I’ve always gotten a lot of spam. I filter most of it with a one-two punch of SpamAssassin on the server side and Thunderbird‘s own filters on the client side.
These help a little bit, but far too much spam still makes it through to my inbox and every Monday morning is a huge annoying delete-fest.
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of spam with ‘delivery notification’ turned on. That adds a pop-up and an extra level of irritation to the whole delete process. Generally the only email I get with delivery notification enabled comes from recruiters, electronic billing systems, and now spammers. So I had to disable that little feature in Thunderbird today.
John C. Dvorak is one of my personal heroes and claims to get no spam courtesy of these guys. Paying someone to filter my spam for me seems like throwing money away, unless they can claim 100% accuracy.
I’ve been thinking about ditching email entirely. I’d still keep an inbox somewhere for things like order receipts and sites with logins. And you can’t run a business without email so I’d of course keep using it for work, but as a communications tool outside the office, I’d say email is dead! Good riddance!
It’s a FastTrack transponder. Roughly 30% of the cars that I see in Orange County have these affixed to their windshield.
I don’t take The Toll Roads much, but when I do I usually pay cash. This, I have learned, is dumb. I should have been using a transponder the whole time.
Last week I got one for my car and it’s made driving on the toll roads so much fun! Instead of slowing down and stopping at a toll plaza to feed a dollar or drop some coins into a machine, I can just keep driving at full speed through the special FastTrack lane! The transponder does a little “beep beep” so that you know the toll has been deducted from your account and you just keep driving!
The transponder is free but you need to ‘load up’ your account with $30 to get started. Once your balance dips below $10, they automatically charge your card $30 to refill it. It’s a very efficient system.
The best part is that transponder users get a discount on every toll paid, anywhere from $0.25 to $0.75 depending on the toll.
I’m not about to stick those adhesive velcro strips on my windshield, though. I keep the transponder in my glove box and just throw it on my dashboard when I take the toll roads. It works!
Tony Trischka played a song from his new album. Steve Martin wrote the song, so he played it right there alongside him. And, oh yeah, Bela Fleck was there too. That’s like the holy trinity of contemporary banjo players.
Steve Martin may write horrible stories (Shopgirl…ugh) but he sure writes purdy music.
See, that’s how good bluegrass should be – no lyrics.
Luckily the girl is my wife and this was all planned.
I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking “Brett, how boring! Everybody knows that the hot new trend in babymaking is to have a bastard child first, then worry about getting married later.” And indeed, you would have a point. I know many of these people, and their bastard children too. They’re good people. But that method just wasn’t gonna fly with me. Call me old fashioned.
When we first got the news a mild panic set in and a million questions big and small ran through my head: Who would stay at home? Who would keep working? Wait, we can’t live on one income what am I thinking? We’ll both keep working. But our house is too small for kids. Let’s look at new houses. Hey, these are nice houses for sale over here! We can’t really afford to move, so what do we do? Spammers make easy money, maybe I could look into that. What about that HDTV I’ve been saving for? What happens to that? Disneyland passes are going to get more expensive. Oh wait, I can take the kid to Disneyland! I already know where they keep diapers at Costco, so that’s one less thing to worry about. There sure are a lot of hard edges and corners on all this furniture. I bet a baby finger would totally fit inside that power outlet – that’s not good.
We eventually decided to sit tight at least until the baby’s born and things settle down. Then we’ll go house hunting again for something better suited to raising kids and take a look at the whole job/income situation.
We’re just in the beginning of the second trimester now and so far everything’s checking out a-okay. Our due date is in early February.
There sure are a lot of doctor visits involved when you’re pregnant. So far I’ve seen a doctor put things up my wife’s hoo-ha twice, smoosh her boobs around once, and I’ve seen the alien growing in her belly on an ultrasound machine twice. I think it’s a girl. Tammy thinks it’s a boy. We’ll see.
We’re going to spend these last few months enjoying what’s left of our quiet, childless lives, because come February things will never be the same again.
I did some pricing research and M&K Locks in Texas was not only the cheapest vendor I could find online, but they also beat my local Home Depot by as much as $10 per lock. That may not seem like much, but when you’re replacing a whole house full, it adds up!
These new Schlages were easy to install too. I managed to do the entire house in less than three hours.
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