September 4th, 2010
Just ranting.
In another capacity, I maintain a non-personal email account. Since I am the person who created it, the only person who uses it, and only ever for the purpose that it was created, I know damn well that I never subscribed to Jordan Community (to pick on the latest people who sent an email to that address).
Therefore whenever I get an email that is obviously spam, I ensure that the sender’s email is put onto one of the blacklist services. This ensures that even fewer of their spam messages get out to the real world.
I am only one of many people doing this, and I am only reactive: there are people out in the world who deliberately set up web sites that are designed to look enticing to those idiots who harvest emails for the purposes of spam. Then when the email addresses are harvested and used, they get automatically added to blacklists.
So far so good – normal spammers work on the basis of sending out millions of emails in the hope that one percent will take the bait. And I am doing my little bit to reduce their chances of success.
But occasionally there are email spams that I see that appear to be genuine information. There was one the other day that was reporting on an issue that I care about, there were no embeded objects, and the email links were valid. So I can only assume that a spammer has sold the email address to a genuine business.
Given that, I have to wonder why on earth a business would purchase email addresses, knowing that it is going to cause them to be labeled as spammers, and that their genuine emails are going to reach fewer and fewer real targets.
Meh!
By the way: for the purposes of this rant, I am using the Wikipedia definition of spam, namely [indiscriminately sent] unsolicited bulk messages.
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August 14th, 2010
I have just started going to a new chiropractor. When he is acting as my chiropractor he is great – my spine is getting back into the spineless wonder it used to be. However he spends way too much time trying to sell me on why I need to be seeing him: I don’t need to know this! I am already here, dammit! I already have signed up to come back time and time again! Now get to work!
One of the things I have to laugh at is the special hydrating drink that customers *must* take before doing the exercises before seeing the chiropractor. I have no objection to the drink or to the exercises – I am not paying extra for them, and I agree with them in principle – it is just the snake oil aspect to the drink. It is a salt drink (2 shots) followed by normal water (8 shots). M’kay, salt and water, in moderate doses, is better for hydration than plain water. But this is not any normal salt (NaCl), this is special Himalayan salt (NaCl).
HELLO? Salt is a very simplistic compound. If it ain’t NaCl it needs to be called something else (e.g. Sea Salt).
But it gets better – water here in Utah (or in any dessert area) needs to be treated before it is drinkable, and the water that comes out of the tap is right at the limits of what the FDA states is barely fit for human consumption. So no matter where you go, they have water filters. So we are mixing this Himalayan salt into filtered water. But not just any filtered water – most filters only get the bad impurities out of the water. The filters that the chiropractor uses are special filters: they also remove the salt (NaCl) from the water. Can’t have that nasty SALT Lake salt mixing with the special Himalayan salt!
Tags: rofl, wtf
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August 1st, 2010
Each month we all get statements from multiple places – utilities, banks, credit cards, etc. I think I am not alone in that I see no reason for dead-tree versions of these statements when I have a perfectly good computer that can look at them online.
However I really dislike manually going to each individual site, logging in, then navigating through several screens, then choosing the latest statement and downloading it.
I was told a long long time ago that a good developer is a lazy developer – they are the people who will take the time to automate the boring jobs. 
I do not know how true it is, but when I look at all the programming I have done outside of work, it seems that the majority of it would fit into that category.
My latest project is no different – I have created a simple WebDriver application that logs onto a site, navigates to the requisite page, downloads the statement, closes all browser windows, then opens the statement for me. I am not sure that I should be using software designed for testing internal web sites to act like a production application, but hey, why not?
Now I just need to expand the sites I access, and set it up to run automatically every month. And possibly post the code later.
Geeky? Yes! But it was a fun way to play with new technology while having an end-goal of reducing my workload. Leaving more time for other things. 
Tags: geeky, software
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August 1st, 2010
If “Practice makes perfect”,
and “Nobody’s perfect”,
then why practice?
Tags: funny
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July 24th, 2010
Old Pony Express Trail
Last weekend was hot in town, so I went up to the old Pony Express trail. Much cooler up there – only 30°C (90°F) instead of the 40°C (105°F) down in town. 
There are some lovely views from up there, including the view where the Mormon’s first saw the Salt Lake valley. The photo on the right doesn’t show the city, but it does show the drive up.
A little further up the road, I came across “Hat Creek Outfitters”, just on the southern edge of East Canyon Resorts. They run all sorts of trail rides, and relatively cheaply, so I went for an hour ride. Getting used to a western saddle was interesting, as was doing a trail ride (since I have not done any riding at all since I left Sydney in 2003, and even that was dressage).
Still – a very good time!
good looking (the horse)
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