The Blog Entry That Never Was

Early last week I thought of an idea for a regular or semi-regular feature for this blog, the purpose being to have something that gets me posting regularly so I'll get in the habit of posting and not let this thing peter out. I was going to collect amusing spam subject lines and make a poll out of the top five or so from each week.

I had it all figured out. I created a text file and made a link to it from my Start menu so I could quickly access it as needed. I would paste the amusing subjects into it as a list, then pick the best five each week for the poll and add some humorous commentary. It seemed so simple. Unfortunately, since I have a fairly quick & effective spam screening system - I have to, monitoring a dozen addresses for the biz - I underestimated the sheer volume of the stuff.

At first I figured I could break it up into a daily semi-finalist post, but I quickly concluded it's just all too much. I think I ended up saving about three days worth of the amusing ones before giving up.

Anyway, here they are. The quality varies as this is from the initial collection phase.

• Me again Johnson
• All love enhancers on one portal!
• say unto Moses prayed saying, Arise, go in the daughter
• replica watches, rolex replicas, fake watches
• Message subject
• Full of health? Then don't click!
• Mankinds free of erectile dysfunction!
• Recapture a bito f your youth again
• 60% off Generíc Víagra __ %junk
• propane glamor ruthless
• Hey, buddy, you must be very disappointed of it!
• Wholesale Oceanview Lots Available
• Damn, you can not stop premature ejjacullation!
• Partial-time job vacations
• Urgent vacations
• Avoid enhancement pills
• monogrammed wick
• Merciless ED fighter
• Enjoy Put aside any doubts and stuff, this terrific product for smart males really does what you need!
• font rickshaw
• for him, why wilt thou canst thou make a man, was an
• twinge deed
• Did you know that Americans have the longest sex than any other nation. With our Soft Viagra tabs this pleasure can last up to 4 hours.
• Must have medications.
• Dude get all u need, here
• My peenis is always hard and is able to move without interruption!
• gay smoggy
• Dear Sir, i am interested in it
• abomination of Pharez: whom custom in our father said,
• Your penis is smaller than the smallest cell phone. Forget about it with Penis Enlarge Patch.
• Different penis enlargement methods damage the cells inside of the very dick. With Penis Enlarge Patch this will never happen.
• With every inches of your dick your popularity grows with extremely high speed. Thats why you should try Penis Enlarge Patch.
• Its possible because I always use Extrra-Time!
• life buoy intimate
• Lots of pleasure waits for you right after you take this medicine
• Nevaeh tried this and loved it.
• With our Advanced Gain Pro Penis Enlargement Pills your dick will bigger than Eiffel Tower.
• so on column
• Attention North American resident
• To the maritime
• it's good to be fit
• My Friend, You are in Trouble
• Hey! tell your friends to hit me up
• and full, of Zion.
• Look sophisticated on your vacation
• Pop singer Robbie Williams narrates the story, and Mark Knopfler provides the music.
• Notice your penis to be wider during
• Look sophisticated on your vacation
• Be 18th again,
• go oarsmanship
• It leaves out any consideration of steady hares.
• Rise Above Silicon
• This is most modern and safe way not to cover with shame
• Can you be like a man?
• Gamblers Love This
• Pop Bob Fort
• Shes already naked but you are not ready yet. Viagra Soft Tabs can prepare you in a tick.
• Got smart
• Enjoy multi-orgasms using this powerful thing

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Here's a couple more entries for the links...

WWOZ FM New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Station A little taste of home. This and NPR were pretty much what I was listening to on the radio in my last years in New Orleans. WWOZ is a community-run and supported radio station that features local, regional, carribean, on out to global music. It's great stuff you may never hear elsewhere. Very much worth a listen, which you can do online! (Great even for locals in offices with bad radio reception.) Search Amazon.com Music for wwoz

Google Image Labeler Help Google give better image search results by playing a game. They give you a series of images and you start entering words that fit what's pictured. Another player randomly matched up with you gives words too. As soon as you've come up with a word in common you move on to the next word. Score points by getting as many matches as possible within the time limit. See your partner's guesses after the round is done. Sign up for a Google account and see your accumulated points.

Dang I'm up late! G'nite!

On A Roll

I recently added a few links, but as it's just so darned easy to miss sitting down there on the bottom I thought I'd highlight them. I visit them all semi-regularly.

Lifehacker
A site devoted to showcasing little ways to make life easier and/or more fun. The leaning is toward computer tech, but it is by no means limited to that. (Book also available: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better)

Engrish
A daily showcase of misused English, mainly from Asia. Not always family- or work-appropriate, but they do give fair warning in such cases. (Book available too: The Joys of Engrish)

Hanzi Smatter
The other side of the Engrish coin: it's a blog about the misuse of Chinese & Japanese writing by westerners. Lots of interesting tatoos translated here. (No book as far as I can tell.)

I hope you enjoy them. I'll be highlighting future additions as they are additted.

Habanero Dorito Update

I just finished them off, pouring the last of the crumbs & dust right into my mouth. Yum!

I managed to finish the bag in five servings, making my servings 2.6 times as large as the suggested 13 11-chip servings. Soy muy macho.

The Perfect Chip For Dieters

All I can say is WOW!

Against all advice from the last entry's poll, I went for the Fiery Habanero Doritos. Let me just say the serving size given on the nutrition label - about 11 chips - is probably the most realistic I've ever seen on a bag of chips. These suckers are HOT!

I'm a Cajun from New Orleans, so I'm no stranger to spicy foods. I enjoy wasabi peas when my wife lets me. (She can't stand the smell of them.) The first serving I had of these chips made my nose literally sweat. I've had food do that to me before, such as the aforementioned peas and the Chipotle Chicken Burrito from Carlos O'Kellys, but not after such a small portion.

That is why I think these are the perfect chips for the dieting chip addict: they make it very easy to limit portions. As long as these are the only chips you keep in the house you will never eat too many.

Well, My Mouth's Starting To Feel Better

Two nights ago we went to the grocery store and while there I went on a rare chip rampage. I picked out four different varieties of chips/chip-like snacks: Funyuns, Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips, White Nacho Cheese Natural Doritos, and Fiery Habanero Doritos. I got the regular full-size bags. That night I ate the entire bag of Funyuns.

Funyuns are really really good, but they are a bit abrasive. The next day and most of today my mouth was sore - both tongue and pallete. Today a bit of raw flesh rubbed loose from the side of my hard pallete above my gums. It would have freaked me out if I weren't used to it happening to my cheek due to my Cinnamon Altoids Gum addiction. (I'm trying to switch to mint.)

It's feeling better tonight, just in time to finish off the sun chips.

Camera Phone Tips

Lifehacker.com has just posted these interesting tips on using your camera phone.

I don't have a camera phone - I don't even have a color display on mine - but I know some of you bloggers do. Now's your chance to get some tips on how to get better pics out of them for your blogs.

Jewelry Party!!!

Well, things have been a bit better. My wife's tender tummy has been gradually improving. We think she's also got some stress-related discomfort there, and of course she's been stressing about the stones and the possibility of another attack. As the days go by without one, though, it's gotten better.

This weekend was nice. We worked briefly Saturday at the Secret Headquarters. Sunday we attended a jewelry & food party at my sister in law's house. You know - one of those parties where everyone sits through a sales pitch and plays some goofy games to earn small discounts on whatever they're selling, and the hostess gets free stuff if the rest of us (who love her so dearly) buy lots of stuff for ourselves.

Being the good husband I am, I played along and got my wife a few extra points, actually winning one of the games. She ended up buying three pieces for a few bucks. I guess it was an okay deal. Apparently if she decides she'd rather have something else she can exchange what she got for anything else in their catalog as long as she keeps the receipt & pays shipping. I think the gotcha there is inflation: you can only trade what you have for something that's currently priced at what you originally paid.

But it was fun, actually. There were a few laughs and we got to spend some time with the kids and meet my oldest nephew's girlfriend and his mother's boyfriend. The food was decent too, though I'm not sure anyone bought any.

The illness is upon us

We had a good time this weekend, but not such a good week.

My wife had an attack of sever abdominal pain, and after spending about ten hours in the ER (mostly waiting between receiving a few minutes of attention) we learned that she has gallstones.

After seeing a surgeon who obviously has his limits (at least outside of surgery) she got a prescription for a drug that should gradually dissolve the stones over the course of several months to a couple years. It's an acid naturally found in bile that normally keeps stones from forming. I think it's supposed to thin the bile a bit too so it flows around the stones more easily and is less likely to carry one into the duct.

She still has some pains that she's not sure are being caused by the gallstones, so further dr. visits & tests are surely forthcoming.

Picture Day!

My wife and I attended a portrait party her sister hosted today. She had a professional photographer there taking pictures of us together, and with her family in various combinations. There were some of their friends there too. (I think my sister in law got a discount on her prints based on how many other sets were ordered.)

We usually don't go in for that kind of thing, so we weren't really looking forward to it. We really just did it for the family. Once we got into it, though, it was a lot of fun. We got a few poses and a lot of "candid" messing around shots. The shots with us and the kids were particularly fun. I ad-libbed some good poses & action there. Our younger nephew is a bit too well-trained by his mother to put on a smile for cameras, though, so I had to resort to tickling him a bit to get a real one out of him. (Parents - don't tell your kids to smile for pictures. Do something that will make them smile naturally or just take the picture of them doing whatever they're doing while paying no mind to the camera. Your pics will come out *so* much better!)

The proofs are supposed to be ready in a couple weeks. (I believe the photographer does a little editing & retouching work before showing the proofs.) *Maybe* I'll post one or two here. If they're really good, though, we may want to use one of them on an "about us" page on our retail site. In that case I'll likely not post them here, in order to better separate my professional and secret identities. I like to have this conduit to be candid with my views & opinions without risking offending any potential customers. (No, the nature of our business does not conflict with any of my views - I just like to keep it professional & neutral.)

Entry for November 01, 2006

To kick off this the first entry in my Secret Blog, let's all sing the Blog song!

It's blog, it's blog,
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's blog, it's blog, it's better than bad, it's good.

Everyone wants a blog
You're gonna love it, blog
Come on and get your blog
Everyone needs a blog
blog blog blog

(appologies & credit to the creators of Ren & Stimpy)

Okay. Not too original and a bit of a stretch, but I've got the wood background going here so it works well enough. And there's trees. Bite me.

The Secret Photo above is a small sample of the fall foliage surrounding the Secret Lair.

I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable Halloween. Perhaps more later.