I’ve turned on comment moderation because the blog keeps getting hit with spam 2.0. This kind of spam is left by actual people, not computer programs, so the spam filter doesn’t catch most of it. They leave comments that sound real and refer to my posts, but they fill out the link field of the comment form with sites that are obviously spam sites. I’ve been filtering it out by hand for the last few weeks, but it keeps coming, so I’m turning on comment moderation until it subsides.

But, PastaQueen, why don’t you just use a captcha?

I didn’t want to use a captcha because 1) they’re annoying and 2) the spam is being left by humans who would be able to get past it. I suspect these spammers are third world citizens being paid a couple bucks a day to leave spam on blogs, sort of like what happens in that Cory Doctorow story Anda’s Game. Once their comments stop getting published, they’ll eventually go away. (I hope.)

So, if your comment is not published right [...]

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I am still getting back into the swing of things post-holidays. I don’t remember much from the time after I passed out into a sugar-induced coma. However, as the pictures below show, I was present for the lighting on my mother’s 60th birthday cake on Sunday.

Here we are lighting the cake.

And here we are still lighting the cake.

And here we are again, still lighting the cake, watching the frosting start to melt.

And finally, the cake is lit! My mother blew out the candles in one breath, proving that old age has not affected her lung capacity. Happy birthday, Mom! Here’s to 60 more years!

• Continue reading "Let them eat cake"

After scouring the Fulda Family archives (a.k.a. three shoeboxes full of photos), the head librarian (a.k.a. my mom) uncovered visual documentation of the gingerbread houses I built during two consecutive Christmases in my mid-teens. I know this will be difficult, but can you guess which package below contains the wrapped gingerbread house kit purchased from Target? Please, take your time.

While I’d like to say I wanted to build a gingerbread house out of my love for the culinary arts, I really just wanted to shove sheets of gingerbread dotted with gum drops down my throat, and then suck on the bag of frosting as a chaser. However, as I soon learned, eating a gingerbread house is not as fun as Hansel and Gretel made it out to be.

First off, building the house is a lot of work. The roof would slide off, gum drops never quite stayed attached, and overall the house looked like it’d been built by a corrupt contractor who was embezzling supplies for the Lollipop Guild. This was because I couldn’t help [...]

• Continue reading "Compulsive eaters shouldn’t live in gingerbread houses"

For the past two Januaries, I’ve written out a list of 3-5 goals I want to accomplish in the upcoming year. I’ve also reflected on last year’s goals to see if I did what I wanted to do. I like to at least attempt to have forward momentum in my life, and having my list of goals above my desk helps with that.

Here’s where I stand with my 2009 goals:

1) Continue to pursue headache treatments

I first went to the headache clinic in January of 2009. Within a few months, we were managing my headache much better, though not ridding me of it completely. We’re still tweaking meds, but overall this goal was pretty much met.

2) Work to become full-time freelancer

I chucked my job in July of 2009 and haven’t looked back. I don’t know how I ever coped with working in an office in the first place. I still don’t have a long-term health insurance solution, but I’ll deal with that at the end of 2010. Another goal accomplished!

3) Maintain my weight with regular fitness [...]

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I get a lot of press releases. Email is cheap, so public relations companies blast out hundreds of copies of the same generic, boring messages to hundreds of people at a time. I think my email address got put on a mailing list that has been passed around to lots of companies, so now I get about six or seven emails a day trying to get me to write about products I know you guys have no interest in. I’ve gotten to a point where I read half the subject line and then trash the messages without reading them.

However, I occasionally get a press release with a subject line so ridiculous that I cannot help reading it and then guffaw at my desk, wondering if the person who wrote it is aware of how silly their message sounds. Case in point, a recent email I got for a hand sanitizer that says:

[Hand sanitizer brand name] predicts that the ‘elbow shake’ will soon supplant the traditional hand shake as the greeting of choice both in and [...]

• Continue reading "You can shake your elbow, but can you kiss it?"