I have been a beer aficionado, home brewer, etc for many years. My favorite beer in the whole wide world is Baltika No. 9. It is a very rich, robust, complex and decidedly strong European Lager. I like beer you have to chew before swallowing  ;o). It is imported from Russia and the local shop that I get it from has had a difficult time getting a hold of it over the last year or so. So when ever I stop by, I always ask "Did my Baltika No. 9 come in yet?".

So I stopped in yesterday and this is what I saw.

I have been self employed for 13 years and the very existence of my pay check has often depended on my customers being happy... So this really struck me. With a very small, but genuine, personalized, and most importantly, public gesture they have pretty much insured that I will be a customer for life.

G- OUT

And the same thing would happen to me. I have often said that I would write a script to wash my car if I could. It all starts out innocent enough until I have to explain it to the authorities. At times my life seems to be an exercise in taunting that Murphy's law fellow.

Someone actually tested my super advanced Ultramega OK anti "wow gold" spammer technology... so I rolled out a BadMotorBeta.

Go ahead... try it. Add a comment and type in "wow gold" in the comment form and see what happens.

I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU.

Yeah. I thought so.... ya wuss. For the record: BadMotorBeta - copyright © 2009

My blog (and other CF blogs ) are getting hit with comment spam for some bizarro WOW (World of Warcraft) gold scam going to: wow gold one dot com

I have no idea what it is about but as a former sys admin I have a borderline psychotic "I WILL FARKING CUT YOU" type hatred for spammers..

As soon as I get out of the weeds at work I am going to write something to mess with these douche bags. Seeing that comments on BlogCFC have a captcha they are probably using a cheap labor source like Amazon's Mechanical Turk service or smart bots.

Either way... Infinite loops for bots or a Rick Roll or Goatse for the humans.

This will be fun.

My Grandfather went to work in Africa (from Italy) in order to support his family during the Great Depression. We found his journal after he died. He never spoke a word of it to any of us. After many years it was translated from the original Italian dialect at great expense thanks to my cousin Angelo.

We see these sorts of stories, ones of great suffering, were hundreds or thousands of men die at the hands of their captors on the History Channel and think nothing of it. This is the amazing story of a man who went though a living hell, a story of deep love and incredible sacrifice made by a man (my Grampa), in order to simply feed and support his family.

During these hard times it reminds me of how much we take for granted and have to be grateful for.

"A summary of ten years of my military life in Eastern Africa, Ethiopia"
By Domenico Franco

Fire works going off, horns hoking and people cheering in the night.

I think something important happened.

That is all.

I got a new phone... Actually I got a new pocket computer (with Windows CE) that came with a built in phone. The thing has more horse power than my workstation back in 2000. So my first thought is, being the geek that I am: What can I get this thing to do?

What should I try first? Hmmmmm... Wouldn't it be cool if I could get it to serve up web pages. HEY!!! It *is* connected to the internet. Huh? I wonder if I get it to run Apache?

Then the rational part of my brain kicked in: WHOA!!! STOP right there.. I have so much OTHER stuff I need to learn. My to do list could keep me occupied for the next ten years... easy.

Then I saw this article in my in my inbox and it made me feel better: Installing Linux on the PlayStation 3.

Seriously... is there some sort of 12 step program for this sorta stuff? I am going to end up like this some day (again).

The confessions would be funny:

"Hi, my name is Gerald."

"Hi Gerald."

"I tried to turn my phone into a web server...."

I saw this near my house the other day. I had to stop and take some pictures.

http://www.myinternetisbroken.com/slideshow.cfm/Merica

After years of voter apathy it is moving to see my fellow Americans so impassioned over this historic election.

"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election."

- Bill Vaughan

It makes me proud that this is no longer the case.

I have a 2 beer limit for sending email. This will help help enforce that limit.

From the Google Blog: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html

"When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings."

Some times Google is too cool for words.