06 October, 2005

Housekeeping

No, that's not what I'm doing with myself at the moment. Well, not entirely.

New posts
There are odds and ends of things (mostly from Project Death Spiral) that for various reasons I didn't get around to posting here. As I retrieve these from old e-mails or wake up screaming in the night when hidden memories bubble to the surface I'll put them here.

Spam
The spam's getting annoying. I could turn on Blogger's 'word verification' feature to (hopefully) counter a lot of the automatic spam Blunt Trauma seems to attract, but it looks like it will be a pain for people wanting to leave legitimate comments (I'd find it annoying if I had to go through it, anyway). If you're not sure what word verification is, have a look here. If you really don't want to go through this step to leave a comment, let me know and I won't enable it.
Otherwise, if no-one cares one way or the other, or I get no answers at all (or if the answers I do get are all spam) then I'll switch this on and save myself the trouble of going in and deleting spam comments.

What am I doing now?
Not a great deal. Fortunately when I left my last job, I had a large enough payout for my unused annual leave (or, as I prefer to think of it, my consolation prize for taking part in Survivor: Cow-orker) that finding work immediately isn't something I need to worry about for a little while yet. So I can take my time looking at what's around, see what I'm interested in (somehow get through the selection process!) ... and probably still end up working for madmen alongside a collection of sociopaths and lunatics.

14 comments:

Drew @ Cook Like Your Grandmother said...

Turn it on. The only reason I don't have it on mine is that I just started, haven't publicized it, and haven't been picked up by the SPAM-bots yet. Once I get hit, I'm turning it on.

Anonymous said...

I brought up the spam in the earlier comment. I actually don't think you are getting enough to worry about. Mostly I'm just surprised that anyone would bother to spam a blog and was surprised to see it. But you've already got two votes for filtering and that's ok too.

I'm somewhat surprised you aren't getting more comments now that you are in this format (after all you had something like 70k hits on the cow-orker... oops wishful thinking ... on the cow-orker site). It would be nice to follow the links to the few comments you get with some believe that they are real, not pyramid schemes and other crap. So ya, on I guess.

drjtech said...

Word Verification is hardly a nuisance to legitimate posters.

When it comes to foiling SPAMMERS every little bit helps. I say turn it on.

-drjtech

Anonymous said...

I have to say - I love reading the BLOG. I loved EtCW and I followed you here. I've found it consistently annoying that self-serving maggots cross-post links to their pointless blogs trying to weez off your following. Annoying & pathetic.

So go ahead, turn it on.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I love your blog. I have a website called JustTurnItOn - check it out!

Anonymous said...

Yep, I also recommend turning on the word verification.

Anonymous said...

Turn it on. It's your time getting wasted by the spammers. Having me type an extra word in isn't an issue.

And what do you mean Australia has 4 "most desireable" cities to live in and here in Canada we only have 3? I didn't know Australia even HAD 4 cities! :-) I mean, it's Perth, Sydney and outback, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Turn it on - I'm more surprised it isn't active given the signal/noise ratio anyway.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I've loved reading your blog and 'Enter the Cow-Orker' site, and feel for your pain. [I have one on the other side of the cubicle wall from me. I can hear her while I have a headset on...playing the Boomtown Rats! (Next time I'll have to try the Ramones.)]

Good luck on the hunt for new, and hopefully saner, employment. As entertaining as your trials have been, a little less drama in the work place is much better for you. :)

And by all means, do turn on your word verification. It's not a problem to legitimate posters, and will same you some irritation. :)

Anonymous said...

on.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I have a site at -- bzt, no wait, that's not what I meant to say. By all means turn on the verification if it makes life easier for you. It's annoying, but less so that finding spam comments.

The worst use of verification I found was the postoffice's post code site. Not only did one have to register all sorts of crap, but one needed to type in the magic word. ... and I was trying to be helpful to the post by finding a postcode for the thing I wanted to post!

Argh said...

Okay, the votes are in (including one bit of spam, which I'm counting as a "yes") and word verification is now on.

And I've just realised I'll have to use it, too. D'oh.

Anonymous said...

If the piece of spam you refer to was my post then it was indeed a Yes vote, I just thought it would be more poignant to write it in the style of a spam message.

I don't really have a website whose title encourages people to turn on word verification.

Argh said...

Dr Irony:

Nope, it was a piece of real spam that I deleted quickly. Your comment had me for a second though, until I actually read it properly.