The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Aiglet:

I have to chime in on the side of people with voices in their heads. I actually get three or four different *kinds* (although all in the same "voice) -- I get "what I'm going to say, only two seconds earlier" (which I wish was more useful for keeping me from saying stupid things), I get "replays of old conversations", I get "ongoing internal debates," and I get "someone is reading me a book" (although often the "book" is just some ongoing story I have in my head).

I thought that was normal? Reinforcing social mores, and all of that?

Janet:

I was thinking that in a high-stress situation, something that is lightweight, funny, cuddly, and can double as a pillow in a pinch might not be such a bad thing to have.

Of course, I also donated most of my stuffed animals to the local fire department when I went to college, so perhaps I have an over-inflated idea of how calming it is to have something silly to hug during a stressful situation.

James A:

Point. I always forget that there are people who use secondary mail servers, and I'm not exactly the most trusting person about ISPs either (I worked for one, and I use my boyfriend as my ISP now).

A lot of ISPs require you to download their software to use their connectivity, perhaps something where you can request certain ports to be unblocked would work, if they guaranteed that they would unblock any port upon request? The average user doesn't need their port 25 open to everyone and anyone.

I realized looking through my bag yesterday that I've managed to accumulate a number of these things just as part of the "stuff I carry around."

I've got moisturizer with sunscreen, lip balm, breath mints (sugar!), a knife, a flashlight (thank you for reminding me to check and replace the batteries), string, books, pens, pencils, a bottle of water, painkillers, sudafed; (in my desk drawers) a raincoat, an umbrella, a stuffed frog, a battery powered radio, paper, more candy, tissues, tea, an eyeglass repair kit...

I think my reluctance to accumulate the rest of the "personal kit" is that I can't carry any more stuff in addition to the stuff I already have and still do my 3-mile-a-day hike back and forth from the train station to work.

Any ideas on how to make the kit lighter without necessarily sacrificing stuff that has to be there?

The problem is that a lot of the spammers are sending through compromised home machines on high-speed connections.

We could probably eliminate a lot of spam (or at least make it easier to trace and to block) if we could take up a massive educational campaign on two fronts.

First, we need to convince home users that they really ought to download all the patches available for their OSes right when they come out (and to download them only from reputable sources, like their manufacturer's website). We also need to convince them that you *can't* just download random things that come in e-mail from people you've never heard of, no matter what they're promising, and that anti-virus software and something like AdAware aren't optional but necessary. That should help prevent their machines from getting compromised.

The other educational campaign that needs to be done is on the ISP side. There is no reason why any ISP that gives out dynamic IP addresses and has a clause about "no servers" in its TOS needs to allow any machine on its network to make a port25 connection anywhere but to their mail servers. While I generally don't advocate ISPs getting involved in what kind of packets go out from anyone's machines, there's no reason for people who aren't allowed to run servers anyway to be sending SMTP packets anywhere but to their ISP's mail server. (On top of which, running a mail server on a dynamic IP address is just a bad idea, security- and privacy-wise.)

It won't stop the spam, but it might make a start towards getting all the spammers onto their own IPs and their own machines, which can be tracked, subpoenaed, and taken down.

They did a study that shows that the spammer AOL just put away in VA was making $400K to $750K a MONTH from his spamming. (Of course, that was over 10M e-mail messages.)

The Spam Blog is a great resource for what's new in the sick, sad world of spam. (1 pt. reference)

TomB:

I'd love a pie recipe, but unfortunately, my blackberries aren't productive, really. They just sit there and mock me, saying "If only you could tame us, we'd be good little vines, but no one's paid attention to us for years and you're going to have to fight us for every inch of land you want to plant something else in, nyah."

I'm normally quite fond of blackberries, but these flatly refuse to be nice, berry-bearing bushes, and insist on being creepers, and they've invaded every single non-lawn space around the house and are making inroads on the lawn. They've got to go.

No, no, that which routes around anything (at least where I live) is blackberries.

Anyone want to come by and help me plough the land under with salt? (Also, I could use some help rehabilitating a tomato plant, if anyone has useful advice. I thought they were sun plants, but this one's a shade plant and determined to stay that way -- I just want it to stop eating my house!)

Gen, Janet --

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to go take a look at both places.

I keep thinking about remaking and replacing my entire wardrobe with things that aren't jeans-and-t-shirts but aren't formal, either -- now must be a good time to start.

So after looking at a ton of interesting and pretty pages of shalwar kameez, I'm left with one question -- this is basically a big T-tunic over loose pants, made of interestingly exotic fabric, right?

They're gorgeous outfits, but I need an excuse to learn to use my sewing machine anyway, and it looks like the fabric is available in nifty colors that they won't sell actual clothes in.

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