Blessed by the Potato

I got my thesis back from the printers!

It’s so weird how unreal it seems — I was able to grasp that the masters was finally done up until I picked up the actual printed proof, and now it all seems so unreal again. I would have thought holding the book in my hands would have the opposite effect.

I’m not very impressed by the super-expensive “thesis paper” they printed it on — it’s thinner than my resume cotton bond paper that was cheaper to get from Staples. Of course, that didn’t have the weird water mark on it. Plus, all the pages stick together along the bottom edge, so I have to be really careful about turning them. Now, I have to find a free spot on my shelf to keep it, because sitting here on the floor probably isn’t going to work for me in the long run.

I just got a call from a credit card company. Miraculously, I have been pre-selected for a mastercard… the exact same one I already have (from the same bank).

It got me thinking to just how ridiculous some spam is these days. To get past spam filters, many spam messages are complete gibberish, many beyond even the extent of leetspeak. Just randomly generated garbage and an URL. Does that actually work? I would have figured the diminishing returns of spamming, despite how cheap it is, would have long ago made it unprofitable… and that’s for messages that actually make sense. Who follows a link in a piece of random gibberish that’s obviously spam and then actually buys something off that website? Sometimes I wonder if there are some slow companies around “investing” in “direct, online marketing” and not realizing that it’s just spam that won’t do a damned thing for them. Then the contracted spammers just need to show that they sent so many millions of emails, without caring about what’s in the message at all, just that it was delivered (since they probably know that their scam has turned 180 degrees now…).

Recently, Netbug has been having a lot of trouble with spammers hitting the comments section of his blog (I’m glad they didn’t follow his links here!). I read on Boing Boing today about even more baffling forms of spam — random, meaningless automated comments that don’t even have a link to a site selling something. There’s some interesting theories out there about why these spam for the sake of spam messages are going out: perhaps they’re trying to build goodwill for an alias or IP in the filters by posting seemingly legit messages before starting the real spam campaign; perhaps it’s a spy network leaving coded messages for each other; but the most interesting one was that perhaps there’s a computer network out there, somewhere, that’s just on the verge of consciousness. A nascent AI. And maybe it’s trying to communicate with us, maybe learning the language slowly, naturally by trial-and-error. And of course, since spam is the most prevalent type of communication it sees crossing the ether, that’s what it tries to mimic first. A new intelligence, trying to communicate with us the best way it knows how: through random, trashy, spam.

Hmm.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: a non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

Today is International Towel Day. There’s been some controversy over when the date should be, since May 25th doesn’t have a whole lot of significance on its own (it’s a Thursday this year, but isn’t usually; it’s not related to 42 in any way, nor is it the actual date of DNA’s birth or death). However, I think that an essentially random date is perhaps just as fitting.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

I got my car back this morning (7 am, ugh). When I was cleaning it up, I found a ton of clues that the cops just don’t care about (I know no one was hurt, so they’re not exactly putting their best man on the case, but you’d think they’d bag some evidence just in case they caught someone else red-handed and wanted to pin this on them, too).

First off, there was a razor blade left on the passenger side. It was one of the 1″ wide disposable construction tool type razors, with 3 overlapping fingerprints clearly on it. I know 3 overlapping isn’t as good as 1 clear one, but you’d think the cops would take what they could get. As I mentioned before, there were McDonald’s wrappers and a cup in the back seat and on the floor on the passenger’s side. There were towels in there, though I’m not sure if they came from my bag of towels in the trunk that was on it’s way to the humane society that was ripped apart, or if they were the thief’s towels. Underneath, there was a brown button (the kind with no holes through it that sew on from an attachment on the back) and half a brick. The driver’s side door had a partial and very muddy boot print on the inside. The stereo when I got it was off, but as soon as I turned it on it was set to level 18 (full blast, essentially) with no CD inside (my CD had been taken and/or thrown out the window).

I know I’m not a cop, and I care a little bit more than not at all, but to me that sort of says “hey, this car was stolen and used to rob a house in a new subdivision, or one that was being renovated.” Sure, it could be that the brick wasn’t from a construction site that night (it could have been used as a hammer to drive out the door lock before the car ever left my lot), and the mud could be from some drug haven by the river, and the whole thing was just for a joy ride and to be destructive… But who steals an old Honda Accord for a joy ride?

Also, the repair shop or locksmith stole my vicegrips (they were there when I got my stuff out of the car).

I’ve been very aprehensive about the upcoming conference in Cancun. The hotel where it’s supposed to be at was ravaged by hurricane Wilma, and wasn’t going to open until a month before the conference (from over 7 months before the conference was to start, that’s a lot of time for something to get delayed). The hotel where all the students are staying is owned by the same company and is sited next door, and wasn’t scheduled to reopen until two weeks before the conference started, and even then under “limited services” (I was thinking no room service, others suggested no air conditioning — ouch!). Given all this craziness and uncertainty, I’m surprised we didn’t end up getting a better rate.

As the renovations took place over the winter, we got semi-regular updates about the progress, which stopped about two months ago. The first hotel (the one hosting the actual talks) was supposed to open last week, but we still haven’t heard any word from them. I just checked the website, and its opening has been pushed back to June 1st. The student hotel’s opening date (yep, the one I’m staying at) has been pushed to June 14 — but I’m arriving June 11!

I’ve sent an email to the conference organizers to see what the deal is; I really hope it’s cancelled. I actually shelled out for travel insurance this time around, and am really dreading moving closer to the equator in June.