Monday, August 11, 2003

Weekend Spam Warrior

Weekend Spam Warrior: Evan Williams asks if there's more spam on weekends or simply seems to be. I have to say, I haven't noticed a difference between weekdays and weekends in my receipts but, just for giggles, I went back to look at the past few weeks:

Sun 08/10	297	Wed 07/30	393
Sat 08/09	287	Tue 07/29	387
Fri 08/08	392	Mon 07/28	400
Thu 08/07	511	Sun 07/27	335
Wed 08/06	448	Sat 07/26	365
Tue 08/05	476	Fri 07/25	378
Mon 08/04	458	Thu 07/24	396
Sun 08/03	354	Wed 07/23	399
Sat 08/02	330	Tue 07/22	389
Fri 08/01	406	Mon 07/21	362
Thu 07/31	370	Sun 07/20	346
		Sat 07/19	309

So, yeah, I think things are pretty constant day to day. If anything, I see a slight decrease in the amount of spam I receive on weekends. (Usual disclaimers: Unscientific approach, measuring spam messages on just my personal e-mail address, this is an exhibition, not a competition, no wagering please, blah blah blah.)

Sunday, July 20, 2003

Spam Count: 44,645

Spam Year Continues: As of this writing, the 2003 Spam Count has reached 44,645, which is significant only because it's just about where I thought it would be...at the end of the year.

When I decided, on a whim, to keep track of all the unsolicited, commercial e-mail I received this year, I estimated that on December 31, 2003, I'd wind up with about 45,000 spam messages, a guess borne out when by the middle of January, I was receiving an average of 118 spams each day. What a difference a few months make! We're 200 days in, over half the year past, and by the current count, I'm receiving an average of 222 spam messages each day.

On one hand, that's appalling. On another, it's perversely fascinating, watching number grow day by day. But one thing is clear, and was even before I began this little project: spam is out of control. Even though SpamAssassin catches nearly everything that isn't a valid e-mail message and shunts it into a separate folder so I can peruse it from time to time and even though I have a private, "unlisted" e-mail address for vital messages and family members, the amount of junk that passes through my server is intolerable.

I've hardly even got the worst of it. Last week, Lance told me he was receiving 3,000 spam messages per day. (It's a little apples-to-oranges, since Lance is trapping spam to every address at his domain, while I'm only counting mail to my primary address, but still!)

For the sake of the project, I'll be tolerating and counting spam for another few months but, come January 1, 2004, I'll start playing hardball in a couple of new ways, not least of which will be completely abandoning the e-mail address I've had for 5+ years. Until then, I'll be making guesses about what the year-end total winds up to be. My current bet is on an even 100,000.

Further: Within 30 seconds of posting this entry, another 31 spam messages arrived. And the beat goes on...

Sunday, July 19, 1998

For the last time

"I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain." — Carol Leifer

"Don't spend two dollars to dry clean a shirt. Donate it to the Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger. Next morning buy it back for seventy-five cents." — William Coronel

"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else." — Lily Tomlin

For the Last Time: Yep, the skeptics—which included just about everyone except some of the more gullible on-line and traditional media—were right. The "Our First Time" soon-to-be-former-virgins were hoaxters after all. The site's host ISP posted a wrap-up. (On the other hand, we may yet discover that even the hoax was a hoax and all a publicity grab by the ISP. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.) "Mike" is still a hottie, though.

Incidentally, the controversial site's supposed brain-man was Ken Tipton, a former St. Louis area actor (or, as his bio avers: "[He] grew up in the small St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, Missouri.")

Meanwhile, Time Magazine finally got around to running the look at Missouri transgender politics that reporter John Cloud visited here months ago to research, featuring fellow PREP board member Shannon Ware. [Time]

There may be redress for we spam-drenched wretches yet: Seattle man makes spammer pay [Seattle Times]

Sam Williams suggests Hollywood take on the potential armageddon behind Y2K. Let us hope that Sandra Bullock is available. [Upside]

MacWindows has turned out to be a particularly useful site for helping my marketing Macs survive and thrive in the realm of COCA's peecee/Novell network. Props, too, to Three Macs and a Printer.

Site News: Some added info on the bio page, the reprise of a popular sidebar from the original BradLands site, and general tweaking all around. Oh yeah, and despite the fact I want to keep these pages quick to load, I'm experimenting with the graphic header and other bits here and there. Thoughts?