Dan Blum: "I've also seen stores that have special parental shopping carts - they're more or less carts built into plastic cars and trucks that kids can sit in and "drive." Not as effective as the babysitting, but cheaper."
Yeah, they've had those at most of the local big Price Chopper grocery stores for a few years now.
And I have to say, I thought that was an excellent idea. The parents who use those do seem to have the most happy and content children in the stores! I wish they had those when I was a kiddiewink! haha.
Crying rooms... I never heard of that.
But then I was astounded when I was at Wegman's grocery store recently, and upon leaving the check out aisles, I walked past a glass walled room that contained a playground of sorts, 2 young adult women, and several children playing. I'm assuming this is a baby sitting service the store offers to shoppers.
But I have to say this, even if it's in poor taste... But the first thing I thought of is how very similar it looked to pet store glass walled rooms where they keep the cats & dogs. haha.
Niall McAuley: "As a father of three, I can't recall ever being the victim of a parenting drive-by, but I have often been helped by passers-by, with or without kids, when my hands were full and one of the kids threw a wobbler."
You know, I think there's some sexist thing going on. Because my friends who are mothers often complain people in public won't even hold doors for them. But yet I often have seen people rushing to help a man with a kid. As if people think women should just deal, but men need extra help at any given moment with children. haha.
Personally, my bias runs more towards being more likely to assist someone elderly with a door or whatever.
Larry Brennan: "The only time I ever say anything (in line with Xopher and others upthread) is when kids are wildly misbehaving in public places. Especially on airplanes. Especially when they're kicking the back of my seat.
I once had a mommy shriekingly call me an "evil man" for complaining about her 10-year-old doing just this, endlessly, over a three-hour flight. The flight attendants told her to sit down, shut up and control her son. And if she didn't they'd land the plane and have her arrested! (She and her kid were *really* out of control.)"
Yeah, you know, I'm hesitant to even make personal silent judgements on any minor parenting choices, never mind to say something to someone... because I'm not a parent myself.
But that does NOT include keeping my mouth shut when someone else's kids are infringing upon my rights.
Over the years I've had repeated problems with parents completely oblivious in the grocery store while their kids fool around running into me, or around me, with the parent's grocery cart & such.
Of course, even worse, one time, this was happening, and when the parents finally noticed (they were busy arguing)... it would've been sufficient for them to simply call the kid over, scold the kid, and keep an eye on him - but instead, the father grabbed the kid by the upper arm & shoulder, started shouting right there in the aisle and then cracked the kid upside the head.
I still didn't say anything, but I did give them a dirty look. haha. Or as Northland says, "silent stares of disapproval". haha.
But I'm sorry, that's not a case of someone telling someone else how to parent - it's a case of - I don't want to deal with your family's dysfunction during my grocery shopping, thank you. haha.
Steve Eley: "It is not the rest of the world's responsibility to put up with it."
Exactly... If the kid has a behavioural problem. I'm sorry, but we don't have to excuse disruption or crimes committed against us because perpetrator is mentally ill. So I don't see a reason that a kid with a mental disease, or whatever, should just be allowed to run rampant in society doing whatever they please.
She swore at me like a sailor, then a few minutes later left the theater, dragging her child while shouting to everyone (and directed at me): "You bitch! He has Tourette's! You've fucking traumatized him, you bitch!"
Sounds like it was the mother who had Tourette's. LOL.
Lisa Hertel
Psychologists would have me simultaneously give my children unconditional love and never say no to them, while disciplining them. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. When my kids whine, "Mommy, you're not my friend," I retort, "That's right. I'm your mother. It's not my job to be your friend.
Actually, I'm pretty sure failing to be a parent authority in a child's life is considered by psychologists to be not healthy, and not establishing good boundaries.
At least that's what I've read.
And I also don't think that spanking "shows kids that they can be bullied about by people bigger and stronger than them.". I think child abuse does that.
Unless of course your child is 12 years old, entering puberty, and you're pulling their pants down in public in front of a co-ed audience of their schoolmates and the pervy neighbor, to spank them bare-assed.
That might be a gray area of spanking/abuse possibly. hahaha!!!
But I'm not a parent... So who knows, maybe when I become one, I'll be running around the public parks looking for stay-at-home dads assuming they're lookin' for love. HAHAHA!!!! ;) ;)
Paula Lieberman:
I'm sure there are those prankster types that get a rush out of "beating a system" through loopholes. But I still think the "average person" who looks for a loophole, is just trying to defend their behaviour, no matter how out of line.
Mitch Wagner:
When I said "I think most people who "misbehave" in conversations on-line, are simply reacting or adapting to a situation in which they find themselves."...
What I meant was, that an ordinarily polite person can easily come off with cheeky remarks when viciously verbally attacked in a conversation. That it's often difficult, even for "nice" people, to walk away after they've been mistreated, there's a human tendency to want to defend oneself, even if it's futile.
Sorry if I wasn't clearly articulate on that one.
Also, your "Miss Nice" sounds an awful lot like the "Nice Guys" described on the "Heartless Bitches" web site:
"But why are "nice guys" misogynists? In the book "The Gift of Fear," Gavin DeBecker defines "niceness" as a "strategy of social interaction" and not evidence of innate goodness. So what he is saying is that being "nice" merely means your behavior is not offensive but does not mean your motives are automatically pure or good. Being a "nice guy" has been discussed elsewhere so there is no need to go into great detail here, but the bottom line is that trying to "be nice" or to use one’s social charm to achieve one’s social or sexual objectives is just as manipulative as anything else."
hehe.
For my part, I'll say that I'm a firm believer that morality is based mostly on self-interest. But I know not everyone agrees with that. And I do think that often "nice guys" are really control freak jerks in a flimsy disguise, and that "Miss Nice" might often be a pretentious defensive control freak "herself".
But I don't think you have to be any of those things in order to be civil...
Re: hateful reactions... Well, there are civil ways to deal with people, even if you hate them. After all, our laws are designed to expect law enforcement agents & prison guards, to treat mass murderers humanely. Know what I mean? Of course this often doesn't happen, but there's a reason why people consider it an important ideal to strive toward. And I don't think you have to condone murder, to treat a murderer humanely.
Almost everything written in this post was stuff that I already had known, someone had told me, or I had figured out on my own.
But this was something new:
"Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system."
That never before occurred to me. But it is so true.
Though I think it's more often that people like to find loopholes to defend themselves and justify their behaviour, after they've made an obvious faux pas.
Re: #10: "You can let one jeering, unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two or more of them egging each other on..."
In my experience, if there's even one "unpleasant jerk"... That one unpleasant jerk can actually turn other people, who are ordinarily polite, civil, people, into unpleasant jerks themselves, without them even realizing what's happening.
In other words, I think,yes, there are some people who are just jerks (or "trolls" or whatever you want to call them)... But I think most people who "misbehave" in conversations on-line, are simply reacting or adapting to a situation in which they find themselves.
It is so easy to forget the wisdom of "It takes an idiot to start a fight, and a fool to carry one on", given the right (or wrong) topic or set of circumstances. We are human, and we have flaws. It's not always easy to invariably walk away from verbal abuse, as often verbal abuse isn't so obvious, and often masquerades as communication.
Thus the importance of #8: "Grant more lenience to participants who are only part-time jerks..."
Because almost anyone is a potential "part-time jerk".
And furthermore, this is related to... I don't believe that all "trolls" do what they do to deliberately get off by spoiling things for others. I think a lot of those people don't even realize what they're doing. It's mostly unconscious on their part... perhaps because in their general life, their behaviour wouldn't be considered "abnormal"... Almost like a cultural thing.
For example, recently a few people told me that what I would consider, and what psychological experts consider "verbal abuse" is actually the norm, and accepted by superiors, on many construction jobs - whereas if the same behaviour and verbal attacks took place in most corporate offices, the participants would be out of their jobs.
I do not for a moment consider this an excuse though!!! After all, when in Rome...
I'm just trying to say that I think a lot of those people aren't trying to be jerks... They just don't understand why 'Rome' has different customs. And as is typical of humans - they think their way is "the right way", because it's what they know.
For example, it would be just as foolish for someone to go to a conversation forum of any type, where "verbal abuse" and that sort of thing is acceptable, and then complain about it on their turf.
But just as many people do that, you better believe it.
Barbara Nielsen:
That's what my mother has always said!
But darn it, I keep doing that day after day this week, and I'm still not feeling much better!
Nancy Lebovitz:
haha! You had me wondering there.
But of the sci-fi fans I know, I can't think of any who've mentioned a problem with side-effects. And of the people I know who've mentioned problems with side-effects, they've not been sci-fi fans - in fact, one is one of those people who never sees sci-fi movies & such and can't imagine the appeal.
hehe.
But all of this is anecdotal too. ;)
Marilee: How awful!
I was actually told by a doctor that I shouldn't use ibuprophen, with my history of anemia years ago. Haven't had any problems with that recently, but I did when I was younger.
I guess it really does depend on the person.
When it comes right down to it, all the OTC stuff has potential dangers. I don't know, maybe we should have pharmacists dispensing a lot of this OTC stuff - they certainly seem to have even more information about drugs than the doctors seem to know.
Nowadays I only take ibuprofen if I have a bad headache, and it's all anybody has on them. I generally only have acetominophen on hand at home. Works well enough for me. Except I try not to take anything for too many days straight though... And stay away from things like Exedrin that combine several different ones, because I've known too many people who've had that rebound headache syndrome thing - whether they were diagnosed or not, I know they did have that - because they had a headache every day, and took Exedrin every day - and that's just too suspicious to ignore.
Nancy Lebovitz: Fans of what? Did I miss something?
Julia Jones: "I'd be risking being dragged off as a Narcotics Abuser if I asked my American doctor for a prescription, judging by some of the bizarre reactions I've had on the subject of opiates."
Something makes me think that the "standard medicine cabinet" type opiates you're talking about are nowhere near the potency of Oxycotin, Vicodin, or 'street smack'.
I also wonder if the opiate addiction rate is lower in the UK.
Doctors in the U.S. are now, I believe, pretty much told to be wary of patients who come in asking for specific drugs, especially when they're potentially addictive. Many doctors truly were once ignorant of their patients who were addicts. They were just trying to help. Now some have swung the other way, and are downright suspicious.
It is sad that the fact that a certain percentage of people can be so seriously harmed by a medication, makes it difficult for people who are not harmed by the medication, to get the medication that could help them.
I think this is the case with a lot of potential "side-effects" of drugs. Whether the side-effects for some people might be addiction, the side-effect for others is kidney problems. :( Meanwhile, tons of people could take these things and not have any of that happen to them.
But how to help those people, while protecting that portion of people who could have serious consequences from the drugs? It's a tough one! :(
xeger: "Heh. Benadryl is on my list of drugs to avoid if at all possible. It does work for its intended purpose - reducing allergic reactions - but the side-effects are ... profoundly distracting. I still remember spending the better part of a day trying (very seriously) to put the blue smoke back into a broken computer, since I was absolutely sure that would fix it. Ugh!"
ALthough of course I'm sorry to hear you've had horrible reactions from this stuff... I am glad to hear that others have had some astoundingly bizarrely severe reactions from this stuff... For many years, I believed myself to be somewhat nuts. Until my best friend went to med school, became a psychiatrist, and learned about a lot of the bizarre side effects drugs can have. And a lot of the serious "drug interactions" that could happen because of prescribed medicine and herbal "otc" medicine.
But still, a lot of people are shocked to learn that the side-effects can be quite severe with something another person would have no problem at all taking. And I've never had enough "validation" on this to really feel like I'm not a complete oddball. ;)
Christopher Davis: I really hope that's for real. And yeah, the way you explain it, it would certainly be cost-effective research to do!!
Re, the link to this article:
LA Times...
I'm not sure I have a big problem with having to ask the pharmacist for Theraflu. It would be annoying not to be able to buy it in a regular drug store, but I really don't have a problem with having to ask for it specifically, unless there were absolutely no pharmacies open on the weekends for 50 miles or something.
If it was prescription required, that would bother me.
And I'm not sure I have a problem with providing my name to the PHARMACY. I mean, grocery store cards pretty much do that anyway. (NOt that I necessarily like that though.)
What did kind of put me off was this "list provided to government officials".
Mostly because I feel like that information could be culled somehow and made available to employers who could sit around with somebody's resume and say "this person buys a lot of allergy products - they must be sickly and might miss more work than this other person who..." might be a drunken drug addict buying their drugs off the street instead of the government culled otc drug list.
What does anyone else think of this deal with the pharmacist handing it out? Is that alone dangerous, do you think?
Larry Brennan: "If you've had palpitations from the plain form of both of these drugs, you should probably avoid all other antihistimines or use them only with close medical supervision.
Also, you should note the current crop of OTC sleeping pills are basically relabeled Benedryl."
Wow, you might be onto something here...
All the 'over the counter' sleep aids I've ever tried have also given me a reaction like I get from Benadryl. Nervousness, fast heart rate, racing buzzing kind of feeling. (Some worse than others.) I remember the first time I tried an over the counter sleep aid, about 15 years ago, I was living with my mother at the time, and she was surprised that the sleeping pill actually had the opposite effect. I was almost hysterical at the time, it was quite scary.
It's probably not a coincidence that the only effective cure I've found for severe insomnia, was a prescription for Buspar - which is actually an anti-anxiety medication.
Are over the counter sleep aids related to antihistimines? And do Allegra and Theraflu not contain antihistimines? Because Allegra & Theraflu are the only products I would personally consider "safe".
Christopher Davis "With some work, I hope we'll wind up with the ability to take a quick blood sample, test it on a microarray for known markers, and be told "take this one, don't take that one, take half as much as usual of this" rather than having to find these things out the hard way."
That would be excellent. I've long wondered why there hasn't been something like that before. But I guess it's a complex area of research, eh?
Bob Oldendorf: "Here's a noteworthy coincidence: Friday's MMWR has a Brief Report: Tularemia Associated with a Hamster Bite"
Did anyone else think of The Sims when they read that?
Lucy Kemnitzer : "Oh Chloe, I meant "speedy" as in the vernacular for the symptoms you described, not as in "quick." You were completely clear: I wasn't."
I think I also misread what you wrote as well.
Mind you, it's been a quite frustrating history of me trying to explain what happens to people. You know what I mean? Like doctors, family, friends... A lot of people don't even realize that even "over the counter" medications can be bad for some people. Like there's long been this popular idea that if you can buy something freely in the grocery store without a prescription, it must be safe. And believe it or not, I've actually been accused occasionally of hypochondria because I get acute side-effects from 'over the counter' medications.
CHip: "Chloe: I've started seeing "We do not carry Oxycontin" signs in local pharmacies. (I live in Boston proper, in a fairly quiet area well out from downtown and well away from the poorest areas.)"
Really? Now that's something I didn't know.
Though I think it may have something more to do with the "theft deterrent" than actually curbing the use of the drug by people with shady prescriptions.
For example, right after that Dr. Alexanderian & I think 2 other doctors in the area, where shut down because of their shady prescription writing & drug selling... There was a string of pharmacy robberies in the area.
Coincidence? I think not.
CHip: "It's not quite comparable to cold medications; Oxycontin, as I understand, is effective against seriously crippling pain, while cold meds are usually milder palliatives (and some even have substitutes, cf mention upthread about nose drops)."
Agreed.
But I've heard that doctors are often encouraged to prescribe Oxycotin for non-crippling, non-serious disease, patients. And even non-predisposed to addiction people can become dangerously dependent on the drug.
And there hasn't been much change in that, that I know about. I think that was my point.
I hardly think that Sudafed will be banned completely out of existence. I think that was also my point.
Like they haven't made it harder for drug addicts to get Oxycotin, even with some measures... So what would taking Sudafed off the shelves really do to prevent addicts from making/getting meth? Know what I mean?
Anyway, my cold is still hanging on. And I think it's only a matter of time before I'll be resorting to mud packs. (Even though it doesn't sound like my idea of a fine time in the tub. hehe.)
Eric Sadoyama: "Perhaps you're the perceptive type who noticed it when it was barely a blip on the screen; well, now it's a big enough problem that everybody and his brother are talking about it."
I think it's more like I'm the honest type, who didn't ignore the problem, or pretend it didn't exist.
Believe it or not, there are still parts of the country where these kinds of problems do exist in abundance, it's just that even the people directly effected by it, like say the family members of the drug addicts, pretend it's not happening somehow, hush it up and so forth.
Just because they pretend it's not happening, so nobody pushes for the papers to report it, does not mean it's not happening!!
And I'm sorry, but that "I tend to take what they say at face value? does sound, as xeger says, as if you're equating the media not reporting on something as proof it's not worth reporting, or that the issue doesn't exist.
There's no way anyone's going to tell me that Dr. Alexanderian wasn't selling drug addicts prescription drugs illegitimately since the 70s, because the newspapers and police didn't catch him in the 70s, or 80s, or 90s. Because it was well known that he was! There was gossip in the area about him constantly!
The fact is, nobody kicked up a big fuss to reporters or police, until they got it into their heads that he might be abusing Medicaid. Indeed, the news reports made it sound like nobody gave a damn what he was selling or to whom, only that they might be using taxpayer money to buy their drugs. If that's not a sad commentary on our times, and evidence that the problem existed before any reporting was done on it, I don't know what is.
RE: the link http://www.gothpunk.com/articles/crystal-myth.html: A few months after I moved down to Washington, DC, my mother came down to visit and commented approvingly on how thin my old friend Leah was. When I explained that she’d become so slender because she’d been using crystal meth, my mother responded, “Well, she looks great. Why aren’t you doing it?”
Oh My God. I've heard similar tales about people who knew people who were going to Dr. Alexanderian in my area, for prescription diet pills, in the 80s & 90s.
Today, some of those people are now dead from drug addiction, or in full blown opiate addictions.
Lucy Kemnitzer: "Chloe, the reason you get speedy symptoms with some of the drugs and not with others is because it's just like that. Even very similar drugs sometimes have very different results in different people. You can hope to generalize, but your hopes will occasionally be dashed."
Oh, I realize that, of course.
And yeah, I've always been aware that I seem to be more sensitive to almost any drugs, compared to other people. Even doctors have noticed that the effective doses of a wide variety of things are much less on me than most others, regarding some prescriptions.
My point though was not that I didn't get relief from say Sudafed or Benadryl, but that I got nasty reactions from them! It's unclear to me still whether these reactions are actually dangerous, but I'll tell you, they feel dangerous. Like the cure is definitely seems than the disease. haha! Even if they're not dangerous, I can tell you, I'd rather be miserable with congestion than feel like that, wiht heart palpatations and a heavy buzzing feeling in my head.
At any rate, I really thought there must be one ingredient in those things, but not in Theraflu (which doesn't give me nasty reactions), that caused the reactions. Now, from reading about this here, I'm starting to think it must be the combination of certain things in a certain way... Because the active ingredient would seem to be the same.
Or, another thought was, maybe it's the delivery vehicle... In that one drinks Theraflu, rather slowly. At least I do, particularly since I mix it in tea most of the time. (I'm only able to tolerate the taste for maybe the first or 2nd dose at most, when I'm the most sick and can't taste anything anyway. From talking to some friends with colds using Theraflu recently, apparently that's quite common.)
At any rate, it's certainly been enlightening.
Eric Sadoyama: "Pseudoephedrine may be effective, but don't expect it to be on the shelves much longer now that the crystal meth epidemic has finally reached the East Coast. The feds will probably ban the stuff soon."
Heavens to betsy... Why does everyone keep claiming that meth is new to the east??
Anyway, I hadn't realize that Pseudoephedrine was the "upper" type thing in sinus medication. It's in Theraflu, and I can take Theraflu. It's Benadryl, Sudafed, and Clariton that give me heart palpatations and "racing thoughts". Indeed, the only things I can take for sinus congestion are Theraflu (regular, not the non-drowsy), Allegra, and certain types of nasal sprays & cough syrups.
Indeed, now hearing that all decongestants are stimulants... I wonder now exactly what the issue is for me. I'd always assumed the reason some of them gave me a racing heart rate & such was because of the type of decongestant in them... But now I'm wondering if it's not some combination of things in some of them.
At any rate, although I have many times suspected certain people I've known to be addicted to sinus medication much like junkies...
Considering Oxycotin addictions being wildly out of hand, yet Oxycotin is still going strong... Well, I don't think we have to worry about Theraflu being pulled off the market just yet. I mean, think of it... Oxycotin comes ready to use, and it's still being sold, while Pseudoephedrine is just an ingredient, right?
Xopher: "They already note you down if you buy a lot of it at once."
Again, I hardly think that really matters anyway, considering there are drug sellers who carried on for 30 years before being caught, even though all of their purchases/prescription-writing is supposedlly 'noted down'. (I'm referring to a doctor in my area who has been well-known as an addictive substance provider in the area for over 30 years, and was only just arrested last year.)
As for stores moving it to the back counters... They'd probably be inclined to want to do that because of the shoplifting element. Most 24 hour grocery stores in my area now lock up their "drug store" aisles during the overnight shift when workers are sparce. And for awhile now, they've kept condoms, of all things, out of the regular aisles. (Both of these things were explained to me as "shoplifting theft prevention" measures.)
Though I have no doubt that some people think banning Pseudoephedrine, or making it prescription only - but they're probably the same people who have no clue that many addicts are getting their oxycotin, vicodin, valium, perkidan, etc. by prescription.
Yuck! Sorry to hear of anyone being sick!
Hope everyone feels better soon!
In recent years, I usually do not get very severe cases of the flu or colds.
But this winter has been particularly bad for me. A few months ago I had VERTIGO for several weeks from the flu! And it seems not a week goes by that at least one day I feel like I'm getting the flu again. Don't know if it's relapses or what.
And this week I have a terrible cold. Terrible miserable cold.
My beverages/remedies... sitting next to me at my desk here right now:
A mix of ice, water, orange juice, and a splash of carrot juice. Yes, I love this.
And a mix of hot mandarin orange herbal green tea mixed with Theraflu Severe Cold formula. Yes, Theraflu is more palatable to me this way. And Theraflu is the only cold medicine I have found effective that I can take without annoying or even scary side-effects. And I have seen no lessened effectiveness of Theraflu by mixing it with hot tea, though I have no idea if this would be medically recommended.
I also find that alternating cold & hot beverages seems to be soothing to my throat. (I have no idea if there's any medical scientific basis for this personal preference.)
I also intermittantly take vitamin C & vitamin E. My uncle and my mother swear by both. (My 80 year old uncle has only gotten a cold once or twice in the past decade!) I really need to make it more of a habit I guess.
Anyway, good luck!
Geez, we're getting into morbid territory here now.
Thinking about what web sites might be filled with spam because the authors are dead. :(
I think that the only way to combat it would be through Google... Because it's the google-ranking that makes comment spam appealing. If Google somehow weeded out these old defunct web sites that were full of spam, then the appeal would drop perhaps? Or at least the spammers wouldn't get anything out of it.
But truly, I don't think the spam problem will end until the supply & demand issue is solved. In other words, as long as people keep buying crap from them, they'll stay in business. And keep spamming.
Hmmmm... spring cleaning. Maybe that should become an internet tradition!
I know that just a few months ago, I myself did a big cleaning of getting rid of a lot of useless files off the web. It was more like a late summer early autumn type cleaning... but still.
I wonder if the people who leave blogs lying dormant full of spam are in the rest of their cleanliness habits. Probably otherwise neat-nick people, I would bet.
haha - I like the dark humour...
But I don't think it would last beyond a week.
From what I know the internet has to be maintained by humans. I mean, not the content, but the actual servers. Which are powered by electricity & whatnot. And I think electric power plants have to be upkept too. I don't think they'd continue creating power indefinitely.
Likewise, I think even spam bots require some human maintanence, no?
At any rate, the place I worked at on September 11th didn't come to a halt. And we were using the internet there. And this place had nothing to do with news gathering.
The spam attack I had yesterday included quotes from various people. They were not quotes I'd heard before.
"I’m starting to regard unmaintained comment areas as the online equivalent of letting old automobile tires lie around in your back yard, collecting stagnant water where mosquitoes breed."
I'd expound on the analogy, to say that it's like allowing other people to hold junk yard sales on your property, for free.
Or maybe more specifically, it's like allowing drug dealers and pornography peddlers to place billboards in your yard.
And I'm always reminded of Adam Kalsey's statement:
In the war on spam if you are not for us; if you choose to look the other way and allow spammers to use your site; if you feel that keeping your site free from spam is too much trouble — you are against us.
I too have wondered what Google does, or thinks it should or shouldn't do, to combat the spam. After all, it's google-ranking that apparently motivates comment spam. But I haven't heard anything about this, exactly.
You just found out about this now? hehe.
I remember when I first found my blog being traded on Blogshares. And then I started playing myself eventually! haha.
If you play, you can claim your blog as your own, btw.
Anyway, that's a shame about the blogroll pressure peer pressure. It all seems very juvenile to me. I mean, the only time I can imagine someone legitimately getting a resentment about someone de-linking, is if the person is a friend or something. And there actually people I know in-person, who don't link me at their blogs... But I don't think it's because they hate me. haha.
I'm less likely to click on a lengthy list of links anyway. Some blogrolls, I just don't believe the person could possibly be reading that many blogs on anything like a regular basis.
Well, I did get hit today with the massive spam thing.
Started with the very first post. I think it's going to try to spam every post.
I was on-line at the time and get e-mail notification, so I was able to blacklist & purge it after only 13 spams got posted.
I checked the MT-Blacklist master list, and the URL wasn't on there. (I have updated my list from the master list a couple of times.)
I sent the URL to be added, though I'm not sure if I did it right.
I'm still curious as to the file name thing of the comment script. My comment script is not available with that file name in it anywhere... But can they get to it anyway?
Well, in light of Google's ranking system... Then I should be getting hammered with spam. I show up ridiculously high in google-ranking. I say ridiculously high because my site's not actually particularly popular or anything - but I come up on the first page for a lot of what I'd consider rather common search terms.
And my friend with the WordPress blog who got hammered in one day... he's not an a-list blogger, the victim blog wasn't even linked yet never mind not in google's index.
So that's not an adequate argument, I think.
Just like e-mail spam doesn't specifically target people, I don't think comment spam is particularly targeted either. It's all about the numbers. More bait, more bites. That's all.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 13 |
| 2004 | 20 |
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