Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been reading Robert Ludlum’s books. The best one was the The Bourne Identity. Ludlum’s books are dense with plot twists and rich with detail, most are hundreds of pages long. Obviously the movie The Bourne Identity bears only a passing resemblance to the original story. Still it is a well crafty and surprisingly good movie.
Rating: One of the few movies I can re-watch again and again.
Rating: A nice continuation of the first Bourne installment.
As I have had the same email address for over ten years now I get a ton of spam; upwards of 500 a day. Yes, five hundred. As a consequence I use an industrial strength Bayesian spam filter to clean out my inbox. In a week’s time the filter traps and segregates 3500-4000 spam messages for me. By and large the filter is excellent but there is one type of message that defeats the filter.
My web site content management software (MovableType) sends me a message for each new comment and each new trackback or ping. Since I rarely, if ever, get any comments I have only gotten “new comment” email from the site twenty-nine times. Usually the content of the comment is acceptable and, as a result, it passes the incoming mail filter and lands in my inbox. Cool.
Trackbacks, or pings as they are sometimes called, are links to a specific posting I’ve made from someone else’s site. I write about some topic x and they write about my posting on their site with a link back to my posting. If they so choose their content management software can “ping” mine resulting in a link on my posting to theirs. It’s a neat feature that is unfortunately ripe with potential for various pond scum eating knuckle draggers.
Purveyors of Viagra or porn or adult sex toys use automated software that generates trackbacks to a postings on thousands (millions) of sites, including mine. Now my site has links to their product. In effect they are using my site to advertise their shit. Imagine having your own billboard along side the highway, only it is constantly being covered up with ads for everthing under the sun: gambling, sex, and drugs. You are paying for their ad.
When the email from MovableType arrives the spam filter sees the content of the trackback posting title as spam since it usually contains words that have scored very high in previous spams. Words like sex, Viagra, online gambling, et cetera. So I don’t see the trackback notification - it’s off in the junk folder hidden in the noise of several hundred or even several thousand other messages. Training the spam filter to accept the trackback messages regardless of their spam-like content only increases the amount of real spam in my inbox. Not training the filter leaves me wide open to abuses by various uni-brow cretins who ought to have their noses stapled to their assholes just before being covered with fire ants and set ablaze with lighter fluid.
This morning I cleared out several HUNDRED trackback spams and turned off once and for all the trackback feature on my web site. What really upsets me in all of this is that the offenders are totally uncaring that the software they are using indiscriminately vandalizes my site (and hundreds of thousands of other sites). If a punk wants to vandalize your house, and every other house on your street with spray paint he has to at least physically go to each house. The script-kiddie (a euphemism for shit-for-brains-nose-picker) just downloads a script or two and runs it, never caring a whit about the damage that will follow. At the push of a button he can deface not only your house, but every house for hundreds of miles.
Prison time is too good for these vermin. They should be made to bath lepers with their tongues.
I have enjoyed all of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had missed a couple along the way. A Darkness More Than Night comes at Harry Bosch from the side and gives us a glimpse into the darkness that resides inside of all of us.
Rating: Kept me up way past my bedtime
Earlier this week I used an “Old El Paso” taco kit to make, oddly enough, tacos. The outside of the box hinted that free iTunes songs could be had within. Sure enough, printed on one flap inside the box is a code good for one download.
This morning I rounded out the John Sandford “Lucas Davenport top 100 Songs of the Rock Era” playlist I’ve been building by getting the last 12 or so songs I needed. Did I happen to remember to use my free download coupon?
Of course not.
<Expletive deleted. />
This morning’s workout was exceptional for me. About ten or twelve students from Lawrence came over and joined us, making the group around twenty for the day. The Lawrence dojo is Korean, and while they call it kumdo to our kendo, the two arts are the same. Remembering the fun of large group work outs from my karate experience I had been looking forward to today’s workout since Wednesday when Sensei informed us it would take place.
More and more of the nuances are clicking into place for me now. Towards the end of the practice I suddenly “got” the rhythm of hiya suburi and could feel the flow of my movement forwards and back in sync with the men strikes. It brought back memories of getting to the same mental/physical space in karate. Good memories.
I have been holding off on buying a keiko-gi and hakama as I didn’t want to spend money on equipment if I wasn’t going to use it. After today’s workout I am convinced that I’ll be doing this for a long time to come. Time to get out the tape measure and order an exercise jacket (kieko-gi) and split-skirt pants (hakama). Time also to start saving for a complete set of bogu (armor).
For those of you who are interested in seeing what kendo looks like, I’ve uploaded some pictures to Flickr: Kendo-Kumdo Workout Pictures. (Kumdo is the Korean form of kendo.)
Since October I have been carrying around with me Michele’s wedding ring and mine. At first I kept them in my pocket. Her ring was returned to me in a small zip lock bag and I figured that anyone who had touched it would have been wearing gloves. I left it in the bag as I wanted the person who last touched it to have been her. After several weeks of toying with it I wore a hole in the bag and held her ring in my hands for the first time since her death.
For the next several weeks I carried both her ring and mine in my pocket. Sometimes my pants pocket, sometimes my shirt pocket. One at least one occasion, bending over in the men’s room I managed to spill both rings out on to the floor; for several frantic moments I scrambled around searching under the lavatory and in the other stalls until I found both again. Clearly I needed to find a better way to keep both with me.
At the time I had been wearing a thin gold chain of Michele’s, with a pendant made from quartz laced with gold. I put the pendant away and hung both rings from the chain. That is until this afternoon. When I went to take my tee-shirt off prior to a shower the rings got caught up in a fold of the shirt and the chain broke.
I broke Michele’s chain.
For the time being I have put the chain and our rings aside. In a odd bit of snychronicity it was almost exactly nine years ago that we first got our gold bands and starting wearing them. Somehow it seems appropriate to set them aside now.
At least that’s the plan.
I have been exhausted all week long and consequently have been going to bed very early, even for me. The last two nights I’ve been in bed well before nine p.m., and last night I was asleep before then.
Going to bed while it is still light outside is something I haven’t done since I was a little boy. Lying there, in the half light coming around the window blind, hearing sounds of people still outside, brought back memories of a simpler time in my life.
Remember those heady days at the beginning of summer after school was out for the year, when every day was a Saturday, and the next day was filled with the promise of new adventures and fun? I know that the world wasn’t truly simpler in 1967 or 1970, but as a boy of seven or ten I was blissfully unaware of life’s realities.
What I wouldn’t give for just one day of blissful ignorance again today.
A powerful, compelling, and thought-provoking look at perhaps the most spun issue of our times, global warming. No matter what side of this issue you consider to be truthful you owe it to yourself to see this documentary. With the exception of one brief segment about the contested 2000 Presidential Election, the film stays on point and address the issue directly. An Inconvenient Truth is perhaps the most important movie you will see. This year or any other.
Rating: Go see this movie. Take everyone you know with you.
Shortly after I lost Michele last year I was told by a very dear and very wise friend that I should wait a year before making any major changes to my life. The upset caused by her death to my emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical balance would take at least that long to settle. Fortunately I have a long term work engagement and my apartment lease isn’t due until this August 31st.
Recently, however, I have been thinking about making some changes. The new upstairs neighbor has at least one small child who seemingly stomps across the floor all the time. Also the cave like atmosphere given to my apartment by only having north facing windows is depressing at times. The thought of moving is daunting and the need to provide 60 days notice in order to not violate my lease agreement means I have to decide in the next 15 days. I don’t to move to another apartment and I don’t have a down payment for a house. So I am stuck, so to speak, in my current residence.
Which puts the need for change onto my job. I dislike my job situation but I like the team and the work conditions. The people I work with are great, and I have learned a tremendous amount from them. We generally have fun even though there are some aspects of the engagement that are trying. I know, having had more than one other job in my career, that all engagements are going to have good points and bad. Changing jobs, it seems, is a lot like changing apartments. It’s costly on several levels and you have to accept that the new situation won’t be perfect. Potentially worse, you have to accept that the new situation maybe less acceptable than the current one. The evil you know versus the evil you don’t.
Setting aside moving and changing jobs I find that I still have a need for change. I guess this is the first sign that I am beginning to be ready to move away from Michele. I know in my heart that I can’t stay in suspended animation for the rest of my life just to keep a fading connection with her alive. Moving or changing jobs would allow me to blame the move or the new boss for the change rather than accept responsibility for it myself. The real change that needs to occur is acknowledging that my life will go on and that my life with Michele, while it will always be a part of me, is going to fade and have less immediate significance. Wow. It is hard to even write that sentence without stirring up feelings of betrayal.
Moving or changing jobs right now would abruptly stop the process of grieving that I am undergoing and mask my true feelings with the temporary pain of change. The healthier choice would be to keep my apartment and job (for now) and face my need to separate from what my life was and discover what it might be in the future.