Year: 2007

Or, why do some poor misguided souls find it necessary to spread spam. Not the usual spam in the can for Viagra etc but the mean spirited and often nasty pornographic kind.

The Spam rate on Flickr has gone up! I suspect much of it is done by disgruntled Old School members that are still ranting and raving about Yahoo’s take over. Maybe it is a movement by other services to annoy users so they will change to their service – I dunno. I am ever so leaning toward the Yahoo is not great department chambers because of their canned answers and not so great support – but come on – things change. I dislike change. I want everything to stay nice and comfortable. Many of my contacts are not posting any new photos but, neither am I. Maybe we are all just busy, busy with other things but maybe not. I have taken some pictures and not uploaded them. Somehow the fun level has depreciated.

Blogging was a fun thing till it became important. Important that the blog was online, important. – sucked into the cyber ego vortex. I wonder why does it matter to me? It is not like lots of people read it. Why do I care if I can send my typed out works into cyberspace. I can just save everything I type in Word onto my hard drive. If I really want someone in particular to read it I could email that person.

Maybe it an ego building issue.

Maybe it goes back to the rat experiments and the forced socializing issue.

Maybe it is a substitute for the front porches we used to sit and chat on.

I may be onto something. The demise of the front porch has led to the necessity of reaching out for socialization between like minded folks. As the blogoshere becomes more and more crowded the battle for individual and social turf becomes more aggressive. Just like the rats bloggers are being separated, divisions are forming, and the more aggressive internet users of are preying upon the weaker with their spam – soon we will not tend for our young – oh gasp – it may be happening. The blog readers and poster all gathering around the favorite A listed blogs. Just like the rats gradually abandoning their food hoppers to crowd up at their favorite hopper.

Maybe it does not matter.

Yes I smell a Wumpus . …

Gremlins beware.

UPDATE: We are getting closer to the Wumpus. Turn east wordpress is not closing database connections, turn north -Geocities will not let you see your htaccess file, turn south Yahoo has a problem with an extra line added to htaccess files, turning west – we will upgrade wordpress from 2.1 to 2.1.1 if this does not work —- geocities will loose an account – I know like they care!

UPDATE2: We have now updated WordPress from 2.1 to 2.1.1 and deleted everything from our host server and put it all back up there again.

For the last twenty hours or so my access to this blog has been spotty. I get the 500 error.  I have checked my files, my database etc. Nothing bad found – so far. I have no idea why all of a sudden access to this blog is stopped. If you get this error I do not have a clue as to why.

So, when  I can access it I do. Short of deleting everything I am at a loss.

Hope whoever you are you are having a great time of it!

Oh yeah – I can access my logs LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

I probably have written about this before. When we first moved into our townhouse there was a pig farm running along the length of one side of the complex. The main exit from a then two lanes each direction Hwy99 (with bushes and a cable dividing the center) was typical of the country side exits of the time. You waited for the occasional vehicle and made a left across the traffic lane to enter the highway.

Now we are surrounded by Section Eight Housing. The Freeway has three lanes and an exit lane in each direction. The traffic headed south toward Elk Grove is akin to that would be expected on a Los Angles freeway. In keeping with the no living thing shall go un-killed in our neighborhood the complex gardeners have taking to buzzing of every little flower or bud on the complex bushes. I suspect they do this to try and lower their upkeep by stifling the new growth. We have no flowers except the blossoms in the trees and they point their blowers up into the trees trying to knock them off. The population in our area is victim to this mentality also. They just can not seem to take a break from killing people either.

I want to move. I wanna go! But where? The town I grew up in has grown to a point that I would not choose to move there. It seems like a vicious cycle. The Bay Area folks move to Elk Grove and Sacramento, the original dwellers get fed up with the steady influx of new bodies, they in turn move outwards towards the Sutter County and Placer County foothill areas and now the Rural County areas are growing to the point that many of their residents want to leave before the trappings of city/urban living attack.

I feel like a rat in the experiment we read about in High School – the one where all the rats are forced to live in a confined space and go wacko. The paper by John B Calhoun called “Population Density and Social Pathology.” (Calhoun, John B. 1962. “Population Density and Social Pathology.” Scientific American 206:139-148. – covers the experiment but I refuse to pay to for the online version. So here is an abstract online of the experiment.

A search of Scientific America 206:139-148 will bring up a bunch of citations.

Studies involving humans have shown it is not just the lack of space that causes the behavioral but the social aspects. Forced socializing is apparently not a good thing.

I guess I have hit my threshold. – I write as my neighbors music booms through the walls, a truck drives by with even a louder boom boomer, and a police siren goes off in the distance – emmm …. The gate outside goes clang bang – the youth of our little neighborhood ghetto have arrived home – let the games begin – as I put on my headphones and continue to type……. I try clicking my heels and chanting . There’s no place like home . .. There’s no place like home . …