DLand - Hello World - a prgrammer's update
Hey, it's me again. I'm alive really. This is gonna be a choppy update, bear with me.We have a new mail server at work and it has a new SPAM filter in it. I can't tell you how pleased I am about the SPAM filter. I'm one of those lucky folks at the company who gets the emails that go to our product names or webmaster etc. I don't get nearly as much SPAM as Bossman but it's still over a hundred emails a day at times. Enough to warrant a better filter, in my opinion. The best part about this filter is that it has a report card at the top of each message showing why the spaminator deemed it an unsolicited email. It has great phrases in it like “contains lots of white space”, “as seen on national TV”, “gives an excuse about why you were sent this spam”, “contains 'G.a.p.p.y-T.e.x.t'“, and my favorite “no such thing as a free lunch”. The irony in all of this is that I now spend more time reading my spam just to see these than I ever did when it loaded into my Inbox. Work is the same crap, just a different day. I don't really want to talk about that so we'll skip that and move on. My parents are in the process of selling me a house - the house I currently rent from them. I may be a home owner by the end of the month. Pretty exciting if you ask me. I like my little neighborhood and living so close to the water. To that end, I've been hiring some yard work do get all the stuff done that I don't have the time or desire to do. This involves taking down a few small dead trees and removing the cursed apple tree from my front lawn. It has already started making disgusting apples and I'm just waiting for the birds and hornets to start arriving. That and if an apple hits my new car in the driveway, I'll tear the tree down with my bare hands. Daddy apparently got wind of my yard plans and snuck over on Memorial Day weekend to cut down my cherry trees. I think he's trying to save me money. I appreciate it but now I think I'm going to have the lawn people take down the apple tree instead. That is if Daddy doesn't beat them to it. The big news in DadLand is that he's losing his job. His job ends the end of this month. We're really all secretly pleased in that his job has gotten suckier and suckier for less and less money. And between my trees and home maintenance things, I've got plenty for him to do. He's taking it well and with good humor. This is a big change from the last time this happened 9 years ago (good grief, time flies). We suspect that he might learn to like being “retired” and his quality of life might improve. That's if he doesn't break his neck before the end of the month. Dad first showed me his impressive bruise that runs from his butt all the way down past his knee. It's like he sat in purple ink. He apparently fell off the hood of a minivan at the junkyard trying to get a windshield loose. And when I called Mom on Sunday she reported that Daddy had fallen out of the oak tree in the front yard. 19 feet - he measured it. Apparently he hit the ladder several times on the way down so that “broke his fall,” but still he's pretty banged up. I think his helper who was at the bottom of the ladder was more shook up about it than Dad was as he went home soon after that. But Dad kept cutting limbs, this time from the safety of the roof before going off to mow the lawn. Sometime my father just has too much energy and determination for his own good.