Month: January 2006

Reason #243,945 Why I Hate Spam

Lately it feels like I’ve been inundated by spam. Every single e-mail account I have has seen an increase in spam, the blog’s been getting an upswing in trackback and comment spam … I can’t seem to get away from it. I don’t know it it’s just a seasonal thing or if the change is permanent. I’m hoping for the former, because if not then I’m going to have to take some steps to get things back to a manageable level again.

One particularly annoying event that happened in the last 48 hours is that some jerk sent me a virus. Although between Thunderbird and Norton, the virus didn’t infect my computer, the act of cleaning the virus out of my in-box blew away all the rest of the e-mail in my in-box, including a number of communications from friends that I needed to reply to.

In short, spammers suck.

Back Home Again In Indiana

Must be something in the water over in Indiana, this is the second time in the last 12 months that some wingnut legislator is trying to roll back the clock 100 years or so.

Abortion would be illegal for most women in Indiana, including victims of rape and incest, under a bill filed this week in the Indiana House.

Indiana’s legislators have chipped away at abortion for decades, imposing waiting periods and other restrictions, but the measure proposed by Rep. Troy A. Woodruff, R-Vincennes, is the first direct attempt in years to outlaw most abortions.

The only exception allowed under House Bill 1096 would be for women whose health or life would be permanently impaired if a pregnancy continued. The bill would define life as beginning at conception and make it a felony to perform all other abortions. Anyone convicted would face up to eight years in prison.

Three Things I Learned Today

– My office is exactly 33.5 miles from my home.

– Twinning’s “Vanilla Chai” tea tastes totally, completely gross.

– Cactus, on the other hand, isn’t bad. It reminds me of a green bean, only a little chewier and a bit more flavorful.

Pre-Friday Cat Blogging

This pic of Bear and Tommy is too good to wait until tomorrow. Plus I was out and about all day so I haven’t gotten anything else up.

Bear is closing in on six months old now. Oddly, the grey ruff around his neck seems to have faded. He’s pretty much a solid dark brown now except for his tail, which is still somewhat grey, and a few small patches of grey on his underbelly. Go figure.

On a related note, go say hi to NTodd’s new critter, a mixed-breed bundly of fur named Mexico.

Ugh

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a dominant figure for decades in shaping the Middle East, was fighting for his life on Thursday after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage.

As I write this, whether Sharon even survives or not is still up in the air. If he does survive, the odds that he will again be active in politics are slim indeed.

A friend of mine pointed out this afternoon that whether Sharon’s illness is bad news or not depends on whether you think that continuity of government in Israel is a good thing. I’m not so sure about that.

Regardless of what you think of Sharon or his government, political instability is not what Israel needs. A sudden transition of power with elections upcoming and with both Likud and Labor in transition thanks to Sharon’s recent forming of Kadima, make for a very, very confusing time Israel this spring.

New Year, New Gig

Today was the first day at my new internship, which is why nothing’s been posted here. I’m home and fed, and Bloglines tells me I have 132 unread posts waiting for me in my RSS feeder. I wonder if I’ll get through them all before I get too sleepy to finish?

I won’t be talking about the internship here much, if at all, but I will say in passing that anyone who says that switching from Windows to Mac is easy is kidding themselves. I have been given a G3 as my workstation and the lack of either a right-click or a scroll wheel on that horribly non-ergonomic joke of a Mac mouse is no fun at all.