Today is Rebecca and mine 6th anniversary. It hasn't gone as well as we'd like; she didn't sleep well last night, so we didn't get to see the Cardinals play tonight. Also, on the way back from my parents, I got nailed for speeding on I-66 just inside the Beltway. No speed trap or "police brutality" anything of the sort, just carelessness on my part, I let the speed get away from the low 60s to the low 70s.

So today hasn't been the greatest day for either of us.

Tomorrow, we might hang out with a friend, or go see The Devil Wears Prada, in addition to the church-y stuff. Monday, we'll be helping out with a Lions Youth Exchange cookout -- it'll be at a Lions camp off of Route 50. Hopefully the students won't be late in arriving like they were last year ...

Here's the spam count since the last time I posted.

Male performance 22-53 total
Cheap stuff 18-65 total
Loans 16-55 total
Free stuff 15-72 total
Stock tips 14-57 total
Self-improvement 8-22 total
Porn 3-18 total
Casinos 3-10 total
Meet women 1-8 total
Blank 1-8 total
Offline scams 1-6 total

Subcategories:
Spanish 4-23 total. The weirdest one yet was an advertisement for a Chilean sushi restaurant. WTF?!?
Chinese 1-5 total
Undetermined Asian 1-5 total
French 1-1 total. My first spam in French.

My vacation is beginning! I went out to the Malibu Grill Steakhouse for lunch and then went grocery shopping. I couldn't do that much since I slept until 11am and Rebecca was working but tomorrow we are headed out to her parents.

Here's the spam count since the last time I posted. I got my first Portuguese spam, which is kinda fitting, since the Malibu Grill is a Brazilian churruscaria in which the workers come by your table with skewers of meat. I'd recommend it only if you skip a meal. :-)

Total 52 - 279
#1 Free stuff 2 - 57
#5 Male performance 3 - 31
#2 Cheap stuff 17 - 47
#4 Loans 11 - 39
#7 Self-improvement 6 - 14
#6 Porn 4 - 15
#9 Meet women 0 - 7
#3 Stock tips 4 - 43
#11 electronic scams 2 - 6
#12 offline scams 2 - 5
#10 Casinos 0 - 7
#13 Political 0 - 1
#8 Blank 1 - 7

Spanish 7 - 19
Japanese 0 - 3
Chinese 0 - 4
Undetermined Asian 2 - 4
Portuguese 1 - 1
Gender-inappropriate 0 - 0

Well, my vacation will start soon. At 7:30pm today, I am off until the 1st of August. So my spam counting will be a bit sporadic, hopefully I can make a few posts while I'm off work.

Here's the count since I started this on Saturday.

Total 226
55 Free products 13
39 Stock tips 8
28 Mortgage/loans 7
30 Low cost products 6
28 Male performance 6
8 Other self-improvement 1
7 Meet women 1
6 Entirely blank 1
3 419/offline 1
10 Porn 0
4 PayPal/eBay 0
7 Casino/gambling 0
1 Political 0

Subcategories
12 Spanish 2
3 Japanese 0
4 Chinese 0
2 Undetermined Asian 0

Hey all. Fark is a-buzz with discussion of a suspected viral marketing campaign. What fun! Let me see if my knowledge of HTML tables still applies. 25 spams since the last update and a total of 182.

Total so far	Category	# since last update
31	Stock tips	4
24	Low cost products	4
22	Male performance	4
21	Mortgage/loans	3
10	Porn	2
4	PayPal/eBay	2
42	Free products	1
7	Casino/gambling	1
7	Other self-improvement	1
6	Meet women	1
5	Entirely blank	1
2	419/offline	1
1	Political	0
	Subcategories
10	Spanish	3
3	Japanese	1
4	Chinese	0
2	Undetermined Asian	0

It's day 2 of the East Coast heatwave. It's a Code Red day, but I figure I can try to brave it out walking. Or, maybe, I'll just wuss out again and take a cab to and from work.

Well, two more days until I am on vacation, which will last until the end of the month.

I saw an interview with Elizabeth Smart on Good Morning America. It was kinda sad, really, she just seemed so nervous/robotic/scared ... she didn't have terribly much to say. I wonder if she is going to have a "true confession" some 15 or 20 years down the road.

Here's the Spam list for today. 26 spams since the last update, 157 in total.

41 Free products 9 today
27 Stock tips 5 today
20 Low cost products 4 today
18 Male performance 4 today
18 Mortgage/loans 2 today
8 Porn 1 today
5 Meet women 1 today
6 Casino/gambling
6 Other self-improvement
4 Entirely blank
2 PayPal/eBay
1 419/offline
1 Political

7 Spanish 1 today
4 Chinese 1 today
2 Japanese
2 Undetermined Asian

Spam update. I got 25 spams since I last posted. 132 total so far.

Categories:
#2 Stock tips 8 (22)
#3 Low cost products 5 (16)
#1 Free products 4 (32)
#4 Mortgage/loans 3 (16)
#5 Male performance 2 (14)
#7 Other self-improvement 2 (6)
#9 Entirely blank 1 (4)
#6 Porn 0 (8)
#8 Casino/gambling 0 (6)
#10 Meet women 0 (4)
#11 PayPal/eBay 0 (2)
#12 419/offline scams 0 (1)
#13 Political 0 (1)

Sub-categories
#1 Spanish 3 (6)
#2 Chinese 0 (3)
#3 Japanese 0 (2)
#4 Undetermined Asian 0 (2)

Gender-inappropriate 0 (0)

I was talking with Randy and Iad (two co-workers) about my spam collection. Iad suggested that in the blank spams might have white-on-white text. The odd thing about those is that the subject and even sender fields are blank. Randy suggested that sometimes a spammer will include a link to an image -- but the image host's account got cancelled. This too could lead to issues.

Interesting. I notice that stock tips seem to have surged up today. We'll see if this a Monday-only thing or if weekday spam is different from weekend spam.

Spam categories (107 total)
Free products 7 (28)
Stock tips 9 (14)
Mortgage/loans 5 (13)
Male performance 2 (12)
Low cost products 3 (11)
Porn 2 (8)
Casino/gambling 4 (6)
Meet women 1 (4)
Other self-improvement 0 (4)
Entirely blank 1 (3)
PayPal/eBay scams 1 (2)
419/money-based scams 0 (1)
Political spam 0 (1)

Sub-categories
Chinese 1 (3)
Spanish 1 (3)
Japanese 0 (2)
Undetermined Asian 1 (2)
Gender-inappropriate 0 (0)

Well, I am checking my email once more. 35 spams, a few bills, but only a couple of real emails. Spam diary in the next post.

It'll be hot today. I'm probably going to drive up to the Ballston Mall then take a cab in this morning. Tonight it should have cooled down a bit by 7:30pm, so I'll walk to the Metro and then drive back home.

At small group, we debated the meaning of Revelations 20:11-15, the Final Judgment. How can we compare Paul's insistence on salvation through faith and this passage's assertion that "each person was judged according to what he had done?" Perhaps we might be comforted that we should not be dead at that time, but instead sharing in our new life in Christ.

My own opinion -- we all begin with our names in the "book of life." When we accept Christ, we stop trying to erase our names, and instead accept His gift -- part of which is having our names in that book. I would think that any God capable of infinite mercy would be capable of handling relatively minor (on a God-scale) problems such as the virtuous unbaptized. Even C.S. Lewis in the Last Battle allows for the possibility that the unbaptized might enter Heaven; and so, too, should we as Christians.

My continuing prayers for those in the Mideast.

Oh yeah -- one more thing. When I heard about the shiznit going down between Israel and Hizbollah/Lebanon, I bought 100 shares of the US Oil ETF. I've made about $70 on it so far, and we'll see what happens from there. I made a bet on some S&P puts when Ben raised rates another 25 basis points at the end of last month.

Of course the next question: Is it immoral to profit off of instability thusly? Would the misery that'd occur if Syria or Iran were somehow directly involved be worth me making a few hundred (or even a couple grand) extra dollars? Or am I merely an observer of world events, and since I am not the cause of this misery, any money I make from wise (for that environment) investment choices merely astuteness on my part?

I will donate 50% of any capital gains to causes devoted to ending the suffering on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. Peace will only come when people are tired of the violence (Northern Ireland) or if one side is beaten into submission (World War II.) In either case -- there will be suffering.

In other good news: at the Uplift camp at Harding University over the 4th of July, seven of our teens chose to be baptized. I am praying that their faith can remain strong as they grow as Christians. I like to say that I am a practicing Christian; one day I will get good at it.

In other good news: Arlington church has hired a minister, Kurt Norton. He accepted the position earlier this week and it was put into this week's bulletin.

Well, right now it is off to the small group -- this week's topic will be faith vs. works. Rebecca and I got the book we are studying yesterday. See you guys soon! The next entry of my spam diary will be tomorrow. I also typed up the original article referred to in my last post, but I forgot to email it to myself (I typed it on the downstairs computer, which I prefer using since it has all the cool games on it but only a dial-up Internet connection.) I'll copy and paste the original French article in here as well.

Hello everyone! It's Sunday morning. My sister told me yesterday that she is engaged to her boyfriend. Rather ironic, since both sisters-in-law have been dating their boyfriends longer than Rebecca and I have been dating -- and Abby and John got married last year and now Dave and Jennifer will get married, probably this fall.

My wife and I are going to go out to eat before going to church and I figured it was time to check my email. No legitimate emails, of course. But 30 pieces of spam since I last posted and that makes for 72 total.

I had to add a new category, completely blank, since two spammers were so completely incompetent they could not send even an advertisement. Also, there was one piece of spam that was porn as it had a picture of some girl's cleavage, but the ISO coding was so munged that I couldn't figure if it was Japanese or Chinese. I can usually tell the two apart by seeing the hiragana or katakana symbols in Japanese.

I've got a little side project, too. If any of the two souls reading this blog (I don't even think my mom reads it) can figure out anything about the French singer Danièle Dupré, let me know. I saw her singing on Youtube a few weeks ago. I thought she was attractive. My wife didn't have an opinion on that, but she (like me) loved the voice. I have another pic of her taken scanned from an EP cover I found for sale on Priceminister and will put it up as soon as I figure out how to post images.

Don't look on Wikipedia, I wrote that after a few hours of Googling. Yes, that's all I could find, even pages in French.) And the magazine cover on there? Yes, I spent $17 to get that (it was something like $16.50 when I placed the order. By the time the order cleared all the hoops, it was $17. Stupid exchange rates...) I ordered another magazine that claims to have an interview with her; it should be arriving any day now. It'll be interesting to see, basically, "what happened" to her. As far as the Interweb is concerned, she fell off the face of the Earth.

Now, she obviously wasn't a superstar on the level of the Platters (multiple #1 hits, etc.), but certainly a Eurovision performance would count as a Top Ten hit, warranting some page somewhere dedicated to her. (Look, for instance, what comes up when I look for the Bobbettes, who had essentially one big hit "Mr. Lee" and a few minor hits.) From what I can dig up, it seems she released several EPs on Polydor -- at least five -- so I figure she probably had a couple of songs reach the bottom of the French Top 40.

But my point is that I am slowly translating the article. It's a nice piece of fluff you'd expect from a radio/TV weekly (La Semaine Radiophonique, to be exact) from 11/19/1957.

I got about halfway through when I realized I probably should just type it all up in French first and save *THAT* as a file. Then, I can enlist the help of French scholars to understand idioms and alternate meanings of words ... and quickly cut and paste any references. BTW, Babelfish alone is useless, but I'm sure you already knew that. Wordreference seems potentially useful.

On to the spam count.

Free products 10 (21)
Male performance 3 (10)
Mortgage/loans 4 (8)
Low cost products 2 (8)
Porn 4 (6)
Stock tips 3 (5)
Other self-improvement 0 (4)
Meet women 1 (3)
Entirely blank 2 (2)
Casino/gambling 1 (2)
PayPal/eBay scams 0 (1)
419/money-based scams 0 (1)
Political spam 0 (1)

Sub-categories
Chinese 1 (2)
Japanese 1 (2)
Spanish 0 (2)
Undetermined Asian 1 (1)
Gender-inappropriate 0 (0)

Well, it's Saturday. My wife and I celebrate our six-year anniversary on Saturday, in case you didn't know. We are going out to Front Royal to see a Front Royal Cardinals game and a Little League Challengers game. Apparently the Front Royal Little League Challengers competition has been invited to watch the Little League World Series and is raising money to do this. I'm not sure how Front Royal got selected but they will be having a special game on July 22 as part of the ceremonies to open Bing Crosby Stadium.

One of these days I am going to copy and paste all my posts on fark.com onto here so you can get an inkling of what I think, politically and otherwise. It makes little sense to type a post there and then post something similar here.

But I've decided to keep a spam diary. I got 42 spams between yesterday afternoon when I left to see Assassins at the Signature Theater last night.

Here's how it's running so far.

For 7/14:
Free products (i.e. "Home Depot vouchers", etc.)
11
Enlarge my penis/cum more/Viagra (I'll also include the enlarge my breasts spam here)
7
Low cost products (such as genuine replica Rolex watches)
6
Mortgage/loans
4
Self-improvement (lose weight, get diplomas from quality non-accredited schools, etc.)
4
Porn
2
Meet women
2
Stock tips
2
PayPal or eBay scams
1
419 or other money-based scams (lotteries, etc.)
1
Casino/gambling
1
Political spam
1

Of course, no spam is complete without remembering how much foreign language spam you get and how much gender-inappropriate spam you get.

Spanish
2
Chinese
1
Japanese
1

Gender-inappropriate
0

For the one or two readers of this blog, let me know if you have any ideas. I won't start trying to hotlink my friends until I've been at this regularly for a couple weeks or so.

Well, here I am again.

A cousin of mine is getting married on Saturday. I just found out that my sister didn't get an invitation, but my wife and I did. Needless to say, my wife and I are a bit annoyed by this -- so we are not going. Am I rude in doing this?

Post 212068 on the FNM board is a challenge I am making to a Chomskyite on that board (at the least, he quotes Chomsky frequently). The honest ones are interested in discussion about the challenges of setting up proper international institutions, whereas the dishonest ones are more interested in complaining about the USA's allged "hyperpower," when they fail to realise that a duopoly in power leads to a Cold War and a multipolarity of power seems to lead to frequent jockeying for power, as the history of Europe between 1500 and 1945 seems to indicate.

I have commented frequently that World War II was the equivalent of the Ludovico Treatment from A Clockwork Orange regarding Europe. Witness Europe's inability to handle civil strife of a hateful nature in its own backyard during the 1990s.

It is my fervent hope that (1) the USA's excessive militarism and Europe's excessive pacifism can be balanced out -- neither is exactly helpful to the world as it stands -- and (2) that the USA does not need to undergo further Ludovico Treatments a la 9/11 to be cured of this miltarism.

Well, I am feeling much better. The doctor prescribed a decongestant for me, and I've been faithfully taking it twice a day. I woke up today and had the least amount of gunk in my throat/nose/lungs that I've had in weeks.

Right now the speculation is that Karl Rove will get indicted. Of course, Bush has the potential to screw up the immigration speech, as well. I don't think most people really care about illegal immigration until their jobs are at stake. For now, at least, we are living an OK existence, with any shortfalls between lifestyle expectations and the ability to pay for it covered over by home equity loans, credit cards, etc.

In finance, I see no reason why oil and gold won't keep on going up.

Regarding American empire, here is a post I made on the FNM board: "I do wish opponents of American hegemony would provide better alternatives than police-state PRC, theocratic Iran or wanna-be dictator Hugo Chavez." While the Bushite model, for lack of a better word, sucks, the alternatives seem to be the ones I mentioned, or the de facto isolationism of the European Union combined with the unable to agree on anything United Nations.

Well, I'm about ready to head off to work and deal with the fallout of the backups. I hope no drives got damaged over the weekend.

Ah -- how could I forget -- my FBR was stopped out today at 10.25. If it gets down to $9 a share, I'll get back in. For now, I'm out. My portfolio is getting smaller and smaller!

I *really* mistimed KMP. I suppose investing in high-yield, interest sensitive stocks in a time of rising interest rates wasn't the greatest of ideas.

Well, Bush's approval ratings have hit 29%. We have gone out of Carter 1980 territory and entered Nixon 1974 territory; the next stop is Truman 1952 territory. Let's see if there are more polls showing a sub-30 rating -- remember these polls were taken before the NSA database. I'm not sure whether this'll up his ratings or drag it down a few more points, since it seems Mr. and Mrs. America don't have a problem with this. It's as if Bush gets a new scandal every week, one worse than the next.

The doctor told me that I had an allergy and a viral cold showed up sometime early this week. He prescribed a decongestant.

I'm bummed. I spent all day at work installing some application, and then as soon as I did what I could there, I had to babysit a tape drive replacement on the jukebox. Apparently, the backup server no longer sees that particular drive, and a jbconfig and a boot -r haven't fixed the problem. I'm out of patience and since backups start in about 40 minutes, out of time.

Well, we'll see what my wife wants for dinner. She's been known to change her mind on a dime, but since I'm not really set on anything, it's no big deal.

One of these days I will figure out how to turn comments on. Of course, the only person who'll comment will be the occasional relative and the more occasional spammer, but I suppose a guy can dream, can't he?

Still sick. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for 11:30am tomorrow. Hopefully the doctor won't automatically assume it's an ordinary cold and tell me to drink plenty of orange juice and get lots of sleep (stuff I'm already doing.) I'm not sure what they do to check for other things, like strep throat, sinus infections, etc. I just hope I'm not spreading this to everyone at the office, but I've thought that the contagious period is early on when you're not sure if you're sick or not. By the time you're sounding horrible, you're already getting better.

I got stopped out of my GOOD position, but I only got 17.55 for it, instead of the 18.00 I was hoping to get. Small annoyance, but I made well 15% on the stock including dividends. If we get below 17, I will jump back in. There is a decent management team -- these are the guys who made ALD a powerhouse.

In other news, it seems I might want to acquire a firearm. I need to double-check post 201,283 on the FNM board, there is some advice on there.

Side challenge: Can anyone name anything that the Bush team has done right in the past year? The most recent scandal as I'm sure you've read, is the NSA generating a database of ALL calls.

Of course, most of the Kool-Aid Republicans aren't going to care one bit. It's for our safety, we're told. The options seem to be a 0.01% chance of dying in a terror attack with our pre-9/11 freedoms, or having a 0.001% chance of dting in a terror attack with our freedoms slowly and surely being taken away. FWIW, why didn't the terror law passed after OKC stop the 9/11 plotters?

As promised, my filk. This is a 70s hit called "Ooh Child" by the Five Stairsteps. Yes, I should be ashamed of myself for thinking it was by the Wondermints. Here's the post I made. When another poster on the FNM Yahoo! board said it was terrible, I posted the lyrics to Melanie's "Brand New Key." I love me some bad 70s music. LOL

I say we should all put our thoughts to song.

Ooh Child (orig. by the the Five Stairsteps)
(remake lyrics adapted by S. Pickrell, and perf. by the Original Mudd Band)

Ooh child earnings gonna get submitted
Ooh child 10-K'll be all right
Ooh child earnings gonna get submitted
Ooh child 10-K'll be all right

Someday yeah, we'll put it together and we'll get all GAAP'ed
Someday when we value things rightly
Someday yeah, we'll get the value of derivatives mapped
Someday when Franklin is still sprightly

Ooh child earnings gonna get submitted
Ooh child 10-K'll be all right
Ooh child earnings gonna get submitted
Ooh child 10-K'll be all right

Someday yeah, we'll put it together and we'll get all GAAP'ed
Someday, rightly
Someday yeah, we'll get the value of derivatives mapped
Someday, sprightly

Someday yeah, we'll put it together and we'll get all GAAP'ed
Someday, rightly
Someday yeah, we'll get the value of derivatives mapped
Someday, sprightly

Ooh child earnings gonna get submitted
Ooh child 10-K'll be all right
Ooh child earnings gonna get submitted
Ooh child 10-K'll be all right

Right now
You just wait and see, things are gonna be

Well, trying to get over a cold right now. I'll be heading to work but I'll be taking Blue Top to and from work -- I don't know if I can handle the mile of walking through the dusty air that usually hasn't given me a problem.

In investment land today, we found out this week that Warren Buffett sold his silver. To think that silver has gone from $7-8 an ounce to $14 (!) an ounce -- while Buffett was presumably unloading his silver -- over the past year is astounding. I will sink a few grand into SLV, the new silver ETF, if the price dips below $13.50 again.

I am still at a loss on USO (the oil ETF) and have made a bit more with GLD, now that gold is touching $700 an ounce. I will unload my physical if I can get enough money to pay off my mortgage. Otherwise, why sell now?

I got to cover my GM short at a loss today -- $26. Ugh. That stunk to high heaven. Still long ACAS, FBR, GLD, GOOD, KMP, USO and WRE. I have moderate stop losses on those, and am sitting on a decent gain with GLD (8-10%), GOOD (15%) and WRE (30%) , and a moderate loss on ACAS, KMP and USO (in the range of 4-6% on each of them.)

FNM is also rolling. One of these days they will release an earnings report. I'll post a song I modified in my next post.