*Big DumpTruck*

Can't It Be For a Different Reason?

As much as I enjoy seeing Yahoo! Leominster make the news, I'd rather it not be attached to a story titled "Pedophile Ex-Priest Killed in Prison."

No, really. I don't care if it is the number one story on both the Reuters and AP feeds on Yahoo right now. I'd prefer it to be because we got the nod for the 2020 Olympics. Cause, you know, we're gonna put a ballpark on top of the old landfill, so it could happen. But no...we make the news from plane crashes and dead pedophiles. I think maybe it's time for the locals to band together and try to make the world's biggest vat of applesauce, cause you know, Johnny Appleseed was born here. Or maybe we can get one of the local kids to win the National Spelling Bee. Gotta get to work on that, people.

Davezilla Rocks My World

Love his site, but especially love when he picks on Jakob Nielsen. This week we cover the (Jakob) Nielsen Ratings, which includes a review of my current favorite show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Ripped from the Headlines: Fox Bid to Block Franken Book Rejected

Dear Fox News:

Are you on crack? Not only do you file a stupid suit that states people will trick consumers into believing you're somehow behind this book (gee, thanks for giving us so much credit), but you use the suit to personally attack Franken? ARE YOU INSANE? Any small amount of credibility you were gaining has now been flushed down the toiled, just like your suit.

Stupid! Stupid stupid!

My ISP is finally filtering out all the viruses from the emails coming in to their server (I could tell because all those emails now have "{virus?} appended to the front of the subject, which wasn't there yesterday)

So the mail gets in your box. What does it say?
---------------
Warning: This message has had one or more attachments removed
Warning: (your_details.pif).
Warning: Please read the "VirusWarning.txt" attachment(s) for more information.

Please see the attached file for details.
----------------------

I'M NOT OPENING YOUR #!%$&# ATTACHMENT, POO-FOR-BRAINS!

It's a stupid text file, so why not just put it in the body of the email? GOD that's annoying! We're trying to train people not to open attachments and this is your plan? GRRRRR

Mountains of Hair

Update: She either wasn't there when I picked him up, or he really didn't recognize her today. The teacher was as tickled as I was, and she really wanted to know who it was. She apparently thinks he's the nicest kid to ever walk the planet, which is just the perfect thing to say to a mom. I mean, there's nothing else that I want to hear.

Anyway, he expanded on the hair thing a little: "It looked like a sand castle". If I had the time, I'd Photoshop a little something and ask "is this her?" but alas, I don't have the time or the software.

I'm going to back off asking about this girlfriend cause he has already starting acting self-conscious about it, and I don't want him to not tell me stuff like this anymore.

p.s. Anyone else picturing the old lady with the big blue beehive hairdo in Better Off Dead? (It was that movie, wasn't it? She was driving really slowly? I keep thinking it was either that or Pee Wee's Big Adventure.)

Lookout, Julia

I know it's been a while since I've talked about my invisible daughter-in-law Julia, but she does come up every once in a while. About two weeks ago Junior mentioned something about Julia and Jim (Jim is his invisible buddy, I'm not sure if he lives with us or not), but since then nothing.

Yesterday when he got home from his new child care center, aside from gushing that it was the greatest place in the universe, he casually mentioned that he had a new girlfriend. I'm loving and supportive, and trying hard not to be the jealous psycho mom you see in TV movies, so I don't tell him he's too young. I don't even tell him that because he's already married to Julia he can't actually have a girlfriend. I just ask what her name is.

"I don't know. But she wears an orange shirt."
"Well honey, what if she isn't wearing that shirt tomorrow?"
"She has a mountain of hair."

Oh good gravy, it's so hard to keep a straight face sometime. Don't you just want to eat him up? Miss Mountain-of-Hair is a very lucky young lady.

163

Sheesh, man. I would like (164) this to stop now. Granted my friend who has had over 400 has trumped me (I hope) on this whole thing. I'm So Over So Big. I know someone who got yelled at by a client for forwarding it. Problem is, you can't prove that you actually got it from someone just because of the header (we've already discussed this here, right?) but the customer is always right, so what do you say? "Stop being an arse, I didn't send you a virus?" (165 - I am so not making this up, I keep looking at Mailwasher, and a new one arrives. 166)

So should we talk about something else? Busy day fighting a big fire at work. I feel pretty good about my contributions there, I love the work, I love the people...what's a girl have to do to get an offer to work their full time?
(167-169)

Okay, granted I was on the phone for 15 minutes (170) so writing this has taken a little longer than it should have.

Did I ever mention that when I was a kid I thought that the way to solve the whole "snack" problem at elementary school would be to learn to love eating leaves? Then if I was hungry I could pick one and just eat it? It wouldn't matter if I forgot a snack or mom didn't give me one. Snacks were growing in front of me!

The fatal flaws in this plan was that
a) leaves don't taste good
b) they aren't very filling
c) this particular snack item is only available for two months of the school year, and
d) if the playground monitor sees you eating leaves they send a note home to your mom.

So ya, I did try it. And the funny thing is that in a mere 12 days, Junior will be playing in the same playground I was back when I did the great leaf experiment of 1974 (or so).

(171,172)

72

At last check, I was up to 72 copies of the virus received. That's amazing. This is really the first one that has filled my in-box. With Klez I think I got maybe two a day at the height of the infestation. Trusty Norton would smite them boom-boom and I'd barely notice they'd been in the room.

But geez, you get 72 email messages containing a virus, at 100k each, and that's going to screw up my mailbox over at the ISP.

So Big

44 emails in my mailbox with the sobig virus (caught by Mailwasher before they got to my inbox). 6 bounce messages that "my" email couldn't be delivered to other people. I guess last night was a big night in the virus world?

I hate that these things forge headers. I know I didn't send it to anyone - I have virus software that updates itself daily - but people who receive these things and think they are from me don't.

In mailwasher I can read messages without downloading anything, so I was looking at the bounces. One was to a mailing list for what appears to be something porn-ish. I guarantee you I'm not a member of any yahoo group that does anything other than try to amuse each other.

*sigh*

Isn't She Too Young To Drink Anyway?

Now see, THIS is usually the kind of story you read about much older trailer trash. She's lookin pretty good for 18, eh? And no mention of the lucky groom?

Didn't Get Anything Accomplished

Man, not a single item on my list. Oh, wait, I just noticed the typo on the last one...9:40. Har! The goal was 7:40. Of course, I didn't make my goal - I couldn't find my ID badge for work, so I spent a long time looking.

Tomorrow should be better/different. Junior starts at the new place, so I don't have to drive out of my way anymore, but now I'm responsible for giving him a lunch, so that should really screw up my life.

I didn't finish the coffee, and I never got the phrase worked into an email. Bummer.

To Do List

Just a few things.

• Work the phrase "we hold these thruths to be self-evident" into a memo at work.
  
• Actually finish a cup of coffee at work
  
• Get out of the house by 9:40.
  

I have 5 minutes left to do that last one.

Funny Stuff

A good friend of mine is starting up his own humor website. I plan to ping Blogrolling when he updates (weekly-ish) so feel free to add him to your blogroll. It's Curious Furious, my friends.

Maybe I'm Not Close Enough to Boston

I don't think the Localfeeds.com website is going to think I'm close enough to Boston to include me. I guess time will tell.

I'm Not In Antarctica

No really. Just because I can't keep longitude and latitude straight, doesn't mean that I have lost all spacial awareness. I am in Massachusetts. However, taking Adam's cue I tried adding myself to GeoURL and in reversing my coordinates, I show up as being "near Syowa - permanent station of Japan, Antarctica."

I'm not there, really I'm not.

Munchos

I don't know how they make 'em, but boy, I do love me a bag of Munchos brand Potato Crisps.

Monday? Again?

Well THAT was fast. Yesterday, the day of rest? Not. Now that I'm working full time and doing the whole single mom thing, I just don't get anything done during the week anymore. Yesterday was "hurry up, you've only got one day left until work again!" day. Combine that with preparing for Junior to start at his new daycare on Wednesday, and then preparing for him to start kindergarten on top of that and you can see that my Sunday was not my own.

Hit Target and did some serious damage. I was in "Queer Eye for the Straight Gal" mode, picking up some storage items. Wicker baskets, actually. Yes, I decided to stop decorating with old Amazon cardboard boxes. I also got a coat rack so I could stop storing stuff on the backs of chairs. So far, so good. Also, I had to mow the lawn, go grocery shopping, do some laundry and the dishes. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? I'd been invited to attend a BBQ but if I'd done that I couldn't have gotten HALF of that stuff done. I feel a little bad about not going, but I feel better about having accomplished so much yesterday. Now if the grass would just stop growing for a while...