Category: Geekery

Somebody in Finland has been reading all our blogs. It appears that he/she/it started with Stevie or Laura’s, which isn’t all the surprising since they have a Finnish last name. And he’s followed the links from those blogs to Vicki’s and mine. Not a big deal – if we didn’t want random strangers reading our blogs, we’d make them private.

But now it appears this person has gone a step beyond. They are no longer just following links, they are fishing around for files that aren’t there. Looking at this IP, I see attempts to reference

/~rose/me
/~rose/lstevie
/~rose/mom
/~rose/dad
/~rose/home
/~rose/friends
/~rose/school
/~rose/my%20pictures
/~rose/my_pictures
/~laura/me
/~laura
/~laura/laura
/~laura/dad
/~laura/sis
/~laura/sys
/~laura/stevie
/~calsabon/me
/~calsabon/stevie
/~calsabon/laura
/~calsabon/mom
/~calsabon/dad

and I’m more than a little creeped out.

So whoever is at 81.197.2.111, listen up: Looking for information nobody invited you to look at is a violation of our privacy. Identify yourself or find your IP blocked and a complaint lodged with your ISP. And quit looking for things that aren’t there.

My latest assignment: write up a paragraph or two describing anything I did in the last major release of the product that might qualify as inventive, so that the patent lawyers can pick it over and decide what to patent.

Have I mentioned recently how evil software patents are?

I’m on a group of mailing lists. Over the years I’ve gotten a reputation for answering rhetorical questions. That’s partly true – most of the lists live on my system, so I see them before anybody else, so if I know the answer I will answer, without minutely analysing the post to see if it’s a rhetorical question. I think it’s better to err on the side of being helpful – most people would rather see thier question answered, rather than not answered because people couldn’t figure out if it was rhetorical or not. So sue me.

I also have a habit, when somebody makes a ironic statement, of trying to amplify the irony by playing off what they’re saying. Sometimes I do it right, sometimes it falls flat.

Unfortunately because of the first reputation, unlike when other people do it and it doesn’t work right, people just assume I’m totally fucking stupid, and pile all over me. And I’m god damned sick and tired of it. So I’m taking a break. I’m not going to say anything on any of those mailing lists for as long as I can. Maybe if I don’t give them any ammunition, they’ll stop piling on me. Already in the last hour I’ve had to stop myself twice where I was going to reply to a message.

The saddest thing is that these people are the people I consider my best friends in the world. Maybe I need some new friends.