I mentioned previously that there’s a hunting guide in East Texas who signed up for my gun show announcement list who just doesn’t seem to “get it.”  He’s tried three times now to spam the announcement list, even after being told that it’s an announcement-only list and he can’t send stuff to the list.  Last night I sent out an announcement to the whole group about the updates to the gun show listing.  His reply (in ALL CAPS no less) was to ask if there are any gun shows in the DFW area this week.  I was tempted to reply by asking him if he was intentionally being daft to yank my chain, given that the freakin’ list is on the web page. 

At least I know who not to engage if I ever want a hunting guide. 

As I mentioned in my last post, batteries suck, especially the puny rechargeables in my Tungsten T3.  I was digging around for some kind of portable backup so that I could keep using the T3 when I wasn’t near an outlet.  While Googling around, I came across this exercise in bad taste.  It’s a USB powered desktop Christmas tree.

However odd that may be, though, the prize for most inappropriate use of USB power has to belong to the USB powered vibrator.  I know some people get really attached to their laptops, but this is going just a tiny bit too far.

As some of you may know I maintain a list of gun shows for the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  It gets around 4000 hits a month by people looking for information on gun shows in the area.  What I find interesting is that I have a big disclaimer at the top of the page explaining that I’m not officially connected with any of the shows:

Important disclaimer—please read: I am not a promoter and do not have any official connection to the shows that are listed. If you have questions about the show or about promoting your product or service at a show, please contact the promoter directly.

Despite this, I still get a couple of requests a month via the contact form asking for information on how to get a table at one show or another.  What’s worse is that clicking the show’s date will take you to the show entry page, where the promoter’s phone number is given.  Clicking the show venue will take you to the promoter’s website.  I don’t know how I can make it any more simple, especially given the disclaimer. 

While I’m griping about the gun show list, it’s also starting to attract spammers.  I give a form at the bottom of the gun show page for people to subscribe to get announcements whenever I change the show listings.  When you sign up you get an email confirmation from the list manager, which appears to come from the list’s email address.  A few spammers have trolled the form and grabbed the email address and then attempted to spam the list.  But since it’s an announce-only list, the email only comes to me, rather than going to the whole list.  But what’s worse is a hunting guide from East Texas who signed up for the list and then attempted to send announcements to the list promoting his services.  I’ve told him twice now that he can’t send announcements because I’m the only one who can do that (and further that I consider it spamming to try to send stuff to my list given that I explicitly promise at the bottom of the form to use the list for gun show announcements only).  I’m hoping that he got the message the last time, but we’ll see.

Given this guy’s reaction to the election, you’d think someone pissed in his Wheaties this morning.  It’s rife with righteous anger and indignation as well as being full of bogus stereotypes about American Southerners.  As somone who lives in the South, I thought I’d reply to one small part, though:

The self-righteous, gun-totin’, military lovin’, sister marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport ownin’ red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land “free and strong”.

Let’s go through the litany one-by-one:

• gun-totin’  Ok.  I’ll give him this one.  But it is a human right and I choose to exercise my human rights.
• military lovin’  I’m not sure what’s wrong with this, so let’s move on.
• sister marryin’  Dude, that’s so worn out.  Have you actually ever been to the South?
• abortion-hatin’  I’m not sure why anyone would love abortion.  Still, I’m not advocating that it be made illegal.
• gay-loathin’  Wrong.  Some of my best friends are gay, and anyone who wants to bash them is going to have to get through me (and a hail of bullets; hmm… perhaps that gun-totin’ thing isn’t so bad after all) to do it.
• foreigner-despisin’  I don’t have a problem with foreigners, provided they don’t try to tell us how to run our country.  I welcome anyone who wants to come here and see what America’s all about.  I also welcome anyone who wants to become a citizen.
• non-passport ownin’ red-necks  Hmm… I’ve got a passport and while my neck is a bit brown, I don’t see any red there in the mirror.

As for the God bit, I’m an agnostic.  Amazingly, I haven’t been rounded up and put into the religious camps yet.  But you never know… 

I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed by the excruciatingly early Christmas commercials and displays we’re being subjected to by retailers.  They got started well before Halloween (or at least Lowe’s did).  I understand getting Christmas catalogs out early, given the usual lead time for mail order houses, but the stores have crossed the line this year.

I’d like to give the people responsible for this a good shake, but barring that I suppose I will try an alternative method to get their attention.  Others are doing Presidential pledges.  I propose a Christmas pledge.

Specifically, I pledge that I will not play their game.  Until Thanksgiving is complete, I pledge not to buy any presents, trees, lights, wreaths, foods, candies, fruitcakes, or any other Christmas paraphernalia. 

Bah and Humbug, I say.

This was supposed to be a quiet week between last week’s trip and another trip I have to take next week.  But somehow along the way my calendar has been infested with 17 meetings for the week.  And it’s only Tuesday, so it’s likely that more will be added, likely on top of each other, given how things went yesterday and today (there were originally 19, but I had to reject two of them due to conflicts).  What’s annoying about this is that the people calling these meetings have access to a button in the scheduler that lets them check to see if their meeting fits into everyone’s schedule (it will even propose alternate times, based on meeting duration and availability of all participants).  The fact that they send me meeting invitations that overlap other meetings tends to make me a bit crazy, since it indicates a lack of respect for the meeting participants (as well as a “me first” mentality).  Often, these are the same people who don’t have agendas and are pathologically incapable of ending a meeting on time.

Continuing with the Christmas theme from the last post, I’ve noticed Christmas displays going up in several stores over the past few weeks (in addition to the big pile of catalogs I’ve received).  I find this annoying, given that we haven’t even had Thanksgiving yet (for that matter, some of these displays went up two weeks before Halloween).

It’s too damn early for this crap.  I’m not ready to think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving.  At the rate the stores are going, they might as well keep their displays up year round…

I’ve been slowly making my way through my accumulated mail from last week.  I just now looked at the Sam’s Club Holiday Gift Guide and discovered their special Orange County Choppers Fantasy Package.

There’s only one available.  The first Sam’s Club member to wire $137,000 to the holding account gets the package.

Since purses for guys never really caught on (not that I’m complaining, given that they always seemed a bit froofy for my tastes), I tend to carry a lot of crap in my pockets.  So I was quite interested when I learned about this company and their products today.  You can get vests from them with up to 42 hidden pockets for all your electronic gadgets.  They even have a model with solar panels that allows you to recharge USB devices.

I really like the idea of the hidden pockets.  They’re contained inside the garment so you’re not flashing your electronics for the world to see.

While waiting for the wee (and not so wee) beasties to come begging for candy I kept an ear on the scanner to see what else was going on in the area.  It sounded to me like a fair number of teenagers decided to skip the treat business and proceed directly to trick.  There were calls for teenagers driving wrecklessly, teens harassing trick-or-treaters, teens throwing eggs at houses and cars, and even one about teens throwing water balloons from their cars at other cars (almost causing the caller to have a wreck).

The calls stopped about the same time as the trick-or-treaters petered out, which was the same time a thunderstorm rolled in.  Unfortunately, this left me with a pile of candy.  Since I don’t go into the office any more, I can’t pawn this stuff off on my coworkers.  I think most of it will land in the trash, especially the smarties and those nasty little Marvel candy sticks (the boxes were cool, but the candy sucked).