For a long time I considered myself to be a non-racist. I wasn’t judging people of other races differently. I wasn’t talking to them differently. Actually, I wasn’t minding them at all. And I’m talking about all the races now – black, white, yellow, red, whatever. All of them were the same to me. Or so I thought.
Month: July 2005
Granma back in town
Maxim’s grandma (my mother) is back in Cyprus. She arrived today via rather crowded airport of Larnaca and she will stay with us for the next two weeks.
It was interesting to see how both of them (her and Maxim) were rediscovering each other. Maxim didn’t remember her at all. That’s not surprising as he was only about one month old when he saw for the last time. Now he is about four and a half. She didn’t recognize him as well. He has grown and matured and changed a lot.
Lots of emotions and warm feelings are floating around…
Album location: /photos/2005/2005-07-10_POTD/
First time in Starbucks
I must be in my “try that food spot” mode or something…
Today I woke up rather late for a walk with Maxim, so I was dressing in a hurry and didn’t manage to have breakfast. Since our way to park passes through Starbucks, I thought it would be a good idea to finally try some coffee and eat some sandwich. Starbucks opened a long time ago and I planned to visit it together with Olga, but she got pregnant and than started feeding Maxim, and coffee is bad for babies.
Trying out Burger King
Olga and I were trying to reach Pizza Hut’s delivery line yesterday, but it was constantly busy so we had to make another choice for dinner. We went through a pile of menus, flyers, and coupons in our “order some food” box and stumbled upon a few coupons from Burger King. Burger King has been represented in Cyprus for some time now, but neither Olga nor I tried it for some reason. So we decided to order it.
SPAM isn’t all that bad
Where I look on the web, everyone is complaining about SPAM. “My Inbox is full of SPAM”, “I am lacking behind because of SPAM”, “My site was SPAMed” and stuff like that. I beileve that everything in the world has its good and bad sides. Such situation with SPAM when everyone is complaining about it is one-sided though. I believe there is some good to be found. Here is my small contribution.
Every time comments in my blog get SPAMed I feel good. You might think that I am such a pathetic loser that SPAM comments are the only kind that I get, but that’s not true. I am soon to celebrate a 1000th comment (that’s a hint by the way). The reason for my joy is my choice of software. Since I migrated to WordPress SPAM stopped bothering me. At all. When yet another script comes in and leaves two or three dozen comments about “online casino” or “morgage bonus” all over my posts, all I have to do is click on “Awaiting moderation” link in the administration interface, scroll down to the “Mark all as SPAM” link, click it, and than click “Moderate comments” button to submit my moderation. That’s it. It probably takes me less time to discard all of these comments than it takes that script to generate and post them. Fantastic!
But my blog SPAM is not the only kind that provides me with good mood. Occasionally, a SPAM message would get through my anti-SPAM software that protects my mailbox. Since these are usually singular messages which are easy to identify and delete, I can afford some time to look inside. More often than not they are pretty funny. Consider this one from today.
From: info@mamchenkov.net To: leonid@mamchenkov.net Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 09:01:08 -0700 Subject: Your password has been successfully updated [-- Attachment #1 --] [-- Type: text/html, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 0.5K --] Dear user leonid, You have successfully updated the password of your Mamchenkov account. If you did not authorize this change or if you need assistance with your account, please contact Mamchenkov customer service at: info@mamchenkov.net Thank you for using Mamchenkov! The Mamchenkov Support Team +++ Attachment: No Virus (Clean) +++ Mamchenkov Antivirus - www.mamchenkov.net [-- Attachment #2: approved-password.zip --]
Isn’t it funny? First of all, I am the administrator of mamchenkov.net domain and all services related to it. So I know that this is crap even before I finish reading the Subject line. Oh, wait. I actually know that this is crap even before I finish reading the From email address, because, guess what, there is no such email as info@mamchenkov.net. And, of course, there is no such thing as “The Mamchenkov Support Team”. Or “Mamchenkov Antivirus”. That all is just pure fun! It’s like I would be trying to convince you that you are not you, but that I am you, although I am obviously not. :)
Now that I am thinking about it, I was wrong saying that the Web remembers only the bad stuff about SPAM. There was a lot of laughter on that Slashdot story about some African cosmonaut left on the orbit. And there was this poetry project that was using phrases from the SPAM messages composed into poems.
What’s your SPAM fun story?