I've been told this many times, and always did believe it, but I will go ahead and say it now and draw from my own experience; the same people show up in every office. The really nice guys between 25 and 35 who you would like to take home and marry (but they are already happily married), the women who feel like any other women are competition, the women who never stop talking, and the (male) 40+ pompous ass holes who think young women were intended to be their administrative slaves and whipping girls - they show almost no respect for people in my kind of position and just generally reek of ill-imagined superiority. The stories (of the pompous ass in our Seattle office) don't bear retelling since the condescention was in the facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, but suffice it to say I've been here just a few days and I already have a least favorite person.
I know there are many many other kinds of people in offices, but these are four groups that seem to show up everywhere in my experince and generally make themselves known in a short period of time. As long as I manage not to take it personally, people are pretty darn funny.
And one last thing - why is it that middle aged men (of any sort) think they have fax machine skills when they don't? It's like the guys in this office either act like they don't know how to do anything when really they can do quite a bit, or they imagine that they can do everything when they should really be asking for help. We had a trio of them this morning trying to send a 40-page all graphic (real pictures for that matter) fax to our Kirkland office - a bunch of the pages just had "delete" scirbbled over them. The silliness of this situation is hopefully not lost on this crowd. The fax would have taken literally 6 hours but could have been taken care of in a 6-minute phone call. Ah, the quirky men who populate A&E firms . . .
As Sha Sha says, we had this conversation quite a while ago, which at the time was eerie to me because I'd just thought of my brilliant new solution the day before and she randomly posted on the subject right after that.
That said, I'm all idea and no execution ... I couldn't be bothered to actually go and implement it. The same thing happened originally with MT-Blacklist - I knew I wanted it, but until things got annoying enough, it wasn't worth the initial effort to implement the system.
The fact that Sha Sha went out and implemented it first was the kick in the ass that I needed. Of course, I also wimped out and did it the static way, but the original idea that I still intend to get to someday (though is probably overkill since I doubt spammers are going to even bother to defeat this) is that the script that creates the comment posting pages should dynamically create a code and that code should be stored somewhere where it is good for 20 minutes or so - this prevents a spammer from hard-coding in your particular magic number. That said, they could just hit your commenting page, parse to find the code, then use that, which isn't much harder. Hmm ... maybe this lame version is all that will ever exist.
Anyway, if you want to do it the quick and dirty way as I have, it's a quick and simple addition to the comment posting function in the comment posting module (replace the code where I've indicated in the second line):
my $spam_code = $q->param('spam_code');
if ($spam_code ne "insert your code here")
{
$app->log("Comment blocked from $user_ip due to spam code failure");
return $app->handle_error($app->translate("To help prevent spam, comments on this weblog must be posted from the comment submission web page. If you have reached this error due to using some other client software, please try reposting using the built-in page. If, on the other hand, you're trying to post meaningless spam, kindly tear off your own arms and choke yourself with them."));
}
If you have MT-Blacklist installed, find the the comment_post_hdlr function in mt/extlib/jayallen/MTBlPost.pm. If you don't, it's the post function in mt/lib/MT/App/Comments.pm. In either case, insert the code anywhere after $user_ip is set.
Then, in each of your templates that have a comment posting form (the 3 comment templates plus the individual archive comment), add a hidden field to the form called spam_code with a value equal to the code you used in the snippet above.
Feel free to come up with your own snarky error message that none of the spammers will ever get to see (unfortunately).
And yes, I'm sure there are a bajillion ways to do this better (as a custom library or something like that), but this was quick and dirty and didn't require research, so as long as it doesn't break, I don't think the spammers deserve any more time than that.
--Nick
Addendum: Mwahahaha!
I added my catch after MT-Blacklist's blacklist check so that it would only catch things that aren't on my blacklist ... just wanted to be able to see how many things I'm catching that would have gotten through my blacklist (seems to happen more and more these days). Awesome to see this:
2004.04.28 15:05:55 24.204.121.53 Comment blocked from 24.204.121.53 due to spam code failure
2004.04.28 15:27:59 24.30.70.162 Comment blocked from 24.30.70.162 due to spam code failure
2004.04.28 15:31:13 68.82.161.52 Comment blocked from 68.82.161.52 due to spam code failure
2004.04.28 16:43:11 207.104.1.211 Comment blocked from 207.104.1.211 due to spam code failure
2004.04.28 17:16:12 172.164.223.214 Comment blocked from 172.164.223.214 due to spam code failure
2004.04.28 19:09:25 172.199.58.125 Comment blocked from 172.199.58.125 due to spam code failure
Edit: Apparently there's a comment entry field on the individual archive page, too ... updated the listing above to reflect this. Thanks to Sha Sha, who ran into this.
Some of you at work know that I horde the Natural Keyboard Pros - my favorite of the "Natural" style of keyboards, since they have the non-screwed-up configuration of the Home/End/Page Up/Page Down block of keys.
Turns out these keyboard have one other very special feature that I wasn't aware of until today.
So I'm working at the office this weekend and the phone rings. I reach over to grab the phone and knock over a full cup of water that spills all over the edge of my desk and onto the floor. This, of course, freaks me out and I end up spending a bunch of time cleaning off all of the desk, the surface of the keyboard that got wet, and the sides of the computers that are wet. I focus particularly on the last of these, since one of them has a loose case and I'm paranoid that something is going to short circuit. 20 minutes later, the computer is still working, I've gotten all the water I can find, and everything works - all seems good.
Today, the keyboard starts wigging out ... typing randomly, causing the computer to beep, screwing with the switchbox ... I can't figure out what the hell is going on.
That special feature? Turns out that these things can hold a lot of water inside the keys! I go to swap it with another and as I grab it I turn it over a bit and a quarter cup of water falls out of it (and some glitter, for that matter ... that's a story for another time).
Oops. My cache is now down by one.
Anyone want a slightly damp Natural Keyboard Pro?
--Nick
So Kara decided to treat herself to an iPod to help her survive her daily bus trips to and from work. Infested with extreme gadget envy, I decided it was high time that I had something of that nature as well, though the iPod doesn't work for me for several reasons (notably, WMA and FM Radio support).
Turns out, the device that I want doesn't exist. How hard could this be? All I want is:
- A reasonably large (20GBish) hard drive.
- WMA support.
- A scroll wheel (like one would find on a mouse, though the iPod solution is fine as well).
- FM Radio support.
- Direct hard drive access.
- WMP + WMDRM support.
I don't feel like this is a particularly strange list of desires, but there isn't a damn player out there that wants to do all of this, which is highly annoying. Reading around, though, it seems like the next gen devices from several of the manufacturers are coming out in a few months and I'm crossing my fingers that one of them will finally get it.
Until then, to satiate my desire to buy something in the short term, I decided I might as well compromise and get something "good enough" that also isn't too expensive that I can play with for now and then sell and upgrade when the device I really want comes out. The player I settled on is the Rio Nitrus - a compromise as far as direct hard drive access, FM radio, and large capacity goes, but not too expensive and in a nice tiny form factor.
I do have to say that Apple does have their syncing done extremely well compared to the Rio solution - a good example of the benefits of controlling everything from end to end. Incidentally, while I'm in the mode of praising Apple, I've been meaning to mention for a while that I'm also highly impressed by the fact that the mouse button on their laptops is raised slightly - it makes the clicking much more satisfying.
That said, seeing the iPod/iTunes/iTMS solution end to end also pisses me off in a global justice sense, just knowing that had Microsoft done something like this, we'd have had our asses sued to kingdom come. There's something about that that just isn't right.
Anyway ... damn that gadget envy! How bad is it? Kara's got a good usage scenario for when she's going to use her device, and while I've now got a fun new toy, I realized before and still realize now that I can't point to a concrete example of a scenario in which I'm consistenly going to be able to use this thing.
Just call me Mr. Rampant Consumerism, in the flesh.
--Nick
My understanding of weblogs is insanely limited, but I have noticed one trend - you are apparently expected to announce your own birthday. So, here I am, all freshly 23. It's also administrative professionals day today and my last day in Lake Oswego, so I have lots of presents and flowers all around. It's nice to feel loved, especially when you're making a big transition.
Good afternoon. Nick is MIA because he is buried under hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Please, wish him well. I will do my part by baking him cookies and washing his sheets.
Why do people get excited about arguing politics with one another? It seems to me that no one ever comes around to the other side and people's beliefs are so firmly rooted in their upbringing and experiences that it's nearly impossible to even make progress. Aside from the passion and the levity of the issues, people just generally don't like being wrong. I like arguing politics with the not-too-bright because I can legitimately win. I can outargue, outlast, and outlogic my opponent. It's way less fun with really smart people because they put up a good fight - I find this tiring. Not because I can't come up with rebuttals for days, but because each party is intelligent and usually stubborn, so I never get to win. And if I'm not giong to change their opinion about anything or at least squeeze in a little sense of superiority for myself, why am I wasting my breath?
I've decided that I don't know how conversational etiquette really works.
From what I can tell, when you're in a group conversation, there are definite and well-known (to everyone else) moments when the person who's currently talking is done and is yielding the floor to the next person talking, and whoever slides into that spot first takes the floor.
Myself? Though I think these moments exist, I have no idea how to tell when they're happening. I always assume that somebody is done when they're just stopping to take a break and when they finish, I'm feeling guilty for having already messed up and miss my opportunity to jump in. Thus, the only way that I ever actually talk is by interrupting the person who's going, which means that my participation ends up feeling like lots of false starts interrupted by episodes of butting in.
It's like there's a Robert's Rules of Order for conversations and nobody ever gave me the code.
Now that I think about it, I guess I don't do well one on one either ... since I'm impatient and I tend to want to move things along faster, I tend to try and figure out the gist of what the other person is going to say and as soon as I think I have, I kind of want to jump in and move things along. Probably the same reason I always want to jump in when somebody in the group takes a breath.
If I had a little more patience, I think things would work smoother. That and everyone should just carry around little signs that they could raise to signal when their yielding the conversational floor.
--Nick
What is this "organizing"? Nick thinks I should tell you. My idea of organizing or clutter clearing was formulated by reading Karen Kingston's "Clearing your Clutter with Feng Shui". I then went about applying the principles of clutter clearing to my apartment, and repeated them time and again until I had sorted through an assload of useless, old, bad-memory-inducing, unused and unloved items. I could see everything in my closets when I opened the doors. I could find things. I knew what I had and where it all was. It was downright liberating.
So in short, my brand of organizing is executed by flinging open the closet doors, dragging stuff out from under the bed, getting into long forfotten drawers and having a stern talk with yourself about what you use, need, and love, and what is just lying around because it is some brand of emotional crutch. Stuff holds energy (this is the Feng Shui part)- good, bad, old, moldy - and you want the stuff that brings, holds, and generates good energy. Pictures of loved ones, clothes you feel great in, books that have a message you believe in, towels that you are using on a day to day basis. All that other stuff? Well, there is a darn good chance you just don't need it, and an equally good chance that it would do you good to toss it out. You own your stuff - don't let your stuff own you. Imagine moving right now - is the thought absolutely horrifying because of the mounds of crap that you would be dragging from location a to location b, probably to never use again? Do you feel just a little bit of tension when you open your linen closet and it feels like everything is going to fall out on top of you? Let in some new chi! Get the old stuff and the stagnant energy out of your life. Create space for energy to flow in your home and it will! if something brings back a rough memory, toss it. If something you purchased, or were given two years ago is exactly where has been since the day it came into your possession, give it away! It's only bringing you a sense of guilt for not having used it - reminding you on a daily basis that you wasted a bit of money. Let the item move on to a new life with someone who will use it. The money is already spent and if you are saving it because you "just might need it" at some point in the distant future then you are stomping on your own foot by creating a sense of poverty/future necessity.
Aside from all of that psychological stuff, it's way easier to use your good stuff when you can actually see and access it. Old books, old clothes, pictures of old lovers, costume jewelry you never wore, tennis shoes you keep for "painting in" . . . get that stuff off the shelves and make space for some vibrant chi to flow or at least for something that will prove more useful in your life.
Copyright 2004 - Kara Govro :)
*sigh* If only receptionists got any credit. Granted, it's easy for someone who treats the girls at the front desk with respect to say "Well, I sure know that there's a big difference between a good receptionist and a bad receptionist, and I appreciate the good ones", but really now, unless you have sat at that desk and taken a lashing from a pissed off client who is angry about a project you've never even heard of, you can't really appreciate this job.
Friday one of our young engineers told me the urinal in the men's bathroom near my new front desk (which is temporarily in a busy, noisy part of the building while we remodel the front) was about to overflow. Our full time maintenance guy is gone because one of his best friends was killed in a horrible accident. Apparently, 24-year old Mario thinks that fixing the urinal is somehow my responsiblity. I looked at him and said "I really don't know what to do about that. Jeff isn't here. Can you try and deal with it?" "No." "It's all you, man" I say jokingly. He stands around looking pissed off and offended that I find him equally qualified to fix a urinal and then disappears into the ether.
Today a slacker engineer, a senior engineer, and the head of our survey department each told me that the urinal was about to overflow. For the love of God! You are 50-year old men and I have just told you the maintenance guy isn't here! How did the urinal become my problem? Well, slacker guy didn't have much to do so he took the time to find the maintenance guy's boss (who happens to be the HR director). She was on an important phone call, so her direct report (who is also my boss) got recruited to be in charge of the spewing fixture and the flooded floor. As a 25-year old woman fixing the urinal was clearly her problem . . .
But I digress. Last time I held this position I had limited information on a particular project and wasn't allowed to give out the information I did have because the bid was on hold; I apologized profusely for not more being more helpful when a particular man called looking for information (he wasn't even a client). His response? With a nasty chuckle, "That's okay. That's why you are where you are." WTF. I can't even begin to describe how infuriated/offended I was. Earlier in the week the CFO bawled me out for sending her a call she didn't want, and the head of our survey department had also given me a stern lecture about wasting his time with calls I didn't know how to better direct. So basically I spent the rest of that day crying. You can tell me to suck it up all you want, but if you find yourself, as a young, petite, woman in a position that does not inherently indicate intelligence or education yet demands that you be nice to every a**hole that crosses your path I doubt you will have any easier of a time.
Recently, it is a super tall socially-inept badly balding ogre boy who has been brightening my day. He'll come down to demand that I bitch at the rental car people about the vehicle he just had to drive for two days. "Tell them I have their piece of crap ready. And they brought it with no gas. And tell them that there was some kind of disgusting bodily fluid on the steering wheel and they should do a better job cleaning up the car next time. Anyway, that car's for people . . . like you. Well, I was going to say midgets, but I thought that'd be mean." Again, WTF? Last week he decided to tell me, mid-sentence about some other complaint, that my glasses "really don't work." Okay, you're 6'8", 180 lbs., wear oversized round glasses (sorry, hon), are dorky as hell, and everyone's least favorite person, and you're giving me sh*t about my style? Suck it!
Wow, I have so many more stories right now. But maybe I will save some for a later date. I know some people think that the primary indicator of pay should be barrier to entry, but I would like to add the amount of crap you have to take from people to the list.
Today, I can still argue that I'm closer to 20 than 30 through only a little unconventional math (rounding down rather than up, and counting all of this year as a single increment instead of by the day). Fuzzy, but still mathematically sound.
Tomorrow, this will only be possible if I'm mathematically challenged.
Funny how this somehow makes me feel significantly older ...
--Nick
I think there are plenty of things that Nick and I will disagree on, but one that came up this weekend (where I have a feeling neither of us is very williing to compromise) is the value of paying for things that are better for the planet.
Nick leapt into a fiscal sensibility lecture which I suppose he had a bit of a right to give since he has money in the bank, and I have money . . . well, not in the bank. However, there is something inside of me that just will not allow for savings at the cost of the earth or at the cost of my liver. My sixth generation Oregonian, web-toed (not really), wheat grass drinking, whole grain eating self cannot come to terms the anti-conservationist view that the earth is made for people and people can do with it what they please.
Conservatives want us to make as many babies as possible (although only white babies if you are Pat Buchannan), but forget about saving those kids some trees. Ozono-schmozone. Global warming is a myth! Those glaciers aren't melting, they're reformatting!
I pay a lot more for my organic locally grown fruits (sans pesticides - and I swear to you, if you eat a regular apple with the skin and an organic apple with the skin you'll never want to go back), free-range chicken, and non-toxic cleaning soluations; for me it's not a matter of saving money, it's a matter of saving the earth. Mock if you will, but our resources here on earth - including landfill space for giant plastic Prilosec boxes - are stunningly limited and being consumed at record rates. I would feel very egotistical about saving money at the expense of the natural environment. No, I can't always make the right decision, but I really want to try.
Addendum: My first paragraph makes a leap from Nick to anti-conservationists. They are not, however (nor do I believe that they are) one and the same. I guess I just got wound up before I took Nick out of the picture there. Sorry about that!
Not really new, since one isn't close to out yet and one's been out for a while, but hey, they average out to somewhere close to new. :)
1) I need this today. Yesterday. What's this end of the decade crap, I'll probably have killed myself driving before then! Guess I'll end up with another Volvo after all. :)
2) The new Pannidos at Jack in the Box are actually stunningly good ... I've always liked stuff there, but they've topped themselves this time. Even if you don't usually like fast food, it's worth the try ... promise!
--Nick
Did anyone get my Shaker/Copland/Tofu reference? Aaron Copland wrote Appalachian Spring, which is most commonly known for the three bars that were swiped by the cow industry for the "Beef, it's what's for dinner" commerical. The musical work was intended to (and did) accompany a creative dance/ballet about two young Shakers falling in love and getting married.
Nick shouldn't have given me privelages here, I'm going to take over . . . (don't run! I won't, really!)
Good evening/morning/afternoon, all,
I know very little about most of you and would like to change that, so I am going to offer up some random information about myself in hopes that some of you will feel inclined to reciprocate with whatever you like, be it small talk or soul baring.
My favorite magic card is Calamity Condor. Do you know why that's my favorite? Because it's the only one I can think of besides those that are "lands", and apparently lands have little value since they give them away randomly out of large boxes at the alphaubergeek table at magic tournaments (aka, the judges desk).
Favorite color: Pink! But for most of my life it's been purple
Favorite foods: Sushi, scallops, good chocolate, mashed potatoes
Favorite number: 24
I went to Oregon State University for three years after spending half of one at USC and deciding that the rich, greek, treeless, drunken ghetto was not the place for me to be. Rain, which would usually abound in Oregon during the fall, showed up once and instead of season change all I noticed was the stinky steaming sewer.
Degree: Liberal Studies aka Hokey Make-it-up-as-you-go Major. I actually split my time between Political Science and Writing. I love to write and edit and proofread and bitch about George Bush and his war on peace.
Occupation: Receptionist/HR Assistant. The phones are the fun part.
Pet: Bailey, two and a half year old tabby cat (that I got at 14-weeks) from the humane society. I'm so glad I won the custody battle . . .
What I really want to do in life (at least right now) is organize. Have you seen the TLC show Clean Sweep? I have a knack for that kind of thing and have been practing on friends and family for a few years. I'd like to make a business of myself, and if any of you would trade my free assistance for future recommendations let me know. Really!
Favorite car: Bug Bug! My badass turbo diesel 2001 Bettle.
Favorite position: On top
Favorite nerdy past time: Competing with someone else to come closest to the square root of some randomly selected number sans calculators, pens, paper, etc. Time is irrelevent, accuracy is everything.
That's a little piece of me in 386 words.
:) Kara
This weekend, I finally decided to get off my ass about my old, falling apart HP LaserJet 4L and went about replacing it. While I didn't manage to get a replacement black and white laser printer yet, I did splurge on a photo printer - an HP Photosmart 7960. Figured that I was tired of having all of my digital photos stuck on the computer without any printed copy and I'd heard through the grapevine that inkjet printouts these days were pretty decent. I'd even seen a couple that had turned out decently on reasonably nice paper.
Wow ... decent is a drastic understatement. With good photo paper, the prints on this thing are absolutely ridiculous - very, very close to indistinguishable from the prints you get back from a photo lab. Close enough that I'd never even consider going back to traditional prints.
I've gotten jaded in computing to the point where new technologies don't typically faze me anymore, but for the first time in quite some time, I'm taken quite by surprise. Nice change of pace.
Speaking of photos, I realized that I haven't put up anything of Kara yet, so here we are. Should be no confusing which of us is which.
And yes, she really is that cute. :)
--Nick
Edit: Update link for the linked picture.
So yes, yesterday's entry was a joke. A little bit too obvious of one for people who live up here and keep up to date with the current state of things for my taste, unfortunately (I forgot it was April 1 until the day of, so I didn't have time to set up properly and had to throw something up off the cuff), but for people who keep less up to date with my life, it was perhaps a bit more effective. It was for these people that I took down the comments that gave things away yesterday - apologies for the temporary censorship. Those comments have been restored.
Anyway, I found yesterday pretty lackluster as far as jokes are concerned, online and elsewhere, compared to years past. Hopefully everyone else found more amusing things to be entertained by than I did.
--Nick
If you really think about it, engagement is just a matter of signifying that you're ready to begin planning a wedding ... if you don't need the big fancy wedding with lots of planning, you might as well just skip the whole thing!
At least, that's how Kara and I see it. So we just went and got ourselves married. Simple, quick, and painless. We'll save the traditional hoopla for another day.
--Nick
