Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Slogging thru the Spam Logs.

I spent about an hour on all my blogs -- several that I use for different purposes -- deleting all the comments, except for REAL comments. Most of them were Chinese, which I cannot understand, and had links to adult sites that I'm not interested in.

I'm not against Chinese, per se, but it really is a pain to rid all those dumb links. So now I require a word-test before each blog comment. I don't mind REAL comments, even if they are negative. I just don't like SPAM.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Living with Children


I am not so old, really, but I am old enough that small children -- my grandchildren -- are much too rapid and wild to engage too often. My office is a massive assortment of bookcases, computers, both servers and workstations, plus laptops occasionally. Also, which is my own fault, there are enormous quantities of computer components lying about, in boxes, in tubs, in cabinets, on shelves, in drawers, and basically everywhere you step.

This is bad enough, however it is also the denizens of the playground that frequent my office, because of all the interesting things in here, and also because Papa is always kind and understanding, regardless of how angry their mom may be at the moment. This results in large numbers of toys, parts of toys, and boxes of toys that accumulate with my own hoarded collections.

I am not really so compulsively a hoarder, it is just hard for me to throw away books, or working pieces of equipment -- regardless of how obsolete they all may be. There are some things I can dispense with, if I get the time. I really don't need 200 feet of Thin Wire ethernet cables anymore. The last thing I used those on was a HP Unix workstation about 10 years ago or so. I also have modems that don't exceed 2400 baud -- useless in today's world, as well as a collection of charging adapters that could bring down a power line if I used them all at once. I can't -- because I don't know which one goes to what device -- they are rarely labeled or even receptacle matched.

I will never use Wireless-B. That can go. I will probably never use Wireless-G again, either -- at least after all of the 3 routers I have are burned out. The Wireless-N will probably last a little while longer, but who knows what will come next. Actually, I prefer direct connect Ethernet for most of my computers, but that is very inconvenient for the other members in the family, so I have to maintain everything all at once.

In front of me are many bottles of pills, directly under my terminal, so that I don't forget to take my 10 different pills throughout the day. I wish I could dump those, and they are a hazard in case any of the children decide to test them for candy content. I also have 10 pairs of glasses, of which perhaps 3 are any good at all, and only 2 which I can stand to wear. I have to use far-glasses for far-things, and close-glasses for close-things. I also have bifocals, but they really don't work very well for using computers all the time.

I have many trash cans, usually filled with napkins from cleaning sticky things off my desk, invariably carried in by the children. There are also other things in there come time to empty them. Toys, parts, stuff I have to sort through.

But I love my grandchildren. Much more than I love my junk.