Yearly Archives: 2005

Anti-Spam Fight Successful for a Change

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For a couple of days several of my – and [some](http://www.lautgeben.de/2005/12/11/dmmlich-penetranter-trackbackspam-aus-deutschen-landen/) [other](http://www.sichelputzer.de/2005/12/13/extremes-blog-spamming/) [people's](http://www.dyingeyes.de/2005/12/08/reise-spam/) – websites were the victim of “my” first serialized weblog comment spam. About a week ago, and after deleting at least a dozen of the travel-related spams, I complained to the ISP that hosted the domain. I had a really hard time getting the problem through to the [thick-headed support people](http://nils.jeppe.de/2005/12/13/spam-spam-spam-lovely-spam/). But it seems the complaints were successful after all: That domain, tamenia.de, has now been deleted.

Chalk one up for the good guys.

It’s so nice to see that the fight against spam in all forms carries at least a few minor victories now and then.

Horrible Discovery

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Yesterday, as I was shopping for some bread, milk, and cold cuts, I discovered something horrible at my local supermarket.

They started selling Ben & Jerry’s.

They already had an okay selection of Haägen Dasz ice cream, but now, near the checkout, they have a freezer box full of Ben & Jerry’s. I resisted, but I must admit that I was tempted…

Having a Website

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> If you couldn’t handle the simple facts I presented, then maybe you shouldn’t have a website.
>
>

Mike <nomail@nomail.coms> (IP: 65.35.177.157 , 157-177.35-65.tampabay.res.rr.com) @ Sat, 17 Dec 2005 21:01:46 +0100 (CET)

Mh. Why do people think that simply because I have a public website, I must agree to give every random stranger “equal airtime”? Build your own website if you want to publish your opinions, do not expect me to let you hijack mine to further your racist, fascist, or otherwise misguided and clueless agenda. _Especially_ if you are too much a coward to provide a working email address and/or your real name.

Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and this one is mine and nobody else’s.

Cool Snow

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I began my vacations very appropriately, by working on a Spelljammer setting until like 4:00 or so (I didn’t check the time). Went to bed, slept til 12:30pm. I finally dragged myself out of bed, shaved and showered and went to buy some food for the weekend. As I got on the road, I saw quite a bit of melting snow on some cars and a little snow on the ground where they sell Xmas trees near my place.

I never noticed last night that it was snowing.

Now I just looked outside: It’s snowing again. Cool! I hope the stuff sticks around longer. I am off for 2 weeks, so I don’t care how much chaos there will be – and I’ll be able to take neat photos during the day.

So, snow: Do your best and cover the city! :D

Finally, Vacations!

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Well, I am off for the rest of the year – short as that may be. I normally don’t really care about Xmas vacations, but in about November 2004 I was urged to give a plan of all my vacations for the coming year. And I put in 2 weeks around Christmas.

As these vacations approached, I considered postponing them and taking the days into 2006. But I quickly decided that I really need a break anyway. So I said “screw it” and took the time off anyway.

So, I’ll have to do on call duty for the semi-weekly [Fliegenpreise](http://www.fliegenpreise.de) tomorrow, and finish setting up our new mail6 sometime early in the week, but I can do that from home at my own pacing now.

Yay for me.

More Weird ICQ Contacts

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The [ICQ-Flood](http://nils.jeppe.de/2005/12/11/icq-conatcts/) that [others](http://chris.quietlife.net/) have [also](http://www.teemow.com/2005/12/14/icq-spam/) reported is continuing, if at a lower rate. But that might simply be related to the fact that the weekend is over. Last night a “Suzane” from the Czech Republic messaged me, and of all those who did so until now she was by far the one with the best English (or with the highest IQ. Probably both.) Naturally, despite some smalltalk, I also asked her where she found my contact information.

She explained that she had “three pictures” at the top of her ICQ, and if you wish to contact one person you simply click on that image. Next, you get a window where you enter “personal information”.

I have now tested the current official ICQ client, and I guess the “picture” she means is a big “add user” button that is located prominently on top of the ICQ contact list. Once you click on that, you’ll get a user search window.

My *guess* is that due to the more prominent “search user” placement, people are looking for “random” people a whole lot more. I am not sure when ICQ5 was released; it seems like it has been out for a while (it’s revision 5.0.4), so there probably is no correlation there. But maybe it’s just reaching the point where so many people installed it that I am noticing an effect from it.

Who knows… but if I figure it out I’ll surely let you know.

Nice toys

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I just asked a supplier for a price quote for an 8 Terabyte SATA Raid. For our backups at work, of course. Nice toy. Not too expensive either. Unfortunately it’s way beyond what I can afford privately. And so I am still looking for an affordable, cheap way to store my files.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Lovely Spam….

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Recently, my weblogs have been spammed by some guy who runs pure add sites. Naturally, I complained to various persons – the ISP which he used for dialup (T-Online), the Ad-Provider (cpase.de) and the hoster of the site in question (all-inkl.com).

T-Online and cpase.de didn’t ever reply. I mean, nobody is really surprised, I am sure, that T-Online’s service is the pits. and probably also nobody is surprised that cpase.de is a disreputable ad-provider who will not do anything about such people. Afterall, it seems in their best interest to sell these ads.

But what truly shocked me was how **completely incompetent** the all-inkl.com ISP is. Their support staff kept asking me to provide full e-mail headers and whether I had ever subscribed to a mailing list from them. At least one of their support staff made horrible spelling mistakes that indicate a prowess of the German language equivalent to a retarded fourth-grader.

If you ever want to get into the spamming business, I guess that’s a great boon, and I must wonder whether all-inkl.com doesn’t do that sort of stuff on purpose. I know I am considering them a spam-haven now, and I will treat them accordingly in the future: The next complaints will definitely go directly to their upstream providers.

Teekanne Tea Experiments

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Lately, I have started drinking tea again. I started off by testing a bunch of teabags by the German brand “Teekanne” (literally translates to “tea pot”) that I had accumulated.

* **Rotbusch**: Okay, not great. But drinkable.
* **Limette**: Horrible taste, smells _really_ awful. I could not make myself drink this after the first little sip.
* **Multi Vitamin**: Almost as bad as Limette. More fruity. I still couldn’t stand drinking this stuff.
* **Blood Orange**: This was okay again, a little worse that Rotbusch
* **Pink Grapefruit**: pretty bland taste, but doesn’t really smell like anything.
* **Fix Minze**: Untested…. I am not into Mint tea at all and at this point I’d rather not risk it.

Bottom line of this – admittedly rather pointless – test: Teekanne tea sucks pretty badly.

ICQ Conacts

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Over the weekend, several oddballs have contacted me via ICQ. I don’t know any of them. Some say Hi in German, some in English. One simply added me and never said a word (a Romanian girl named Miki, if the profile is truthful). One spammed me; I always send some curse-words in reply, and funnily enough this one actually replied – so I spent half an hour cussing him or her out. Not that he or she got the point..

My most recent acquisition now is some guy from Egypt: “here a male for a clean chat”. Well, clean male, I would hope so – I don’t dabble in the forbidden love; I actually prefer women. But thank you for asking.

Where the heck do these people find me? I am really wondering. It’s most certainly not ICQ or some other way that would be pretty much random, because I only ever get these people in waves, not spread evenly over the year.

I remember a wave of strange ICQ contacts a few years back. Then it was a number of girls from different countries all looking for a husband. I remember, very faintly, some Turkish chick with very bad English, and a girl from Asia – I want to say Thailand but that may be stereotypes interfering with my memories – who tried to market herself via her ethnic origin. “No, I mean, you like yellow skin on girl?”

Booooring. If that’s her most distinguishing feature, I really don’t want to talk to her.

Anyway, if anybody had a similar experience, or has any idea why these people show up so suddenly, comment below.

_Update, later on Sunday night:_ Next in line: Some strange moron from Turkey. Totally unable to answer simple questions. I have started insulting him, as I will with anybody who contacts me out of the blue on ICQ and then is too dumb to put two words together in a way that makes sense.

I wonder if I am getting hammered by that [virus that tries to "chat"](http://tc.imlogic.com/threatcenterportal/pubThreatDetail.aspx?ThreatID=3255) with you. But then I’d expect them to offer files of some kind in an attempt to infect me. So: If you want to contact me, you are very welcome to do so but **at least introduce yourself** and don’t be a complete moron.

Sorry, but it **had** to be said.