Saturday, June 28th, 2008
Normally this isn’t something I do, but I’ve decided I should respond publicly to an email I received from two emails I received from a reader. First of all this particular reader has posted a couple of comments on my post about ball pythons.
You’ll find this person posting both as “Monty” and as “Brianne”. Which for some reason she thought was clever or something, but apparently didn’t account for the IP address being the same. But whatever. I played the game and responded to both personalities “in character” and called out BS when I read it in the comments. Then I got two emails from this person. The first email says:
BRIANNE () wrote:
I’m also a little confused with this crap you’re trying to tell my readers
about the snake burying it’s head in the back of the mouse’s neck to sense
the pulse. That is complete and utter garbage. A total fabrication that no
doubt someone lied to you about. A BP is constrictor. You throw a f/t rat in
with it and it will still strike and constrict. There’s no pulse to be found
and it still goes at it with the same gusto.
HERE THIS IS WHAT YOU WROTE ME, I HAVE FUCKIN WATCHED MY SNAKE DO THIS
FUCKIN PRICK
Ok easy enough. Apparently my dear friend Brianne thinks I’m telling her that her snake doesn’t bury it’s nose in the back of the mouses neck. Two of my snakes do it all the time. What she misses, by a country mile is the fact that I’m telling her that doing so to sense a pulse is utter garbage. How can I be so sure? Because like I said in my response to her comment on the blog was that it does this regardless of if the mouse is alive or dead.
And her second email (because it seems that one isn’t enough to describe how upset she really is)
Brianne Moore () wrote:
Hi im the one with the name”monty” i thought i would just ask you a little
question. how can you be a fucking know it all, and at first i was impressed
with the info you were letting others know, but your personal life and blog
scene really doesn’t have anything to do with ball pythons, i think someone just
brought it up and you went with it, cuz now that i think of it everything that
you have said so far is stuff i already read off the internet and you didnt
really help. but hey there is a lot of fake people in the world and your just
another one of them. i think that your one of those insecure weirdos who think
that having a big famous blog will make you special or something, i mean damn
you were named after a fish maybe you should look into a blog about fish. well
im never this mean but something you said when you wrote to monty being me
“brianne” really set me off, you’re like one of those rich little fucks that
think they fucking know everything, damn im so pissed that you turned out to be
a fake jerk i cant even say anymore!
Brianne let me ask you this, publicly. How did you miss that this is a PERSONAL blog? Because you seem pretty surprised when you realize that my personal life and “blog scene” has nothing to do with Ball Pythons. This blog has nothing to do with Ball Pythons aside from the fact I felt like posting something about them on here. Which apparently in your economy is a crime.
You’re absolutely right someone just brought it up and I went with it. That’s how life works. You find something that interests you and you “go with it”. Welcome to reality.
As far as originality goes I don’t recall saying it was original information. It doesn’t need to be original information. You might have found it elsewhere on the internet but judging by your comments and questions on the post in question you didn’t manage to do much with that information. Aside from make some stupid comments like the one about your snake checking for a pulse.
A blog about fish? Hmm interesting. Maybe I could make a video tutorial on tying flies or proper casting techniques? Oh wait someone already has done it so that wouldn’t do for you at all. After all a simple internet search turns up the same information. Not to mention the monetization when it comes to fishing as a topic isn’t so hot. But thanks all the same for the idea.
It’s ok to be pissed Brianne. We all do it. It’s not ok to be pissed without reason though and that’s exactly what you are doing. So let’s review what Brianne has done wrong:
- Mistook a personal blog for a topical blog
- Missed the fact that a blog (personal or topical) will be rife with opinion. That’s why it’s a blog. It’s not meant to be a newspaper
- Failed to read the blog she was commenting on (this one) beyond on article. Has she read more than just one article there would have been no confusion on her part
- Needs to learn a little something about IP addresses and Word Press technology before assuming she has pulled one over on anyone by commenting under two different names
Really we could go on and on but there’s no need to list everything out. So you might wonder why I’m airing dirty laundry for the world to see. A few reasons.
- It serves as a good object lesson
- Any communications sent to me either by email or via blog comment is fair game. How’s that for a privacy policy?
- I feel like it
I don’t generally post emails online from readers. Usually I just respond to the email itself and leave well enough alone, but I decided it would make sense to turn a bad situation into a new post.
Posted in Potpourri | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
For as much as I bitch about Google I sure do find it to be a useful resource. Today I will talk about intergrating Google Apps with your website. It’s a fairly easy process and shouldn’t take much more than 5-10 minutes. So let’s get started.
- What is Google Apps?
- Google Apps is a service made by Google which allows you to use your own domain name with a number of Google products. For example instead of logging into gmail.com to check your email you’d log into webmail.yourdomain.com, or mail.yourdomain.com, or whatever. Google Apps includes by default the following:
In addition to those included features you can also add on additional modules from third parties. Some are free, some aren’t, but the basic Google Apps default package is free. I’ve seen everything from astrology updates to sports scores to CRM solutions, and beyond.
- Flavors
- There are three flavors of Google Apps that are available. Each one is designed to support a certain segment of the market.
- Family or group
- This one is free and includes hundreds of free user accounts. I honestly don’t know the exact number as I’ve made accounts ranging in size from 3 people to over 500 and not had any problems at all. This includes all of the default modules mentioned above. The email is capped at the usual (and growing) Gmail limit. In other words you have plenty of email space. Support is good if not a little slow, but that’s part of what you deal with when everything is done via email
- Small Business and Enterprise
- This features the same as the Family or Group accounts except the email is set to 25GB and there is a 99.9% uptime guarantee for the email service. Normally Gmail doesn’t offer any kind of uptime guarantee, but that doesn’t overly concern me. After all it is pretty rare that you can’t get into your Gmail (or other Google account). Support is available via phone. I’ve never had to work with them for support on a Small Business account so I can’t speak to speed or accuracy of their support staff. There is a cost of $50.00 per account per year for this flavor of the service.
- Non-profit and schools
- This has the same features as the family or group accounts, but also adds Extensibility API functions as part of the basic setup. This allows you to more easily integrate Google Apps into your current technology.
- I still don’t get the point of it…
- Suppose you wanted to give each and every one of your friends and family a free name@yourdomainname.com email address, but couldn’t due to size limitations. With Google apps you can.
Suppose you wanted to be able to share documents between several collaborators all of them working on the documents, saving, making changes and more at the same time via the internet. With Google apps you can.
Suppose you wanted a company wide calendar that can be shared via the internet with each person being able to edit and control their own entries. With Google apps you can.
- How hard is it to setup?
- Very easy. Of course I’ve done it 100 times if I’ve done it once, but in all honesty it is very easy. Here I’ll even help you out. These instructions are based on the Home edition.
- Step 1
- Go to the Google Apps homepage and click the “Get Started” button (currently in the upper right corner). This will take you to a page that allows you to select the edition of Google Apps you are signing up for. Most people can get away with the “Standard (free) Edition”
- Step 2
- Select the edition you want to use, in this case “Standard”. It will take you to another page that looks like:
If you already have your own domain fill out the information on the right side. If not read the left and decide if you want to get one. If you don’t have your own domain you won’t be able to use Google Apps.
- Step 3
- Fill out the information that is required. Make sure to give yourself enough email boxes as requesting more has potential to be an annoyance. Also make sure you write down the administrator username and password because without them your life as a Google Apps user isn’t going to be long.
- Step 4
- Log into your administrator account by going to google.com/a/your_domain_name_here.com/net/org/etc and on the left hand side put in the administrator name and password you used in step 3. This should take you to your administration panel where you can begin adding users, setting up the sub-domains and other things.
- Things to consider
- You will need to be able to access and manipulate things like your Mail Exchange records, and DNS records in order for Google Apps to work properly. Basically you will be creating DNS records that point things like webmail.yourdomain.com to your Google Apps account and MX records that will route your email to the Gmail servers.
If you are unable, or uncomfortable doing this type of thing most hosts will gladly do it for you if you just request it. During the activation process in Google Apps you’ll be given instructions on what settings to use. Be sure to save that information for future reference.
I hope you’ve found this article useful. If you have any trouble with Google Apps leave a comment in this article and I will see if there is anything I can help you out with.
Posted in Technology and Computers | 5 Comments »
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
I’m sure with a little effort I could go on and on with a list about the insane amounts of email storage space. The question is who ever needs that much space? Does anyone actually make use of it? I have a gmail account that I opened on 7/14/05 I’ve never deleted a message except the spam which is deleted automatically and all told I’ve used 134 MB (2%) of the current alotted amount of space. Which is, as we all know, growing.
Let’s do some quick math.
- 7/14/05 - 11/4/07 is 15 months (we’re rounding)
- 134/15 = 8.9 MB per month growth on average
- 1024MB = 1GB
- 1024/8.9MB = 115
- 115/12 = 9.5
What does it all mean? It means at the rate I use my gmail account that it will take me 9.5 years to reach 1GB of stored “stuff”. Which means it will take me over 36 years to reach the current capacity (which of course will likely be 1000 times higher than it is today) of 4GB. Not to mention the fact that if I’m still saving email that is 30+ years old I need to be shot!
That’s just one account. I’m not even going to bother with my Hotmail and my Yahoo Mail accounts. Not to mention the ones I’ve setup via cpanel on my various domains. Is there anyone who actually uses that much storage space? I can’t think of one good use for that much storage…
- Store media files
- Could do that but email is way to slow. Not to mention it might get you in trouble and you run the risk of it getting deleted
- Store important documentation
- I suppose you could, but not a very bright idea. Scan it in triplicate and put two of the copies in two different safety deposit boxes and hold onto the third if you’re that worried about it. Email isn’t THAT secure. Unless you muck around with encryption which will send most uninitiated people home crying to their mommas.
- Brag to your friends
- Hey look! My thingy is bigger than your thingy!! Ok maybe not, but you get the idea
Take my word for it. Unless you are storing full sized movies in your email, and we already went over why you shouldn’t, you’ll never even begin to dent your email storage capacity. Why then do the free email accounts offer such insane amounts of storage? Because disk space is cheap and it makes for good PR. After all everyone likes to hear “and now [insert name here] is proud to offer our loyal customers [insert absurd number here]GB of email storage space! You’ll never have to delete another message again (unless you live to be 1002 years old)!”
Do you need MORE email storage space, or are you good to go for a little while now?
Posted in Technology and Computers | 6 Comments »
