If you've had a public email address for a while, as I have, you get SPAM--unsolicited commercial email, usually selling sex, money or drugs. I've had the same address for almost 9 years, and manage a few mailing lists, so that address is all over the net, easy game for spammers and their address-seeking web-spiders. In a typical weekday morning download of mail, spam outnumbers actual email by about 5 to 1, and it is not unusual for me to get 30 spams a day.
I have been using a program for the past year that has all but eliminated the spam I once received: Spamfire Anti-Spam Software for Macintosh. (If you are a PC user, check the last link in this blog entry for a similar program I used on my old PC with good results.) If you are a Mac user, especially using OS X, you can't afford to be without it. It uses extensive, automatically updated (XML) filters to compare mail received to known spammers, common spam techniques and tricks and to "score" mail. Then it passes on only desired mail to your standard mail tool while saving the spam in a discard "purgatory" for review, re-scoring if necessary and eventual discard. This demo animation shows how it works. And it DOES work--all but flawlessly. Mail from friends, known senders or domains is automatically passed on untouched. Unknown mail can be reviewed, and senders added to the "known senders" list. It's safe, with plenty of ways to easily "rescue" mail scored as spam which isn't really (like if someone sends you an email filled with profanity, or talking a lot about Viagra, mortgage rates and hungry cheerleaders for some reason)
Spamfire has has had two major version upgrades since I started using it, and I am a beta user of the newest version, 1.3 to be introduced next week at MacWorld Expo. The beta user community is vocal and excellent, and the developer is among the most communicative and responsive I have ever worked with. The beta has lots of user interface enhancements and has been remarkably stable since beta 5 (now at beta 11) but the release version (1.21a) is fine if you are cautious.
The software costs $19 for a "Lite" version which will handle one email account with no filter updates and $29 for the Pro version that handles unlimited email accounts and automatically updates all filters as new ones are released by the developer (5-8 times a year). A full featured Demo version (expires in 15 days) is available for free. Matterform also makes a number of web design, graphics tools and Dreamweaver add-ins for Mac, and a "SPAM Vaccine" for Windows and Mac that makes email addresses invisible to spam spiders. I like this company, and I love this product; although this sounds like an ad, I have no connection to the company other than as a satisfied user who would like to help others deal with the scourge that spam has become.
If you are a PC user, the best program I've found used to be free, but is now owned by McAfee. SpamKiller works similarly to Spamfire, and costs $39. A Google Search on "spam killers free" delivers more options.
My last summer in college, I came home to the suburbs of Dallas for an unpaid newspaper internship. In the morning, I wrote for the suburban weekly in Mesquite, Texas. At noon, with my long-sleeve dress shirt and tie, I hopped into my '73 Plymouth Valiant (no A/C) and drove 30 to 40 minutes to downtown Dallas for my afternoon job in the credit department at Neiman Marcus. I always paid $2 for surface lot parking and walked 10 minutes to Renaissance Tower, then took the elevator to the 27th floor. By the time I placed my time card in the clock, I was unrecognizable as the person I had appeared an hour before. Sweat and stench. Thank god the cubicles were far apart.
You'd think that experience would have taught me a lesson. Commuting=bad. But just before Christmas I accepted a new job in San Antonio, and in February, I'll begin commuting to work there. I think it's a good career move: From assignment editor at an Austin 24-hour local news channel to web manager at a new San Antonio 24-hour local news channel. But that commute. Commute, Schommute? I'm steeling myself. Lots of people tell me I'm crazy (and a big part of me thinks they're right) ... but I've also come across plenty who have stories of friends or husbands or wives who commuted for two, four, six years. And to further rationalize my decision, I tell myself that the market is bad ... and it could be four or five years before I'd have this same opportunity again.
The decision is already made. Thoughts? Condolences? Rants against my idiocy? What do you think of a 1.5 hour drive to work ... and then 1.5 hours back from work? If it gets hideous, Marty and I have discussed some options. In a year or so, we may be calling San Marcos home.
The past week has been a pretty good one for us in Central Texas, at least in terms of weather. Hopefully Baze won't be bringing back all that nasty snow from Albany when he comes back!
I got to enjoy the sunshine on Saturday, Dec 28, with a drive to Fredericksburg, the Hill Country's own German enclave. The critical mass of psuedo-German kitsch in all the storefronts is positively overwhelming. The rolling hills heading out 290 westbound more than made up for it though. The town was positively crammed with tourists shopping along main street (Hwy 290) for after holiday bargains, I imagine. My purpose in burning the fuel to get out there was a bit different. I was introduced to Alexander McKinney Walch for the first time.
I went to college with his mom, and was there when his mom met his dad while we were all college exchange students at the University of Freiburg in Germany. I was the only non-relative at the Christening, which was awkward during only a few moments of the ceremony. They had a pretty nice reception afterwards at the hotel where his maternal side of the family, the McKinneys, were staying. Some brisket, peach cobbler, and a few Shiner bocks shared with the family made it a really nice afternoon.
I think the kid is off to a pretty good start, all things considered.
If you've had a public email address for a while, as I have, you get 
