It’s My Birthday

Today is my birthday, but I’m out of town, so please leave a message on my machine, or wait to call me on Sunday night 🙂 I’m on an anniversary weekend with Jessica! (October 3rd will be 6 years of marriage!)

Why I Ordered Over Night Shipping

I ordered a camera, and with that camera I asked for two-day air. Right now you’re thinking, “Randy, there’s something in your teeth.” and, “Randy, you said ‘over-night.'” I did. But on Monday when I ordered the camera I ordered it two-day so it would be here on Thursday so I could have it charged and ready to go today when I leave for my romantic Anniversay/Birthday weekend. Well, Tuesday rolled around and I hadn’t gotten a tracking number in an email so I called and they told me that there was a billing issue (they recorded my credit card number wrong) so they would send it out next day air the following day (shipments had already gone out). Thursday rolled around and I anxiously awated the arrival of my package, Jessica was slightly irritated by my super happy anxiety. Noon reared its ugly head and I still had no package (morning delivery is what DHL had on their site for the shipping method). Well, to make a short story longer I called DHL and after going through the labrynth of automated customer service I actually talked to a human being. She told me that my package had apparently not made it onto the truck, but would be out the next day. OK, Friday will be the day I get my camera.

It’s Friday and DHL’s site has no new information about the whereabouts of my package and I’m leaving later this afternoon to go to Colorado Springs. I sent an email to customer service this time hoping that email might be a good method since I didn’t want to be pressing more phone buttons if at all possible. I got an auto-responder message warning me that it may be up to two business days before I get an answer to my email asking for information regarding my package which was guaranteed over-night. Since when did over-night equate to a week’s waiting?

Last night I heard a commercial on TV (it was on in the other room) proclaiming the wonders of the new DHL delivery service. That just might be an overstatement. I just wonder where my camera is. In the end I will be patient, this camera is not critical to my existence, it would have been nice to have for a weekend full of digital memories, but I’ll just use the one we’ve got, it’s just like driving a Yugo in a Viper race.

Can Spam Day, October 2nd

I was getting comment spam, with some of the ‘filter blocking’ text being rather offensive. I was tired of this one IP hitting me with garbage (it wasn’t posted live on my site due to WordPress‘ excellent filtering of comments) so I did something about it. I looked up his ISP from within the warning email, found out what email address they used to get reports of abuse and emailed them. About 2 hours later I got an email saying that they’d temporarily blocked the IP address until further investigation. Woo-Hoo! The comment spam stopped. Thanks for the great tools Matt and Kitty!

The heart of the issue is that we often, as web site owners, don’t take time to let ISP‘s know that they’re hosting these spammers. If we let them know they might do something, thus either forcing spammers to greater lengths to achieve their goals or to stop them in their tracks. Spammers are not good clients for ISPs because usually they smudge their name. I officially dub October 2nd “Can Spam Day” [somebody buy that domain :)]! On that day, take 5 minutes to find a comment spammer’s IP address and then email the ISP to warn them of abuse.

Gluten Free Bread

cover
If you only buy one gluten free bread book this year (you do buy gluten free bread books don’t you?) this is the book. Our friend Krystal lent us this book and we’re buying it because the recipes are good, the pictures are tempting and I’ve gained more weight than Oprah in the 90’s! Sure you’ll have to buy some special flours, and maybe a package of egg replacer, but the bread that will replace your dry, tough rice bread will be worth it. The pizza crust recipe is great and tastes like normal pizza crust – I can have Hawaiian pizza without the wheat! I’m sure this is a shocker, but you can buy it on Amazon.com [and I’ll make a few cents in the process to help fund this site].

Oh, and in case some of you are wondering what I’m doing reviewing this book, I’ve got allergies to wheat, corn and your cat. I also don’t do well with lots of sugar. Yeah, I’m crazy like that.

The Real Issues

This morning, in a disappointing episode of potty training slippage Abby peed on the floor. Jessica was scolding her and said, “Those are your pee-pees and you need to tell us when you need to go to the bathroom.”

Abby replies, “You tell John Kerry.”

Priceless! I want to know John Kerry’s stance on a two year old’s urine.

Last Weekend

Last weekend we stayed at the Kaes‘ house and watched their children Kailey and Trystan. We had a great time (though I didn not manage to get enough sleep) and I think Kailey and Trystan still like us. Abby did well and managed to not injure herself, which is a bonus since she seems to go out of her way to get hurt while at their house 🙂 Craig and Krystal had a good time on their anniversary weekend trip and warned us that we too would probably have a good time on our weekend trip this coming weekend. The aspens are changing colors right now and I ordered a new digital camera to get some really top quality pictures (of course I’ve figured out how to spend thousands of dollars in new equipment to complement the new camera).

Sunday afternoon we went to the Egypt exibit at Denver Museum of Nature and Science, or Natural Science and Nature Museums, or Denver Museum of the Expensive Viewing of Dead, Mummified People [Thanks for taking us Mom and Dad!]. The reason we went is because my mom had a birthday. And since she was getting older looking at even older people made her feel younger. Plus, Abby, seeing a display of the Mars MER rover said, “Look Dad, Chocolate Poo-poos.” Of course that was in refernce to the rocks at the bottom of the display.

Sunday night we took my parents out to dinner at the Claim Jumper, which is a pretty nice restaurant with generous portions and the largest cake slices I have ever seen. We ate good food but the actual waitress’ service was not so good. I had to ask for refills regularly as she walked by and smiled without actually looking at our table’s contents. However, I believe my mother enjoyed the meal, which was the purpose of the evening. Oh, and Abby made her own chocolate poo-poos in the restaurant’s restroom, whichw as good since had she done it in her pants it would have been much more challenging 😉