Monthly Archives: November 2002

Thanks a lot

Saturday, November 30, 2002

Another email response from my old buddy Franko Derb to some jackass that thought he could get a membership by sending in ripped off porn pix. This guy was so stupid that he was sending in sluttycamgirl pix — with their logos still on them!

Thank you so much for sending in your pictures. We have processed them and added them to the site and have applied the standard $24.99 charge per photo. You will see this automatically deducted on your next bank statement.

For legal reasons we can't email you your password so we have left it with AOL tech support. Ask for Jerry Holstein (he works weekdays between 9AM and 5PM) or ask for Susan Burrow (she works weekends and occasional night shifts). When you get them on the phone (although most of the other tech support people can help you when it comes down to it), say the following passphrase and they'll give you your password information:

“The green heron sits in the rotted nest with bowling ball eggs”

If you didn't manage to get through to either Jerry or Susan, just let the person know that they can find that information if they look in the folder “\\AOL\BME\\\PASSWORD-DATA\RECKER8889\”

Enjoy the site, and thank you again for sending in your pictures,

Franko Derb
Ministry of Passwords

If it wasn't for Franko, I'd be a far angrier fellow.

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Franko strikes again (funmail)

Saturday, November 30, 2002

Here's some typical crap I have to deal with. First “Nick Foster” sends me a pile of pictures, including the one below in order to get membership. He'd sent a combination of pictures stolen from torturegalaxy and from Slave Misty in France (at this point I have a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of online adult content).


From: Franko Derb

Your membership has been processed. We have placed your membership details under a star shaped rock 645 feet down the main (west) path in Central Park, NYC. Because of the extreme nature of our content we are legally required to do so.

If you are unable to pick this up yourself, please let us know and we can put you in contact with third party operatives who specialize in this type of mission.

If we do not see your account used in the next week, we will assume that you would prefer a paid account and will apply a charge of $249.99 directly to your bank account. There will also be a $15 service charge to do so.

In any case, enjoy the site, and thanks for sending in your pictures to help.

Franko Derb

Or this one, from “Sea Wolf” who says he has piercings and “sometimes I meet girlfriends which have although piercings”. He sent a pile of pictures that were absolutely blatantly ripped off from some porn site:


From: Franko Derb

Your membership has been processed. We have placed your membership details at:
N 44° 30.334 W 077° 26.960 (WGS84)
UTM: 18T E 305301 N 4930946

The container is green tupperware. All I can legally tell you is that it's on the Madoc Town Line Road, and that you'll be passing along a number of old fence lines to get there. Oh, and we've put a scratch-and-win ticket in the container as a special bonus.

If you are unable to pick this up yourself, please let us know and we can put you in contact with third party operatives who specialize in this type of mission.

Oh, and additional details on our procedures can be found at http://www.geocaching.com/ — I realize they must seen unusual, but these are unusual times.

In any case, enjoy the site, and thanks for sending in your pictures to help.

Franko Derb

Other than that, I then have to deal with all the people that send in horrible drawn-on tattoos… And don't underestimate how hard it is to tell the difference between a really poorly done tattoo and something that's drawn on by a marker. For example:

Well, back to work…

Update: Those may well both be “real” tattoos!

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Sad…

Saturday, November 30, 2002

I saw on someone's page regarding the death below, them complaining that is was somehow perverse that people would care, and implied that the people leaving heartfelt statements were just making it up because they were death obsessed… I thought it was very sad to read that, and I really feel sorry for that person. I'll repeat here roughly what I said to them.

I think what you're missing is that for many people this is a community of extended friends; I think it's very sad that you see it so cynically; as just a collection of strangers.

The reason people who didn't know her are sad is the same reason people are sad when a classmate or a family member they didn't really know died.

It's called empathy, and it is very valid, and I'm not sure what gives you the right to demean that, just because you don't feel it yourself.

In all honesty, when a member of your community, especially someone that's young, lively, and full of potential, dies, it's kind of weird to not be touched by it, and even weirder to actually complain about other people are touched by it.

Very sad.

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Hardboiled

Friday, November 29, 2002

OK, we're back, and we have hardcovers, and they look great. Hopefully I served my purpose on the trip (blah blah blah blah to keep the driver awake). Anyway, check it out — they really turned out great:

They'll be shipping out first thing on Monday of course. After this experience, I definitely am sold on hardcover printing and will probably do all future projects that way. Oh, and to the person who'd asked me about getting them an unbound copy to practise on for their bookbinding course, drop me a line — I managed to snag a couple for you (sorry, I've forgotten who it was — but I will remember when you contact me, so don't think you can pretend!).

And thank you to Vanilla for the finely packaged teas. I'm drinking the maple flavored one right now.
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A beacon in the darkness

Friday, November 29, 2002

First things first (entry below is actually from last night):
Happy birthday to my sister Ashleigh!

PS. Yes, she's in the scrapbook. The first scrapbooks should be arriving at people's addresses starting today — I hope those people will assist in building the online index since it's an awful lot of work (but worth doing I think).

Oh, and when I say “a beacon in the darkness”, I mean the satellite. As much as there are things I hate about it (latency and cutouts), there's a real romantic beauty to a piece of high end telecommunications technology strapped to an old barn and tying a little rural farm into the global grid. That said, with the snow coming down right now, I doubt I'll be tied in much longer.

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Could you be the one?

Thursday, November 28, 2002

We took a closer look at the land down the street today. 100 acres, so it's nice and big. An all-season maintained road hits the one corner of the lot at a high point, perfect for building. It's got tons of hills and very varied terrain. There are some wide open fields (currently dotted with cedars, hawthorn, prickley ash, and the typical stuff). There's also some very large cedar and pine growth, as well as some giant oaks, maples, poplars, apple trees, and others.

The low lying areas have some swamp and marsh, and an all-year creek runs through the lowland. The far edge of the property is bordered by an abandoned railroad track that is now a maintained government snowmobile line. There are gigantic boulders that dot the property, and there are game trails everywhere so it's very easy to traverse, although it's easy to get lost because it's so up and down. The property is covered in birds and deer and is an absolute wilderness dream — with the kicker that it's just minutes off the biggest highway in Canada.

Here's some of the pictures I took today:

That's just with my video camera, so pardon the resolution. It was snowing and rather hazy so it's a bit desaturated… This is definitely one of the most impressive low-cost properties I've seen so far.

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It's not that hard!

Thursday, November 28, 2002

It seems that no matter what I do, I keep getting really poor surface piercing photos sent in. While I'm glad to say that people are finally starting to come around to the idea that surface piercings need to be done with surface bars (although there are many piercers out there who use the word without knowing what it is), it doesn't do any good if they don't know how to use them.

The disturbing trend I've been seeing lately is piercers using surface bars, but using them very wrong so they don't work properly. Anyway, in the diagram below you see five potential surface bar placements. All five are variations I see regularly. Only the first one is a good placement. Here's why:

  1. The bar has tight bends, sits uniformly under the skin, penetrates at a perpendicular angle, and contains enough space above the skin to accommodate for minor swelling.
  2. The bars are not long enough, which means that there's no room for swelling to occur. The holes may enlarge, the piercing may be drawn up and into rejection (it may start to surface like #4), and it may not be able to drain as well. Note: Let me be clear that I've greatly overemphasized the lengths on diagrams 1 - 3. In #1, the balls may be gently touching the skin, and #2 is meant to show bars that are short enough to pull the bar up against the skin, and the ball down toward to hole.
  3. The bars are too long, so the piercing will get twisted constantly. This twisting leverages a lot of force onto the exit holes, causing them to enlarge and can easily start a rejection process.
  4. The bar was placed crooked and/or the placement is to long or short causing the bar to twist lengthwise. If one end surfaces healing will be no easier than with a straight barbell and rejection is likely.
  5. It's not even a surface bar. You can't just put bends in a bar. It will usually reject if you use such jewelry.

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