: not a blog

11 jan 07

Hello. <a href="http://www.tMUYXASCVW2.com"> MUYXASCVW2 </a> [url=http://www.tMUYXASCVW3.com] MUYXASCVW3 [/url] Thanks

well, it's finally happened: "ask the box" (or whatever) is getting spam -- guestbook spam from the ukraine, to be precise. every day or so, i get an email from "ask the box" in the format above, featuring a link to an unregsitered domain like www.tMGJDKSLDJK.com, www.tIUGDKJSJ3JK.com, etc. the little 't' is always at the front.

suffice to say, this is pretty weird. the spammer isn't selling anything, and i find it odd that a script would be set to hit me at such irregular intervals. and it always comes from the same IP address: 195.225.177.48, which geolocates to the ukraine, according to dnsstuff.com. maybe it's wrong. i don't know. i'm starting to really hate geolocation. there are a few databases one should cross-check to get a reasonably good idea of where someone is, but they were in the bookmarks file that i keep losing.

here are the email times (i suppose i'm responding to the first):

Jan 5, 2007 10:43 AM
Jan 6, 2007 1:54 AM
Jan 7, 2007 11:10 AM
Jan 7, 2007 12:03 AM
Jan 9, 2007 1:41 PM
Jan 9, 2007 4:01 PM
Jan 10, 2007 10:36 AM
Jan 11, 2007 6:13 AM

this entity appears to have no javascript capabilities (or they're turned off), because i needed to consult my apache logs in order to see him, and not just my dorky statcounter.com logs, which are nice nonetheless because they resolve hostnames, do some really terrible geolocation, and usefully organize hits in some other ways.

i googled that IP address, and i found some weird shit. as you can see, some beast has been hard at work.

so i guess maybe it's some kid in the ukraine, testing out his malicious scripts? here's one of the "hackers" from whom you're supposed to protect yourself! watch out! they're dangerous! if you throw in the word "secure", you can sell anything computer-related, which can't be coincidence since i'm currently offering new, secure mousepads for only $119.19! email me for details!

after getting that last "Hello" email at 6:13 this morning, i finally started to feel a twinge of some annoyance/mental exhaustion, and created a filter -- not my first.

i get a few emails a day from the mozilla developers' caucus or whatever because of this idea for a firefox project that i birthed a long time ago. i can't log in to manage anything, though, and i saw no way to deal with a lost password. i feel bad about it when i very occasionally look in the trash and see hundreds of desperate emails from mozilla pleading that i log in and do something (?), but most of the time i don't think about it.

for a while, i had to filter out every email that came to me with the word "flute" in it, after i tried to sell one on a "used flutes" website (seriously). almost immediately after posting the ad, i got a flood of gramatically shaky emails requesting that i set up an escrow account (i even wrote back to one of these people telling them that they were full of shit).

but the best part is that "used flutes" site has only one way of making money: it charges you $5 to remove your used flute ad from their site. isn't that brilliant? if you want to stop receiving scam emails, you have to pay to do it. i did it -- i paypalled $5 to these people. i wonder if that was their business plan all along. i've filtered out some other stuff in my day, but i don't remember what. i guess i'll try to find that used flutes site for you. ok, so i guess that wasn't their only way of making money, but still -- pretty shady, i think, especially since "change email address" is also one of the pay options.

i anticipated the eventual abuse of "ask the box", and if it gets really bad i'll just send submissions off to a whole new email address, and check it every week or so. no biggie. christ, i hardly ever answer submissions anymore anyway. but i see in my server logs a few of the faithful checking back for their treats. so sad. i need to finish this and post it. problem is, i'm extra-ordinarily lazy. not to mention sick, again. i'm pretty sure i'm going to stay home from work tomorrow, saturday, sunday. i really would prefer not to go to work at all, ever again.

my sound system is now mounted to the walls. it has to be kept on only "one bar" of volume, and the subwoofer turned down all the way, or else i'm almost certain the bass waves would be just as easily felt and heard by my poor neighbors as they are by me. i actually feel and hear them more the further away i move from the subwoofer. it's disturbing.

someone walking into a townhouse carrying a 280 watt subwoofer universally betokens doom.

i tried listening to my ipod on the metro on the way back from national airport, but those pathetic little iPhones or whatever they're called sound like what you'd expect 8mm speakers to sound like. i'd like to get some noise cancelation earphones that fit over your actual ears like earmuffs. of course, this is all for when i'm not a pizza man anymore. god, i hate my life.

i saw a few cute girls on the metro, one that i'm still thinking about. she might have been in my league if i weren't so fat. oh well. life == 2/5 over. i was thinking that a fun way to spend the day might be to get really stoned and ride the metro back and forth, trying to pick up girls. it'd at least be interesting, even if one didn't get any phone numbers, and could manage to keep from getting arrested.

the monthly cleaning people came today, and i think they think i'm a real piece of shit. it was 1pm when they rang the doorbell, and i came staggering downstairs with my shirt inside out and backwards to let them in. i stuffed myself inside the sofa cushions until they were done with my room, and then staggered back up to it and closed the door.

they broke a pair of $10 headphones (not the iPhones) -- snapped the cord right in half by sucking it into a vacuum cleaner. from downstairs i heard a vacuum making a terrible noise, heard it turned off, and then heard some frantic babbling in their demonic tongue (spanish). the maids didn't say anything about it before they left. i suppose i should call the maid-to-order company (it's not actually "maid-to-order" -- it's someone else i can't remember) and say "hey...your illegal aliens savagely chopped my headphone cord in half with their backpack-mounted vacuum cleaners. will you give me $10 off the next go-around?"

they also knocked my mom's monitor around a bit, such that it's power cord became loosened and it appeared to be broken, until i wiggled the plug around in its socket and it turned on. it seems like each time they care less. when they first cleaned, i saw some rather charming arrangement of my desk objects into parallel and perpendicular structures. but, i guess those days are over.

of course the reason i feel like a real piece of shit is that 1), there are these chiquitas in back-packs and knee-pads cleaning the vomit and fecal residue from my toilet while i lie on the sofa and watch "midnight cowboy" on tv, and 2), a normal person would do the really minimal household maintenance required here on his own. but, as experience has demonstrated, neither my mom nor i are willing/able to do it. in my case, i'm just not willing. i'm actually very good at cleaning, and even enjoy it as an artistic endeavor; it's very similar to fixing stuff. but it's like cooking in that it's good to do once and a while to enjoy the concept, but doing so on a maintenance basis is unpleasant.

my mom, on the other hand, is more willing to do maintenance cleaning, but is simply not very good at it. so, these girls evade the volunteer texas tiger border patrol and tunnel to maryland to scrape ceramic-hard mini ravioli sauce from the glass living room table once a month.

i'm feeling postmodern.