• GetLessMail without getmail — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  Adopting a disconnected second pass
  Tags: chipstips ruby email spam filtering
• Do you ever bad-mouth clients’ previous consultants? | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  No, I just insult their mothers, and the entire canine genus.
  Tags: techrepublic consulting
• Struggling with Rubinius — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  Got me in a database headlock.
  Tags: chipstips ruby rubinius

• Rachel Held Evans | Did Anne Frank go to hell?
  A very good question for fundamentalists to ponder,
  Thanks, Dan.
  Tags: fundamentalism hell religion christianity annefrank
• Synthesis 2.2: full compatibility for Unix, .NET, Synergy/DE 9.5 — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  Yes, we can just all get along.
  Tags: chipstips synthesis synergyde
• Would you sign this consulting agreement? | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  Would you step into this gas chamber?
  Tags: techrepublic consulting contracts

• Averting an unintentional DOS attack on my spam filter — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  My own son attacked me with music!
  Tags: chipstips ruby spam dos
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  The price of early success
  Tags: smbc peanuts achievement
• Do you take CMS work even if it doesn’t pay much? | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  Do you eat wax fruit, too?
  Tags: techrepublic consulting wordpress joomla drupal cms donanza

• blogstrapping: Vimium and Other Chrome Extensions
  Hooray! Chad got Vimium working on FreeBSD. I'm going to try Chromium as my default browser for a while and see how it goes.
  Tags: apotheon vimium chrome freebsd
• Seven ideas for learning how to program | Programming and Development | TechRepublic.com
  8. Have to.
  Tags: techrepublic apotheon programming autodidact
• Tax questions IT consultants should ask their accountants | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  "Can I get away with this?" and "How bad would it be if I get caught?"
  Tags: techrepublic consulting taxes

• GM’s Volt: 10 million lines of code – SmartPlanet
  Blurring the line between the definitions of 'crash'.
  Tags: software automotive electriccars volt
• Per-CPU usage stats for FreeBSD revisited — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  The life and times of a humble port.
  Tags: freebsd chipstips utility
• Microsoft visionary Ray Ozzie heads out the door – Oct. 18, 2010
  You know you're in for trouble when the prophet moves out of town.
  Tags: microsoft rayozzie

With a title like that, you might think this post more properly belongs on the head lemur’s blog, which bears the title “raving lunacy – oxymorons for the 21st century”.

Lately I’ve been receiving more spam comments on this blog, many of which get past Akismet, that attempt to read like real comments. They make general observations about the wisdom of the post, or complain about some technical problem. That’s probably why they elude spam filtering, because they sound germane — although a human (like I pretend to be) can quickly recognize that they don’t address the topic of conversation at all. They usually occur on older, high-traffic posts, too. So I delete one or two of these per day.

Today I happened to notice this one:

In case you aren’t viewing images (or can’t make it out), the comment reads:

I will tell fairly … the first time has come on your site on purpose “clever spam”. But to write that that close on a theme it is necessary to read. Has started to read – it was pleasant, Has subscribed and with pleasure I read. Very to be pleasant your site – interesting The maintenance, pleasant design for reading …

Ironically, Akismet caught this one.

• xkcd: Tech Support
  Aw man, I was all psyched to try the code word next time…
  Tags: xkcd techsupport humor
• IT consultants, document your work! | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  No, source code alone does not constitute documentation.
  Tags: techrepublic consulting documentation
• You Might Be A Computing Old Timer If … – Reed’s Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed
  Six out of ten — I guess that makes me a Slightly Used Timer?
  Tags: computing history

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
To bring unto these western nations
The gifts of western civilization:
Disease, enslavement, Christianity
(But please forgive my redundancy).

• blogstrapping – Blog Strap Ping
  Subscribed.
  Tags: apotheon blogstrapping
• Keeping the client relationship fresh | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  Fresh, not on ice.
  Tags: consulting techrepublic
• blogstrapping
  The Virtues of Lump
  Tags: apotheon cms blogging larrywall programming

• Object-Disoriented Programming – Twenty Sided
  Unfortunately, this problem isn't limited to C++.
  Via the Code Project.
  Tags: opensource programming freesoftware reuse
• UK bans pregnant nun ice cream ad – CNN.com
  Best comment: fordlvr1
  

  Gotta watch out for those thought police. Luckily this sets precedent for blocking anything that one group may find offensive. I find commercials in general offensive, that mean we can finally get rid of em all and just stick to the shows?

  
  Tags: censorship religion

• Compensation survey reveals consultants’ optimism | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  Funded, or unfounded?
  Tags: consulting techrepublic