gushue.net

My time off for Christmas is nearing it’s end. I was really lucky this year with my schedule, and end up with 7 days off. Which is one reason why I never volunteered to work extra shifts over the holidays. But I’m working on New Year’s Eve (voluntarily, and is why I have 7 days off instead of 6) - I had to work New Year’s Day anyway, so I wouldn’t have been able to go out and do much drinking like I normally would. But that’s ok, I never had any plans in the first place.

Unlike last year, it was warm and pouring down rain here on Christmas Day. Somewhere between 8-10°C. Much better than having lots and lots of snow, and bitter cold temperatures. Last winter was really bad, but this year has been good so far. More like normal (except for the rain on Christmas Day, but that’s ok).

Christmas is more about the family stuff than the gifts for me, but the things I did get were things I needed/wanted, and appreciated (of course, I did pick out most of it myself). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to buy more stuff for my immediate family this year, due to having to pay off an old VISA. But after next month, that will be taken care of, and all will be good. My sister liked the two books about Tolkien stuff that I got for her on eBay (brand new), which is good.

My parents have been talking a little about finding a house to rent somewhere (and possibly eventually buy). Not really actively looking yet, but it’s in their minds. Politics around this place are just getting worse. After 12 years of living in this housing co-op, I think we’re just one of three families that have been here since they opened. Personally, I’d love to get my own place, but that’s not really an option right now - until my student loan is paid off, at least. but I get along well with my family, so I don’t mind living with them for now. I’d love it if we had a house, though. One of the first things I’d do is wire it up with ethernet everwhere :) And having a seperate room for most of my computers would be nice. One of my near-future goals is to build a quiet/silent computer for my bedroom, but with my Linux box here making noise, that wouldn’t accomplish a lot.

After getting some comment spam on this weblog in the last day or two, I set up MT-Blacklist. It seems to be pretty good, and easily added to. I’ve been pretty lucky this year, only getting 3 or 4 of those since setting up my weblog. Other people have just been flooded with the crap. Most of my spam has been limited to email, even though it seems to be exponentially growing each month. It would be even worse if not for my aggressive blocking, since that rejects 50-100 emails daily (over the last two weeks). At least very little hits my Inbox - usually somewhere between 0-5 a day. The rest gets filtered into Junk and Junk-high for higher spam scores, making it easier to skim for false positives. Even though over the last few months, I might have had just one or two false positives, I still don’t want to automatically delete junk mail. Sometimes something valid gets tagged as spam that really isn’t. Less often than before, though. SpamAssassin rules.

That’s enough for now, I guess. I haven’t posted much here lately, so thoughts have just been piling up in my head.

I finally found out my schedule for the week leading up to Christmas. It would have been my long weekend anyway, with me having Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. But I also get two more days off for the holidays - Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So, I will end up having 6 days off in a row. Tuesday through Sunday. Fucking awesome! I’d be willing to work that that Tuesday (the 23rd) if asked, though. Last year I had an extra shift for each of the two weeks before Christmas. I mentioned it to my manager last week, but he isn’t sure if we’ll need the extra people or not this year. At least he’s aware that I’ll work if needed (but not on that Wednesday or later, I need the break).

After hearing bad things about raises recently (people there for just a month or so getting raises, and nobody else - some cost of living crap), I’ve also heard better things. Like having a bigger than normal raise (possibly double) on our next yearly evaluation (July for me). If so, that won’t be so bad. That would make things a little easier. Well, not so much easier, as being able to spend/save more money than I can now :) I’m not going to say anything more about that, though. It’s best not to talk about your pay, because all it does is cause problems with other people you work with. Not that I know of anyone other than two or three people that might possibly read this.

Talking with Jon lately has made me want a Mac of some sort again. Not that I had stopped, but I was settling for the computers I have right now. Especially since I just got a new laptop from Dell a couple of months ago. Apple also has their own loan program, but I’m not going to get one unless I can pay for a big chunk of it, and get a loan for the rest. Won’t be so bad that way. Their options are also more flexible than Dell Financial’s. Such as, actually having options :) But, if I get one, it probably won’t be an iBook or Powerbook (as cool as they are). Maybe just a (relatively) cheap eMac or iMac.

As if I didn’t have enough computers already…

Wow, two posts in the same day :) Although, this entry is what I had orginally intended to write earlier, but got sidetracked by my hatred of spam.

Since I was off work last night, and rather bored, I was just browsing around various sites. I remembered that there is now a Telus store here now, for their cell phone service. So I took a look at their phones and plans.

Now, I have a cell phone (Nokia 5160) already. But it’s quite useless for me now, since it’s on the Rogers AT&T network - which has no coverage here. I had it while I was in Halifax a couple of years ago. It’s a nice phone. Pretty basic, but hey, it’s just a phone. I also have a PDA (Palm m125, although I’d like to get a Palm Tungsten T3) for those other features ;)

Since there is finally digital coverage here in Corner Brook, I’m somewhat interested in having a cell phone. Not that I have a real need for it - I just refused to even think about having one here without digital service. Some of the available plans aren’t too bad (like the Atlantic EW 20 plan), but I’m not so sure about the phones. I’m not a huge fan of the phones that flip open, but I suppose those are becoming more common than not these days. Most of the phones they have on their page are just too damn ugly. Or have lots of useless crap I don’t want (PDA functionality, mostly). Or are refurbished. No Nokia phones at all either. But maybe the LG models might be good. The LG 4600 and LG TM520 seem ok. They do have a lot of cheap, decent quality, things these days. Of course, they make pretty much every kind of electronic device.

Maybe I’ll get one later in 2004. In the spring/summer, when I’m more likely to go somewhere. I hate winter, and I hate going too far when it’s cold and snowing :)

Since the beginning of this year, I have been tracking the amount of spam that SpamAssassin has been filtering. It’s sickening how much spam comes in daily. At the moment, it’s probably averaging around 300 spams/day. And that’s not counting how much my server rejects before it even gets to SpamAssassin. And it’s only mail for three people - myself and my parents.

The graph for October is lower, because between Oct 15 2003 and Nov 15 2003 (or about that long, not sure exactly), my mail server was down and wasn’t tracking the spam. But that also means that the graph for November is only for the last half of the month. I figure that it would have reached 6000 or more. At the rate it’s going now, I wouldn’t be surprised if 9000+ spams got filtered this month.

Thanks to a lower threshold than default (4.0 instead of 5.0), and Bayesian filtering (see the Wikipedia entry for more information), I haven’t gotten any false positives for some time now. And only the occasional false negative. But I just feed those to sa-learn and all is good.

Note that I have modified SpamAssassin slightly to do the actual tracking of spam. Right now, I haven’t really publicly released my small change, but I’ve given it to people that have asked. I’ll have to properly release it in the future. Along with the code generating the graphs on my page.

I really don’t know how people can manage to read non-filtered email.