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:

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:

The PowerSquid, one of the most clever products in history, is now available with a <1 nanosecond response-time, 540 joule surge suppressor.  List price is $34.95; the store Affordable Home Electronics has^* it for $9.44 and low shipping.

^* Happy, Dave?  I arranged the sentence so that I could use a singular verb.

GoogSpy is pretty cool.

I discussed Tabasco brand Smoked Chipotle Sauce previously.

Before I first tried it, reader and longtime friend Bob Mike was over for a “special” tea party and horror movie night (he’s a great friend, taking public transportation for about 100km to keep me company during the divorce).  He saw the bottle on the counter, which I had picked up out of curiosity, and exclaimed something to the effect of “Isn’t that stuff great?!”  I didn’t know, I had never had it before.

I’ve had it now.

It is amazing.  It’s not a hot sauce, really, just a flavoring sauce.  It’s no hotter than A1 Bold & Spicy.  You can pour it over anything and everything savory: rice, beans, tortillas, soup, hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, whatever.  They hit this one out of the park.  It’s a major keeper.

The Coupon Clippers have a coupon right now for $0.75 off any flavor Tabasco, which you can probably get doubled.  Do it quickly.  I’m not posting a direct link because the current coupon expires on 2 March 2008, but there may be one coming to replace it.  The Coupon Clippers is a great site that charges a small processing fee to clip and mail you manufacturers’ coupons.  For this coupon, the fee is $0.10.  I’ve become a devotée of the site, and I think you will, too: go try it out through this affiliate link.

Check this out.  The item was sent UPS 3-Day Select last Thursday.  It got to the location from which the delivery trucks are deployed last Friday, after two drives, three flights, and another drive.  Since they only count business days, they are not obligated to deliver it until Tuesday — which, it seems, is what they’re doing.  Did they just not put it on the truck or something?  Was there not room (it’s a small box), or did they not want to give an extra day of free service to their customers?  I don’t get it.

Everything that made Ask.com special is now seemingly being done better by 800 lb. Google.  See features you might not know exist.

Ooh, burn!  The Post Office claims overnight Express Mail service to “most areas”.  I could understand it not being available from small town to small town, but not between two major U.S. city ZIP Codes, 99775 and 96815!  They’re even both in the high 90,000s!  Sure, you can drop off your package at the origin until 7:00 p.m., but it won’t end up at the destination until 10:00 a.m., two whole days later!

Actually, that’s really frakking amazing, when you look it up.  Wow.

(What, the government-kinda?  Really, they can do that?  I’ll let you in on a little GAO secret: the USPS’s biggest contractor is FedEx.  No kidding.  FedEx planes fly Express Mail.)

(USPS Web Apps: Express Mail Commitments)

Can someone with Flash 9 look at Strange Little Office Beings (promoted by Office Depot) and tell me if they’re cute enough to find a computer with the player?

There might be music or other noise, I don’t know, so maybe not at work, unless you have headphones.

The best free visual geographical traceroute application that works on Linux (lots of restrictions, I know) is here at YouGetSignal.com.  Even if traceroute is blocked by your ISP, this will allow you to bypass this by starting the search from DreamHost’s servers.

If you don’t know much about traceroute, read about it.  It’s a tool that needs to be in your arsenal, for everything from satisfying curiosity to diagnosing network failures to tracking down spammers.  You don’t need to be a poweruser to make use of it.

On M$ Windows, for historical (8.3) reasons, it’s called tracert, apparently, or maybe pathping.

I gave you the StumbleUpon “wrapper” page.  As discussed in 2006, it’s a system worth using.

I’m going batty.  I submitted three questions to the IRS via email today, and I have one more, and now I can’t find the blasted page!  What’s wrong with me?

Anybody with good Google-foo?

My brother has a new essay entitled Deus Ex Leo, about C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in his continuing series of hacking to death, as an adult, fond memories of his childhood.  The series is very good.  Have I mentioned my brother is a better writer than I?

Also, I has a comment there, or might eventually, if it gets approved by a mod.

OK, first I’ve heard of it, and it starts in a little over an hour.

Sellers — apparently many sellers (including PowerSellers) — are going to be boycotting eBay due to huge rate hikes and questionable changes to the feedback system.  The rate hikes could be as much as 67%, according to analysis I have read.

Power Sellers Unite is a site with much detail about the eBay boycott.

It looks like the most tenable competitor right now is iOffer.  They seem grassroots, kind of craigslist-meets-eBay, and have nifty tools to transfer your feedback and items.  I haven’t gone through the steps yet.

Anyone else involved?  Anyone boycotting, or not boycotting?  Any other suggestions of sites on which to list?  Any idea of what to do with the listings I currently have running?  Discuss!

eBay make this page a bit hard to find.  Click here to appeal a wrongful decision to terminate your eBay item.

I have six credits at Swap-A-DVD.  What’s worth owning rather than just queuing?  What am I going to get from Netflix and say, “Man, I should have just bought this to start with”?

It would be really cool if I could buy “typo” domains for Amazon.com, like ammazon.com and azamon.com, and then “helpfully” redirect users to the correct site, after inserting my affiliate’s code in the URL.

Unfortunately, I can’t.

While we’re on the topic, you might consider dragging this link to your favorites toolbar and using it as your launchpad for Amazon: Amazon.  I’m not allowed to tell you why.

I literally laughed out loud.  More of a bark.

I needed some help with a PHP function.  I typed php help in Google, and the first match was phphelp.com.  Pretty obvious, I guess.

And under the heading “How send mail using the mail function”, I get this.  Seriously, look at it.  Looks like I’m going somewhere else for help.

Um, wow?  Did Gmail just double its disk quota overnight?  It’s showing a 6341 MB, and I would have sworn it was about 2800 MB a few days ago.  I’m back down to 26% utilization, and hoping against hope that the quotas continue to grow faster than my email volume (I’ve already turned off every mailing list that’s being archived on a website, as that was quickly creeping up on the quota.)

Also, I’m very surprised that quotas is the plural of quota, and not quotae or something.

How can ShipRush for USPS be free? How does Z-Firm make money?

ShipRush for USPS is free to you, the shipper, because it is part of the ShipRush Everywhere initiative. There are no hidden costs or fees to you. There is no fine print, and there are no catches. We are sure you will like ShipRush USPS. If you ever need to ship via one of the commercial carriers, we hope you will use ShipRush.

(You smell … ‘cos you do!  You’re a twit … ‘cos you are!  ShipRush is free … ‘cos it’s free!)

worldwineboutique.com (no link) is an internet wine shop.  And a spammer.  As this site has higher traffic than their own site, I’m sure this will show up in Google searches, and probably higher than theirs.  If you oppose spam, don’t order from the site.

I was on a site — can’t remember which, darnitall — that, for every post, had a row of framed favicons from something like a dozen different bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, Bloglines, Technorati, etc.)  One click would add the post to your favorite flavor.  Anyone know of a Wordpress plugin for this?  Or am I going to have to roll my own?

Add http://sgisland.gs/webcam/webcam.jpg to your desktop and watch it refresh throughout the day (every 3 minutes, approximately.)  It’s in the island of South Georgia.

My A2 gives me a “DivX video on demand key”.  It tells me to go to http://www.divx.com/vod.  It redirects me, then I get a screen that simply says, “It works!”

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, guys and gals, but it doesn’t.

American Education Services is harvesting email addresses, with the carrot being a $10,000 payment towards your student loans.  I thought it was worth it.  Note that their CAPTCHA text for the contest is case-sensitive.

I have been making up my worldwide stamp albums, at long last, and by far  the 4″ D-Ring binders at MyBinding.com are the best deal I have found.  The company is great, the shipping is free, the customer service can’t be beat, and their binders are top-of-the-line.  I also ordered a paper trimmer, which arrived perfectly, and I expect everything else you order would be perfect, too.

Pretzelfont.com.  Render text in letterforms rescued from within a bag of pretzels.  And if you are familiar with non-Latin character sets, contribute your own pretzel letters!

You know Google can do unit conversion, right?

Right now, there are two nag screens running at PayPal.  One tries to convince you, when you try to pay with a credit card, not to use one.  It gives a litany of reasons: no bills to pay, no interest, no impact on credit report, etc.  The other nag screen you have to click through?  An ad for a Paypal credit card!

Looks like Google Answers is gone forever.  Was a really, really neat idea while it lasted.

Do check out PaperBackSwap.com.  Trade books — for free! — with other book lovers around the country.  There is a sister site for CDs, but that costs money.