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Three Annoyances
This evening I was visited by three annoyances, in three different forms:
1. A letter from my Senator, "liberal" Republican Lincoln Chaffee. "Prepared, Printed, and Mailed at Taxpayer Expense", it helpfully reminded me. And what was the urgent message that required the Senator's use of his franking privilege and my taxpayer dollars? Why, to tell me what a great job the Senator was doing, of course! He's spearheading legislation to give control of Rhode Island's Fox Point Hurricane barrier to...the Army Corps of Engineers.
Wait a minute. Aren't those the guys who screwed up the levees in New Orleans? Why would Chaffee want to boast about a bone-headed move like that? I honestly wonder.
Hmm. The flunkies who designed the mailing (at my expense) threw some "how to prepare for a disaster" info on the back side, just to make the more dim-witted of his constituents think that the Senator actually gave a damn about their pitiful lives. How thoughtful.
Am I too cynical, do you think?
2. Shortly after I read that mailing, the phone rang. It was yet another pre-recorded sales pitch for the DISH network. I waited for the prompt, and hit "1".
She sounded bored.
"Satellite Sales (?). Are you interested in signing up for the DISH network?"
"No, I'm on the do-not-call list, and you people keep calling me-"
SLAM! Must have been a bad day for her - she hung up hard. I only wish that I'd strung her along long enough to get her phone number or the right spelling of the company name, so I could file a complaint. But perhaps they'll call again.
3. After dinner, I checked my email. What joy: spammers had once again decided to infest my site. In this case, it seemed to be Italian spammers, putting hundreds of messages promoting sex, drugs, and indecipherable crap in my site guestbook, as well as in some sections of The Chaos Project.
That situation had been getting worse and worse over the past couple of weeks. I'd tried blocking IPs and key words from their URLs, but they were coming up with new ones faster than I could block them. Finally a light bulb went off over my head, and I took away the field that allowed people to list their homepages. It's a pity, but what else can I do?
Just another evening in early-21st-century America...
1. A letter from my Senator, "liberal" Republican Lincoln Chaffee. "Prepared, Printed, and Mailed at Taxpayer Expense", it helpfully reminded me. And what was the urgent message that required the Senator's use of his franking privilege and my taxpayer dollars? Why, to tell me what a great job the Senator was doing, of course! He's spearheading legislation to give control of Rhode Island's Fox Point Hurricane barrier to...the Army Corps of Engineers.
Wait a minute. Aren't those the guys who screwed up the levees in New Orleans? Why would Chaffee want to boast about a bone-headed move like that? I honestly wonder.
Hmm. The flunkies who designed the mailing (at my expense) threw some "how to prepare for a disaster" info on the back side, just to make the more dim-witted of his constituents think that the Senator actually gave a damn about their pitiful lives. How thoughtful.
Am I too cynical, do you think?
2. Shortly after I read that mailing, the phone rang. It was yet another pre-recorded sales pitch for the DISH network. I waited for the prompt, and hit "1".
She sounded bored.
"Satellite Sales (?). Are you interested in signing up for the DISH network?"
"No, I'm on the do-not-call list, and you people keep calling me-"
SLAM! Must have been a bad day for her - she hung up hard. I only wish that I'd strung her along long enough to get her phone number or the right spelling of the company name, so I could file a complaint. But perhaps they'll call again.
3. After dinner, I checked my email. What joy: spammers had once again decided to infest my site. In this case, it seemed to be Italian spammers, putting hundreds of messages promoting sex, drugs, and indecipherable crap in my site guestbook, as well as in some sections of The Chaos Project.
That situation had been getting worse and worse over the past couple of weeks. I'd tried blocking IPs and key words from their URLs, but they were coming up with new ones faster than I could block them. Finally a light bulb went off over my head, and I took away the field that allowed people to list their homepages. It's a pity, but what else can I do?
Just another evening in early-21st-century America...
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But I do have a couple of links for you. This story (http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/academics/studentwork/cns/2002-04-03/syndication/dscheer-marketers.txt) from 2002 gives a good intro to what it's all about. Then this site (http://www.panix.com/~eck/telemarket.html) has a pretty good primer on the basics and lots of useful links.
Good luck! I've kind of wanted to do this sort of thing (because I absolutely despise telemarketers) but for some reason I can't get them to call me often enough to make it worth the effort. :)