Below is a piece of Spam I received today. Normally, I neither open nor read Spam, but something about the subject line peaked my interest.

Dear Friend,

My name is Cpt. John Brett, representing a fraction of the 1st Armoured Division in Iraq and i want you to read this.

In April 2003, Staff Sergeant Kenneth Buff of the United States Army found US$160 million hidden by fleeing members of the Baath Party led by former dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Later, a search of the area revealed more hidden loot, totaling US$650 million in all! For a detailed account of the money found by the US Soldiers, please click on the following websiteto have an insight of my mail to you
[link removed as I don't want to give this asshole any more PR than he's already getting].

Recently, during a routine archaeological excavation of the area east of Tigris River, I and my three other colleagus discovered 2 boxes of the similar kind found by US Army! After careful examination we discovered that it is $100 US Dollars bills totaling USD 12Million which we concealed and packaged in one box hidden safely. But we need a trustworthy, upright and business minded person who can keep this money for us till we arrive. CAN YOU HELP? I do not have any foreign contacts. I will therefore appreciate your help to move this money abroad for investment. If you are interested, please reply urgently so that we can conclude the plan to move this money. It will be 100% risk free! and we shall discuss sharing modalities upon your acceptance of this transaction. and scan details will be sent to you to back the genuineness of this deal.

You will not be required to travel to Iraq. Rather through diplomatic means and special arrangement to your country for you to clear and collect and proceed for subsequent lodgment of the money into your designated account pending my arrival as time can permit me.
Awaiting your immediate response.
Sincerely Yours,
Cpt. John Brett


Call me old-fashioned - but war profiteering just doesn't sit right with me...

With all the crap that's been going down surrounding the war in Iraq, the very LOWEST thing a phisher can do is trying to pull some gullable sap into the fold with a money scheme based on this war. Really. It's so low. And so wrong.

I'm almost tempted to reply to this guy. Just so I can verbally beat the crap out of him. I'm so damn offended. I have no more words.


Update: I replied to him like this: "Sure, John!! Anything I can do to help a war hero like yourself!!!! I would hate for all that good clean American money to remain in Iraq. Please tell me how I can get my hands on it - right now! Thanks."

Does this sound sufficiently insane? Will the phisher detect my sarcasm? Time will tell...

I know - I've totally been slackin' on the blogging front.

But it's July, and there's work, stuff to do outdoors in the SUN, hang out with friends, some more work - and oh, yeah, did I mention work? I think I forgot to comment that I've been working too...

Anyhow - a few things to blog/log/back-up-brain items nonetheless:

1. Fact: Friends don't let friends buy DELL.
Point in case?
Quote by Jon today: ....that Dell hard drive I ordered for the one that died? It came today, BUT IT'S THE WRONG TYPE.
I really hate to have to say "I told you so, Jon". Heh.

2. Latest obsession: Photographing the people from FyreFlyte, a local firedancing troupe who's been wowing downtown Bend every Friday night (and some other events) with their performances.

So when the Bend Police Department shut them down at 10.30pm and half-way through their performance at last Saturday's Summer Fest (in front of a huge crowd no less) because "their permit had expired at 10pm" I was less than pleased.... I suppose it's nice to live in a town where crime is so low that the cops have nothing better to do than to harass street performers ... Bleh.

Well, with that off my chest, I can now go on living my life.

Thank you for your time.

I've been blogging for quite a few years now. Looking at my archives actually, my first blog post was in November of 2001. So over time, I've used a variety of blogging software, with varied success.

Since a friend graciously hosted my first blog and site for free on his server, he made me use Zope as admin software. In retrospect, it really was less than ideal. Zope does have its advantages (I guess - although I couldn't point them out to me if you paid me... zealots, please leave positives in the comments), but in essence it lacks the kind of automation that, say, Blogger has. Dates had to be input manually. Ditto with titles. Publishing was a lengthy process. If you screwed up somewhere and forgot to close a tag, you'd only find out after the post had already gone live. No day/time stamps were available. And worst of all - no commenting was possible.

The lack of the commenting feature led me to eventually ditch the blog, site and host, and start fresh with a proper URL, a new host, and Blogger. Finally, I had all those tools I had to desperately wanted on my fingertips - everything was easily administered, edited, and published. I loved it so much, I even incorporated a blog into my portfolio website, propelling the blog and the site high up in the Google ratings.

Recently, I've started yet another blog, this time for my new company, a joint venture with a web designer and tech whiz.

Implementation and setup were his chores, so he choose Wordpress. Having had no previous experience with blogging and various blogging software before, I 100% cannot blame him for choosing the app. It looked slick at the time, I admit. But after using it for a couple of months, I have to say Wordpress is simply retarded.

Why? What exactly does it do to deserve that label?

Let's see: so if you don't get a blog post perfectly right in the first attempt (and really, who does?) - the editing process is a major pain in the ass.

Usually, after I write a post, I "save and continue editing". The little "preview" link should give you a preview of the page then, right? Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't look anything like what I have just input.

Ok, so I go to make changes in the form and save again. Hit the preview button again - and it still looks exactly like it did before. If you decide to publish anyway, it might look like what you had envisioned, but it's never a guarantee.

If you dare to italize anything, watch out, because the retarded app is finicky in recognizing the "i" tags (it sometimes, but not always, turns them into "em" "/em" tags instead). Hitting Enter to get a new paragraph sometimes works, but sometimes you end up with two spaces instead, or none.

Sometimes, the app also decides to hyperlink something you don't want hyperlinked, and then you have to go the HTML function to try and figure out what the hell when wrong as it looks all perfect in the form window. You make your changes then - which it sometimes saves, but mostly not, so you have to do it over and over until it finally seems to get it.

[Note: I know what you're going to say now. USER ERROR! But seriously. I'm not a retard. I know HTML. I know stuff about blogging software, and can usually figure out what the code on a page should look like.]

Overall, Wordpress pales in comparison to Blogger - where you always get what you see, it's easy to use, and you actually get error messages if something goes wrong.

I know I'm going to get totally slammed by all Wordpress users who just LOVE their app, but I maintain it's buggy at best, and would really recommend people use something else - anything really - than Wordpress.

If they value their sanity.