Did Anybody Else Get The Jim Smolich Motors Spam?

I was looking through an old Yahoo! mail account that I keep around just for kicks and in case I ever need it, and found that I had been spammed by a local car dealership. That link is the Web-based version of the spam, that has a functional video and form, but the e-mail I got was actually just a bunch of large GIF files (as you can’t really easily embed videos and forms in email and expect it to work) pulled from this page and this page (just change the 01.gif to 02, 03, etc.. .gif).

I can’t honestly remember being outright spammed by a local business before (except for bendnights.com, who tried to spam the COBlogs mailing list, though they do run a good site), has anybody else? Most of the mail I get from local businesses are from folks I’ve dealt with or I have requested information from before, but I’ve never been to Jim Smolich in my life (and now probably won’t even more because of this kind of crap).

I hate even mentioning them, as it’ll get them more publicity, but I’d rather it be known that they spam.

April 12, 2006

Adventures in Parenting

I don’t usually post about my family or my daughters much, but I had to share this.

Remember hearing stories about all weird things you and your friends did when they were little? Or hearing stories from parents about the weird things their kids did? Today was a story I’ll be telling for a while.

My two year old (nearly three) swallowed a marble. Now she never puts stuff in her mouth like that, so we’ve never worried about her doing that kind of thing. But today, she was playing quietly with her six-year-old sister. Then out of nowhere, she runs screaming out of the bedroom, screaming “It’s all gone, it’s all gone!!!” She wouldn’t let anybody near her, so we asked our oldest daughter what happened, and she said she thought that she had swallowed a small little marble.

So the poor thing was scared to death — she was running around frantic. I don’t know if she was scared about doing something really wrong, or scared about what was happening with the marble inside her. My wife tried to comfort her, and every time she got near her (especially near her belly) she screamed. It wasn’t a painful scream, it was obviously a scared to death scream (the same kind of scream she exhibits when she hears a loud noise like the vacuum or something equally as loud and obnoxious (when the neighbors were shredding tree branches, that really freaked her out). Finally, with the help of the big sis (who little sis adores more than anybody), we finally got her calmed down and laughing and happy again.

That was, until somebody mentioned the marble, and then we were back to square one again.

Luckily we finally got her calmed down — again. We made it clear between the three of us to not speak of the marble again.

But you know what I’ll have to be digging for in her diapers over the next couple days. Because when something gets lost like this, they always turn up in the end and this too shall pass.

April 11, 2006

My First Experimentation With WordPress

I’ve been a loyal MovableType user for many years both on this site, and I use it at Cascade Winds as well. It’s a very nice, powerful system. But, just for kicks and giggles, I decided to try something else for a new site.

(more…)

April 11, 2006

If You Hate Your Dog…

…be sure to buy them one of these dog thongs, used to help with a dog with a flatulence problem. I guess it’s better than the full diaper.

April 11, 2006

That’s Something For The Resume

Anne Sellors has one movie credit to her name: Woman who urinates herself. Be sure to read about her compelling performance in her message board.

April 11, 2006

I Don’t Know Which Is Worse

The fact that she has more chins than a Chinese phone book, or the fact that she’s got a moustache. Jokes and link via b3ta.

April 11, 2006

That Saves Me The Trouble

I was going to go through the effort of coloring in today’s FoxTrot (which Bill Amend admits he screwed up on one of the calculations), but somebody beat me to it.

April 9, 2006

Bend.com Founder’s House Burns To The Ground

While Bend.com founer Spencer Dahl and I have had our issues with each other publicly (read the comments on this post and this post), I would never wish this on anybody.

Needless to say, Bend.com is down right now. And Spencer, I know you and I have had our issues with each other, but if you need a place to temporarily park the domain until you’re back up and running, you know how to get a hold of me.

April 7, 2006

Running Google Analytics

Like Dave, I finally got an invite to Google Analytics, and it’s now tracking the traffic on this site, Sunray‘s (with some advance tracking there for when bookings are made) an Bend Blogs. I haven’t quite gotten used to how their back-end works, but the stats are certainly presented in a nice, easy to use, interface that will make non geeks like it (especially more so than AWStats, which track all the sites on this server). It has lots of pretty pictures, charts, graphs, and reports catered to the Webmaster and the executive type. So for a corporate environment, and to track folks browsing through a site, it’s going to work well (which is why I immediately put it on Sunray’s site). It also has nice Web interfaces for filtering, so I can very easily turn off counting of accesses for Sunray’s office, which has the page set as their home page.

But I’ll post sometime down the road when I get more traffic into it to see what kind of reporting it really can do.

April 6, 2006

For The Ladies, During That Time Of The Month

A fairly comprehensive review and comparison of feminine hygiene products (don’t worry, no graphic pictures, just scientific experimentation).

April 6, 2006