I’ll be a fireman when the floods roll back

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I’ve been going through my web links and bookmarks and compiling everything/weeding it all out to just the sites I think are really cool. It’s gonna be a long process. I also have some ideas for redesigning the entire site. Yikes. Wonder when I’ll have time to do that? (update: march 2005) Hmmm. I keep reminding myself I have to work on the living room before I start anything new. Looks like I might not get the room done in time to have the party I want to have. Or I’ll just have the damned party with the room half done. Hmmm.

Continue ReadingI’ll be a fireman when the floods roll back

weekend update 2002-08-19

It wasn’t the best weekend I’ve ever had. My sister’s going back to England to live, and I had to say goodbye to her Saturday. I’m happy for her that’s she’s going back, because she really likes it there, but I’ll miss her. On Sunday, I went to Kokomo and Peru Indiana to photograph big things, which was cool, but on the way back, my brakes started grinding. So I had to take the car in and spend the afternoon getting new brakes put on, which really sucks, because I was just starting to really get ahead financially after buying the house. Very annoying. But at least I have new brakes. And photos of big things.

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House Photos

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I just finished updating all of my photo galleries: both the regular gallery , and the house photos. I finished the thumbnail pages so you can see all the photos in a section at once, then click for the large photo. I was a bit behind (6 months) on doing that!
UPDATE: I later took these photos down because someone used them to locate my house and stalk me, sadly.

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Happy Birthday to me

Birthday Alligator
Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday, dear me.
Happy Birthday to me.

Hershey Kiss
In case I hadn’t mentioned it, today is my birthday.

Yesterday, I had someone come up to me and say “I recognize you from somewhere.” And after we went through a big list of places (work, college, high school, friends, etc.) it turns out he recognized me from my appearance on the morning news with Dick Wolfsie. I’m like, famous. In Indianapolis, Indiana. I think I’ll stop combing my hair and become disaffected, like all the other celebrities.

(2014 update: I’ve since realized it isn’t that hard to get on the local news, or that impressive. But I should let 2002 me have my moments, shouldn’t I?)

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I can’t tell an anecdote anymore

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Okay it’s creeping me out a bit the number of people who I’ve started to tell a story to, and they say, “yeah, I read that on your site.” First because I’m scared that my friends actually check my journal regularly, and second, that I’m ruining all my small talk. I can’t tell the same story over and over just to hear my own voice. I actually have to shut up and listen to other people. 🙂
I changed all my catalog subscriptions (Pottery Barn, Ikea, etc.) to the new address, so I should start getting tons of junk mail shortly.

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Stupid Spam

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Here’s some great spam of the sort I get all the time:

Subject: Hello Steph.
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 01:23:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: ETM <qx5fd@hotmail.com>
Dear Steph,
My name is John Barister and I work for a company called Electronic Traffic Management. Our Company has done a large amount of market research that has brought back some very interesting results.

Immediately with the first sentence I are skeptible (a new word, meaning skeptical in a “funny voice” way, along with the noun-verb disagreement, which, when done intentionally is hi-larous) about this. Market research on what? My web site? The solar system? Green Eggs and Ham? How interesting are these results? [fake voice]Veeeery iiinteresting.[/fake voice] I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to find out more about these results of research of the marketing variety on an undisclosed subject.
We suspect that you’re not getting the return on investment you were hoping for with your website. If you would like, I would be happy to give you some tools that will start to bring in larger returns.
Now that’s a non sequitur for you. Are these supposed to be the aforementioned “results” of the marketing variety? Your marketing research has told you that you suspect I’m not getting a [bullshit bingo] return on my investment[/bullshit bingo]? Your research ain’t very good then, cause this is my personal site and my return on investment is sky high considering that I don’t pay beans for this site and I get to just spout off on any old topic without caring what anyone else thinks.
But all that not with standing, you were mentioning giving me tools? I like tools. What kind are they? Car tools or house tools? Or maybe they’re my new favorite kind; lawn care tools. What ever; you said you’d “give” me these tools, not “sell” me these tools. Sound’s like your return on investment is gonna take a beating if you go around just giving tools to people for no good reason except you did some hazy sort of marketing research. Have a glance at this post here that explains about How to Make Use of Intercom Documentation and how it is now being used in the marketing field.
You can also go to our website and download the free video on how to get more business from your online investment. If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you will keep getting what you’ve been getting! Just visit the link below and follow the instructions:
Apparently, I need to keep doing EXACTLY what I’ve been doing, because I have an incredibly satisfying cheapo personal website which causes people to go around giving me tools (of an undisclosed nature) and free videos which unfortunately sound rather boring.
http://www.electronictraffic.com/marketing.htm
Now, this URL they sent bothers me. Because if these guys are the big shots they claim they are (okay, they never claimed to be, but they are throwing around words like “marketing research” and “return on investment” like there’s no tomorrow, which sounds like a “We’re all of the big-head variety right over here, huh!” type of speech.) their URL would be:
http://www.electronictraffic.com/marketing/index.htm
Because then marketing wouldn’t be a single *page* on their site, but a whole *section* of which the index page is first. Sort of like on my site, where I have
https://commonplacebook.com/humor/index.shtm
And there are literally like, hundreds, of jokes in the category of /humor/, see whut I mean? If these guys don’t have more than one page of things to say about marketing, when you know, they’re doing all this vast marketing research (apparently on my site, which is damn kind of them to do without even being asked and all) they should have like, a giant database worths of stuff to say about the marketing.
So basically, I think these guys are big fat liars. Which make me really suspicious of the following:
To be removed from our mailing list, simply send an email tormv@mailandnews.com with the word “remove” in the subject line. Your email address will be permanently removed, and you will not receive any further mailings from us. Please note that any attempts to abuse the removal process will result our inability to handle remove requests.
Because the secret new internet meaning of the word “remove” is “sign me up for a bunch more spam as I confirm this e-mail address is a valid one.” I’ll think, instead of “removing” myself from their mailing list, I’ll just make fun of it on my website.
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

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