Spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam

First, a nod of thanks for Eric Idle, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and that other bugger, all of Monty Python, for giving us the word spam in a comical non-food context. That was so funny, we named one of the worst plagues since the Egyptians went frog-gigging after it.

Spam is, as you know, junk email. Spam is evil, hated, rude, fornicatory, vile, diseased, loathsome, and just plain wrong.

Sadly, it's also profitable, thanks to the regretable combination of keyboards, credit cards, and stupid people. You know, the people so incredibly ass-brained they willingly and repeatedly reach for their wallets when they get an email from a close friend they never heard of before, offering knee adjustments, anatomy growth, free porn, drugs, herbs, stock tips, on and on.

People! Please! If you stop feeding the spammers, they just might be forced to go out and do something productive, like donate their eyeballs to science, or protesting the Gay Baby Whales For Jesus rally, or working at KFC.

Spam is an epidemic. I run several servers of this and that, amongst which is a decent little email server. Oh, by the way, Windows sucks. Anyways, this little email server services about 200 people's email needs. Not grandiose, but not miniscule. Daily, I process about 5000 messages. Daily, I trash about half of them. That's not counting the roughly 3000 more I kill at the sendmail level, nor does it include the 10,000 or so, daily, that I block at the software firewall level.

So, let's see. 10,000 + 2,500 + 3,000 = 15,500 garbage blobs per day. 2,500 decent email messages per day. Nice. 84% of my mail volume is garbage.

So, to all you idiots, fools, dimbulbs, nitwits, functioning assbaskets, and other associated mental midgets out there: thank you. You are now officially worth more to me if you were dead.
However, if you wish to hire me to protect you from yourselves, I offer two programs. One, for a non-trivial sum, I will establish a spam filtered server for you and/or your organization. Or, two, for an obscene amount of cash, I will stand behind you whilst you read your email. Each time you reach for your credit card, or even look like you actually have faith in the current crapsheet you are reading, I will raise my large fist, and plunge it down on the top of your head. Repeatedly. Often. Until you get the idea that buying anything based on an email you did not ask for is about as smart as pouring sulpheric acid in your nostrils, smearing Nutella over your genitalia, and having yourself staked to the ground over a bed of ants. Fire ants, preferably.


To all the spammers, those that transmit the crap... quoting Mr. Cleese, from another Python skit: "yes, well, that's the sort of blinkard, philistine, pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you, non-creative garbage... you excrement!"

Stop spamming. Stop reading spam. Stop buying from spam.

Rats. Rats in the chicken, rats in the tacos. Surely the Colonel is rotating at 300RPM right now. The little Taco Bell dog needs to get to work de-ratting the place.

Actually, I laugh. Since the establishment of Yum! brands as the hegemon of KFC, quaility of both food and service has dropped to below credulity. To be waited on by the rude, surly, ignorant, apathetic workers at KFC, only to be presented with lumps of fried grease only recognizable as chicken by application of myopia and charity, is ridiculous. That's assuming they even bothered to cook at all, which they often do not.

Yum! Brands has succeeded in plunging the Colonel's place into Dumpsterville. I predict KFC will be either gone or sold off within a year. It's a shame, really. Back in the day, KFC wasn't bad eats. Hell, it was treat as a kid, for Dad to bring home a big 'ol bucket of actual fried chicken. Now, if you live in California (as I do not, thank the gods that be), you might be prosecuted for attempted neglect and abuse if you offered clay-batter deep-fried mystery-meat blobs.

Taco Bell, you are next. The Yum bums will soon bring you to your knees as well. The writing is on the wall.

So, boysngirls, when you are working late, and want to grab a bite on the way home, your choices just went down by two. Thank goodness for programmer soul food, Pizza, Pop-Tarts, and Jolt Cola... if you can still get Jolt, that is. Nothing like that diet of champions when you are working the wee hours.

I gotta get out more. I think I'll write some about camping, fishing, cooking over a fire/dutch oven/trash can (not kidding), hiking, all the healthy stuff that does not involve the 'net.

See ya.

Existentialism and IT: a dichotomy

So basically, I wanted to start with a post that at least sounded like some thought had gone into it. Big words and all.

Anyways, existentialism is primarily concerned with the view that reality is as we make it, that our "essence" exists apart from the absurd world commonly accepted as reality.

Right. Ever been at work at 2AM, sweating peanuts and gophers, exerting every erg of will that this time, the friggin SQL database *will* reload, the the application (which exists in a Cartesian subject/object symbiotic duality with the database) will "come to life", and not "die" anymore.

We bring our creations to life. They exist, just as sure as we think we do. On a questionable reboot of the big dog server, who does not cast forth their mind and soul, to lift the re-birthing child into the air... or net, or whatever.

All of those who pray (and I am not throwing ersatz rocks at that practice, at least not here) to a supreme being... consider how much effort you put into your faith in your god, versus how much effort, strength, and will you put into the next OS load, upgrade, update, backup, restore, etc. We might sing out loud at church, but we really feel it when our fingers are poised over the F2 key.

If Kierkegaard et al. were right -- we are creating a very different subjective reality for ourselves.

Or, we could all go have a beer, and sod it all.