kismetism

Spam comments are getting to be a little too brilliant. I love MovableType and all, but I have to admit it’s pretty crappy at weeding out the bad from the good, when it comes to comments. Very aggravating.

But they’re getting uncannily brilliant. Check out this latest one that showed up on the Filmcraft site. Third one, by “George U”.

It refers to Sedrin’s name and it’s totally on topic. I actually left it at first because I thought it was legit. I was only able to confirm that it was actually spam because the URL that it left (to be linked to the given name) was some site that was promoting acai products. >_>;

Even then, Dev had his doubts… so I took it a step further and googled the provided e-mail address to find that, yes, the e-mail had been used to spam some other sites across the web… all in the name of acai. XP

Anyway, we’re leaving the spam comment there, cause it’s funny, but we took the link out. ::lol:: I feel a little less annoyed at MT for being tricked… have to admit that it’s getting pretty hard to tell.

Boy, I don’t know what I did, but all of a sudden my laptop is having all sorts of schizophrenic problems. One moment it blue screens, the next it’s giving me errors I’ve never seen before, something about Vista Authentication. It wouldn’t even go into safe mode.

Eventually I got it to boot into Windows, not through any deliberate action but just by repeatedly trying to get in. But now I’m distrustful of its spastic behavior and have decided that I may as well reformat this damn thing too.

So I scrambled to get all my stuff backed up onto Spark’s external drive (convenient) and am about to start the long and probably painful process of doing first Vista Home and then putting Ultimate back on. I also think I want to do some partitioning, but I’m not sure where in the process that occurs, so will have to play it by ear. qq.

In the meantime, I finally got around to reformatting my desktop a few days ago and reinstalled just the bare essentials… and it’s been running very well, thank god. I think I even got an extra 5-10fps back in WoW. XP

[edit]
Great. After extended attempts at putting a fresh install of Vista on the laptop, I’ve determined that the problem(s) are all a result of fried RAM sticks. Finally ran pre-boot system diagnostics and the laptop went all crazy when it came to test memory and complained about DIMM_B… which is a RAM slot.

So… the summation is that my desktop, which I’ve had for 8+ years has broken down less than my laptop, which I’ve had for less than three years and already replaced the graphics card twice and currently suffers from what is probably a broken fan which probably also led to a melting hard drive / RAM sticks.

Laptops suck so much. I really wish the iPad wasn’t worthless for coding, because I’d totally get one then. Now I’m not quite sure what to do… repair might be more expensive than getting a new laptop, but I’d rather get a new desktop… but I’m not quite done with needing a mobile computer.

GRRRrrrRRrrRRrrrr.

Good thing I got all my data off first, and all my Schism code is safe on my SVN server. -_-

Finally resumed some coding today. Not a whole lot, but a significant amount considering how much I have NOT gotten done since turning the paper in. And I have the next steps visualized, so I won’t be as likely to get roadblocked by sheer reluctance to think.

I’ve been high strung for the past few days (7-9) because my WoW account was compromised (i.e. someone hacked my account). For me, having played a single character for nearly five years and to have that almost very nearly taken away from me … don’t laugh, but it’s really pretty harrowing. Say all you want about the supposed triviality of said online identity, but I’ve invested money and time and energy, which makes me very emotionally attached to this batch of pixels and to have some stranger run my avatar around without my permission… it’s a bit like having someone take and destroy the musical instrument that you’ve practiced and played on all your life.

Anyway, managed to turn the situation around relatively quickly… thanks to immediate discovery of the misdeed. Took back control of the account, locked a spare authenticator on it, then assessed the damage. Kirlune, my main, had her bank more or less cleaned out and all of her currency was gone, including badges. My other characters on Eredar were likewise robbed of their gold, but had less to lose in terms of gear. Luckily the hacker didn’t have time to investigate the other servers I play on, or he would have discovered that I have two fairly well-to-do characters on Moon Guard… these remained completely untouched.

Ticketed a GM and was incredibly surprised and gratified when the turnaround time was several hours later; everything was restored to its original state. It probably helped that I was able to provide timestamps for when the altercation occurred, but nevertheless it was pretty amazing customer service.

I’m irritated because I’ve run countless virus and malware scanners on both of my computers and have failed to find anything, so I still don’t know how I contracted the keylogger… which puts me on edge. I’m going to have to format my desktop, but haven’t quite found the time yet. And now I’m on pins and needles all the time with every disconnect, wondering if it’s a hacker trying to get in, or when I receive an official-looking phishing attempt in my e-mail. It’s like I’ve been psychologically brutalized to some degree and, as a victim, am now living in a permanent state of fear.

I’m sure it will go away eventually, but in the meantime, I’m still using a password made of completely random letters and numbers that I have written on a piece of paper because there’s no way in hell I’ll remember it. Sigh.