Random Observations™
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Tuesday, June 01, 2004 at 04:01 PM [GMT-6]

  • Gas prices closed at $6.68 today, and the temperature in Midland is heading for 104°. The white noise generated by the continuous operation of my a/c compressor just outside my window almost obscures the non-imaginary sound of dollar bills shuffling like playing cards out of my wallet and into TXU's coffers.

  • Comment spam on this blog is approaching a volume that I'm unwilling to deal with any longer. Today it's in the form of (1) a putative female Russian who loves my blog, especially to pitch her steroids, and (2) some yahoo (a fitting description considering the email address is from yahoo.com) offering debt consolidation services. Much as it pains me to do so, turning off the comment feature is rapidly becoming a not-unthinkable option. Just so you know.

  • My nomination for the foulest movie ever made (not that I've seen that many, mind you) is "Cabin Fever" (I refuse to link to it). MLB and I made it almost 20 minutes into the DVD before ejecting it in disgust and returning it to NetFlix. We had to cleanse our psychic palates with a viewing of "Freaky Friday" (the remake).

  • Yesterday's ribeyes were scrumptious; just ask Abbye. She loves it when we fire up the grill. Wonder how she knows? ;-)

  • The cheesiest made-for-TV movies come from the Sci-Fi Channel. Exhibit A: "Sabertooth." The big cat in question (resurrected via evil cloning, of course) is apparently hand-drawn directly onto the film. It's so bad...well, we can't resist watching it every time it's on! Next up: "Anonymous Rex."

  • I digitized four more albums over the weekend, including a compilation LP that contains a cut by an uncredited Janis Joplin appearing with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and another by Grace Slick when she fronted The Great Society. Gee, those 60s bands really knew how to stick to The Man, didn't they? Anyway, more about that later...
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Comments

"* My nomination for the foulest movie ever made (not that I've seen that many, mind you) is "Cabin Fever" (I refuse to link to it)."

I suspect that nomination will change once Michael Moore's "Faranheit 9/11" is released in the United States.

I was tempted to hotlink Moore's name to a site for weight-loss pills, but something tells me now isn't the right time.

Posted by: Mr. Freen at June 1, 2004 06:42 PM

I never get comment spam. I'm just sayin'...

Posted by: jen at June 1, 2004 08:07 PM

I've had about 30 such comments just today. That's more than 30 minutes I've had to spend clearing them and rebuilding the blog so that they don't get spidered by search engines. At some point, it's just not worth the time.

Posted by: Eric at June 1, 2004 10:17 PM

'Comment spam on this blog is approaching a volume that I'm unwilling to deal with any longer.'

Suggestion-

Instead of email for comments. Change over to RSS and use bloglines or some other RSS news feed reader. This is what I use with HaloScan. (yes I am cheap).

Posted by: shannon at June 2, 2004 09:38 AM

Shannon, I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. The only email involved in the comment spamming is the notice I receive that there's a new comment. That notice is not a problem to deal with (considering that I get 300-400 emails a day, 95% of which are spam...another handful is hardly noticeable).

The real problem is deleting the bogus comments from the blog and rebuilding the database so that they no longer appear. I'm not sure that what you're suggesting helps in this process; what am I missing?

Posted by: Eric at June 2, 2004 10:18 AM

Mr. Freen, your point may be valid, but I'll never find out. I'll be ice skating in Satan's backyard before I watch anything produced by Moore.

Posted by: Eric at June 2, 2004 10:21 AM

Comment spam seems to me to be mainly a Moveable Type characteristic.?? I never receive any on my Blogger based pages.

Knock on wood!!

Posted by: Wallace-Midland, Texas at June 2, 2004 11:06 AM

Wallace, I'm biting my tongue! ;-)

Posted by: Eric at June 2, 2004 11:16 AM

Eric,
Not being an expert on MT, I don't know how the comment system works.

HaloScan offers the ability to keep your comments in a XML dbase. I then use a RSS newsreader (bloglines) to read the comments. Thus I get no emails filling up my inbox.

Maybe a different commenting system needs to be investigated. MT isn't the end-all, get-all you know......

Posted by: shannon at June 2, 2004 12:46 PM

Shannon, the MT comments are also stored in the database (it's a mySQL database, fwiw) and the email notice of a new comment is actually optional, so I can elect not to get them. Again, though, the email notice is not the problem; it's the comments themselves that have no purpose other than to pitch a product.

I'm very satisfied with MT overall, and the comment spam problem isn't inherent to anything in its architecture. However...it would be nice if it offered the blogger the chance to reject a comment *before* it was written to the database.

Posted by: Eric at June 2, 2004 01:08 PM
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