Tiny bit of Internet traffic generates hefty amounts of sp*m
Funny how just a tiny increase in Internet traffic to a website can generate hefty amounts of sp*m.
For those of you who don’t know what “sp*m” is, it is my abbreviation for that unsolicited and usually worthless garbage that comes as a comment on a blog post. The word itself came from that well-known ham-like canned meat product that’s been popular in America and throughout the world for a couple of generations now.
I choose to write “sp*m” for that term because I have a theory that using the full word might draw more of it to my site. Call me paranoid, though, because I have no proof of that. All the same, why tempt The Fates.
I got my first foreign-language sp*m comment to this site just yesterday. It was written in Spanish and tried to link my blog to a “get-rich-quick” scheme website of some sort. I deleted it from the blog’s sp*m collection and it never got posted. So the jerk who sent it never saw the light of day.
Which brings me to the friendly request I try to put on all of my websites from time to time:
Please, sir and/or ma’am, don’t target this site for your worthless, cr*ppy sp*m. I want nothing to do with it, nor do my site visitors. Thank you for honoring my request.
There. Since I know that will do absolutely no good, I have a couple of pretty effective sp*m filters installed and I check the site regularly, so your sp*m efforts most likely will fail. So please just give it up. Posting some of the p*rn*graphic and semi-p*rn*graphic stuff you’re trying to sp*m the site with is about as useful as looking for life insurance leads at an octogenerians’ dance party.
Google can lead to ‘sort of’ a backwards time machine
Yes, I journeyed into the past yesterday. My wife came along. We used Google Maps — Street Level view.
For three years in the early 1970s, we lived on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Mission, South Dakota. We were back there to visit for the last time in about 1984, I think it was.
Yesterday, I thought for fun I would search Google Maps for Mission — and I found street level viewing available for the one “main drag” through this little town. My wife was home from work, so she and I gathered around the computer and journeyed up and down, back and forth, through three very formative, eventful years of our lives.
It was like traveling into a past we could see but no longer touch. And, of course, many of the buildings and streets in this small town were changed radically, as they are in most small towns of the “heartland” over any 20-30 year span.
It was great fun, though, and we smiled (and almost cried) at some of the memories brought back.
For tonight: Maybe Denver, to recall an earlier time in my childhood. (Oh, hey — anybody here reading this from Tecumseh, Nebraska? I grew up there until the age of 10; left there in 1957.)
Do you take winter vacations? Where’s your favorite spot?
Do you take winter vacations? If so, where’s your favorite spot for a winter getaway?
I was moaning recently about the “blah” sort of weather we’ve had here in southwest Missouri. I suspect many of you reading these words have been going through the same sort of winter weather?
So, do you resolve those “blahs” by taking off for warmer, sunnier climates? Or do you just grin and bare it where you are — or do you try a winter vacation somewhere? Do you actually spend time and money to go from one wintry, snowy spot to a different wintry, snowy spot?
In our part of the country, a favorite thing to do is grab a Branson vacation package just to get out of the house. (Branson’s only about 40 miles from where I live.) But what do you do in your part of the country?
If I could afford it, I’d probably try a trip to Hawaii (we’ve always wanted to go there), or maybe a visit to the desert regions like Phoenix or Las Vegas. (I’ve been to Phoenix, never to Las Vegas.)
Heck, we’ll probably just end up sitting around home waiting for a couple of days of sunshine before the next rain/snow storm whips through here over the weekend.
What about you? Any vacation plans you’d like to share with us? Talk about favorite past vacations? Leave a comment and tell us about it!
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