Category: Miscellaneous babble

Well, this is a new one (for me anyway). Spam coming through Amazon’s seller contact form. Like lots of other people, I sell some of my unneeded books on Amazon. The profile page has a ‘Contact this seller’ link that sends you to a form where you can send a message to the seller asking questions. Today this obviously spammy message was waiting for me in my mailbox

How are you! I am very interested in this production. Is it new or secondhand ? I used to buy something on ‘_______________’, Because I found that most of the goods on the website are more cheaper than on the amazon. I would like to buy what I need if you can list the goods on it.

I removed the mangled URL (no doubt mangled to escape whatever URL filters Amazon might have in place), since the last thing I want to do is help the dumb spammers along. I wonder how many other Amazon sellers have this problem.

That was the traditional cry at the door when we went trick-or-treating as a kid. We used “trick-or-treat” too, but mostly it was kids shouting “Halloween apples!”. No idea where it came from, but that’s what we did.
I’ve never been much of a Halloween person, and was never really into getting into costume or going trick-or-treating as a kid. Most of the time there was snow on the ground already, so there wasn’t really much point in dressing up because you had to put a coat on top of the costume anyway. We always had lots of kids at our door though back home and usually stayed pretty busy handing out candy and dropping change for UNICEF into the little orange boxes.
Last week, we bought a couple of bags of candy to hand out to the expected trick-or-treaters. A few days ago, the wife bought some more, having forgotten that she already bought some several days earlier. I know there are a few families in the area so we were expecting a few kids trick-or-treating yesterday. Only 1 kid showed up at our door last night. Perhaps we missed them because of coming home a little bit later than usual. Perhaps kids don’t go trick-or-treating anymore like we used to. It’s definitely become a much more paranoid time than it used to be when I was a kid. I remember when I was back home working at the hospital during my undergrad, the x-ray department in the ER would be busy x-raying buckets and bags of candy that kids and their families brought in. Nothing was ever found though. But the paranoia remains. Kinda sad, I suppose.
In any case, we have a bunch of candy left over now. Darn 🙂

Oreo arose from the dead to communicate with me last night and confirm that he did indeed get hitched on Tuesday. With nary a call, email or invite, he went and got married with no Hooligans in sight. Another opportunity for Hooligan celebration missed.

A hearty congratulations to the newlyweds! You owe us a big party though.

Don’t forget your wallet when you move to Wisconsin.

TS Beta (2005) sprouted up off the coast of Nicaragua and looks to be heading inland slowly. May even reach hurricane status before it reaches the coast.
5 weeks left in the season. The tally so far:
Tropical Depressions: 26
Named storms: 23
Tropical Storms: 11
Hurricanes: 12
Major hurricanes: 6 (Dennis, Emily, Katrina, Maria, Rita, Wilma)
Gamma? Delta? I wonder how many more greek letters this year’s season will dig into. This year has already topped the <a href=”http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/NHC‘s revised predictionsfrom August for named storms and hurricanes. There are a couple of areas to watch still in the Atlantic and eastern Carribean. We may just see storms 24 and 25 by the time next week starts.
From this morning’s Tropical Weather Outlook:

A TROPICAL WAVE IS SPREADING CLOUDINESS AND SHOWERS OVER THE LESSER ANTILLES… WITH THE MOST CONCENTRATED ACTIVITY NEAR THE WINDWARD ISLANDS. THERE ARE NO SIGNS OF TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION AT THIS TIME. HOWEVER… UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE GRADUALLY BECOMING A LITTLE MORE CONDUCIVE FOR GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT AS THE WAVE MOVES WESTWARD INTO THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN SEA.

A WEAK LOW PRESSURE AREA ASSOCIATED WITH A TROPICAL WAVE IS LOCATED ABOUT MIDWAY BETWEEN AFRICA AND THE LESSER ANTILLES. UPPER-LEVEL LEVEL WINDS ARE NOT FAVORABLE FOR SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT.

My med student wife is trying to pimp me out to her fellow med student colleagues as a practice dummy so they can work on their exam techniques on Friday. She says it won’t be anything invasive but I’m still not liking this. I think I will arrange to be very busy Friday.