17. December, 2003 - housing hassles, spam

• Update: when I stopped by my house this morning, the blanket and pillow (see below) were gone, and nobody had broken in. Yay!
  Yesterday I closed on the house. But before going to the closing I stopped by to see if the sellers had fixed the broken window. They had, but it had been broken again. So I called 911. The cops didn’t check inside when they showed up. When I got back there after closing, I called them again and had them go through the house.
  Then I started fixing things. While the sellers put new glass in the window, I got the floor refinishing guy in and started on tearing out the old carpeting. Then it was off to the Big Orange Box. Got two double cylinder deadbolts. Then realized that I’d probably still be returning to a broken window, so it was off to multiple hardware stores trying to find some expanded steel to put over the window. No luck on that, so I finally just bought a piece of ¾″ plywood and a box of sheetrock screws.
  When I called it a day, I had screwed the plywood over the window, added a new lock to the door the bastard’s been coming in, taken down the for sale sign, changed the lock on the front door, and thrown the bastard’s blanket and pillow outside in the snow. Hopefully that’ll get the message across.
  But at this point, I lost a day of trying to get the house secure rather than getting ready to move. I’ve left a message for the SAFE team to get them to stop by and see if there’s anything else I need to do, and a message for my new neighborhood association asking if they have any programs to help pay for such things. With any luck, my efforts will mean that when I stop by there this morning, I’ll find everything intact, and I can feel okay about starting to move some stuff over there.
• Crusaders Against Junk Faxes Brandish Lawsuits. Steve Kirsch, who made his millions by selling InfoSeek to The Mouse, is taking on fax.com. He’s not the first, but he may well be the best-financed, and if he’s successful, it may actually slow the bastards down. Kirsch runs junkfax.org. The other group suing fax.com runs junkfaxes.org (but don’t seem smart enough to make the non-www version of their domain just work). Best of luck to both.
• Meanwhile, President Signs Law Aiming to Limit Spam, and it’ll take effect January 1 (that’s just two weeks off). I hope it’s more effective than the government’s efforts to stop junk faxes or telemarketing.
• But since the Feds may turn to bounty hunters to catch spammers, there’s some amount of hope. Heck, maybe that’ll be a career for me. But it’ll be months before the FTC finishes studying the idea and decides how they’re actually going to enforce the anti-spam law, which leads me to think it’ll be a year or two before we see any effect from this new law.
• Law won’t can spam and more importantly, overrides stricter laws in California and Virginia. Which is sad, because the Virginia law looked like it might do some good.
• Spam wars play out across Internet profiles a spammer and a spammee.
• One hundred years ago today The Wright brothers flew, and the human spirit soared. [press-patch]
• Finally, a personal note: Pete, if you leave a message asking someone to call you back, it’s helpful to also leave a phone number.

Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:35:19.