Category: Geekery

Comment and Trackback spam

I had 60 comment and trackback spams overnight. All but one of them were for the same URL. By the time I got through MT-Blacklist removing them, it had already blocked 5 more attempts to spam the same URL.

The problem isn’t keeping up with the URLs that they’re spamming – that’s never going to be completely under control, but MT-Blacklist does an ok job. The problem is the compromised PCs that the spammers are using. Last night’s spam run involved about a dozen different IPs – you can bet your life that ever single one of them is some idiot’s home PC that’s been taken over by a virus, trojan or spyware.

I can’t keep up with that list of IPs, but I bet there is a clearing house out there, and a plug-in for *some* blog software, that will. Any suggestions?

He made it!

Steve Fossett made it – first solo unrefueled flight around the world. I’m thrilled. No particular reason why. It’s not like in the grand scheme of things it’s as important as Americans dying in Iraq and the genocide in Sudan, but I’m thrilled. It’s just fun. And once again Burt Rutan proves that if there is an aviation challenge, he can design and build the airplane (or spacecraft) to meet it. I’m even more thrilled to hear that Space Ship One is going to be at Oshkosh this year. That’s just doubled my conviction that I need to go.

In other news, I got my laptop back from the shop. The hinge is definitely stiffer than it was (I think they replaced the whole screen, not just the hinge), but it fails the “propped up on your knees while sitting on the couch” test – it still flops down, just slower.

And in other news, I’m at Piedmont Hawthorne waiting for the flying club officer’s meeting to start, and the god-damned wireless internet connection blocks outgoing ssh and telnet connections. Thank God I installed Squirrel Mail so at least I can read my email, even if I can’t read news.

Why sure, I’d love to be your secretary

I’m working on something that’s fairly important and complicated, but it’s supporting current customers, not something on the critical path for the highest priority task, which is preparing for a trade show to get new customers. (I hate the fact that servicing current customers always takes a back seat to getting new customers, but that’s a rant for another time.)

There is another programmer who is working on tasks that are on the critical path. He’s task saturated, at least partly because he’s disorganized, only grudingly uses our source code management system, does stuff in a way that’s impossible for other people to understand, doesn’t document what he’s done, and when asked to explain only gives a vague generalities or launches into wild digressions. But because he’s on the critical path and I’m not, my boss thinks nothing of having me interrupt my work and do stuff for the other guy. And because the other guy is useless when it comes to explaining what he’s doing, often those interruptions are like today’s.

“Paul, I need to you remove these three lines from these four files, and submit a PCR for it.” Ok, fine. It only takes 10 minutes to do the edit, and another 10 minutes to process the PCR through the problem reporting system (which SUCKS, by the way). But it’s an interruption that I don’t want when I’m trying to concentrate on something. And lets not forget the 30 minutes of playing Net to get over my anger at being made into the most highly paid secretary outside of the executive floors.