seriously, though, my only real 2006 resolution — decided upon on a whim while filling out the friday quiz at the local coffeeshop whilst fetching my standard large-coffee-with-a-shot this morning on my way to work — is to “panic less about stupid shit.” so far, so good!
* Name a CD you own that you think no one else on your friends list does: hmmm. “Silly Songs,” a compilation of kids’ songs i bought expressly for Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Haaa!”
* Name a book you own that you think no one else on your friends list does: Hospital: An Oral History of Cook County Hospital, a bargain-bin find on the sidewalk outside of powell’s on 57th.
* Name a Movie/DVD/VHS that you think no one else on your friends list has: slightly tougher, as i think i’m relatively pedestrian in terms of film taste. um, going to guess Stephen King’s Creepshow.
* Name a place that you have visited that you think no one else on your friends list has: brighton pier (not the west pier; that was already in complete disarray, unfortunately, though i have photos and antique postcards).
Name a tool/piece of technology that you think no one else on your friends list owns: an atomic warhead! (hah! this question neglected to specify that it was an object that i had.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Noted Insomniac Gets Adequate Sleep; Bakes Bread
Chicago, Illinois — Local frequent insomniac S. Downard recently slept for eight consecutive hours, uninterrupted by cats protesting recent cuts in food allotments or surrealist dreams. Downard reported, shortly after her five a.m. wake time, “That was really great. But I still don’t want to go buy TurboTax and run errands today.”
Instead, the Printer’s Row resident and amateur slacker chose to continue work in the exciting field of sourdough, completing the long and exacting process of baking two loaves of bread, from dough created yesterday and left to rise overnight. However, further research into a second sourdough culture, as Downard intends to continue her work to create a sourdough culture which does not require aggregated 36 hours of proofing/rising time from the outset to delicious delicious bread. Results are anticipated by the end of this week, assuming that flour procurement is completed in a timely manner.
Representatives from the Internal Revenue Service, when asked if Downard’s impending tax filing will conflict with the sourdough research project, had no comment.
Kiyoshi and Tiger, also of Printer’s Row, were provided with tinned food on their regular schedule, and a representative for both cats says that their research into finding warm sunny spots in which to sleep shall continue unaffected by Downard’s foolish human bread-baking nonsense.
for anyone who’s ever felt picked-on for making a stupid user mistake — relax, the professionals make even better mistakes!
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 07:21:08 -0500 To: abuse@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu, postmaster@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu From: $ISP Support Role Account Subject: please fix this before you are blacklisted
——- Forwarded Message
[buncha headers snipped] Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:45:50 -0500 From: A GSB Alumna
To: $ISP Support Role Account Subject: Re: blah blah
Can you please remove the email forward of (her address this ISP hosts) to (her GSB address)?
My account name is (foo) Email address is (bar) Thanks so much, (Her name), (Her company)
—– Original Message —–
[Much quoted previous material, including a response from the support guy in which he chided her for a long paragraph for using HTML email because “there are too many possible security issues with HTML,” and not sending her “account name/email address/whatever needs to be changed” because “[w]e’re a very small ISP, but I cannot keep all account/email address info in my head,” and finally adds that he completed her original request, which was to set up the forwarding from her hosted address to her GSB address.)
did you notice the part where he left out any explanation about what he was claiming, via the subject line, was going to get us blacklisted?
so we get this email and then kinda stare at it, gossipping about it in irc, warming our hands over the shared fire-barrel of “what the hell is he talking about?”
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:04:51 -0600 (CST) From: sabrina downard To: $ISP Support Role Account Cc: abuse@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu, postmaster@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu Subject: Re: please fix this before you are blacklisted
Please fix what, precisely, before we are blacklisted? So far as I can tell, you’re upset about a client asking to have a forwarding address terminated. Or possibly because she’s top-posting.
–sabrina (for postmaster@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu)
a few minutes pass, during which time i clean up the HTML further so the entire message is legible (amazing what “%s/\&/\&/g” and friends can do for you), and realize something else is badly amiss. specifically, that the quoted material — which is a whole long thread — contains the user’s account name, pop server hostname, and the password that he assigned her. then we receive:
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 13:56:58 -0500 To: abuse@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu, postmaster@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu From: $ISP Support Role Account Subject: Re: please fix this before you are blacklisted
I’m very sorry, my mistake, I got the wrong email!
the epilogue — after a soul-searching internal debate about whether or not it’s just being mean to rub the salt in the wounds of embarassment further, versus letting him be blindsided when the user inevitably contacts him:
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 13:25:16 -0600 (CST) To: $ISP Support Role Account From: sabrina downard &;t;sld@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu> Subject: Re: please fix this before you are blacklisted
: I’m very sorry, my mistake, I got the wrong email!
No worries.
BTW, your email to us contained the client’s login information, including her password, for your pop server, as the thread included the original email where you set her account up.
We have a very strict security policy at our site, so I emailed the client and asked her to change her password as soon as possible. Just letting you know in case you hear from her.
–sabrina (for postmaster@$MY_EMPLOYER.edu)
i felt kinda bad for that last one. but, c’mon. seriously, he chastises the user like a child for sending HTML email because of its security implications, and then he forwards her login information to completely unknown third parties via insecure email? gimme a break.
asking where the “any” key is ain’t got nothing on us.
i honestly am not sure why i’m bothering to write this up, apart from my clear tendency to enjoy ranting about people who i think are stupid. after all, it’s a bit on the “duh” side to point out that, omg, those crazy conservative christians don’t really care for the gay cowboy movie — but what the hell, it’s friday and i’m feeling frisky.
not that i actually spoil anything, but just in case—
discovered today, after publishing a blog entry with a really long title, that the folks who host my comments index said comments under the filenames, limited to the first fifty chars of said name. this resulted in someone successfully commenting but then having the “Comments” link go to a page that did not actually show that comment. so, not so commentastic, there.
a quick substr() later and i’m back in bidness. of course, in the course of retrofitting that substr() into my blosxom i managed to break the ‘seemore’ plugin for a couple of minutes. hope i didn’t accidentally traumatise anyone with my clever commentary about BBM or my work desk picture during those couple of minutes.
oh, and — oh the irony — the other day, when i was trying to stuff the comments link into the RSS feed? works great! …except for on the livejournal feed. doesn’t show up there. which is a pity, because the livejournal feed is the entire reason i wanted the stupid link there at all — it bugs me that comments made on the livejournal feed disappear, so it would make me happier if they would be attached to the blog and not lj’s interpretation thereof. i’m not really sure why the link is not appearing. i mean, it’s right there in the rss feed, right there in the description field — not separated by a newline (that was what got me the first time, when it wasn’t working at all). alas, i am thwarted. ’twas ever thus.
oh… oh, wait, i bet i just figured it out. i bet it wants all <‘s and >’s instead of s; my dumb ass forgot i needed to convert the ugly characters. y’all are going to kill me if i update the feed template and it forces all my entries to be marked “new” on your friends pages again, aren’t you? FTR, none of this try-and-try-again stuff would have been necessary if anyone would write up some actually simple and clear documentation for RSS syntax and requirements. instead i get crap like what
/ does. because i couldn’t have figured that much out for myself. sheesh.
well, i’ll hold off a day or something until i get bored. do it on a day no one will be reading their flist anyways. see, i’m not really doing this to make the feed suck!
p.s. fuzzy warm cozy sweaters on cold and depressingly rainy days RULE.
