Rand Wacker

CNN.com - Got bumped? Here’s how to get paid - Oct. 28, 2003

A group of friends have been forwarding around a pretty inane survey in email which is supposed to teach you “a lot of little-known facts about those who know you.” The questions are either so obvious (I already know what hair color my friends have) or pointless (”Ford or Chevy?”…who cares!) that there’s nothing that’s either new or useful information. OK, at least Alexis found it interesting that WES LIKES TULIPS, but this thing didn’t even have the classic question “Ginger or Mary-Anne?”

So, I started thinking of a survey that would be worth asking, something with simple questions that can reveal a lot about my friends.

1. When the weekend comes, do you look forward to seeing everyone, or seeing absolutely no-one?
2. What life change (different kind of work, new place to live, new people) would you most like to make if you weren’t absolutely terrified of doing it?
3. How often do you steal? Yearly, monthly, or every damn day. (Cable, music, and computer software all count)
4. Does holding a gun make you feel powerful, or scared?
5. Is there anyone in this world whom you actively hate?
6. Ever had any group-sex activities?
7. Ever had any same-sex activities?
8. Ever had any animal-sex activities?
9. Ever thought about it?
10. When did you last try something completely and totally new?

The key characteristic here is that NO-ONE WOULD ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS OVER EMAIL! If a question was interesting enough to ask, then anyone who put their private answers down in a permanent medium is either stupid, lying, or boring.

Native Iraqi and Baghdad-resident blogger Salam Pax has started posting regular updates again at his site: dear_raed.blogspot.com. He was traveling for a few weeks, hopefully getting to enjoy some of the notoriety he gained before the war as a lone, uncensored voice of the Iraqi people.

When he first gained popularity in the months leading up to our invasion of Iraq, opinions ranged the gamut from “American Phsy-Ops” to “Iraqi Phsy-Ops”. I held out my gut feeling that he was genuine, and after the war I was proven correct; Guardian UK found him and offered him a regular column. Now he’s back in Iraq and commenting on the day-to-day life of people in and around Baghdad. How things have changed from before Saddam, what the American efforts look like to the locals, and throwing in some of the usual inane commentary you’ll find in most blogs out there…

Check it out. It’s a good counter-balance to TV news and administration talking heads telling us how much “better” things are over there now compared to before.

I’m currently offline, driving (well, riding) back up from LA on I-5, but I downloaded a lot of material to go over on our way up. I haven’t had a chance to follow the links on these articles, but the excerpts are brilliant.

First of all, for any of you who haven’t checked out Tom Tomorrow’s Blog, I highly recommend it as daily reading. The two posts from this weekend which I found particularly interesting:

Why we went to war

The discovery of the hidden vial of C. botulinum Okra B, which was revealed in an Oct. 2 interim report by chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay, was highlighted in speeches by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other senior administration officials as proof that President Saddam Hussein’s government maintained an illicit bio-weapons program before the war.

…
The single vial of botulinum B had been stored in an Iraqi scientist’s kitchen refrigerator since 1993. It appears to have been produced by a nonprofit Virginia biological resource center, the American Type Culture Collection, which legally exported botulinum and other biological material to Iraq under a Commerce Department license in the late 1980s. L.A. Times writer Roger Ailes

There’s also a link to an interesting article talking about Bush Sr’s split from W’s refocusing on Iraq:

Blogging around

Since the current President Bush veered away from the real war against terrorism in Afghanistan and went a’venturing in Iraq, much to his father’s dismay, just about everybody close to Washington politics has known of the policy schism between father and son.
…
The ideological rift between father and son has been growing ever since George W. began focusing on Iraq and, with that obsession, proposed “theories” of unilateralism (America needs room in the world) and preemption (kill even your perceived enemy before he kills you).

So how did Father Bush show his malcontent? He decided to award his 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service to…Ted Kennedy (who has become one of the most vocal critics of W’s war policy)

Finally, “The more you watch, the less you know” links to a Washington Post article about a study done which found that people who watch “Fair and Balanced” Fox News are much more likely to believe some of the more popular hallucinations out there.

Keep it up Tom! Everyone should go out and order his new book and show our support.

One of the great generational memories which seems to exist for guys born between 1972 and 1976 is Battlestar Galactica, the great 70s sci-fi epic born in conjunction with Buck Rogers. I have some very early memories of my dad recording the original broadcasts on to a tank-sized VHS recorder (and being careful to pause it at each commercial). He had (and probably still has) a long tape of several of the original episodes, with a yellowing cut-out from TV Guide taped to the front.

Occasionally (like twice a decade), the Sci-Fi channel re-broadcasts some of the series, and for the past several years we’ve heard stories about them filming a completely new series (with Edward James Olmos). Tivo picked up a block of about ten episodes earlier this week. I was hoping to get a chance to dump these to tape (I’d pay a lot to be able to just drag them to a hard drive somewhere), but it looks like I won’t have to:

Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Series (1978)

Complete DVD series, released next week!

All of this (I think) is in preparation for the premier of the mini-series (not until December 8th!) I think I’ll have to plan a party.

I complained about spam on Monday, and that same day, the following got released:

MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin

Easily the best approach I’ve seen to blog spam. Namely because it’s looking for the “call to action” in the spam…

Hopefully some day soon I’ll get a chance to actually deploy it!

I think this might have made the rounds already, but I thought it was pretty damn funny:

http://www.ubergeek.tv/switchlinux/

Mmmmm, Genetically Engineered Cyber-Goats.

Argh! At first I read Mitch Kapor complain about how he was getting a few spams a week on his blog. Then my friend Wes complained about a couple of random spams; and I have to admit, I was a little jealous. Well, my vanity has come back to haunt me, because two weeks ago I got a couple of spams, then last week I was getting two a day, and now it’s 5 to 10 a day. This doubling rate is worse than in email!

The only real article I’ve seen discussing some solutions is here. Considering my work life has revolved around email for anti-spam these past many months, when I get a free moment I’m going to see what creative ideas we might actually have in the blog space.

Someone forwarded this to me and it was a pretty good collection of quotes. I thought that instead of continuing the email chain letter I’d just post it here:

“Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration’s positions on civil liberties…in the original German.” - Bill Maher, on Schwarzenegger running for Governor.

“President Bush is supporting Arnold but a lot of Republicans are not, because he is actually quite liberal. Karl Rove said if his father wasn’t a Nazi, he wouldn’t have any credibility with conservatives at all.”- Bill Maher

“Yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he would run for governor of California. The announcement was good news for Florida residents who now live in the second flakiest state in the country.” - Conan O’Brien

“Apparently Arnold was inspired by President Bush, who proved you can be a successful politician in this country even if English is your second language.” - Conan O’Brien

“They’re saying Arnold will get 95% of the vote. At least according to his brother, Jeb Schwarzenegger.” - Craig Kilborn

“President Bush has been silent on Schwarzenegger. Of course, he can’t pronounce Schwarzenegger.” - David Letterman

“Here’s how bad California looks to the rest of the country. People in Florida are laughing at us.” - Jay Leno

“Well, we’re all excited because President Bush has started his 35-day vacation. He’s down there in Crawford, Texas and on the first day of his vacation he went fishing. He didn’t find any fish, he didn’t find any lakes, but he believes they’re there and that his intelligence is accurate.” - David Letterman

“The White House released a videotape of President Bush meeting with his cabinet and today Iraqi officials say they believe the tape is authentic.” - Jay Leno

“The United States is putting together a Constitution now for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It’s served us well for 200 years, and we don’t appear to be using it anymore, so what the hell?” - Jay Leno

“President Bush held his first full press conference in over five months this week. He announced that the war on terrorism is continuing, much more work needs to be done on the economy, and Saddam Hussein has not yet been captured. And then he said, ‘I’m going on vacation for a month.’” - Jay Leno

“The White House says that the vacation in Texas will give President Bush the chance to unwind. My question is, when does the guy wind?” - David Letterman

“If you add up all the time he’s spent on the ranch, he’s spent more time in hiding than bin Laden and Hussein put together.” - Bill Maher

“President Bush’s economic team is now on their “Jobs and Growth” bus tour all across America. I think the only job they’ve created so far is for the guy driving the bus.” - Jay Leno

“President Bush has refused to declassify portions of the congressional 9/11 reports about the Saudis, because he says it will help the enemy. Not Al Qaeda, the Democrats.” - Jay Leno

Here’s where I show off my vane side in my blog; as opposed to my “OH GOD WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR HAND!?!” side.

In my role at Sendmail, Inc., I had some good quotes in the following article on news.com:

E-mail filters not fooled by signed spam

“Since SpamAssassin is built in a very transparent way in how it does its filtering, we see a lot of spam that is directly targeted at getting past SpamAssassin,” Wacker said. Sendmail’s own spam program, [Mailstream Anti-Spam Filter], wouldn’t be fooled by the technique because it doesn’t give better scores to signed e-mail messages. Filters frequently use a scoring system to evaluate whether a particular message is spam or legitimate.

There was also an article late last month (which I wasn’t forwarded until just last week) with some quotes regarding VeriSign’s SiteFinder service.

VeriSign move ignites uproar

All I can say now is ding-dong the witch is dead!

More press fun to come…