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This morning, as I sat in the Student Union Building at my alma mater, I looked out the window and noticed that not only was the sky dark, but there was something falling from the sky. I know what you're thinking: "Rain, Michael. It's Seattle after all." But it wasn't. It was big fluffy white snowflakes. Which melted the moment they hit the ground. What a bummer.
So, yesterday, I received an odd email through one of my various email forms. Unfortunately, the person used a fake email address, and a fake name, so I couldn't really get a glimpse into where on earth this email had come from. So I decided to add something to the mail script to make it a bit more user-friendly. User-friendly for me. Not others.
So what I did was this. I added a key to the mail form that sends along a person's IP address when they submit something to me. It's a hidden form field, and the IP address can be spoofed through proxies, etc, but it adds another element of info to my pages, and if a person is not wiley enough to use a proxy, then I'd have the extra data. I figured I would just look up the IP on a website like DNSStuff.com.
What I found, however, is that there's a website called hostip.info, which is a database that contains geo-coordinates for various IP addresses, and includes Country, and City/State data as well. This website also utilizes the Google Map API to show a graphical representation of where things are in the world wide web.
I figured I'd do the same thing. Why not, after all? If I can, and it's fun, why not? So I figured out a way to grab the data from hostip.info, and feed it to the Google Map. The result is that any email I get now sends along the IP of the person sending it, and I need only click on the link that displays their data to me. You can find this handy-dandy tool here: Google IP Mapper.
So yesterday, one of my brothers and I decided that since today is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, we needed to train up for the feast we'll be having at the Mski's. So we called it Fat Monday: Training Day, pulled on comfortable clothes and sat down on the couch with a movie.
Thanks to some very wonderful people, we had several large drumsticks, which we smothered in our homemade buffalo sauce, some leftover birthday pizza, which we ate cold, an Ameci's sandwich, and evil ice cream which retains its shape even when it melts.
When it was all gone, we looked at the empty containers and plates and said, "Man, that's a beautiful sight."
I think we'll be ready for pancakes tonight.
So, there's this great comic called Piled Higher and Deeper, by Jorge Tran, who used to be a professor at Caltech. He's got life in academia down. Apparently, he recently went on a speaking tour to several universities, from which the above comic comes. It's actually a cutout of a much bigger piece, which you can see here.
Honestly, it's a shame I quit programming in Perl.
So, I've written this fantastic little bulkmailer program that sends out customized emails and tracks whether users opened the email, and whether or not they click on a link. All these items are encrypted and stored in a database to analyze later.
Now, there's two things the program needs: 1) content that's been modified with flags to insert the unique tracking fields, and 2) an email list. I received three messages that needed to be modified (numbered 1,2,3), and three lists (numbered 1,2,3). I paired up message 1 with list one, and so on. The largest list contained 11,394 emails, which I naturally sent out just before going home, as the processing could be done in the background while everyone slept soundly. Turns out, however, that the lists and the messages were not paired properly, and we sent out a message that does not apply to all 11 thousand people on the list. In fact, they so much don't apply that people seem to think that one of America's Finest Institutions has lost its mind.
I don't disagree.
(pebkac)
There's nothing quite so exhilarating as logging in to your bank account online and learning that in less than 10 days you've saved a whopping amount of cash.
Yes. I know. You're all jealous at my ability to put it away.
Sorry.
Sounds like a name, doesn't it? "Minutiae! Come here. Now." Or, "Minutiae, honey, would you pick up all the little stuff just laying around? Thanks, you're sweet as a trifle."
Well, whether it's a name or not, it's the little stuff that's been keeping me away from writing. Ok. Maybe one big thing, like moving from one city to the next, had something to do with it too... But all in all, I've found myself lately logging on to the system to write something, only to discover my mind wandering to some minor detail that needs attention, some small program that needs fixing, or some small whozitwhatzit that grabs my head and yanks in a new direction.
And so I don't write. Today won't be any different - other than to tell you why I wasn't writing, and to tell you that I hope to get back into some regular rhythm again soon, so that all 3 of my readers will have something to look at when it gets boring.
Yeah, this one had to go up just because of the title. I think it's a fancy play on words: City fights leaky carnival crowd