California vs. the South

In California, people are hostile to strange people but welcoming to strange ideas. In the South, people are welcoming to strange people, but hostile to strange ideas. When I told this to my friend who lives in New Jersey, he said "That's interesting, because here in New Jersey everyone is hostile to both!"

On Barry Bonds

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The Yahoo Spam Test

Day 0

I have created a new Yahoo! ID, one that is not memorable or obvious, and is not a word. I will not use this ID for any purpose at all, not as an email, not for file storage, and I will not sign in with this new ID except once a month in order to inspect the email in the Inbox and the Spam folder.

This should let us know how much of the web's spam is created by Yahoo! itself. If this ID is used by anyone other than by Yahoo! (who will use it for their official communiques), then we will know that Yahoo! gave this email address to the spammer.

I did this test once before, about four years ago, but I did not document it.

Here is the first instance of the inbox, from two minutes after the account was created:

Our Son's Name's Domain Names

I have just registered our son-to-be's first name middle name dot com plus one alternate spelling dot com, as well as his first name last name dot com. (We are not telling anyone what we are thinking will be his name; about six more weeks to go, and we have to see whether he fits his name before we announce it. We think he will!)

We came up with a name for a daughter long before we got pregnant. Turns out we are having a boy, though, and so we thought long and hard about what to name him. One day, while talking to him through Maria's belly wall, his name came out of my mouth without my thinking about it, and that was that. We could not believe it. It just fit, and we knew it.

So, we are waiting to be introduced to the little kicker, and then we will announce his name. And then I can can publish his website as well, with maybe a baby photo or two plus endless stories of his first diaper, his first meal, his first curse word, etc.

A couple final details: common as his name will be, it does not appear anywhere in any book of baby names. Also, one friend came extremely close to guessing it correctly, but we did not let on, so they did not know.