“Medley, 94, can’t see straight ahead, so her 86-year-old husband Ralph tells her which pins are left after her first ball.” ⇒

“Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I’m not a scientist,” Scalia said to laughter. “That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.” ⇒

“AllofMP3 doesn’t expect the Russian government to take any action against the company since it operates within the current law,” said Rory Davenport, an Allofmp3.com spokesman. ⇒

I dreamt last night that I was in jail. I don’t know what for, but for a short time I was in the jail jumpsuit, shuffling through the hallways and cell blocks, sticking close to the walls with head down and never making eye contact so as to avoid sending any provocative messages that might get me into trouble. It was very uncomfortable.

I’ve been going to the local jail here 3-5 times a week for the last month. Maybe I need to find a way to cut down on my jail time? I mean, I really do want to be able to empathize with my clients, but isn’t this going a bit too far?

“Lohse’s study . . . found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.” ⇒

We found out Saturday that our poor dog might have cancer. The chance is slim, I think, but she had a couple of lumps that we had to have removed just in case. The surgery was yesterday and seemed to have gone off without any trouble. Now we have a half-zombie dog who can’t seem to figure out how to navigate through her world now that her head has effectively swollen to four times it’s normal size (thanks to the “elizabethan collar” that prevents her from tearing out her stitches). I feel so bad for her. She just looks at us with these sad glazed eyes as if to say, “What have you done to me? Why me? Why?”

I have no answers for you, Sisu. I guess we love you or something.

Oh, and to any readers who might have been expecting Christmas presents from us: Sorry, we just spent out holiday money on the pooch. On the other hand, if you’d like to contribute to the Sisu Lump Removal and Potential Cancer Treatment Foundation, I can hook you right up. [tags]sisu, surgery, dogs[/tags]

“It was not meant to be a Jenny Craig supplement,” she says. “If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more.” ⇒

“Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips.” ⇒

I just noticed that I have nearly 15,000 messages in my Spam mail box. SpamSieve tells me that in the last year, 60% of my messages have been spam. Over that time, I have received an average of 87 spam messages each day. What’s most troubling is that in the past month, that average has gone up to 220 spam messages each day. Yesterday alone I had 227 spam messages, the day before that was 264, and the day before that was 248.

Yeah, I think this is a problem.

Now I learn (via Daring Fireball), that:

The recent surge in e-mail spam hawking penny stocks and penis enlargement pills is the handiwork of Russian hackers running a botnet powered by tens of thousands of hijacked computers.

Internet security researchers and law enforcement authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet seeded with the SpamThru Trojan.

. . .

The botnet stats tracker even logs the version of Windows the infected client is running, down to the service pack level. One chart commandeered by Stewart showed that Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2) machines dominate the makeup of the botnet, a clear sign that the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system is falling prey to attacks.

Great.

[tags]microsoft, spam[/tags]

Most Americans think “President Bush and Congress could help U.S. automakers be more competitive by increasing the federal fuel-efficiency standard to 40 miles per gallon”. ⇒