Spamrogance

After working as the ‘IT guy’ at a company for 5 years, I’ve seen a lot of spam. Whenever I opened up my inbox I would be confronted with maybe 20 messages, with the usual V1@GRA titles (or some funnier ones, like ‘my SPERM volume has TRIPLED since taking this CUMpills‘ – I wasn’t aware that people felt like low sperm volume was a self-confidence issue)..anyway…

Some people get mad at spam…they get tricked into clicking on links, installing viruses and spyware, have their bank info hacked and generally screw up their computers. I don’t. I can spot spam. I know the difference between an email from Paypal and an email from P@yp@l. Well at least I thought I did…

Last night, 5am, this message is sitting in my Gmail inbox:

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So do I know someone called lucy marjory? No.

Is my name jkoptie? No.

Do I even watch Heroes? Not since I found out the Cheerleader wasn’t going to get naked.

So why the filter did I click on the link in the email?! Well, two reasons. Firstly, I was hammer-drunk. Not an excuse, but a mitigating factor. Secondly, CURIOSITY! I like to watch ‘underground’ videos (not THOSE SORT OF VIDEOS)…like alternate endings to films (I am Legend)…stuff banned from TV (Jerry Springer ‘I married a horse’ anyone?)…and of course – celebrity sex tapes (ok that is THAT SORT OF VIDEO, but it’s Paris!).

But sadly, curiosity killed the cat…and the link in the email lead to a lot of pussy (I didn’t check if it was dead) and nothing to do with blogs or Heroes. I was devastated. My spamrogance(tm) blinded me to the obvious hallmarks of a fake email. I’m big enough to admit it, because I don’t want anyone else to fall like I did.

My advice – If you think you’ll never be tricked into clicking on a spam link, you’re wrong. If you feel stupid when you ask your nerdy friend for advice about whether your bank REALLY needs you to reconfirm your address, don’t worry – you’re just watching your back and being responsible. Good for you.

Oh yeah, and don’t check your email when drunk…or you might end up with three litres of $3/\/\3/\/ in the post. Try explaining that to your girlfriend.

Hooters, Shanghai

So…true story…we’re looking for an authentic Chinese restaurant to try near Zun Yi Nan Lu when my eyes get distracted…

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Well, in honour of my dad (who is a HUGE birdwatching fan), I thought that going to an owl-themed restaurant would be a great way to spend the day!

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I was getting quite excited as we went in, because clearly birdwatching in China has no social stigma attached to it (as is the case in the UK). The bar was bright, clean and very cheerful.

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There really wasn’t a single anorak in sight…I was starting to wonder if we’d walked into the wrong restaurant! There seemed to be the odor of ‘lady’ in the air, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on its source. I motioned to one of the twitchers to come over…

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And then I realised that we may have come to the wrong place…it was in fact an American Diner masquerading as a bird-watching den…but since we’d already ordered, we figured we’d stick it out…

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This is Annie, our waitress. I know her name because she wrote it down on a napkin as we sat down. Since I’m rarely on first name terms with serving staff, we asked her a few questions about how much fun it was to work in Hooters, where she was from, what time she finished…but before she could answer…

…all of the staff grabbed chairs, pulled them into the aisle of the bar and stood up straight…then danced in sync to some trashy pop song (hey I didn’t say I didn’t like it) called ‘L-O-V-E’ for about 5 minutes. I (foolishly) thought it would be a little bit ‘Bangkok pool hall’ to film this…looking back, I messed up.

There seemed to be a hierachy to staff, with each level being granted a different outfit. All black is the hottest…followed by the trainees (pretty hot, but sometimes with a flaw (like a moustache or a limp)) wearing white tops with orange shorts…and the kitchen staff wore black tshirts with black trousers. This may seem like peripheral info, until you see….

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…a brown hoody?! Everyone’s wearing the skimpiest of skimp and you’re wearing a brown hoody? Either this girl was the BOSS of the BOSS or someone didn’t want her flaunting her assets near our food. Either way, sadly, I don’t see a future in this business for her.

But these two…

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…have a long career ahead, and luckily:

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I have the autograph!

Happy Birthday Cheesie!

I helped make this gallery for a special buddy of mine, Cheesie! See it in action @ Cheeserland (her blog).

It was really quite simple to make, once we had all the submissions from her friends and fans!

To sort the photos on my computer I used Picasa (from Google) and the Tiltviewer template for exporting. Once the gallery was prepared on my computer, I upload to my server and BAM…job done. There are lots of ways of customizing it by editing the index.html file which is created after export…so have a play around!