Tag: Spam

Monetizing the fan base

I don’t think I’ve expressed much love for MLB since 1994. I enjoy the game of baseball. I like some of the teams and players. I just absolutely hate the governing body of professional baseball.

A lot.

Another exhibit in the bottomless stack of reasons why I hate MLB is this bit of spam I receive at least once a week detailing ostensibly single fans of baseball in my geographical proximity. It is just plain wrong on so many levels and it shits me to no end. Yet every week there’s this:

MLB Spam
MLB is going to hook me up!

Odd pastime

I like to make snarky comments to the spam email I receive. It must be some vestigial thing left over from the days before email spam—when every email you received had been laboriously typed by someone you had a reasonable expectation to be corresponding with. Like there’s someone on the other side of this who gives a rat’s ass what I think about whatever intrusion they’re precipitating in my inbox.

Yet it doesn’t stop me.

Your Secret Hookup is Waiting!
Good. They can wait. Kept me waiting long enough first.
Time for a new car?
Time for you to blow Chunks? Chunks is my goat.
Redeem Your $100 Walmart Voucher! Expires 08/23/14
Ah shucks, you shouldn’t have. Seriously. I don’t shop there.
Meet single MLB fans near you!
Screw you, MLB. Seriously? I gave you my email address so I could listen to your crappy games. Why the hell do you think I’m single anyway? Awfully damned presumptuous, don’t you think?

And so it goes as I walk through my inbox.

Homonken

Is it the case that the high volume of Web searches for “Windows Installer [additional tokens here]” I’ve made in the past week or so have led to the massive spike in email spam trying to sell window replacements and installations?

Because, if so, I’m a little creeped out by that. I’m also more than a little chagrined that those algorithms aren’t able to distinguish between tokens that are spelled the same but have very different meanings.

Reply All

Is this an effective and efficient way to ensure robust communication? Or is it a facile way of demonstrating how busy one is?

Because, seriously, the two in the example I’m working off can take their “I’m doing FOO know. You should do BAR”, “I’m almost done with BAR, you should be able to start BAZ” minutia off-list any time you’d like. My inbox thanks you.

Spam and eggs

Getting more and more convinced that there has been a disturbance in the force. Weird Facebook status update emails and now some out of the blue SMS spam. It’s not the first time ever so we’re still in the realm of coinkydinks but as the day goes on the more I feel like everyone’s favorite Sith lord right about the time Luke is slashing up Jabba’s little sandpit party.

At any rate, I found AT&T has a handy anti SMS spam FAQ. Of course, like the inept ISP they are, it’s a friggin’ PDF. Christ on a crutch.

At any rate, forward you spam SMS to 7726 (SPAM on your keypad!). They’ll reply asking for the sender’s phone number. Once you provide that, they promise to bring the wrath of several gods down on the spamming feathermuckers. At least that’s how I choose to interpret “Thank you, we appreciate your assistance.”

Two unrelated things…

First: Weird coincidence time! I’ve been reading Zodiac where one of the baddies is a company named Forex. I got spam today from a betting service named Forex. There was a weird moment where I couldn’t figure out why a betting service was dumping PCBs and why they wanted to contact me. Like maybe they were going to do me in like they’ve been trying to do in Sangamon Taylor.

Second: …

…

Well hell. Was so involved in the first thing I completely forgot the second. All I remember about it was that I wanted to file it under “Rants” and it came up while I was reading Facebook at work.

It’s Friday! Let’s go out and have us a good weekend, shall we?

Late night build support…

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.

a picture of the chat window...you're really not missing much

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’…