I come bearing tidings…

Tidings not of great joy (well, maybe a little), but of great spam! Some spammers are starting to post more relevant comments on my blog. At least relevant enough that I read through the whole comment, was amused, and decided to slap together an entry to preserve them in some manner. :)

First, on an old entry where I consider starting to use XHTML Strict and the W3Schools Validator, I got spam trying to tell me I most likely have a problem with Dreamweaver and my images folder. That’s nice, but I’ve never mentioned Dreamweaver on my blog, nevermind that single post. In fact, the only WYSIWYG I’ve used (for personal, non-school purposes) was Netscape Composer. Oh, I did use the Geocities WYSIWYG, but then I wasn’t serious about my Geocites site. Memories!

Another spam tells me I might have something called “Seborrhoeic dermatitis.” All I mentioned in that silly little post was that I’d started using conditioner in my hair! Did I really have to read, “I get more red patches then most people who had dermatitis, so thats why I also have psoriasis.” OMG, TMI SPAM. (Okay, no, I didn’t have to read it, rhetorical question.)

This spam might suffer from ADD [my commentary in italics]:

Great Journal prompt 22! I’m still icibednrly [WTF? Yes, I understand the use of typos in spam, but still, WTF?] behind BUT THANK GOODNESS I am holidays now [much better than being only one holiday?], and will be catching up on all the prompts I haven’t done yet. They’re all written down in note-point form in pencil on their respective pages, they just don’t look pretty!I’ll hopefully be up to date for Prompt 24!I love sparklers! They are simply stunning and it makes me so happy whenever I see people writing messages with them. That octopus is simply brilliant!I miss the fourth of July so much. Actually, I just miss Oregon in general. The whole town would come down to the main road (just off my street) and we’d have street parties and picnics at the local highschool. I miss picking crab-apples off trees and riding in a wagon with my cousins. And the chalk drawings on our street that lasted until the end of summer every-year…Enjoy every second while you can, you never know when you won’t be able to celebrate your favorite holiday anymore :) [But I thought you were multiple holidays now.] I love you!xxxxxx, Norah

One comment was a standard “I like this site, good article, bookmarking.” (No, this one actually said “very likely I’m planning to bookmark.” Gee, thanks?) But it was on a post titled “stupid spam”!! Spammer doesn’t have very good comprehension skills.

This spam made me laugh and want to know more:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH(it was probably an honest mistake two boxes got smashed to s—t. Right now there is a blender repair shop with a stack of comic books they don’t want.)

So… someone turned in a busted blender stuffed full of comic books? How else could a stack of comic books come to a blender repair shop? Unless the box was packed with the comic books? And what about the two boxes? Did a blender manage to blend its way through two boxes? But the comment notes the boxes were smashed, not blended. Mysteries upon mysteries. XD

As for any real content updates, or managing my sites, well I have time management issues (for the past half year, yes, okay) and my blog isn’t anywhere on my list of priorities. For a possible future entry, I may write about a book I finished recently, Home Again by James Edmiston, a white person’s biography about Japanese Americans and World War II. But who knows, I can’t get my thoughts straight on that subject. I may either scrap it or just post a very disjointed “review.”

In October/November I was considering writing about the Propositions on the ballot, but I found (first, that I didn’t have much time, but also) I didn’t see anyone, including me, getting much out of it, so I didn’t care and I ignored my blog for two months! So, see you again in another two months!

[comments closed to combat spam]

hot water living

About a month after our Zojirushi water boiler busts, and I think the results are in.

I asked Mum about trying a water boiler one last time, but she was adamant: “I already gave them my money; I don’t want to give them any more.” We’ve been living the old fashioned way ever since: boiling water kettle on the range.

However, today Mum confided to me, “Our gas bill is up to a hundred dollars now.” We aren’t sure if it’s worth the money, saving on electricity to run the hot water pot, if the gas bill is going so high.

I’ve been considering buying an electric water kettle, but wasn’t sure how accepting Mum would be. I think she’ll be more willing now that I heard about our gas bill. The electric kettle would only be used once or twice in the morning and once in the afternoon. Not too huge a drain on our electricity. And no hanging around to make sure the stove is turned off before the kettle screams!

our Zojirushi water boiler busts

I’m so disappointed, our Zojirushi water boiler bit the dust. The model we have is the CD-LCC30 3 Liter. (Called an “Electric Dispensing Pot” on Amazon? But that doesn’t describe its function very well…)

The other day my mom commented how her new coffee she’d bought tasted weird. She added more instant coffee and creamer and managed to finish her coffee.

Later, my green tea that I’d made had a funny taste as well, some sort of sickly sweet taste. Since I had another drink I set it aside, planning to ask my mom what was wrong with it.

Then I got a message from my mom, don’t drink my tea, there’s oil in the water boiler!

At home she explained that she’d found a film of oil on top of the water when she went to refill the pot. She cleaned it three times and there was still oil, which was coming up from underneath the area that stored water. Searching online, she found that these water boilers use oil to heat the water. (Although I can’t replicate her search results, and wonder if she confused the electric pot with the home water heater tank.)

This was our second water boiler; our first was made by Panasonic and that one just up and quit on us after a year or two. We generally don’t buy Panasonic anymore. But this Zojirushi oil problem has me worried. The pot lasted us a little over a year, and the 1-year limited warranty of course has run out. I don’t know that the warranty would have covered our problem anyway. This is Zojirushi! Says right on the pot, “Made in Japan”!! It’s not supposed to bust in such an odd manner.

My mom has given up on the water boilers, but they are one of my favorite things! I love being able to make my little oyunomi of ocha at any time of the day, frequently or infrequently! The water kettle cools down too quickly for my tastes. (Need to reheat after only 20 minutes? Inconceivable!) People on Amazon write that their pots last up to 10 years, so maybe I can convince my mom that the third time’s a charm…

norton at norton from symantec dot com

I got an e-mail today with the subject “[my name], your free update to Norton™ AntiVirus is Available.” Inside the e-mail was, along with other text and information, a link to “Update Now.”

I was, in all honesty, about to click the link when that little voice in my head said check the link, which I did. It went to response.nortonfromsymantec.com/servlet/ and a jumble of characters. The sent-from e-mail address was norton at nortonfromsymantec.com. All the text in the footer was convincing, little footnotes, copyright notices, the mailing address for Symantec. But all the links led to the same site, nortonfromsymantec.com.

I’d never heard of nor been contacted before by this site so I looked it up on Yahoo! but didn’t get much in the way of information. I got the Symantec website and bunches of other sites hawking the Norton program download along with registration keys.

Finally I thought to check the Norton support forum to see what others said about it. There’s one topic, “Email from Norton”, where the site is mentioned, and someone from Norton confirmed that it’s a Symantec-owned website, and the e-mail was sent from the company.

But yeesh! Why does Symantec have to do it that way? Anyone who’s savvy enough will question an e-mail and a website like that! Why can’t they just go through symantec.com or norton.com to offer the upgrade, which is what I ended up doing, because I still don’t fully trust that nortonfromsymantec.com.

Although it is awfully nice of Symantec to offer this upgrade. I bought Norton Anti-Virus 2009, and they offered me a free upgrade to NAV 2011! They just need to rethink the execution of it. After all, I’d bought NAV 2002 and they never offered a free upgrade in all those years.

grasping onto last vestiges of childhood

I did it! I finally completed my quest! I collected all of the four most common U.S. coins from my birth year! Only took me about two and a half years. I wasn’t trying that hard. Mostly because I’m not on much of a cash basis. (It’s the age of electronic money!)

You know what I just realized, while rereading that old entry? It’s suiting that I found my last coin, a quarter, while cleaning my grandparents’ house. :3 So in an indirect way, my collection has come full circle!