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A few people have received a plethora of virus files (with various zipped attachments) purporting to be from the "klyjen.net management team" today.
Please be advised that THERE IS NO KLYJEN.NET MANAGEMENT TEAM, and that these are virus messages that did not originate from me. You should not, under any circumstances, open those zip files. Instead, update the virus definitions on your computer and delete the files.
Thanks, and sorry for any inconvenience.
I have long felt that Amazon has customer service down pat. I love the recommendations, I love the "page you made" options, and I like the new plog feature. And, I have always enjoyed the e-mails I receive with taglines like "As someone who has purchased music from [bandname], we thought you'd like to know that [bandname]'s newest release is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com."
The e-mail I received yesterday, though, was slightly puzzling. Granted, I am a Harry Potter fan. And granted, I have ordered Harry Potter merchandise in another language (specifically, the first book, on tape, in French.) But this still seems slightly off-base...
As someone who has purchased books by J. K. Rowling, you might like to know that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Ancient Greek Edition) will be released soon.
Ancient Greek Edition? Is "Ancient Greek" the language spoken in modern Greece? Is it so named as a dig at the rest of us whose languages cannot be described as Ancient? And, if not...is there truly a market for Harry Potter readers who speak Ancient, as opposed to Modern, Greek? And, finally--am I somehow considered part of that market?
I could find the answers to these questions, of course, but at the moment I am just amused.
Last night, I-290, known as the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago, was shut down for close to an hour for "police activity." All lanes in both directions were closed. As I was driving home, I managed to avoid most of this traffic, but was curious about what constituted "police activity;" the radio people will usually specify an accident if that is the case.
So, this morning, I went to the local news radio station (WBBM 780 (don't click until you read the rest of this) to see if they had reported on the incident. I wasn't thirty seconds into browsing their front page when one of the advertisements started talking to me, trying to sell me a new car.
I hate ads with sound. I need to be able to sit at my desk and work (or browse) without interrupting the other people in the vicinity. I do not want to wear headphones or turn the sound off completely (although maybe that is what I will have to do); I simply want to browse and only have sound when I expect to have sound. I know it is petty, but that ad will stop me from visiting that website in the future, and that is just sad.
The Economist published an article today about sex discrimination lawsuits and the debate about whether the law is the best way of making the workplace fair.
One could argue back and forth about the lawsuits, but I shall not endeavor to make an argument one way or the other. Instead, I merely point you to the sentence in the article that made me chuckle:
America’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which took the case on, had alleged that the Wall Street investment bank had systematically denied promotion and pay increases to women, and allowed male staff to take clients to strip-clubs and to make crude comments...This is simply the latest in a long line of sex-bias settlements in the financial-services industry, which is still dominated by white males, some of whom have a less-than-sophisticated sense of humour. [Emphasis added.]
Sometimes you have to just love Brittish humo(u)r.
As a side note, I want to express my appreciation to The Economist for providing links of interest with their articles online. It shows their respect for their readers to acknowledge that other places on the internet (gasp!) might have information about the topics in the article.
Ernie wrote about the hip lingo of comment spammers a few weeks ago, as part of his goal of reaching the lightning round of Comment Spam Bingo. (ha!) I thought he'd get a kick out of this particular bit of comment spam I deleted this morning:
Sorry that i am a bit of topic here. I am looking for technical writer who is compute savvy. I like how you put your words together. If you are interested could you email me your rates.
The link, of course, was to a site that was clearly not in need of a technical writer of any sort, unless those sorts of sites have a user guide. (And if they do? I do not want to know about it.)