Just another WordPress site
While composing a detailed “you broke the build and here’s how, but you’re not here so you’ll see this in the morning and have to answer the gnashing and wailing from the angry horde of testers” email, I was chatted up by hotandhorny13.
I did not blur the URL to the probable malware site linked. If you’re fatheaded enough to type it into your address bar and browse that site, you deserve what you get. Just sayin’…
Listened with whatever word it is that describes amusement crossed with shock and dismay to this NPR story about phosphate-free dishwasher detergent on my way in to work this morning. One Mrs. Sue Wright of Austin, Texas, single-handedly made my day when she flexed her reasoning prowess thusly:
I’m angry at the people who decided that phosphate was growing algae. I’m not sure that I believe that.
You have to listen to the story to get the full effect of the delivery of that line because, man, it’s glorious. I’ve listened twice now, mostly because I’m sure I just keep missing the part where NPR enumerates Mrs. Wright’s biochemistry credentials. At least they did us the honor of not correcting Mrs. Wright’s grammatically interesting sentence.
In which our humble narrator lays out an ambitious web portal plan under the guise of a paltry review of PandoraJam.
Just today I decided I’m making a commitment to keep iChat open when I’m online just because it seems like I need more distractions in my life. nickspictsatbfp in the event you’re in the same frame of mind… Anyway, this created the need to have my status message be updated with what I’m currently listening to. In iTunes, you get this for free. In Pandora–what I’m always plugged in to–you don’t. Enter PandoraJam, a useful stand-alone app to listen, scrob, and update. Free version seems to do everything I need so we’re all good on that front.
The upshot of all of this it seems is a strong urge to rearrange stuff on my vanity domain (the very same one you’re reading this blog post from). I want to keep the blog but would like to rebrand and rename it I think. Primarily, though, I want to create a dynamic about me page that pulls from all of my various online presences into a portal of shameless self-promotion. Kind of like Facebook, only without it being on Facebook. I also want to write a new portal for myself that pulls from around the web into a single page that I can use as a springboard.
It’s not a new idea by any means. My first web page did the same basic thing. The coolness of this one, however, is that it is more aggregator than springboard. It should also help clean up my inbox as I presently consume > 500 RSS posts a day via my collection of feeds. I do this because I want to archive the damn things, but, after a few years of usage, I haven’t really used the archive in any meaningful way.
Besides, I’m feeling sad about the decline in my webmonkey skills, having primarily written C# and Java the last few years. I haven’t the faintest clue as to CSS and HTML5 support in modern browsers, much less the degree to which they successfully implement W3C standards. In all, this would be a useful learning experience now.
So…we’ll see how far any of this goes given Cataclysm went live earlier today and the holidays are just around the corner.
The best marketing gimmick the folks at Pandora Radio have for Pandora One? Regular old vanilla Pandora radio.
Bought my subscription just a bit over a year ago and in a cost cutting move elected to not renew the subscription. How bad could it possibly be?
Dumb question. Really bad. I renewed.
Historically:
Three coffee pots, two regular and one decaf = one half-filled decaf, one empty regular pot sitting on a burner that is on and one nearly empty regular pot
This week:
Two coffee pots, one regular and one decaf = one half-filled decaf and one regular with barely enough coffee to cover the bottom of the pot when I go get coffee. wonder how we ended up short one pot…
Today:
Four coffee pots, two regular and two decaf = one half-filled decaf, one regular pot with half a coffee mug’s worth and two empty pots sitting on the counter
Every single damn day:
I start a pot of regular coffee and then go wandering around the campus at work looking for a floor that is better able to manage it’s coffee supply/demand.
Corollary:
Take up drinking decaf as there’s always half a pot laying about no matter the time of day.
In the past I’ve often remarked that spammers must be stupid because they generally commit some silly, obvious error when forging an email. That all changed today…
This morning I received an email, ostensibly from Amazon, advertising Erotic Monday specials. I’m a pretty laissez-faire kind of guy but this seemed a bit over the top for me. I mean, I read my personal email on my personal machine at work, but I do use the company network and they monitor traffic to some degree. The last thing I need is to have to justify my personal computer usage because I much prefer to work on a mac to the extent possible.
All of this to say receiving this email put me over the edge. I decided to unsubscribe from Amazon’s friendly reminders about sales and specials. Having made the decision, I clicked the “unsubscribe” link only to be surprised when I landed on some purported Canadian pharmacy’s international shipping page. Thinking this to be exceptionally odd, I went back over the email’s source code.
Lo and behold, it’s a damn near perfect forgery. It copies Amazon’s layout, uses images off Amazon’s servers, it links to products in Amazon’s catalog. The only difference being that several key bits of hyperlink functionality run out to this spammer’s site instead of Amazon. This is how I would do spam if I were inclined to spam. Thankfully it was sales-oriented spam and not infection vector spam because I didn’t give it a second thought before clicking the unsubscribe link.
/me makes a mental note to mouseover all links in HTML email before clicking.
As part of a major economization move, chez Shotwell-Hansen is engaged in training our domestic animals in all manner of professional careers. Gigi has elected to follow in my footsteps and seek a career in IT. We’re getting her started with an A+ Certification. Here are some photos of her doing some homework:
I think we’re on to something here.
It’s one of those top-posted email chains. Probably best read from the bottom up. Oh, and HTML formatting by MS Outlook so there goes my validation… OTOH, I’m too lazy to clean it up so I get what’s coming to me I guess. Anyway, without further ado:
From: XXXXXX, Anthony
Hello, Carter XXXXXX!
Team Prius Has Sent You A Way To
Go!
Here’s What They Had To Say About
You!
Carter Always Goes The Extra
Mile To Be A Seminal Force For Motivation Among His Team
Members. He Has Single-handedly Increased The Productivity Of His Team By
Employing Innovative Techniques For Inspiring And Empowering His Fellow
Employess. Here’s A Typical Testimony From A Member Of Carter’s
Team: "I was terrified that I would have to face Carter with this not in
tomorrow’s build… He beats us" Thanks, Carter, For Going The Extra
Distance!
Team Prius
—–Original Message—–
From: XXXXXXX, Mike
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 8:45 PM
To: XXXXXX, Kevin; List-Team Prius
Cc: XXXXXX, Carter
Subject: RE: Migration Build Issue
Yeah. Its weird cause I forced the build twice which usually would
resolve the issue. I was terrified that I would have to face Carter with
this not in tomorrow’s build, and I had to roll back my change. He beats
us š
Thanks.
Mike
________________________________________
From: XXXXXX, Kevin
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 8:26 PM
To: XXXXXXX, Mike; List-Team Prius
Subject: RE: Migration Build Issue
Mike,
I see that the continuous migration build was fixed. This problem was
resolved?
Thanks,
Kevin
________________________________________
From: XXXXXXX, Mike
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 6:11 PM
To: List-Team Prius
Subject: Migration Build Issue
Can you guys take a look at the XXX migration build, its complaining because
the XX_facility table is being added before the XX_facility_type
table. I have added both of these tables to the
XXX_development_2_7_2_0_0 and XXX_development_2_7_2_0_0_stage databases where
it should be pulling the dependency (table order) data from.
Mike
So I am joined into an IM session by my scrum master with one of our special needs developers. He [the special needs guy] cannot check out code from the repository. Ostensibly something I’d be in a position to help with as I run the access rules this iteration.
So we go through troubleshooting away. For twenty minutes. I cannot reproduce his problem even using his authentication credentials. We’re at the part where I ask him to use the command line to do his checkout—and if you knew this special needs person, you’d know I’m asking quite a bit here.
Just then, and I shit you not this is 20 minutes into the troubleshooting I get this on IM:
special needs guy [4:52 PM]:
the OK button is now enabled. Seems pretty wierd but it stays dithered unless you enter something into the checkout directory – using the browse button to place a path there does not enable itspecial needs guy [4:53 PM]:
I am good to go now
Otis and Morton have petitioned me to construct the following:
I’m not so certain they deserve nice things though.
From the bin of forwarded emails that are actually fun to receive.