techcafeteria

Okay, so I understand that you have a lot of time on your hands, and that you choose to, apparently, spend a significant amount of that time trying desperately to post spam advertising gambling and prescription drug websites to the guest book on my Krazy Kat web site. Let’s review:

First, you started posting very large HTML spams to the guest book. Since the guest book is moderated, those came to me for approval by email. My guestbook is set up to email me the post, followed by a link I can click on to automatically publish it. I approve anything that’s remotely on topic, the exceptions falling into three categories:

• People posting obscenities or other childish, inane comments;
  
• Messages that seem to be of a commercial nature – krazy.com is only interested in advocating for the works of George Herriman and entities that directly support Herriman’s memory, such as Fantagraphics publishing, and
  
• People doing obvious test posts that have little or no content.

I’m certain that you didn’t intend for this, but the giant, heavily-coded spams that you initially posted had a nasty habit of hanging not only my web-based email client, but also the web server that hosts it (which is not the same server that the site is on). So, after verifying that you are crafty enough to come in from a variety of IP addresses, which rules out simply blocking you, I added a little code to make the maximum post size far smaller than your average post (which is still four times the size of anything that has ever been legitimately posted).

Here’s the thing: At this point, I had no idea that you were so personally committed to poisoning my guest book. I assumed that this was an automated effort going after numerous guest books on the web, and that my size block would simply automate the process of rejecting your spam; you might not even notice. Boy, was I wrong! You actually think the ten Herriman fans or so a day who read my guestbook are the prime demographic for your online gambling and Cialis marketing. Amazing! What do you base this on? Did you pay for this market research?

So you noted the size limit, and then spent, what, about 90 minutes figuring out how to edit your spam enough to fit my restriction? Then you posted two spams, which came to me for approval, and guess what? I didn’t approve them. What a shock to the system that must have been!

So, an hour later, I get a guest book submission with one word: sex. I don’t approve it. Was that you, using the full breadth of your imaginative powers, doing a test? A few hours later, a benign post: “I love Ignatz; I must be Krazy”. Well, that’s on topic! If that one was you testing, congratulations! You passed. I published it.

And today I get yet another gambling spam post, this one cut down to just a few lines. I can only imagine the anxiety you must have felt, waiting for me to review it, waiting to see if maybe… maybe… perhaps, this attempt to use my guestbook as a further voicepiece for offensive spam will work! And now I’m imagining the dejection, the despair, as it becomes increasingly clear that I have used my god-like editorial powers to censor you once again.

So, at this point, I don’t know how resourceful you are. I don’t know how obsessed you are. All I really know is that you don’t make good choices on how to enjoy life – that I’m sure of. If you want to continue, and you come up with some way of making this really annoying for me, then, yes, I’ll shut down the guestbook. You will have succeeded in single-handedly removing the ability for people who appreciate Krazy Kat and want to discuss the strip at the Krazy Kat website from doing so.

You do understand—this is not a business. I make zero money for running krazy.com. I am not going to let it become someone else’s commercial venture, and I’m really perplexed as to why you are pursuing this as vigorously as you are. There are a lot of web sites out there, that get far more traffic than my site. My recommendation, and request, is that you move on. And consider that there are ways of making a living that don’t involve being a blight on the Internet. I mean, what do you do now if you’re out on a date, or at a family gathering, and someone asks you what you do for a living? Do you say, “Well, you know all of those offensive ads for rip-off online gambling and penile erection drugs that you get in your inbox; that your children get in their inboxes? I’m the guy who sends them!”

Self-esteem issues, perhaps? Sheesh!

With over 8 million blogs out there (as of March, when I saw Mena Trott, founder of blogging service Six Apart, speak at the NTEN Non-Profit Technology conference), there’s a real good question as to why someone like me would add another “sad, default-Blogger-templated website” to the giant heap of the same out there. Well, I have a few reasons.

Mainly, while most people set up blogs and then notice how conveniently they can distribute them via RSS (Really Simple Syndication), I got here from the reverse direction. I have a need to strategically publish content to a variety of web sites, and RSS is an effective tool to do it. By maintaining a blog, I can pretty handily write all of that content here and then selectively copy it where it needs to go. The destinations for these posts include www.krazy.com, my website devoted to the classic cartoon “Krazy Kat” and it’s author, George Herriman; a private web site inside San Francisco Goodwill that I maintain (running on Drupal), where I blog on technology issues relevant to my organization and role as IT Director; and, possibly, the Digital Divide Network, where I am hoping to be more active.

Secondly, I think I have enough web street cred to be legitimate. I wasn’t born on the web yesterday. In 1989, I ran a computerized Bulletin Board system (BBS) out of my home. I wrote software to convert Usenet newsgroups to PCBoard BBS format so I could carry them for my callers. I registered krazy.com in 1994, and had a web site up there by January of 1995, a little earlier than most of you, right? Since about 2000, you’ve been able to find my web site at Google by typing “krazy kat” in the box and pressing “I’m Feeling Lucky”. The Coconino County Homepage is the first unsponsored link at just about any search engine when you look for either “Krazy Kat” or “George Herriman”.

Third, I hope to grow this into more than just a blog. WordPress supports adding additional pages, and RSS feeds on related topics, as well as forums and other features are likely additions in the months to come. Ultimate goal: port the whole Krazy Kat web site to WordPress as well.

Finally, this is not a place where you’re going to hear cute stories about my dog, and I promise to keep the “blogging about blogs” itch scratched, as much as possible. I will discuss related technologies, but from my perspective as a technology strategist, which I think puts a broader slant on things then just “ain’t it cool”. I’ll also throw in some biographical/political/pure opinion stuff, but I’ll try to keep it entertaining.

So, again, welcome!