army Knives from the mid 1980s.  One of the (many) reasons I was looking forward to going to Switzerland with my family was my ability to purchase, in Switzerland, one of my beloved knives.

Today, I get an email from slickdeals.net advertising — what else — a top-of-the-line, $80+ Swiss Army Knife for under $35.  The sale is one of their “Gold Box Lightning Sales”, which means it has a duration of minutes to hours.  So I go to GMail and send out a quick email to, oh, just about everyone, telling them about the sale.

Then the proverbial X hits the Y.

It’s kind of funny to me, now, in a rather embarrassed way, the first time I’ve been reasonably accused of spamming.  But yes, that’s what happened — everything from pure jest to someone seriously threatening to block my emails.

I can’t really claim any extenuating circumstances, so let this be a warning to you: if you see an awesome deal, even if you think everyone you know might be interested in it, spammers have ruined it for the rest of us, and sending out a mass email to all your friends might not be the best route to go.

Anyway, I ordered my knife, and I hope some other people were able to order knives of their own — if you’re not already Leatherman devotees or something.

And if you got the email and hated it, I’m really sorry.

I can highly recommend, to US buyers, the oddly-named Vera Trinder, self-described as “London’s Oldest Stamp Accessory Store”, for philatelic literature.  They have relatively low prices, good coverage, and exceptional service.

Watch your checkbook, though: the merchant is completely honest, to be sure, but the current exchange rate (plus “international fees” on your credit card) leaves much to be desired (when importing — it has been a boon while selling on eBay!)

eBay seller internationalcovers has some awesome covers for sale right now.

No kickback, just thought the cover collectors would like to know.

I’m looking for someone who can do some simple, short translations from English into Scottish Gaelic.  Fluent speakers, please, preferably Scottish (rather than Canadian).  I can pay you or, preferably, if you have a freelance translation service, I can give you a free ad on this site — one year for every 15 minutes of translation time on your part.

Can anyone help?

Anyone use Bloglines to read mcgees.org?  Anyone having problems?  For me, it’s showing no posts since August 2007.

Big news, released today, that I stumbled upon at eBay while looking for something else entirely: beginning 1 April 2008, eBay will launch its own “Partner Network” affiliate program.  If you are a content publisher, set an alarm and visit the not-yet-live eBay Affiliate site in two weeks’ time.

Is mcgees.org going to participate?  OH YES, if they’ll have me.  I see dollar signs.  Maybe I’ll have to get rid of my Auction Sniper link to be admitted…

I’m slowly-but-surely building my eBay feedback.  It’s at 460 now.  I’m aiming for 500 by the end of the month.

A friend of mine, a PowerSeller, saw my feedback when it was right around 400 and said, mockingly, “Oh, how cute!”  I worked bloody hard for those 400, damn it!  Can you imagine reaching 13,000 or something?

Actually, I can.  It’s sort of the route I’ve planned for myself, at least in the near future.

Aside for one very recent, very undeserved Neutral, all of my feedback has been positive.  Knock on wood…

There’s an eBay lot that I really, really want.  The auction closes in less than one hour (4:40 a.m. PDT is probably some sensible time in Johannesburg, where the seller resides), and the bidding is at 14% of my high bid.  I would love to get this lot for 14% of my high bid.

I can’t sleep, as you can probably tell, so I’ve been fiddling (they call it a “one tweak loop” in computerese) with the sidebar.  Let me know what you think — if you can tell the difference.

Firefox did not complain about the word “computerese”.  Wow.

“We get a lot of stiff skepticism and disbelief from our first time clients all the time, and its okay, we’re used to it.”

Yeah?  No kidding.  Add me to that list.

Anyone care to support, debunk, or otherwise comment on this “miracle” product?

OK, any guesses on how much spam I receive, per day?

Seriously, hazard a guess.

Since I don’t want the email and (maybe) feed readers to just show the number, please click here for the answer.

That’s my number.  Care to share yours?  Average across 30 days if you can.

I watch Antiques Roadshow.  I can usually only stomach the original, British version, not the horrid American knock-off.  Frequently someone will bring in a family piece — say, a portrait of a relative from Georgian times, or a needlework sampler that a greatⁿ-grandmother composed in the early 19th Century C.E. — and will ask after its value.

Now, establishing an auction value makes sense for these: that establishes what items like it, in comparable condition, fetch to when sold to someone else with an interest in art.  But the valuers will go on to give a higher value for insurance purposes, which is supposed to be a “replacement value”.

Replacement?  What could that possibly mean?  Surely you aren’t going to go out and find another portrait of your ancestor, right?  Another sampler that a distant forebear created?  No, it probably means a contemporary of what you have — a portrait of someone else, or a sampler by someone else.

This baffles me.  Why bother?  If it’s Revere Silver, and there are other, more-or-less identical items on the market, “replacement value” make sense.  But the literally irreplaceable, the one-of-a-kind items?  When they’re gone, they’re gone.

My former boss (Jeff, if you’re reading, it was your father) once talked to me about an insurance agent approaching him about insuring his children.  He was likewise dumbfounded.  As he saw it, the argument seemed to be that, if his child died, it would take a lot of money to make up for it.  This is nonsense.  There is not a figure (in dollars) I would accept in exchange for Niall — there may not even be a figure in lives I would exchange for his.  That’s not big-U Utilitarian, but it is how I think.  Heirlooms like the cassette tapes that my family recorded for my Nana, which I now have safely in my possession and will be encoding to digital form, don’t make sense to insure.  There is no accounting for ancestry.  de la Rocha lyrics come to mind: “Sell your history for a VCR.”  No thanks.  You keep your VCR, I’ll keep my heirlooms, please.

Anyone have a better translation for schnelle Lieferung aus USA - Alles Bestens, gern wieder !!! than snaps supply out of the USA - everything, gladly in the best way again!!!?

In other news, the Euro topped $1.50, the Pound topped $2, and oil topped $107/barrel.

Anyone want to join me in a stirring round of “And I’m Proud To Be An American”?

Billion dollar organization The Roman Catholic Church, previously brought to trial for electromagnetic pollution and known worldwide for freely distributing intoxicating substances to visitors (including minors), asking the desperately poor for 10% of their earnings, and subjugating reproductive, expressive, and scholarly rights around the world while denying positions of power to women and any but chaste, heterosexual men, has generated a new list of Seven Deadly Sins. 

The sins are:

Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

To the best of my knowledge, the Catholic Church does not conduct in vitro human or genetic experiments, so five out of seven ain’t too bad!  That only gets the Church damned five out of seven possible times.  Bravo!

Would the Roger Nileen who operates the pages on rr.com please contact me?

Sunday, I lay down in the early afternoon, about 2 p.m.  I wake up, and look for about five minutes for my tiny, hard-to-find glasses.  I look at my phone, which said it had updated itself for DST.  It said 4:30.  I went to my computer.  It said 5:30.  Neither made sense, as it was dark outside.

I went to time.gov (bookmark that one) and found out it was 5:30 — the following morning.  So I slept for about 15.5 hours.

Kind of scary — weird things happen when you are sick — but a good way to accumulate shows on your DVR.  I started watching a Law & Order: CI episode I had previously given up on.  It’s a Logan episode, starring David Cross and, they said, Kristy Swanson.

I like David Cross.  I like his writing, I like his stand-up, I like his insight.  But I think it’s fair to say that he has no dramatic chops.  If we find out he’s the killer and has been lying about everything during the episode, it may be better, because the fact that I don’t believe a single one of his motivations could be viewed as a choice.  The episode is dreadful.  And Kristy Swanson?  Kept looking for her.  Beautiful, beautiful Kristy Swanson from when I was in high school.  Here is how I remember her:

Here are three more-or-less NSFW images.  SFFD fans, remember to check back when you are home.

Finally found her: she’s playing a bottle-blond floozy.  A latter-day Marilyn Monroe, a comparison they keep making more and more explicit.  And she’s — how to put this gently? — obese.  Not Monroe-by-today’s-standards-big, but obese.  Maybe some of it is a fat suit, and she certainly looks worse because of the Playboy-style caked-on makeup and garish lipstick, but her upper arms looks like they weigh as much as she used to in total.  IMDB reports she’s almost 40, now.

Really unfortunate.  I’m speaking as someone who has put on 120 pounds (British: 8 1⁄2 stone; Bushman: very much; elsewhere: 54 kg) in the last ten years, so I know this can happen, and I know what I’m talking about.  But this is really, really unfortunate.

Episode is half over.  I’m going to go drag myself back and try to finish it this time.

I was watching DIY Network’s program Cool Tools, specifically, the episode on woodworking tools.

A representative from POWERMATIC was showing off their top-of-the-line woodworking lathe: an 800 lb. cast iron Goliath with lots of bells and whistles.  One neat thing was a hollow tailstock, apparently airtight, with a door that opened into a compartment.

“Oh, neat,” I thought.  “You can keep finishes or sandpaper in there without it getting dusty!”

The POWERMATIC representative smirked, “We say this compartment is to hold your favorite beverage.  What that beverage is, we won’t say.”

Whoa, wait!  What are we talking about?  Why the circumlocution?  It’s not infant’s blood, right?  It’s not cat urine.  It’s clearly an intoxicating beverage that he’s suggesting you hide.  While working on a full-size lathe.  Is he insane?

They really need to send woodworkers to tool conventions, not just salesmen.  This has totally turned me off of POWERMATIC.  Drinking alcohol while turning is a good way to lose a limb.  Talk to a turner, and he will give you a list of what you want while turning: a full face shield, ideally one with positive air pressure; long sleeves that button or tape tightly at the wrist; a full apron; something to cover the opening of your socks; no loose jewelry or hair; super-sharp tools; a safety kill switch; etc.  One thing he will not suggest is that you need to drink a fucking beer.

Man.  I’m thinking about writing a letter of complaint.

I wish USA Network would hurry up and air The 40-Year-Old Virgin already.

Surprised?  Let me clarify.  I don’t plan to watch it when it airs.  But I watch a lot of USA Network, and they have had the same thirty second promo for this film debut for a couple weeks, and they always start it right after the fade to black of my shows’ commercial breaks.  I don’t even get a fair chance to skip them.  Awfully sneaky.

Anyway, God, get it over with, USA, so I can start watch your next crappy in-house promo.

(Wow, USA Network’s ad campaign worked, didn’t it?  They successfully, and against my will, infected me with this “New movie on USA coming” meme.  It annoyed me so much, I turned around and passed it on to thousands.  Hmmm.)

Niall:  Daddy, what time of the year is it?

Joshua:  You mean, what season is it?

Niall:  Yes.

Joshua:  It’s winter.

Niall:  [visibly upset:]  Again?!  It was winter before!  The twenty-nine days of January have passed!

(Poor little guy.  He has expressed to me worry that it won’t ever get to be summer, that he will not get a chance to go in the pool ever again, and said to Jenn he’s worried he won’t get to go see another football [i.e., MLS soccer] match with Daddy if winter doesn’t end.)

eBay make(s) it possible to blacklist (or, if you will, black list) bidders.  This prevents the named eBay users from bidding on one’s auctions.  The page has been made much more difficult to find, so here you go.

Given eBay’s recent “reforms” that essentially assume all buyers are good and all sellers are criminals, blocking bidders is going to be, more and more, the only recourse for sellers.

I’ll seed the list.  I’ll maintain it in this top post in a form you can just cut-and-paste into your blocked list.  I’ll have a comment that justifies each addition.  Feel free to use my list.  If you have additions, post your eBay ID, the bidder(s)’s ID(s), and the reason you block them.  I’ll check it out, and if you have glowing feedback and the other guy has lousy feedback, I’ll incorporate your addition into my list.

Sellers can block up to 1000 User IDs.  Yes, that’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start.  Let’s get this list as close to 1000 bidders as possible.  When we pass thirty User IDs, I’ll make it a text file you can download, rather than a list you cut-and-paste.

If you are one of the blocked bidders, you are welcome to post here and, in a civilized manner, explain why you do not deserve to be blacklisted.  You get one shot at this.  I will warn you in advance that it will be much more difficult to get off this list than to get on: the purpose of this is to protect sellers, something that eBay has/have ceased to do.

Over to you…

blocked_ebay_bidders.txt (697 currently)

I am ill.  I am under the weather.  I am out of sorts.  I am avec cold.

I am sick as a dog.  And I am miserable.

I am having trouble breathing, have post-nasal drip, headaches, cough, pre-cankerous blooms inside my mouth (which are going to get much worse before they get any better), massive allergic symptoms, whole body ache (different from normal), fever,  and — get this — pronounced knee and thigh pain.

Niall has a constellation of symptoms strongly correlating to mine, including the leg pain, bizarrely.

We each started showing symptoms on the same day: two days ago, on Wednesday.  We had spent the preceding weekend together.  There is no solid proof of who infected whom, but assuming it was one of us to the other of us, and given that I spend my days immersed in high-tech culture while he spends his days immersed in germ culture, it is not difficult to surmise who is more prone to rhinovirus and influenza, and who is more prone to Michaelangelo and Concept.

I’m actually sick enough that I’ve asked Jenn to keep Niall with her over the weekend.  There’s no way I can be single parent and keep up with Niall this weekend feeling like this.

If I were not already disabled, I would have taken today off work.

Blech.  Ouch.  Blech.

Amazon is/are having great deals on Victorinox knives.  (That last sentence is a link.)

Act quickly.

Posting this as a favor:

My friend is selling his used Powerbook.  I have seen the machine in the past, and it is in great condition, and amazingly light.  I can vouch for his honesty, and for the care he takes of his possessions (when I purchased vintage MAGIC cards from him, they were some of the most pristine I have seen.)  He says:

I am trying to sell my 12 inch Powerbook.  It has really been babied.  It has a few minor hairline scratches on the bottom (obviously does not effect performance and they can barely be seen).  Specs are below:

1.5GHz PowerPC G4
1.25GB DDR SDRAM
60GB 5400RPM
12″ LCD - 1024×768
GeForce FX Go5200 64MB
DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
Wireless Airport Extreme
Bluetooth Built-in

Accessories:
Booq Powersleeve 12 inch (white/grey)

Asking $800 + shipping
Email: evanskeeee@yahoo.com
Pictures — www.spikedstudios.com/powerbook

I expect it’s small enough to fit — with padding — in a Priority Mail Flat Rate Box, which means shipping in the U.S. will run you about $10 (double-check with him on that, I haven’t asked him.)

OK, I’ve emailed 90 of you readers, but for the others, I thought I’d post here, and start following it up with anonymized comments from people.  I’m asking for feedback on the logo for my new company, “Clan Mackay Enterprises”, that I actually did myself (rathern than pay Ashley to do it), in some incompetent sense of the word.  Here’s the logo:

Feel free to post responses or, if you got the email, feel free respond to it and talk about other stuff, too (like the divorce).  I’ll post comments as I receive them, unless you ask that they not be published, even without your name attached.

My e-friend (and erstwhile contract artist) Ashley has a new line of hand-sewn adoptable critters.  Throw out your Beanie Babies!  These are the real deal.  Hand-sewn, with one eye on a green planet (most are made from recycled materials), one eye on serious art (the designs are highly competent), and the third eye (don’t ask) on whimsy (one-eyed chocolate-brown plush bunnies, anyone?), these adoptable creatures need your home.  They’re stuffed with poly-fill so they’re soft and resilient.

I held off posting until I could secure adoption rights for the mammoth.  I may be commissioning a penguin.  Or five.

Seriously, check them out.  Here’s a link:

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died at age 69.