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Day 672: What A Computing Day

In which our intrepid heroine sold the Honda, waded through the worst-archived well logs in the western hemisphere, fended off evil spam demons and successfully closed a Denial of Service attack on VatulNet. Phew. It’s alright — I am used to days from the Annals of Crud. Case in point: not two weeks ago, my trip back to the United States from Italy was much like the one Ashley Morris just endured, and I had a cold.

Oh, what now? Mominem informs that the list of New Orleans bloggers is missing. Thanks for noticing, I fixed it and blocked the spammer’s IP. Here ye, here ye: this is precisely why the ThinkNOLA wiki is migrating to Instiki — it keeps a lot of this spam nonsense in check. Please keep both links handy until the old wiki dies under the weight of spam, spam, spam, spam and spam, no eggs. Spammers are on the top of my X list now.

Windows Vista 64 is on my list, too, not to mention that it appears to be a huge potential security risk. D and I are both battling it at our respective workplaces, except that he pretty much runs IT where he works, whereas I am a geo-cog who hasn’t gesticulated wildly enough to the decisionmakers. Why can’t they just leave my working Redhat Linux installation and me alone?

Meanwhile, in the non-virtual world:

1) the French Quarter is at risk of flooding (despite being above sea level — go figure),

2) Cokie Roberts, Lindy Boggs’ scion, and her husband, Steve, pen a great article on New Orleans recovery, and

3) conversations on New Orleanian race relations abound at Editor B‘s and Varg‘s blogs. According to one commenter at B’s, I am not entitled to comment on anything New Orleans because of my Kuwaiti birth, as isn’t anyone who didn’t emanate from the womb inside Orleans Parish limits. With master debaters like him, this city doesn’t need imploders. Great comments and constructive criticism from everyone else, though. Black, white, yellow, brown or polka-dotted, we are all capable and guilty of the worst in human nature. Some of us just have the right parents and skin color. The end.

4 comments… add one
  • rcs July 3, 2007, 7:31 AM

    this is precisely why the ThinkNOLA wiki is migrating to Instiki

    Thank god, it’s been pretty much a SPAM link farm.

  • Alan Gutierrez July 3, 2007, 9:07 AM

    Well, the problem is that it took volunteer energy just to stand still. No one was adding to the Wiki. There was one valiant volunteer who kept it spam free.

    Maitri, I’m going to organize collaborative computing days, invite people to help organize and publish at ThinkNOLA, Flickr, or on their blogs, etc.

    It would be good to pursue the many hands make light work thing. People are paying more attention to us now, they want to be a part of the local social media.

  • Tim July 3, 2007, 9:17 PM

    That silly story about the French Quarter flooding is another bit of tomfoolery brought to you by Bob Bea, the same “engineer” who performed a taste-test of the new wall in the Lower Ninth Ward and found it too salty to be effective. Ashley has a perfect label for such people: fuckmook.

    Peace,

    Tim

  • chazbe July 5, 2007, 1:03 PM

    Silly or not, it was an AP story of strong local interest. Can anyone explain why the Times-Picayune, never a paper to shrink from silly, didn’t run it?

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