Hey, why not talk about the spam? I used to complain about the spam in my comments all the time and I don’t want people wondering what happened to that plot thread. So here’s the deal: Back in the day I was manually fighting the spam myself, deleting the comments as they came in. When it got to be hundreds a day, I was goin’ nuts. But then Marq, my man behind the scenes, hooked me up with Akismet, some sort of program thing especially designed for the dealing-with of spam! How convenient.

So anyway, it seems to be working super well. As of the moment I am writing this, it is telling me that it has “protected (my) site from 22,643 spam comments already.” And the really impressive thing, to me anyway, is that the spam is slowing down. The robots behind it all are finally getting the point that I didn’t want them doing it on my web site. Isn’t technology grand? And also ungrand since it caused the problem in the first place?

Haiku!

I smell the ganja.
It’s wafting through the window
from some other realm.

Is that how “ganja” is spelled? My spellcheck seems to think so, but I’m no expert on the reefers and my spellcheck has steered me wrong in the past. It doesn’t even recognize the word “spellcheck”.

In other news, Marq is working harder than ever on the site. He’s got buttons and banners coming and going. Basically, just accept any changes you see over the next while for what they are, the hard work of one of the people on the site, but not the other.

As mentioned many times before, an annoying amount of spam comments are thrown at this website. Well, they’ve got a new trick now. The spamming robots have learned to tailor the fake comments to the title of the post being commented on. For example on the post called Stupid Over Hurricanes the comment said “Stupid over hurricanes.. He-he-he :)” and on Rolling With Dogs the comment read “Rolling with dogs.. Corking :)”

All of these comments have been made under the name “www.bookofpdr.com” which does make it pretty obvious that these are not really random people enjoying my site. But since robots have used the word “corking” on my site far more often than people have, I was almost reluctant to delete them.

I just went roughly two days without the Internet being allowed into my home. Seems I did not have enough money in the bank when the provider tried to take the money out of the bank. A couple times. Like since January. So they cut me off. But it is all taken care of now, so I am back online and I will start making sure that I am keeping more money in my bank account, I think.

It’s weird how if I were to go away for a weekend or something I would not notice the lack of Internet. I mean, it’s only two days. That is really not very long. But when I am in my home and I am having nothing better to do and I have had several days of way-too-long shifts at work this week, when that happens, I notice the lack of Internet. After all. It’s Two Whole Days! That’s forever!

I’m pretty much all caught up on what I missed. I’ve two episodes of each of the Daily Show and Colbert that I am about to watch. And I had to clear about 900 spam comments from the site here. I suppose that could have been worse considering that I’ve had that many turn up in a matter of hours sometimes.

Today I had a box of cereal and a carton of milk that both became empty at the same time! That almost never happens! Now I don’t have to go buy more milk or more cereal to use up the rest of whatever remains! Hooray!

Haiku!

Man lands on the sun.
He says “I guess they were wrong”
and gets shark attacked.

I’d be complaining about cleaning thousands of spam comments again this week, but I’m getting as sick of seeing myself write about that as I am about seeing me complain about work. So I won’t. And anyway, I have to go to work now. Which sucks.

I am still getting amounts of spam that infuriate me. I’ve now turned the settings up so a comment can’t get through unless that person has a comment already approved by me. That means that random people who may come along and want to leave a comment will go into a pile with all the spam in there and I have to hopefully notice that one and approve it while I am deleting. This means I have to be more careful than ever before at cleaning the spams even though it is pretty rare a random person comes to this site.

In the meantime, here’s a list of the ten spams I found most interesting while clearing them out this week in no particular order with the name, then the comment and then my thoughts:

1. The Magic Bullet System 2: “I am loving this site accept I am having issues with getting the rss feed to work in the new Firefox 4.0. Any suggestions? Thanks a million! bye” This is easily the most common type of spam. It acts like it is some random dude and says it is having a problem viewing the site in a certain browser or finding the RSS feed or some other technical thing. Most of them are the same with some words changed. I wanted that kind of spam represented on the list and I picked this one because I think Magic Bullet is those stupid infomercials I’ve watched on occasion and because of the “accept” miswording.
2. Andy Ortiz:”You made some Good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree.” This guy has a surname I have always liked, he compliments me AND he can tell that people will agree with my having seen a UFO by doing a search. Neat.
3. Mending A Broken Heart: “26 Dec 10 at 6:38 pm” Somehow commenting just a random date is creepy. I can’t decide if it would be creepier if the date had been in the future or not.
4. Chris Doll: “Gran pagina web, me gusta mucho.” Spanish? Pagina is a funny word!
5. The Magic Bullet System: “Excellent write-up, I am a big believer in placing comments on websites to help the site writers know that they have added something of great benefit to the online world!” Nice try, spam robot, but I know you are in fact not a big believer in that or anything else.
6. clickbank product review: “Fingers down, you solved a problem I had linked to this for any when. Your blog is very inspiring also. Clickbank Product Reviews” This fellow makes the list for getting the phrase “hands down” so incorrect.
7. Fantastic007: “Hey Every one how are you doinging. hope you are haveing a wonderful day” This guy has a great attitude and amusing typos. This one popped up on two posts I did specifically complaining about the spam.
8. painful broken heart: “@thecico12345 shut up you fucking pussy” Hah! That one just made me laugh. I’d sure hate to be thecico12345 about now.
9. Bonita Dejesus: “Awsome article and straight to the point. I am not sure if this is really the best place to ask but do you people have any ideea where to get some professional writers? Thanks in advance :)” This is another one that makes the list for having a name that amuses me. Also, the idea of heading down to some store or something to pick up some professional writers is sorta fun.
10. bistro table: “What’s evil, then I might desire you’ll now extra acceptable? The standard of an evil human being, the place existence moved away to somebody in the way in which of a wound.” There were a ton of comments from bistro table that were just as incomprehensible as this apparently trying to muse upon the concept of evil. I probably could have filled this list with just those. Instead I picked this one. Oh what the heck. One more…
11. bistro table: “Business is divided into excellent and bad people. Few who do not anything however evil emperor. A person also was once this sort of person.” I want to get “Few who do not anything however evil emperor” on a motivational poster or something.

UPDATE:

And then this happened: