Not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES in the last two weeks, I’ve found (and deleted) *porn spam* in my *blog comments*. Yes, really. Spammers have gotten to the point where they’ve got bots scouring the net for blogs of any type that allow open comment posting (like this one does), and they then auto-post a URL to their porn site as a comment on your blog. Lovely. So, if you notice a particularly colorful “comment”, just try to ignore it. I get notified about all new blog comments, so it just means I haven’t gotten around to deleting it yet.

I won’t turn off the comments, if only on principle. But I might have to look into “hardening” them – that is, putting some (reasonable?) anti-spam measures into place. The problem is already widespread, and getting worse – enough that it’s the topic of the week over at MovableType.org. The ). The good news is that as a result, smart and creative people are already working on the problem – there’s already one good solution available that I’m planning on implementing as soon as possible.

Hrm, where was I? Oh, yes. When last I posted, Gentle Reader, it was pre-Halloween, the mighty Agent Dan was in da house, and we had no plans. Sure enough, that led to us going nowhere and doing nothing on Halloween night. Well that, and the fact that the weather was (by local standards) really nasty – cold and rainy and just yuck. We did get down to Monterey the next day, but on the other hand that meant missing the Day of the Dead festivities here in the mission, because we got back too late. So, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. At least Agent Dan had the best of times, overall, and we got to eat a bunch of the saltwater taffy that he bought at a cute shop in Sausalito.

[Trivia Break. Did you know that "saltwater taffy" does NOT contain (ocean) salt water? Some recipes call for a bit of salt, but apparently no one actually uses (ocean) saltwater, and a lot of it is made with no salt at all. Yes, I know that's perfectly idiotic. I did find a site (check the sidebar - "The Sweet History of a Treat") that purports to have the true story of why it's called saltwater taffy. Who knows? It might actually be true...]

Anyhow, here’s a big shout out to Agent Dan, now that he’s back up in the frozen North – our home and native land. Cheers, bro.

Dan left on Monday (November 3rd), and I left for Seattle later the same day, and spent most of last week there workworkworking. I didn’t go anywhere but the client’s office and the hotel, so there’s nothing much to report on. Oh, wait, there is. It has nothing to do with my trip, but it seems some folks have been eating sushi off of naked women in Seattle. Right or Wrong, that’s MUCH more interesting than what I was doing (installing Microsoft apps on a server and some desktops).

This week’s been dull-ish so far, but is picking up. Em and I are due over at Karie and Donovan’s in a couple of hours for “dinner and West Wing” (we don’t have cable, and they do, and in most of San Francisco you can’t get NBC without cable – yes, really). Then tomorrow night, we’re celebrating the long-awaited (by me, anyhow) grand re-opening of Cobb’s Comedy Club in their new, bigger-and-better-than-ever North Beach location. And so help me God, the headliner is none other than BOB SAGET. And despite how good he was at being the LEAST funny man on television, he is (I swear!) really, really funny live. Mark Pitta & Johnny Steele are also on the bill, and W. Kamau Bell will be hosting.

Unfortunately, I’ll be working this weekend, upgrading a client’s systems – they can’t afford the downtime that would cause during the work week. Yuck. But at least I’ll get a couple of comp days out of it to use later…

On the missions-accomplished front:

1) Agent Dan and I played the hell out of The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers (even finishing the Tower of Orthanc level), just in time for his departure, and for me having to take it back to Blockbuster. For the record, Blockbuster is The Great Satan of video rental, but they did send me a coupon (three, actually) that let me rent the game for the whole week for 99 cents. Can’t beat that deal with a stick.

2) Em and I watched our way through the rest of the Sports Night DVDs, so we’re DONE. We also saw The Matrix Revolutions (one-word-review: bleah), so we’re DONE with that as well. Now we just need to see The Return of the King, and all the loose (media) ends are tied up.

3) I installed iTunes on Em’s new PC, and it’s ripping our CD library into MP3s like a dream. I don’t know if it’s her CPU (currently the fastest in the house), or something about the MP3 compression algorithms in iTunes, or some mix of both, but it’s FAST. In fact, while typing this, I just ripped a 44-minute CD in just under six minutes, which is pretty sweet. In general, I prefer EAC for ripping CDs on Windows, but iTunes is really easy for Em to use (I’ve delegated some of the CD-ripping duties), and it’s optimized for playback-during-ripping, which most other apps won’t do. Anyhow, the good news is that we’ve now got around 200 CDs ripped. The bad news is that we’re maybe halfway to done, if that. How did we end up with this many CDs??

Now I just have to show Em how to make custom playlists, and burn them to CDs/CD-RWs, and fun stuff like that, and we’re groovin’. And no, the use of iTunes does NOT mean that we’re getting an iPod. My iPaq plays MP3s fine (and how much dork-gear can I carry?), I’ve got an MP3-CD player in the car, and Em’s got one to tote around with her on transit and such. Besides, we already have iPods – in our minds.

Speaking of great Onion articles (well, sort of), here’s hoping my mom never finds this blog.