View From the Bushes

Well, it's been an interesting day. Most of my "blogging time" was taken up deleting well over a hundred spam comments (though thanks to the help of my underpaid South American labor it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been). I did finally find a place in Movable Type that allows me to block IP addresses, though I'm not sure how effective that will end up being. I myself have easy access to at least at least 10 IP addresses, and with effort could probably get access to 30 or 40 more, so I can only imagine that the spammer is not limited to that one address. I'm still flabbergasted that the software doesn't have some way to do a mass delete of comments; maybe that's coming in the next version (or maybe it's already here and I just need to pull my head out and upgrade).

Of course, all of my blogging difficulties were small potatoes compared to what happened with my car. It failed its safety inspection on Tuesday (uneven braking), plus it had an oil leak and a power steering leak going back to its purchase, so I took it into the mechanic. It also occasionally ran rough and had once died on me while I was driving it, but for whatever reason I didn't mention that. My mechanic (who is actually a great guy and related to me in a very bizarre fashion) fixed the leaks and the brakes. Additionally, he noticed that the spark plug wires were arcing, so he replaced them as well as the spark plugs. Well, when he told me that, I figured that must have been what was causing it to sometimes run rough, and my initial reaction was, "Bonus!"

Perhaps he put the spark plug wires on wrong, because when I got it back it wasn't just running rough occasionally, it was running rough constantly, and dying every other time I made a turn. I had to give someone a ride home and I had already taken longer on my lunch break than I should have, or otherwise I might have just turned right around and gone back. I can understand if the problem still existed, but for it to have gotten worse is hard to fathom. Previously I had theories involving the cold, but I have to discard those because it's warmer today that it's been in many days, maybe...it's the heat that's causing it.

In any event, given that I took a longer than average lunch full of cursing and pain, it was to be expected that (as far as I can tell) the minute I walked out of the building one of the web servers crashed for the second time today. By all accounts my phone was ringing off the hook the entire time I was gone. I was hoping to put out a fairly comprehensive overview of where DireKobold is (as requested by someone on the Message Boards) but it looks like I'm out of time, and with me DMing tomorrow it might be Monday before I get around to it, but I am aware of the request and I won't forget.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross