I have accepted a contract position with SGI, to work on sendmail and spam filtering. I am extremely happy about this. I will be terminating at AV on 4/15 (or maybe 4/16?) I am happy about this as well. Unfortunately I had already signed up to have my transition extended to 5/31 so I will most likely lose my severance package due to voluntarily (wry grin) leaving earlier than my planned term date. Which means I forfeit the 3 mo. of pay I would have got by sticking it out another 6 weeks. But, I don’t want to risk losing the new opportunity. I will still get my “please stay until 4/15 bonus” on 4/15 though (which is about 6 weeks pay) and I will get vacation cashed out (3+ weeks). ...

I need to find out how feasible it is to get something patented. Does anyone have experience with the patent process, who is willing to chat for a while? Thanks!

What’s the big idea here? Problem: Any spam blocking list is either too specific or too small/ineffective to be noticed, or it is effective enough to get spammers to attack/threaten/sue its owners and DDOS its servers into the stone age. Proposal: Make a blocking system that: is fed by raw data from its members so that there’s not one person or group “making decisions” allows members to show their policies and see others ...

OK, so my #3 job lead just dried up. There are two more leads at the Y, which are semi-interesting, and a lead at SGI wich sounds cooler, but it’s a contract. Six to twelve months, which is cool, and it involves mail filtering, so I could do much worse I guess. In other news, I have been extended at the Y to 5/31, though I expect not much work will be done in the intervening time. ...

Daily Show segment on SPAM (Audio only)

Miche and I are planning to go out to dinner… Where: Mudd’s Restaurant (San Ramon, California) When: Sunday April 4 (next weekend) at 6:00 PM PDT Why: No special occasion, just want to have dinner with friends Friends of ours, including personal friends, work friends, LJ friends, are all invited. Please let us know by followup here or email if you would like to attend, and we will make sure there are reservations for all. RSVP by Saturday night, please. (Yes, this is the first day of Daylight time, so please set your clocks forward so you won’t miss the main course.) ...

I subscribe to Moveon.org and I like receiving mail from them. I do this because it is important to me to get G.W.Bush out of office this year. Sometimes they ask for money, and other times they ask folks to call their senators or something. It’s a good list to be on if you want to help kick some Republican ass. Here is the latest missive on statements by Richard Clarke. The message seems to be that the administration was too wrapped up in finding a reason to topple President Hussein of Iraq and didn’t pay enough attention to domestic terrorism possibilities. There is enough blame to go around, there are things that the Clinton administration didn’t do either. I think it’s interesting, not necessarily that mistakes were made, but that the Bush administration has chosen to belittle/condemn/dismiss Clarke, who has worked tirelessly against terrorism under Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr.

Thanks to kethry for this one. It’s kind of a flash game, it’s funny, took me about 15 minutes to get through. samorost

As posted in but I wanted to save it in my own journal just for fun. Inspired by the “difference between stock and broth”…. Meanwhile, on another soundstage (now would be a good time to put down your beverage): … MARSHA: “So Alton, what’s the difference between broth and stock, anyway?” ALTON: “You know, I would love to be able to tell you, but as I have said before, I’m not a food scientist. But, she is.” [points at SHIRLEY] ...

Of interest to users of nekodojo.org, but other folks interested in spam control may view also, if you like.