Randomn3ss

Last week the Randomn3ss family grew with the addition of Elizabeth Grecco, who has already cranked two great articles.  Please welcome her with open arms and leave her lots of comments, she says she likes them, they make her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

The Staff page has also been updated to reflect her profile, so check it out and learn a bit more about her.  See all of Elizabeth’s articles here.

On January 9th Randomn3ss celebrated one year of being online. To help celebrate, a contest was formed based on leaving a comment at your best guess when the 15,000 spam comment would be caught by the anti-spam police. At the time, there were just under 13,000 total spam comments. The prize was a $25 iTunes gift card, given to the person guessing the closest date and time without going over.

At 3:57pm EST, January 31st, the 15,000 spam comment was caught by the software. The closest was Scott, who guessed February 20th, 2:00am. Off by 20 days, he was the closest person, and while he did go over, no one else was anywhere near close nor made a guess in January. I don’t want to drag this contest out any longer so I hope no one is offended.

More contests will come in the future, if you have an idea of how you’d like the next one to be run or would like to sponsor a contest with a prize or service, please use the contact form to get in touch with me.

Recap of articles published one year ago this week.

Piracy OK in the minds of most Americans.  60% of people think that it worse to park in a fire lane than download movies or music.  You know what, I still agree with them.  The movie and music industries need to change how content is distributed to us make it more affordable and easily accessible.  That will cut down on piracy.  Laws that can’t be enforced will not help anyone out.

Fake band hyped on MySpace.  I still find this rather amusing; the masses of people will buy into just about anything if they think that someone else thinks its cool.

Paris Hilton runs out of gas.  Three minutes of you life you can’t have back for watching this clip, but it is funny.

58% of Americans want the Bush presidency over.  Now that we are officially in an election year, I find it rather interesting that people stop paying attention to the president and what he is doing and focus all their attention and energy on who will become the replacement.  It can only get better, right?

My favorite ways to get back at greedy retailers.  A nice overview with some interesting ideas how to fight back as a consumer.

Word of the day: Arachibutyrophobia.  Seriously, this has happen to all of us.

The floppy disk is dead.  Now I can only pray at night that people stop using them.  Seriously.  At least once a month someone brings one into work and I still have to support these archaic things.

Burning the candle at both ends.  Another mindless video, yet very intriguing at the same time.

Spank happy.  Sofia’s article looking at the practice of whether or not spanking fits in today’s society.  This one is still up for debate apparently.

Marketing campaign to bomb scare to eBay in under 24 hours.  Sadly, less than a week after it happened, no one cared, the TV show that The Cartoon Network was promoting didn’t get any more long-term viewers and everyone forgot about it.  Until this recap a year after the fact.

Hello McFly! One man’s mission to collect enough signatures to make Nike actually make the sneakers featured in Back To The Future II.  To the disappointment of many, I don’t think this will ever get accomplished though; some of the links from the original article are now dead.

Why impeachment is inevitable.  Seeing as Bush never got impeached, was it that inevitable or were others too afraid to start the proceedings to make it happen?

Eat vegetarian on the cheap.  Some cheap ways to eat good food.

Quick update to the $25 iTunes gift card giveaway that is still going on in celebration of the Randomn3ss 1 year anniversary.

Currently Akismet has captured 14,644 spam comments.  That’s a lot of spam comments in the little more than one year we’ve been writing articles.  The person who guesses closest without going over the date and time that the 15,000 spam comment is left will win the $25 iTunes gift card.  You must read all directions and leave your comment here.

This contest will be over in the next 5-15 days or so, so get a guess in, leave a comment and maybe you win.

At the request of several, a minor site modification has been made to the right sidebar. You will now be able to sort articles written by each author, simply click their name. So go read and leave them some comments!

A recap and updates on articles posted one year ago this week.

Black market Vista for $2.50.  Even at that price I’d still be asking for a mail-in rebate or refund or something.  Having worked with Vista for the last year or so, it blows chunks, so much so that I’ve had to install XP on several users computers at work because of stability and usability issues.  My dislike for Vista is so deep that it was part of the reason I bought a Macbook.

Every ad in Times Square.  Now updated to with all the high resolution images on Flickr.

Girl in a slingshot is still one of my favorite videos on Randomn3ss.

Help Place A Pet Foundation and get a cool sticker.  Not only can you help a no-kill animal shelter, you can get a great sticker designed by Derek Hess.

Google denies 99.5% of the 1 million job applications they get annually.  And you thought it was hard to get a new job at McDonalds.

China continues to censor what their people will see on the Internet.  This should be really interesting in a few months when the 2008 Olympic games start.  I’m curious to see if and how the Chinese government will restrict foreign journalists  publishings of not only the games, but whatever else they may see over there.

Paris Hilton hits new low and gets fully exposed.  The car wreck we call Paris Hilton which everyone likes to slow down and watch was fully exposed when she apparently forgot to pay a bill for a storage locker she was keeping.  This story sounded kind of fishy from the start, why would someone with several homes need to keep a storage locker with childhood photos, credit cards and raunchy photos of herself?  In June, The Smoking Gun exposed not only the fraud which was the site but also how one user very easily gained access to the 750+ subscribers information thanks to a badly designed and unsecured website.

Google integrates blog results in searches. Adding the word blog after any term you type in the Google search box will give you results found only in blogs.  Likewise, from the Google homepage you can select blogs from the drop down menu now at the top  left portion of the screen.
Piracy OK in the minds of most Americans.  Duh, next headline please.

A recap and update on articles that were published one year ago this week.

AT&T flushed the Cingular brand name at the cost of several billion dollars. As a consumer and Cingular now AT&T customer the impact to me as been: nothing! Big surprise. Oh wait; the AT&T logo now has orange in it. Big fucking deal. Waste of time, money and energy, which have not resulted in lower plan rates, better coverage or better customer service. So AT&T, what was the benefit of all of this crap?

One dollar / one day, one man’s struggle to eat only one dollars worth of food per day for thirty days to see what it is like to live as a homeless or less fortunate person would. The end result is pretty amazing and I won’t spoil it now, but it is a good read. Sadly, no other updates have been made to the blog and it will probably just die over time.

The Pirate Bay tries to buy their own island. Crazy as it is, bittorrent mega-site The Pirate Bay actually put a bid in to buy an island so they wouldn’t have to deal with the laws in their own country or anyone else’s. It didn’t work out and TPB is still operational and still one of the largest torrent trackers out there.

Castro almost dead. So this story held about as much water as a spaghetti strainer. A year later and the commi bastard is still alive and kicking. While searching for any updates to write this article, I did come across the Castro Death Watch, kind of amusing but mostly covered in ads.

6 tips for not getting busted surfing the internet at work. A pretty straightforward list, but lets face it, you probably shouldn’t be online anyway, so if you like your job, stop searching for the latest news on Britney vs. K-Fed.

Tofu burger vs. Big Mac. One year later, the Big Mac comes out as the clear winner! Veggie Bite, the first vegan fast food business seems to have rolled up and gone out of business. Their website is down and no other information seems to be readily available.

Napster buys AOL music – who really cares? No one, neither are successful and both still suck ass from an end user standpoint.

Firefox add-on FireFTP still rocks. I still rely on this add-on as the only FTP software I use. The only thing it hasn’t been able to do for me is show hidden files on a server, which is important if you need access to the .htaccess file on a web server. Still not a deal breaker for me.
Please put your cell phone away. Sadly, people seem to be getting even more attached to their phones and nearly every time I’ve been in a check-out line at a grocery store, the idiot in front of me is too busy having a conversation on their phone to pay attention to the cashier who simply wants them to enter their ATM pin number or give them change back. Ugh!

Find a free wi-fi internet access point near you is a great list of websites to search for free wi-fi hotspots near you.

How effective is TheTruth.com’s message? While some of their videos are a bit over the top for regular TV and I’d be a bit worried to have a 5 year old see some of them, in the last year or so they seem to have faded away, rarely being broadcasted. It’s possible I don’t have the right channel tuned in on my TV to see them I guess, but either they ran out of money or people just didn’t care enough anymore. Stop smoking! It does nothing positive for you or me!

Early Friday afternoon I was notified that Randomn3ss was down. A quick check verified it was indeed down as well nearly a dozen other sites I host on the same server. Panicked, I logged into the admin section of Dreamhost and sent an urgent support ticket in stating the exact problem. Less than 90 minutes later the problem was resolved and an email was waiting in my inbox from the support team letting me know they pinpointed the problem and it was resolved.

Props to Dreamhost! No web host can give you 100% downtime. These 90 minutes are the first that I am aware of since moving my sites here. If you are looking for a host, I still recommend Dreamhost, use promo code RANDOMN3SS on the checkout and save $60 on the per-year pre-pay plan.

Randomn3ss is one year old today, I’m amazed it went by so fast. Big shout-outs go to the fellow staff for contributing so many amazing articles, those who left comments and everyone who reads this on a daily basis.

In honor of this great day, I think a contest is in order and the prize will be a $25 iTunes gift card. Over the last year, Randomn3ss has received 12,980 spam comments to it and counting. I know this because of a plug-in that helps to trap spam comments and keeps a running counter. The monthly average continues to increase as more people read the site and it becomes more popular. This has almost no effect on anything, I just think it is an amazing number. Of those 12k+ spam messages, some of the things I’ve learned are,

• She wants me to be thicker
• In 60 days I could lose 40 pounds
• For $20 I could last 4 hours
• My credit score is amazing
• My help is needed to somewhere for something
• I’m awesome

And those are just the work safe versions of some of the crap people try to peddle in comments. I now would like to introduce you to the non-spam comment contest. The rules:

• Leave a comment on this article with the month, day and time (don’t forget AM or PM) of when you think the 15,000 spam comment will be left.

• One entry per person (IP address will be used to verify).

• Valid email address is needed and will not be published, sold or otherwise given to anyone.

• Must live in the United States - sorry to everyone else. The US dollar blows against your much stronger currency and it could cost a small fortune to mail it anywhere.

• The person who guesses the closest date and time without going over will win the $25 iTunes gift card.

Let the guessing games begin!

While reviewing the stats after the 500th article was published, I was amazed to see that there are nearly 700 comments, which is really great! I’m just curious why more people don’t comment, and comment more often? I won’t beg for comments, please only leave them when and where you see fit, but a lot of good can come from them. This site has a pretty open door policy on comments.

• If you agree with what is said in an article, let the author know. We as writers put a lot of time and energy in these articles, it’s nice to know that someone else shares our views.

• If you disagree with what is said in an article, let the author know. We all have opinions on everything, they say opinions are like assholes, sometimes we are assholes, let us know. A good-faith debate that stays on topic is always encouraged here.

• If something isn’t factual or you know differently, say so. While we do our best to give accurate statements, quotes and sources, sometimes we get stories crossed or people mixed up, point it out, we won’t curl up in a ball and die.

• All comments are read here! The comment box is a pretty amazing tool. I’ve found some great websites that people run by the comments they leave. There is a section to fill in your website when you leave a comment, I personally click on almost all of them, so do most of the other writers. Leaving a comment will often get you a new reader of your site. Don’t have a personal website? Leave your MySpace site or other social networking site.

• Meet new people. I’ve found some great people on other blogs that I read, based on the comments left for that owner and the conversations that have developed. Same concept applies, by leaving your website in the options box, others may find you and your site.

The comments here are valuable, they are as much a part of the site as the content that all of us write, and everyone enjoys them. So man-up and leave a comment, please?

« Previous entries