<me> Yay! The internet’s up again! *
<Tanya> Yah, but is it going to stay up?
<me> That’s what she said.
(you had to be there)
* Internet’s been down for a week. Telkom lines. And on a good day, internet is 384 kbps down and a whole lot less up ADSL. 1999 indeed.
… but a translation is available on request.
Basically it involves my brother, his girlfriend, a new-year’s eve party, and my brother’s girlfriend’s father’s shotgun.
… of a bad example.
Take a hermit living in a big house all by himself, add winemaking as a hobby[1], and before you know it he’s rolled up the carpet and planted a tank in the living room.
Gotta love my bro, he sets the bar low so I can shine :-)
[1] Or maybe obsession.
No, not the Wikileaks one.
Came home, found that Frank had caught this poor thing and put it in a drain hole, where it was running in circles. Ag shame.
Felt sorry for it, let it go over in Sun Valley.
Back in the early days of the internet, when Usenet ruled, there would be a huge increase in noise on the forums each September, due to the influx of newbies at the universities in the northern hemisphere. These newbies would eventually learn to behave, and things would settle down.
September 1993 was the September that never ended. Noise went up [1] and never returned to normal. As a result, Usenet is effectively dead [2].
Well, from where I’m sitting, September 2010 is another milestone. It seems that spam antimeasures are eating my emails, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
For example, my ISP decided to change the DNS (MX) records they had access to, to insert their mail server between my server and the Real World. I had them stop that, silly boys. I’d rather have spam than lose email.
But still, email gets sent, email does not make it to my SMTP port. Someone somewhere is filtering, and using DROP not BOUNCE [3].
And who do we have to thank? The fscking spammers.
[1] Many if not all blamed AOL.
[2] Well, there’s Google Groups, but it’s not the same.
Edit, September 6258, 1993 : http://www.eternal-september.org/ is my friend. And so is Xnews.
[3] Maybe. Because so much crap gets sent with fake From: addresses, people have learned to ignore bounces. So maybe their mail is bouncing. Nobody knows.
The ninth International Metallic Silhouette Shooting Union (IMSSU) World Championship shoot, that is.
(Excessively long posting after the break).
