Lee.org

Update 12-9-05. See comment #5, below

I had an exchange with SierraTradingPost.com recently about comment spam they appeared to be writing.

Here is the last letter I wrote to Andy Newlin, Online Marketing Manager at SierraTradingPost.com

To paraphrase our conversation:

I said: Your company is posting comment spam, which I don’t think is very endearing.
You said: No, we’re not.
I said: Yes you are, and here are 20 examples of it
You said: No, we’re not. That’s not us. Well, actually, you’re right. An adverstizing affiliate of ours is writing potentially deceptive ads in our name. So please apologize for saying that we’re writing comment spam.

You do what you think is best for your company. Have a nice day,

Lee Sonko

Continue reading ‘SierraTradingPost.com comment spam’ »

I guess I’m in the right place….

Pledge ruled unconstitutional

By Associated Press
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 – Updated: 02:06 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge in San Francisco has declared it unconstitutional to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
The judge, ruling in a lawsuit brought by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, today ruled that he is bound by precedent of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Newdow objected to the words ”under God” in the pledge.

My rant on the subject

When a court fires pot-shots like this, the rulingslikely won’t stick nationally, but the sentiment is still there.

I generally only watch a particular television series once in order to grok it. When I’m done with it, I’m done.

I watched and enjoyed the original “Bachelor”. I found the experiment in “forced romantic community” quite interesting. I also followed the original “Survivor”. I thought that the Survivor story was finished… well, except for the multiple of re-iterations. I was wrong.

Richard Hatch won the original Survivor through a mix of social engineering, careful plannning, and luck. But apparently, his skills are so infused into his personality, he doesn’t know when to turn them off.

The Smoking Gun

“Survivor” winner indicted for tax evasion, fraud, charity swindle

SEPTEMBER 8–After rejecting a plea deal earlier this year, original “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch was named today in a 10-count indictment charging him with tax evasion and fraudulently using charitable donations to cover personal expenses. According to the indictment, a copy of which you’ll find below, Hatch never bothered to report his 2000-01 haul for winning the initial installment of the CBS reality series–a $1 million check and a $27,000 Pontiac. The 44-year-old Newport, Rhode Island resident also never told the Internal Revenue Service about nearly $400,000 in other income. Included in that six-figure sum was $36,500 in donations to Horizon Bound, a purported charity established by Hatch. Prosecutors allege that Hatch actually used that money for personal expenses. Along with two tax evasion counts, Hatch was charged with filing a false return; mail fraud (four counts); wire fraud (two counts); and bank fraud. He faces a maximum of five years in prison (and a $250,000 fine) on nine of the felony charges, though the bank fraud rap carries a 30-year max and a $1 million fine. Hatch reneged on a January plea agreement calling for him to cop to a pair of felony tax evasion counts. Prosecutors responded by opening a grand jury probe that resulted in Hatch being hit with eight additional felonies. (18 pages)

My dad went to a doctor today. His heart has some tricky blockages. I’m very concerned.

I’ll probably be flying home for the surgery.

I installed the Subscribe2 plugin by Scott Merrill. It lets viewers subscribe to an email version of my blog. You can probably see a link to it in the sidebar. Or here.

I wrote this list in response to watching the movie Shall We Dance with Richard Gere on my way to San Francisco in February 2005. I have only now gotten around to transcribing it. I think that it is a good list.

What I learned from Shall We Dance

• Follow your dreams, even when they take you in unexpected and even threatening directions. Keep hold of your foundations and things are bound to go well.
• Don’t be afraid or ashamed. There will be times when you -are- afraid or ashamed. Let the natural course of events overcome.
• When you see a chance for happiness, take it.
• Be proud of what you love.
• Allow new passions in your life.
• Don’t let your fears control you. Don’t sweat it when it does. It happens to us all.
• I cry often during movies in which people dance.
• The substance of what epassions you is much less important than the spirit and energy that is put into it. The spirit -is- the substance, and that will show.

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sept. 12, 2005–eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY)(www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration

Skype had been privately held.
From working stiff to billionaire, overnight*.

.

*If, by “overnight”, you mean: innovating, struggling and slaving for without any solid goal in mind for several years.

Mailinator

It’s like super-instant, always-ready, any-email-you-want email. right now.

Mailinator is a new kind of mail service. The biggest difference is that you don’t need to sign up. Any email name you can think of already exists at mailinator.com. Want goofy@mailinator.com? You got it. Want to be SuperGuy? BoohaBunny? FredInPants? No problem. They all already exist just waiting for you to check your mail.

How is Mailinator different than some other webemail? Say, Yahoo or Hotmail?
The differences are easy to list. Generally speaking however, anything you can do with Mailinator, you can do with some other email service. In fact, you can do more with other services since they allow you to actually send email (Mailinator only receives).
The differences are:

* Mailinator requires no sign-up. To create an account, you send email to it.
* You cannot send email from Mailinator.
* Your Mailinator email inbox can be read by anyone. There is no security here. If they know (or guess) your email address, they can read your mail.
* You cannot delete your email here (you can’t reply either), after a few hours, all email is auto-deleted.
* Mailinator has strict rules about what kind of email it receives. Plain text is best, html is filtered. Images, attachments, and fancy stuff is simply stripped away.

In a nutshell, other services provide more functionality but require a sign-up (where you can falsify all the information really anyway). Mailinator provides less, but requires no sign-up.

Enhanced Post List by Brian “ColdForged” Dupuis is similar to “Paged Comment Editing”.

It’s a good thing

www.coldforged.org is down. I hope he’s ok! I only know him from trolling his posts but he’s a good guy!

I’m hoping the best for him!

I’m guessing that he lives in a currently waterlogged portion of the US…..

Update 9-12-05
Not waterlogged…. CPU logged.

From Coldforged on WordPress.org

Just FYI.

After some trouble with my hosting provider — meaning having my account suspended for CPU usage 3 times — I’ve gone ahead and shut down coldforged.org. I currently have no intention of finding another hosting provider and starting anew, so this is the end of that era. Thanks to those who read and those who found my plugins helpful.

My plugins, Enhanced Views, Paged Comment Editing, Image Headlines, and the Spelling Checker are still freely available under GPL from the plugin repository but I will no longer be supporting them. If by some chance I decide to revive the site in the future, I may pick up where I left off but I certainly wouldn’t count on it. And I’m sorry to say I won’t be checking back here for support questions on any of the plugins. There are lots of people using them who may be able to help you, though, so it doesn’t hurt to ask here.

This also isn’t a call for help, free hosting, or debugging my installation. I’ve tried many things — static caching, disabling features, cached gravars — and I realized following this time that I think I am using the seemingly notorious “Brian’s Latest Comments” plugin which has caused such issues in the past. However, I’ve apparently had one too many strikes with my hosting provider and frankly don’t feel like paying more or going through the headache of migrating. Not worth it. Thanks in advance to anyone who wanted to help :).

Adios, friends.

9-16-05 update: He couldn’t stand to be offline. Blogging is catharsis for him too.