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{ Monthly Archives } February 2007

Over the Salton Sea

Near the beginning of my career (after all the “real engineering” stuff like mining and oil), I worked for a small company developing software for analyzing satellite data, and between that and being a pilot, I totally fell in love with satellite, space and aerial photos of any sort. I remember a set of classic satellite images of water forms that we had around the office to use as examples for various types of image analysis, and I think that I learned more about the geography of water features from those slides and the accompanying documentation than I learned from all my years of grade/high school geography. Now, when I look out an airplane window and see an oxbow lake, I know what it is and how it formed.

One of the photos (technically scanned images rather than photos) in the set was of the Salton Sea, located in a desert basin in eastern California, more than 200 feet below sea level. Because water only flows in, not out, it has a high concentration of mineral salts due to agricultural drainage, and is also a protected area for certain bird and fish species. The sea has a very distinctive shape, as well as being a huge honking lake in the middle of a desert, so is pretty easy to pick out if you happen to fly over it on the way into San Diego or Los Angeles. Today, approaching San Diego, we flew directly over top of it and I snapped several shots, the first time that I’ve photographed it (although not the first time flying over it):

Salton Sea

2007 02 25 travel Comments (0)

Hosting on GoDaddy

I finally got all of my domain transfers and hosting sorted out — my corporate domain is now with GoDaddy both as the registrar and the web host (although the archive of my business blog is still down), my Yahoo hosting account is cancelled, and I never have to talk to Melbourne IT again. I had a problem with GoDaddy’s nameservers not propagating things properly on the transfer, which meant that I spent 24 hours without a website and email, but it all seems to be sorted out now.

I’ve previously documented the problems that I’ve had with Yahoo and WordPress hosting:

Yahoo’s MySQL installation, besides being out of date, is somewhat screwed up; this, in turn, seems to be impacting the ability to do a WordPress upgrade or even a separate WordPress install. My advice: avoid Yahoo Small Business hosting if you need anything but the exact WordPress version that they’re offering, which is currently 2.0.2. This likely won’t be a problem until a major WP upgrade occurs and you really want some new feature in the new version.

This became a real problem last week when I was dabbling with MySQL and couldn’t set permissions properly on the database; I just got fed up with Yahoo’s non-standard MySQL and WordPress installations, and decided to move it over to GoDaddy, where I have been hosting both this blog and my wine club’s site/blog for some time with good results. In the post linked above, I stated that I was reluctant to consider GoDaddy because of crappy technical support, but I’ve had pretty uniformly crappy technical support from every hosting provider and concluded that GoDaddy’s technical support isn’t outstanding in its crappiness — in fact, in getting the problems sorted out over the last week, it’s been pretty good.

I went with GoDaddy’s Linux-based Deluxe hosting package, which gives me 100GB disk space, 1TB of monthly data transfer, 6 FTP users, 25 MySQL databases plus PHP, CGI, Java, Ruby and a ton of other stuff. This is way bigger than I need for any single domain that I own, but it allows me to host multiple domains on a single account, so I’m using it to host my corporate domain, this blog domain and a few other domains that I have without buying anything extra for each new domain (except the domain registration, obviously). Most hosting plans on any service, even the lowest level starter plans, are far bigger than I need for any site that I need hosted, so the multiple domains per account is perfect for me.

I don’t like that you have to have one primary domain on the account, so that all others are contained in subdirectories of that domain; other hosting solutions that I’ve used that support multiple domains in a single account allow the domains to be in sibling directories, hence better isolated and not dependent on the existence of the primary domain. To fake this out, I put my unused sandykemsley.com domain as the primary and everything else as secondary domains in subdirectories off that; I then redirected sandykemsley.com to kemsleydesign.com, which means that no one can accidentally navigate to one of my secondary domains by going to a subdirectory in the primary domain. Okay, problem solved, but I had to have a dummy domain to use as the primary in order to do this, or put a bogus domain name in there.

Another GoDaddy annoyance is the lack of a proper file manager in the domain administration: there’s a Java ftp client, handy for uploading/downloading files if you don’t have access to a real ftp application, but although you can see the file structure on the server, you can’t move files around. That means if you upload something to the wrong directory, you have to delete it and upload it again, which became a bit of a pain when I was moving things around to create the primary/secondary domain structure within my hosting account. Not sure whether it was Sympatico DSL upload speeds or some choke point on the GoDaddy server, but the uploads are a bit slow. Yahoo, and other hosting services that I’ve worked with, have a file manager functionality that allow files to be moved and copied around the site without uploading again.

The one thing that kept me on Yahoo for so long was their webmail: it’s fast and easy to use with great spam filtering, and it’s integrated with my free Yahoo account (which I use for filling out web forms) so I can just click between them in the Yahoo environment. They also allow 2GB per mailbox for the email accounts included with the web hosting account.

GoDaddy hosting packages, on the other hand, come with seriously inadequate email accounts of 25MB each, and their web mail is good, but not as nice as Yahoo’s. However, most of my mail ends up downloaded to Outlook, so I’m really only dependent on the webmail interface when I’m travelling without my computer or to pre-filter for spam (with both Yahoo and GoDaddy, you can increase the accuracy of the spam filters by marking any spam that appears in your webmail inbox, but if Outlook downloads it and deletes it from the server, it’s too late). The spam filtering is working pretty well so far, certainly as accurate as Yahoo.

In order to get more email space on GoDaddy, I purchased a Deluxe email plan, with gives me a total of 1GB of storage divided however I want between up to 5 email addresses. Since I only use two actual POP email boxes — everything else is handled through email address forwarding — this works fine for me. 1GB works out to be plenty: even when travelling for a month over Christmas, I had less than 50MB of email accumulated (but more than 25MB) in my webmail to download when I returned.

In my previous post comparing WordPress experiences (linked above), I mentioned that GoDaddy didn’t allow multiple users per MySQL database, which would require that any applications build in their own authentication; I haven’t reinvestigated that issue, but I don’t think that it’s going to be a big problem.

All in all, I now have an infinitely more competent registrar, and properly working MySQL and WordPress, for a fraction of the cost:

GoDaddy:

  • Web hosting deluxe (allows multi-domain hosting) = $6.29/month = $75.48/year
  • Email plan = $19.99/year
  • Total = $95.47/year for my two domains (this one and my corporate site), with room to add any number of other domains until my space/bandwidth is used up

Yahoo:

  • $11.95/month = $143.40/year for my corporate site
  • Same amount for this blog’s hosting
  • Total = $286.80.year for my two domains, and an increment of $143.40/year for any other domains that I want hosted

Never having to talk to Yahoo customer support again: priceless.

2007 02 24 technology Comments (11)

Sporadic email problems

If you’re trying to email me now, you’ve noticed that my kemsleydesign.com domain is totally screwed up, likely due to Yahoo. Hopefully things will be sorted out by tomorrow; in the interim, you can email me at skemsley at gmail.

2007 02 23 rant
technology Comments (0)

Sex. Death. Siberia.

I had a last-minute invitation to see Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto this week. From their description:

The frustrated and lonely wife of a wealthy man falls into a passionate relationship with one of his workers. Fuelled by lust and a need to escape her bleak existence, Katerina risks all and suffers the horrifying consequences.

Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk scandalized Stalin and the Soviet Union of the 1930s, and was denounced for the naturalism, vulgarity, and overt sexuality in the story, which is mirrored so potently in the music. It remains as relentlessly powerful and extreme today.

Usually when I go to the opera, I don’t see simulated sex on stage. Okay, I admit I haven’t been to the opera in a few years, but the last time is was all zaftig sopranos and portly tenors in elegant costumes singing about love while casting sidelong glances at each other, or clutching hands. This time, it’s an attractive couple, her in a silk slip and him stripped to his boxers, singing about how she shouldn’t be cheating on her husband as she mounts him and gets it on.

The story is a great classic tragedy: Katerina and Zinovy have an unhappy marriage, living with/near his father Boris, who also owns the factory that Zinovy manages. Although it appears that their marriage is unconsummated due to Zinovy’s disinterest, the old man has the hots for her. Meanwhile, she takes up with Sergey, one of the factory workers who was fired from his last job for screwing the boss’ wife, while her husband is out of town, but they are discovered by Boris. She poisons Boris, then is haunted by his ghost. Zinovy arrives home and catches Katerina and Sergey together in bed, so they kill him, and she starts being haunted by both ghosts. On the day of Katerina and Sergey’s wedding, Zinovy’s body is discovered, they’re arrested and sent off to Siberia. Sergey blames Katerina for all of this and rejects her, then gets it on with one of the female prisoners during transport to Siberia. Katerina kills the other woman and herself. See? Sex, death and Siberia.

There are some great anti-Soviet satirical bits as well, such as when all the workers in the chicken-plucking factory sing about how eager they are to go off to work.

Great music, and the sets were really fantastic, including a raised portion representing Katerina’s apartment that moved forward into view when required.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk finishes its run in Toronto tonight.

2007 02 23 arts challenge
culture Comments (0)

Yahoo has hijacked my domain!!

Three days later, the saga continues. Yahoo seems unable to figure out how to release my corporate domain and allow it to transfer to my new registrar, GoDaddy: it is still languishing in a “Pending Current Registrar Approval” state.

Today, I spent a long time on the phone with Yahoo technical support trying to get some actual technical support. I explained that I had initiated the transfer from GoDaddy’s side, entered in all the necessary information including the authorization code from Yahoo (which, when they receive the request to release the domain, is supposed to be Yahoo’s clue that I actually initiated the transfer). Then, I explained that the domain appeared to be stuck waiting for Yahoo to approve the transfer and relinquish my domain to the new registrar.

First, the tech support guy went through the same claim as I had fallen for earlier in the week, that they’re just the hosting provider and have nothing to do with the domains. I said that I had contacted Melbourne IT and that Melbourne had assured me that Yahoo was in fact a reseller of domains, so is required to deal with technical support issues. He immediately dropped that one — they must be trained to say that first for anything to do with domains, but also to not push it since it’s not true.

Next, he told me that the only way to “cancel the domain” (which is not what I asked to do) is to cancel my hosting account with them, which would cause interruption to both my corporate website (bad) and email (disastrous). I pointed out that I didn’t want to cancel my domain, just get them to release it for transfer, and he insisted that I had to cancel my hosting account in order to do this.

I tried to explain the logic of why this wouldn’t work, and even quoted their own help pages on this subject back to him: you transfer the domain first, then switch the DNS servers to your new hosting provider, then wait 2-3 days for the DNS changes to propagate through the internet, then cancel the old hosting account. If you cancel the old hosting account first, then you’re fucked: your domain will be unreachable until you get the domain transferred and the DNS servers.

We went through various rounds and permutations of this, including one where he came back, walked me through the pages to find my authorization code, and told me that I need this for the transfer. Duh, no kidding, moron — I told you that I already did that at the beginning of the call, and at least once since then.

I then waited 10-15 minutes on hold for a supervisor to come on, who told me the same thing: you have to cancel the plan in order to release the domain. I made him go to their own help page and read parts of it to him, highlighting the bit about “If you’d like to transfer your domain away from Yahoo!, we strongly recommend transferring your domain before you cancel.”

After a total of 58 minutes on the phone, and after the supervisor told me several times that I needed to cancel my hosting plan in order to get the domain to transfer, he started blaming GoDaddy: obviously, they haven’t initiated the transfer, because Yahoo’s systems would have released it automatically. And, by the way, he told me, definitely don’t cancel your hosting plan until that domain is transferred, or you’ll have an interruption in service…

2007 02 21 customer service
rant
technology Comments (5)

Getting shot by Rannie

Rannie (a.k.a. photojunkie), a talented local photographer who I met through the TorCamp community, came over on Friday to shoot me. Photos, that is. I need a real headshot for my blogs and various speaking engagements coming up, rather than the current shot that was taken while on vacation in Murano.

I scrubbed the obvious bad ones — mostly the ones where Rannie couldn’t get me to shut the fuck up while he was shooting — but that still left almost 100 to choose from. Since I hate pictures taken of myself, especially those terrible posed family photos with rictus-like smiles on all faces (the result of “overexposure” while growing up with a father who worked for Kodak hence had nearly-free film), I asked the opinions of a few people who know me best for their opinions:

My sister Betty picked five that she liked, although didn’t specify any particular reasons:

IMG_0870 IMG_0862 IMG_0836 IMG_0816 IMG_0774

My boyfriend Damir picked his fave:

IMG_0838

Rannie published what I assume to be his faves in his Portraits 2.0 set.

The best response came from my friend Pat in Ottawa, who works in PR so presumably sees a lot of headshots:

They evoke different reactions so here’s how I lined them up with what I got and you can decide if the pictures and the gut reaction are appropriate for what you are trying to communicate with the picture. I tended to pick ones that I thought focused on your best features; got the light in your eyes…I was looking for good lighting, flattering focus, no distractions. Now you know my criteria.

“Do not fuck with me and do I ever deliver the goods”:

IMG_0841

“Seriously competent”:

IMG_0825 IMG_0821

“Softer, gentler, guider and mentor”:

IMG_0811

“Fun to work with”:

IMG_0849 IMG_0813

“Competent, experienced and gorgeous”:

IMG_0810

After going through the list myself, I narrowed it down to five (one of which was on Pat’s list, and one on Rannie’s):

IMG_0772 IMG_0809 IMG_0810 IMG_0815 IMG_0827

Turns out that I do like the smiley ones after all.

2007 02 21 photography Comments (0)

Outage earlier this week

Okay, that sucked — you may have noticed that this blog has been down since late Sunday night, or showed my corporate website instead of the blog. I’m constantly amazed at the ways that domain registrars and hosting providers can screw things up; there’s always some new frustration. I’m documenting the whole story here for posterity — and maybe to help other people in the same position in the future — but if you’re not interested in technical details of domain transfers, move on.

It started around 2am Monday morning, when I couldn’t sleep and decided to start a project that I’ve been thinking of for a while: transferring my corporate domain, which includes my website and my primary email address, from Yahoo to GoDaddy. I love Yahoo’s webmail, but I’ve become frustrated with their implementation of MySQL and WordPress, which is anything but standard. I’ve been using GoDaddy for both this blog and my wine club site/blog for quite a while, and am happy with their registrar services, their hosting and their prices.

Easy peasy, right? Not so much. First, I go to Yahoo and unlock my domain — first step in starting any domain transfer. Then, over to GoDaddy and initiate the transfer. I get the email from GoDaddy with the Transaction ID and Security Code, pick up the Authorization Code from Yahoo’s domain management page for my site, and enter it all in on GoDaddy, which is supposed to be everything that I need to do, except wait. So I wait. Now, I’m a bit impatient about technology sometimes, but every domain transfer that I’ve ever done before has happened automatically, and therefore within an hour or two has switched over. Which means that I was a bit surprised to find that 12 hours after initiating the transfer, my domain was still sitting as a pending transfer in GoDaddy with a status of “Pending Current Registrar Approval”. Basically, that means that although I’ve initiated the transfer and provided all required approvals and security information to complete the transfer, the current registrar is sitting on the transfer.

Meanwhile, I replicated my corporate website on GoDaddy (which explains, in a roundabout way, why this blog was down — I’m hosting both under the same hosting account, and I wanted to make my corporate site the primary site, so had to relocate this domain as a secondary domain on the account, which takes some time) so that when the transfer finally came through it would be available, and I changed my MX records over on Yahoo to redirect my mail to a new mail account that I set up on GoDaddy for my corporate mail. Mail started arriving on GoDaddy instead of Yahoo, but still the domain transfer waited.

This morning, more than 24 hours after initiating the domain transfer, I called Yahoo technical support. “Walter” informed me that Yahoo is not the reseller of my domain (huh? then how come I paid Yahoo for my hosting/domain services?) but that I have to contact the registrar, Melbourne IT, directly — in Australia! Okay, this is starting to bite.

I went on Melbourne IT’s site and tried to their password recovery for my domain (which presumably would email a password to me as the domain’s contact), but was presented with:

Retrieval Failed

The Registry Key for Domain Name kemsleydesign.com was not able to be retrieved. This could be due to the Domain Name being managed by a Melbourne IT Reseller. Please contact your Reseller for assistance.

Hmmm. I went off to their help pages, then their contact pages and eventually found a customer service request form, where I tried to be as succinct as possible:

I am attempting to transfer my domain, kemsleydesign.com, from Melbourne IT to  GoDaddy, but it appears to be stuck in the status “Pending Current Registrar Approval”. I have entered the appropriate authorization code that should release the domain, but it has been in this status for more than 24 hours. Can you please confirm that this transfer is pending and will occur soon?

By this time, it’s midnight in Australia and (given the current state of things), I’m not expecting a real speedy answer, so I was impressed to receive a reply within the hour:

Subject: How to contact your domain manager for kemsleydesign.com

THIS IS A SYSTEM GENERATED MESSAGE

A Melbourne IT Reseller manages the domains specified in your message.

Please contact this reseller using the details below for any assistance you require. If the person you contact refers you back to us, ask them if they would please contact us on your behalf.

Reseller details:

Yahoo Inc.
Web address: domains.yahoo.com
Email address: domains-support@cc.yahoo-inc.com

If after 48 hours you have yet to obtain a satisfactory response:

FOR FURTHER ASSISTANCE FROM MELBOURNE IT YOU MUST REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. TO ENABLE TRACKING OF YOUR REQUEST, DO NOT ALTER THE SUBJECT LINE OF THIS EMAIL.

Please provide us as much detail of any correspondence with the reseller which relates to this request.

Please note: In an effort to resolve this matter quickly we will notify the Reseller of this request including any details you have given us.

Kind Regards,
Melbourne IT Customer Support

——————————

The status of your case is now closed.

If you need to reopen this case with additional information, please reply to this email. If you need to contact Melbourne IT by phone please quote this case ID

Okay, someone is obviously confused: either Yahoo is the reseller and their technical support people don’t know it, or they’re not and Melbourne has their records screwed up. In either case, they both appear to be refusing to give me technical support for this, which lends credence to my argument that they’re just trying to delay in hopes that I’ll forget about it.They don’t know how stubborn I am (they should ask Netfirms).

I check the WHOIS information (again) and notice that Melbourne IT is indeed listed as the registrar, although I’m not sure if the reseller’s name normally appears on WHOIS along with the registrar. I replied to Melbourne IT, hoping to eventually get a human to look at this:

Yahoo customer service informed me that they are NOT A RESELLER, and that I must contact Melbourne IT directly for assistance with my domain. Melbourne IT is listed as the registrar on the WHOIS record for this domain. Please confirm that the domain transfer to GoDaddy.com is in progress.

Then, I fired off two emails to Yahoo, one telling them not to renew my domain (which they were planning to do later this week as part of my hosting package since it comes up for renewal next month), and the following which included Melbourne IT’s message to me:

Earlier this morning, Yahoo technical support told me (on a phone call) that Yahoo is NOT a reseller of domains, and that I have to contact the registrar, Melbourne IT, directly with my current problem with my domain kemsleydesign.com. However, Melbourne IT states quite clearly in the attached email that Yahoo is in fact the reseller for this domain and that you should be dealing with my technical support problems.

I am attempting a domain transfer away from Yahoo to GoDaddy, which was initiated more than 24 hours ago. My domain appears to be stuck in “Pending Current Registrar Approval” status, although I have entered the transfer Transaction ID, Security Code and Authorization Code from the GoDaddy site as required. Can you please confirm that this transfer is underway?

Meanwhile, over on GoDaddy, the hosting account finally accepted the switch from this blog domain to my corporate domain as the primary domain for the account, and I could initiate adding the blog domain as a secondary domain. This, however, takes a few hours so this blog address went from displaying my corporate website (bad) to displaying a GoDaddy parked domain page (worse). My own fault — I could have left this blog as the primary domain and added my corporate one as a secondary — but I thought that the switch would happen within minutes, not more than 24 hours. By now, I was unhappy with Yahoo, Melbourne IT and GoDaddy, and ready to go back to chiseling blog entries on stone tablets.

I searched around for other people with this problem, and found a few. In fact, I even found a document from GoDaddy specifically talking about transfers from Melbourne IT, so they must have seen this problem before. They state that it could take 5 days, since once GoDaddy requests the transfer at the registry, if Melbourne IT doesn’t respond to the registry’s request to approve/deny the transfer, new ICANN rules automatically approve it after five days. In other words, Melbourne IT probably just ignores requests for transfers and waits for them to time out; they’ve had their wrists slapped by ICANN for sloppy practices in the past when they abdicated responsibility during domain transfers to their resellers (although there is definitely dissent between Yahoo and Melbourne IT about whether Yahoo is actually a reseller). I realize that at this point, I’m about to become an ex-customer of Melbourne IT and they may not be fully motivated to serve my needs, but this is an incredibly poor bit of customer service.

This blog address finally sorted itself out around midday today. Stay tuned for more on the domain transfer.

2007 02 20 blogging
customer service
rant
technology Comments (1)

Jerry has (had) a friend

After last week’s mousecapades, we figured that the entry hole was blocked from our side and we were free of mice, although there were still some odd scramblings inside walls at times. For good measure, we picked up a couple of traps, and set out two of the glue type and one of the old-fashioned snap type baited with almond butter.

Yesterday, Damir and I both worked from home, and in the afternoon (as is his habit when working at home), he went for a little nap. A while later, the bedroom door slides open and he emerges holding the mousetrap, without a mouse but also licked clean of almond butter. He had watched while the mouse visited the trap several times, licking away and even standing on the trap — I have a visual of the mouse spread-eagled over the spring mechanism like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat — but not setting the trap off. Personally, I was amazed that he lay in bed watching not one, but several visits of the mouse to the trap before he arose. Then, when he moved, the mouse scooted away (at lightspeed) down the hallway towards the bathroom and laundry.

We started investigating where it went, and I went into the closet and picked up a duffel bag off the floor, and a brown blur zipped out of the closet at my feet and sped further down the hall. I actually shrieked. Now, I’m not a really girly screamer type, but I’ll make an exception when something surprises me like that. We checked the bathroom — no mouse — and concluded that he was in the laundry closet hiding under the washer. We baited several traps and put them outside the door: a couple of snap traps with carrot (Damir had by now determined that we had to use something that the little guy had to gnaw in order to trip the spring), and a couple of glue traps with bits of carrot and goat cheese added to the centre, looking like little mouse sushi trays. We also put a snap trap with carrot over near the windowsill where Damir had originally seen it, and where we knew the point of entry had to be.

We closed the bedroom door, and because it was Valentine’s Day, were making preparations for a nice dinner at home when we heard a trap snap in the bedroom. An exchange of glances. A raised eyebrow. I hand him a plastic bag, and he heads to the bedroom. He checks the traps by the laundry — no mouse — but finds our little friend dead in the one by the window. At this point, because he’s a guy, he picks it up and starts waving it around, as if he had caught the damned thing with his bare hands. No, I don’t really want to see it, thanks. No, I don’t want to take a picture of it. Finally, he gets the point, it goes into the bag and the bag goes down the garbage chute. I postpone dinner while I get the dead mouse visual out of my head.

Billy Bob and DennisLater, I re-raise the issue of cats; specifically, the two kittens that my neighbour’s sister is giving away. Damir, who has been resisting this idea although he really likes cats, says “I saw Tom and Jerry, I know that the cat never catches the mouse!”

That’s when it finally strikes me why he named the first mouse Jerry.

2007 02 15 home Comments (4)

Love 2.0

In response to my earlier post about Skype stalkers, and I’ve had a request from Skype’s PR company to help find someone to interview for Valentine’s Day tomorrow. The gist of the story is how Skype can help long-distance lovers keep in touch, especially on Valentine’s Day.

Are you currently in a long-distance relationship? Do you live in Toronto? Do you use Skype to communicate with your other half? Are you free to be interviewed (on camera) by Amber Mac of CityTV tomorrow?

If you said yes to all four questions, and you’re game for this, contact Margie Cader directly (I’m just the messenger, leave me out of it).

2007 02 13 off topic
technology Comments (0)

Rebuffing the Skype stalkers

As part of the whole transparent lifestyle, I publish my real name, my age and my gender on my Skype profile. Unfortunately, some morons take the “female” indicator as an invitation to start a chat with me that they think is going to lead to some sort of hot IM conversation. I allow chat messages from people who are not on my buddy list, since that’s a good way for people to make initial contact with me, but I had to disallow inbound phone calls from anyone not on my list because of the many unsolicited (and unanswered) calls coming in.

Since my first name is gender-neutral, I could just leave my gender unspecified, but it’s kind of funny to see how, within hours after setting it to “female”, the unsolicited chats start. If I turn it off, they stop. Back on, they start. Like Pavlov’s dog.

Here’s a few from a 6-day span last month:

firatveli47m says: [which pretty much makes me want to barf]

[name deleted] says: “does this work?” [his brain, I assume, and the answer is "no"] [The owner of this Skype name recently contacted me and said that he was just trying out Skype, and picked me at random to send a test message. Personally, I wouldn't recommend that practice, but I'm letting him off the hook.]

batmisho9 says: “hi” [twice, 30 minutes apart], to which I reply “do you have a valid reason for contacting me? i’m not available for chatting with strangers, i use skype mostly for business.” He disappears after that.

versace_74 says: “hi” [yeah, that's original]

sourito (tanger 2007) says: “hollllllllllllllllllla” [okay, at least that's original]

farido771 says: “212063 80 39 87″ [weird, I assume that's a phone number?]

kingmoon6 says: “hi” [a couple of times, starting to get annoying], to which I reply “who are you and why do you want to exchange details?” he says “am froom toronto” [oh, great, a rocket scientist], and I say “so?” he indignantly replies “SO ? SO”, and I block his ID.

romantic206 (Sameer) says “hi” [the usual couple of times], and I give my now-standard reply, “who are you and why do you want to exchange contact details?” He says “hi” a couple more times, then “how r u”, twice. He then follows with “your name plz”, “do you have time to see you today”, then the ever-barfable before I block him.

I cleared my gender indicator for a while to ponder this, then I saw the description on Alec Saunders‘ Skype profile: “Please be specific in your contact requests. I do not accept blind contacts.”

My profile now says:

Please be specific in your contact requests. I do not accept blind contacts, especially from idiots who think that because my profile says “female”, it means “skype me”.

All quiet on the Skype stalker front since then.

2007 02 13 technology
women Comments (8)