So I changed offices today at work. They put me back in with the guys I used to be with -- except for one fellow. And as luck would have it, my beloved Model M keyboard was too loud for the new space. And I was using the quiet version even -- specially bought for this shared office situation!

So I had to march myself down to the parts guys and get a new, quieter, shitty keyboard. It's fucking hell typing on that thing. My wrists hurt after only a couple hours. I'm bringing in a quiet-ish, less shitty (but still not completely good) keyboard tomorrow. If that one isn't quiet enough, then I'll bring in my vintage 1987 loud-ass Model M and type out a novel on it.

In retaliation, I availed myself of the lamb curry from the cafe and was inclined to take it to-go, so that I could eat lunch in my new office.

You know that you're bound for a happy day when the drive into work features the asshole in the beamer who cut you off 5 minutes earlier parked on the side of the road with a cop behind him. I just love seeing BMWs getting pulled over. And if you get to respond to their prior shenanigans by flipping them off as you drive by, so much the better.

I got plenty done today (mostly due to my upbeat mood), including finishing an XML-based thing I was doing. More internal tools leveraged, so that ups my score a little come review time. Plus it'll save a few folks some time and effort down the road, so it's a nice thing to have behind me. Later in the day, I bailed out on TGIF, happened to meet Tess as I was driving back from the hardware store and we went shopping for groceries. Got home before 6:30!

And the best part is that I was doing it all in my new boots:

These are the handmade orthopedic work boots of which I've enthused about on a previous occasion. They really fit my feet extremely well, but they were so stiff at first that it felt as though I had strapped bricks to my feet. But they're loosening up nicely. I went and ordered some Pecards shoe butter for them. It's supposed to lube all the fibers up and help them start conforming (waterproofs the leather, too).

Now, I'm going to install Windows on a tiny PC hooked up to my TV, and have a strong drink or two. I have one more small cigar left for after dinner, too. All in all, a happy day.

If you find yourself the recipient of a spammy blog comment, and the spammer happens to be using a Gmail account as their "return address" for the comment, then Google provides a .

The cool part was that I didn't even have to go log into a work machine to find out who I needed to talk to (at work) about these low-lifes! I've met a few guys on the Gmail team, but looking up their email addresses and writing them an email from my work account would involve dragging out the laptop and such. Too much effort for a Saturday morning. I (sort of recursively, I guess) did a Google search for Gmail spam abuse and there was the form. How meta-handy is that?

It's much better to use the official abuse form than try to "back channel" it anyway. Added bonus is that anyone can report Gmail abuse using that form, and it wasn't hard to find.

I've never bothered looking for a Yahoo abuse form, since I long ago blocked any yahoo.com address from being able to leave comments here. So I can't say what those guys are doing. Seems like a lot of junk comes from the yahoo.com domain, though. (Maybe because it's been around longer than gmail.com?) I did some numbers a while back and close to half of the spammy comments left here had a yahoo.com at the end of the email address. So rather than report each one, I just blocked the entire domain.

But the really sad part was the spammy comment left today was for a kid's website. Kids! The website they wanted to clog search results with was this one: http://www.funbrain.com/. As you can see from for the phrases used in my spam comment, this particular slimeball has been quite busy lately. Just pathetic...

Anyway, I'll try pretty darn hard to see that they don't get to leave any more spam with that account.

I went to drop off my lunch tray and happened to notice that the two fellows playing pool on the billiards table next to the mini-kitchen were Tibetan monks. Maroon robes, shaved heads, beads on the belts, the works. The one guy was pretty good, but for some reason the visual anacronism was enough that I just couldn't stop chuckling and so had to get out of there.