Archive for December, 2006

My favorite spam email yet

Yes, it’s true: I actually read some of my spam email. Not the stock investment stuff, or the crazy sex stuff. But occasionally, I’ll get a spam email that has no links to any websites, no graphics or images, no nothing… except rambling text.

This is my favorite one so far that I got back on July 11. I haven’t modified it at all, except by changing the line breaks and adding some punctuation, so it looks as poetic as it sounds. I also got rid of a trailing “the” at the end of the missive. It was from a Lila Jorgensen.

Switched to Google Reader, despite earlier review

I reviewed Google reader sometime ago, after its major update, and wasn’t impressed. I had been looking for an online feed reader so I could make use of my time away from my home computer by catching up on the blogs that I read. At the time, I had been using the built-in feed reader of Thunderbird, my email program.

However, after continual frustration with being stuck somewhere, waiting on someone or something, and wishing I could use the twenty minutes to catch up on my blog reading, I finally decided to give Google Reader a more comprehensive try. I’ve been using it for the past two months as my only feed reader.

Which Superhero or Villain are you?

So, I took the same quiz that millions of other netizens are taking and was both pleased and concerned. According to the results, Green Lantern most fits my personality. I’m not surprised. He was one of my favorite superheroes as a kid (below Superman and DareDevil). But I was a little concerned about which villain it said I would be. The Joker? Boy, I always hated him. You know how you can admire, in a strange way, some villains? Like Lex Luthor or the Kingpin? But this basically says that if I ever turn to the dark side, I’ll be a real insane guy. So, don’t make me mad, I guess. I think I was excluded from being Lex or the Kingpin because I answered no to the question, “Are you bald?”. I probably never will be since us Salberg’s tend to keep our hair. Even my grandfather had a pretty decent amount of hair left when he died at 92. But why does that mean I have to wear clown makeup and laugh like a madman? Seems a bit unfair. I’d rather be bald and wear a nice suit.

Spam is Beyond Control

One thing many folks don’t seem to fully grasp is that if you want to be available, that is to say, if you want people to contact you, then you must allow spam in your life. I hate these Russian-originated stock quote spam emails as much as you, but it is a necessary evil in order that people can conveniently have an email address.

Often, I’ll see blog postings and various tech magazines give a list of dozens of ways to control spam. It is quite often more time-consuming and frustrating to implement those ideas than it is to just let spam take its course.

Wall Street Journal Bashes Blogs

Joseph Rago, an editorial assistant for the Wall Street Journal has just debuted a smashing critique of blogs and bloggers on Opinion Journal, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial section. Entitled “The Blog Mob”, Mr. Rago, who was previously the editor-in-chief for the Dartmouth Review (an in-house publication for Dartmouth College, his alma mater), prefaces his article with Joseph Conrad’s quote about newspapers themselves “written by fools to be read by imbeciles”, but intones that this now applies to the very blogs which criticize newspapers - the kind for sale at my local convenience store - the type I don’t buy, or read because they “are predictable” and thus, “excruciatingly boring” - despite both of those terms used by Mr. Rago to refer to political blogs on the internet.

Creative Writing now on Booksie

BooksieI’ve removed some of my creative writing from my blog here and put it on my profile at Booksie. I didn’t want to clog up my blog with creative writing, plus I have a few projects I’m working on which are a bit long for a blog format. I will make mention of any interesting posts at Booksie here, but you’ll have to go to Booksie to read it and comment on it there - along with all the other great creative writers that float around that domain. There will always be a link to my creative writing at Booksie profile under “Some Cool Links” on the side column in case you lose track of this post. If you want to read my latest short story, check out “Upstate”.