Quiz du jour

Stone Dragon: Old, wise and a but of a grump, you know things happen for a reason and would rather keep your nose out of it. Wonderful personality lies in you, but it takes a true friend to bring it out.

The Dragon Personality
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Damn Spam.

The e-mail system at work is pretty much my baby, that means trying to block spam is part of my job. I read about this particular insidious trick the other day and just noticed my first example of it. This is a new tactic being used to bypass content filters:

<p>G<!--iup8uh1kwzve-->et Vi<!--9zdgum1zqa5-->a<!--0iifrz1kwv-->gra o<!--g1esqe2qa1dz53-->nline N<!--xdgz301z7hi-->ow <!--yun98a212g-->! <br>

The subject line was innocuous and unfilterable ("Answer my question please"). The content is in HTML. In HTML <!--comment goes here--> is a comment tag and doesn't render so the above text reads "Get Viagra online now!" The contents of the comments are completely random and randomly inserted in the text. Adding insult to injury the random comments not only subvert all but the most sophisticated (and expensive) heuristics filters, they make the message multiple times larger than it's content, chewing up considerably more bandwidth.

Restoration?

I was just chatting with one of the bosses from the "restoration" company and he answered a lot of my questions about the terrible work without even meaning to. He was coming out of my old apartment and we talked briefly about what was being done in there. I mentioned how much better the bathroom looked and he said, "it's still terrible. Upstairs I got to do a complete makeover but down here I have to work around the old stuff like this tub [referring to the 100-year old, 7' long, clawfoot tub] - I'd rip it out if I could. And up there I could cover up these old windows [referring to the windows to the light-wells]." This is a restoration company? I asked him why he would want to rip out the tubs and he said it was because of the shower assemblies, that the old tubs weren't designed for shower curtains. I presume by that comment that the tubs on the fourth floor have been replaced with modern fiberglass pieces of crap, probably with sliding plastic doors or some such. Certainly not "restored".

I want to go up an see now and take some pictures. If I run into Janice I'll ask her.

I'm so glad we took this apartment when we did rather than waiting for one of the "restored" apartments on fourth floor like I had orginally planned on doing.

A few things that seem to have been forgotten in the 20th century:
Minimalism is not the only style, nor the best style.
Cheaper ≠ Better
Newer ≠ Improved
Popular ≠ Tasteful
Almost as good ≠ Good enough