Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

ShoutOn.com, “A Free & Reliable Link Exchange Service”, sent me an email today letting me know I could “Start your high quality, spam free, link exchange in minutes.” I could be one of the “early adapters to use our fully free in-direct link exchange services”. Yes, I could, if I was a complete idiot.

My favorite line was from their “Privacy Policy” in the email:

ShoutOn.com values your privacy. At no time has ShoutOn made your email address available to others without your permission.

Really? How did you get my email to begin with. Oh, that’s right, you made it up and I got it through the catch-all. Anybody have experience with these ShoutOn spammers?

According to the ergonomics training at work this morning: “Select a handtool without sharp edges on the handle.”

You know, I never would have thought of that. That’s nearly as useful as the advice that you take breaks in a temperature controlled environment if you’re working outside in the heat.

An issue today with a test site containing live site data (and testing the comment notifications) reminds me of the time I added 200 people to a Listserv and forgot to use the quiet option. So I got each and every response back. And then they were forwarded to my work account on Lotus Notes through a gateway from the internet. This was back in the spring of 1996, about a week after they setup the gateway in the first place. IT asked me if the number of messages was intentional and then politely asked me never to do that again.

If you’re trying to delete a message out of the Lotus Notes Webmail application, be sure to beware of the “the document has already been deleted” error:

If I am trying to delete a message, and it’s already been deleted, don’t show me an error. Just say “great” and get on with life.

I got an email from Reunion.com asking me if I knew Debi, giving me choices of “Yes” or “No”. Where’s the “Maybe, but let me see her profile first” button? I don’t guess it matters too much, since you can’t see profiles until you sign up for the premium (a.k.a. to-be-of-any-use) service.

At work yesterday, a guy a barely know was telling me how he was hitting golf balls in his yard out into farmland behind his house. All was going well until he sliced one through his neighbors window. But all was well, when his neighbor “believed” him when he said he knew nothing about the golf ball in his neighbors kitchen. “It must have been some kids being mean, finding golf balls out in the field and throwing it through his window, thinking it would be funny.” Right.

On NPR this morning, there was a short clip of a guy saying he didn’t like Joe Biden (possible running mate for John McCain). He said he questioned the character of a man who flip flopped from Democrat, to Independent, to Republican

How about believing in the character of a man who doesn’t let himself be hemmed in by groupthink?

For the most part, Merlin Mann hits it right on the head with his list of what makes a good blog. Put I think he left out one of the most important points:

0. Good blogs allow for comments. All of us are smarter than any of us. I find that much of the value I get out of web logs comes from the comments that the user base makes regarding the article. (Not the comments agreeing or refuting the main point, but the ones that add to the discussion with their own ideas of the post.)

This is not to say that all blogs get it right–some have very useful comments (Lifehacker, Slashdot) while others could turn off the comments and not lose value (TUAW). Some are correct in leaving it to the author (Daring Fireball) while I really want to know the user comments on others (43 Folders).

I went to Max & Ermas this past weekend and got a hamburger with seasoned fries. I tend to like seasoned fries as a break from the regular french fries. Apparently I am the only person who expects seasoned fries to be seasoned with something other than salt and pepper.

Just one more thing in an other wise “blah” visit.

When I wrote about Deep Fried (finally), it had been almost two years since I had decommissioned the drive. One (Thermostat) is used for offline storage and the other (Whirlpool) is used for the nightly back up and, up until tonight, Time Machine.

My current large storage volume of choice is the Infrant ReadyNAS NV (which has since been subsumed by NetGear). The first 750GB drive was $450, the second was $300 and they’re down to $100 now. Complaints about the ReadyNAS? Not a one. It’s been sitting in my basement (on a UPS) as solid as a rock for two years.