Category: Life

This is my own life, in which I hold a masters degree.

A Torrent Of Spam

Everyday, its name seems more apt. Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE/junk email/SPAM) continues to flood through my email box at a ludicrious rate. I’ve taken measures to head it off, including tightening my Hotmail account to only receive messages from my close, personal friends, and only then when they are arranging to send me presents and gifts and/or money. It worked. I checked my Hotmail account today and there wasn’t a skerrick of junk to be seen. Lovely.
Feeling optimistic, I eased the junk mail policy off a little, to filter out email likely to be junk. It took – literally – minutes for the flood to start again. Garrisons of the ‘Spamilitary’ poured through my weakened defenses and within 15 minutes, there were 10 mails from people I wouldn’t know from a bar of soap. Most of these people needed their mouths washed out with same.
I don’t like Spam. I will not eat it; Sam I Am.

I Have A Pen

You know the old truism that pens and biros have as short a life as paperclips and matching socks? I’ve got an exception to the rule right here. I have a biro on my desk which has stayed with me 12 years. And counting.
There’s nothing special about it; it’s not ornate or unique. It’s a cheap blue ‘staedtler’ with no modifications or attachments, save for one thing which sets it apart from the multitude of pens and biros (and paperclips and socks) which pass in and out of my life: wrapped around it is a tattered piece of paper, under a layer of stickytape, which says ‘Cookie!’. I remember adding this when pens were in short supply in my work at Sonshine fm, waay back before computers did the job. We used typewriters, whiteout and pens to mark up the copy. That was late 1990.
Now, in 2002, it’s still here. It’s come with me through commercial media, computer studies, through tech support, through consulting, into marketing; lasted 5 employers, 8 different offices, several dozen desks, and it’s still here. And it *still works*. (I don’t actually *use* it that often. It’s just nice having it around). No-one has nicked it; and if they have, it’s found its way back. i’ve labelled other pens, but I suspect it’s the ‘!’ which has made all the difference.
Maybe I should start naming my bank accounts the same way.

Stay Awhile; Stay Forever

It’s probably worthwhile to post a community service announcement here, following some internet searches and the dawning revelation on how seriously invasive this whole internet thing can become. It used to be that if your details were up on the net somewhere, unless someone – like a spammer – had jotted down your details, they were fleeting, and you could change it if you needed. Nowadays, sites like google (the search engine) and The Internet Archive keep copies of as much as they can get their hands on, so the implications of getting your details on the net are far-reaching. Tip: don’t put anything up on the net you don’t want future generations to see: it’s the digital equivalent of carving it on stone.

Star Wars

I wasn’t going to post a review of Star Wars II, despite having seen it twice recently, mainly because they’d likely turn into rants about parents who take 2 year olds to the movies and try to pretend that the rest of the cinema has developed the same level of consideration of their kids’ poor (and noisy) behaviour. I’m not going to mention that. But I did think that this otherwise lack-lustre review has probably the best summary of it:
‘There was more chemistry between Princess Leia and Jabba the Hutt than there is between Padmé and Anakin.’

When Geeks Attack

I’ve written before about the naff new name of PriceWaterhouse’s new-look consulting company: Monday (gaaah), but there’s been a development; in the hubbub, they forgot to register an important domain, and now some poms are rubbing their noses in it. (Warning: contains donkeys)