Archive for November, 2006

Go give blood, please

November 30, 2006 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

You’ll meet some amazing people there.

We had lunch at the Olive Garden, which shares a parking lot with Macon’s only remaining clothing-fabric store and the blood donation center. On the way out, I decided to run by the fabric shop and see what was new. But first I figured I’d drop in at the blood center. Last week, Maureen, the volunteer coordinator, called me, out of the blue, to let me know she was thinking about me. She wasn’t trying to get me in to give; I’m ineligible for at least two more years. She just wanted to see what was up.

So, Maureen was there and came up to hug me and we spent an hour catching up. I’ve only seen her at the center and even during my most frequent visits, I was only there for two hours every two weeks. And her office isn’t in the donation center, so it’s not like we spent those two hours in the same room. She even remembered IkeGetDownFromThere. Ike’s a memorable cat, but really, to remember the pet of a donor. I’m so blessed with these people in my life.

Of course, Maureen had pictures of the latest children receiving platelets and knew all their stories. So, please go give blood and there will be another amazing person there.

(See, isn’t this better than an ad for celebrity photos?)

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The Care and Feeding of Blogs

November 29, 2006 at 4:27 pm · Filed under Day to Day Blather

It might be very easy to forget you have a blog. Especially if you post to it as infrequently as I do.

But I have one of those sorta demanding blogs. It won’t let me forget it. At first, this was a very nice thing. I’d post and people would comment and I’d get copies of their comments via email. The comments were incredibly supportive; it was great to know someone was out there.

Well, now, I’m not posting. But I’m still getting comments. Of course, you might think people were still being supportive, and I’m sure they would be, but ya know, not many people feel the need to be supportive of a surgery 7 months after the fact, when I’m back and as good as ever.

No, instead, I’m hearing from the same people everyone on the Internet is hearing from–the spammers. They’ve figured out how to automatically search out blog entries and add comments to them. I could just abandon this blog and let the spammers have it, but I’m just too ornery for that. It’s become like a game. They post a comment to an old entry and I go in and delete it. I win if I delete it before anyone else sees it. I get extra points if I delete it less than an hour after its posted (I think my record is 9 minutes). They win if you order Canadian pills to make your hair grow larger and weigh less from them.

So far, I’m way ahead.

I hope.

They also are trying to post fake trackbacks, but the software is pretty good and has found most of them so far. There have been over 3000 fake trackbacks almost posted in the last 2 months.

So, this is what I’m doing instead of grading essay questions from my freshmen. I figure anything I post will probably be better than spam and it does help the morning walks go by faster to try to reflect on something other than asphalt.

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