Archive for the ‘Nonclassified Nonsense’ Category

Label designed by Neal!

Some time ago, Google started a webmail service. I managed to get an invite pretty early on as a result of knowing Jonah, and I was excited to be able to sign up for [email protected] before any one else grabbed it. (Hey, you never know!) It turns out that Google, for some reason they have not disclosed, decided to limit e-mail addresses to a a minimum of 6 characters. It suggested [email protected]. I figured I might as well get something that someone else would want one day, and picked flyboy.

Boy was that a mistake.

Within a couple of years the flood of mis-addressed email started. There are, I estimate, hundreds of people with e-mail addresses that are some variation on flyboy. It turns out there are two main subsets of people who have decided to go by flyboy (I’m not suggesting these groups are mutually exclusive): African American Men and Military Aviators. (For what it’s worth: These groups appear to be equally stupid and equally interested in pornography.)

You’d think that most of the misdirected email would come from people who simply forgot to add the numbers to [email protected]. Much of it, however, seems to come from people who simply don’t know what their own e-mail address is. Google sends me “click here to recover your forgotten password” e-mails several times a week–all requested by someone who is surprised they can’t log in to their g-mail account. I’m sure they remember the password, they’ve just forgotten that they’re not really flyboy.

I’ve also been signed up for countless email promotions from JC Penny to mail for expecting dads.

Totally unrelated: the following email just showed up in my UCCS inbox:

Hello UCCS Students,

Please be aware of these upcoming career opportunities:

1) Have you ever wanted to be a pilot??

Yes, yes, I want to be a pilot! How do I do it?

Anyway, people have paid for things like wifi internet accounts and pornography subscriptions using my account. A couple of years ago, someone signed up for Blockbuster video rentals with my e-mail address. I changed the account password, then filled their queue with things like “Manos the Hand of Fat” and “High School Musical”. Doing things like this insures that no only will the moron who doesn’t know his own e-mail address will be harassed, but also the company that fails to verify e-mail addresses.

Have you ever been annoyed by something that requires you to verify receipt of an e-mail before your account can be activated? These things used to annoy me, now I realize that all good sites should implement them. When I get one of those, all I have to do to avoid being further harassed by the site is delete the e-mail. (Frequently, though, such an e-mail is often followed by a Google password change request.)

Lots of e-mail I get as a result tends to be personal. For instance, a few weeks ago a prostitute negotiating a “party” got confused about an e-mail address and sent me the entire exchange. A few years ago, I managed to get on the forward list of a Jewish grandmother. It’s bad enough to get forwards from your own Jewish grandmother–no one should have to deal with those from someone else’s. When I told her that I didn’t know her and asked her to stop sending me e-mail, she said, “I’ll send e-mail to whomever I want.”

The niceness/nastiness of my response often depends on what I’m being forwarded. If you’re a right-wing moron, I’m probably going to be pretty mean. Often, I get aviation related forwards that I’m interested in. I usually don’t respond to those.

A couple weeks ago, I got an annoying forward about how Jane Fonda is a traitor. I responded with, “I won’t know who you are, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me email.” Response: “Its Uncle Howard. I’ll stop. Sorry”

People like to argue with me. Often they tell me that they don’t know how I get their e-mail, but they e-mailed someone that wasn’t me, and it’s obviously not their fault.

The latest is the mother of a person who is obviously a member of one of the aforementioned groups. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which:

Hi aaron

i,m doing fine tring to get back to sending you some mail

glad to know that you are getting a little better each day you know that

all our help come from the good Lord we must keep our trust in him.

Love alway

Mamma (..) (..)

Ps Hi to all

I responded rather politely that she’d gotten the wrong e-mail address. I got another today.

O.give Thank to the Lord for he is good and his mercy indureth forever Psalm136

hi aaron ihope your day and nite will get better,dont let the devil put doubt in

your mind that no one care about you i believe Lisa does she just dont know how to deal with it she hurt just like you do some it hard for her to understand

but we all must keep on beliveing.sometime our hard trail come just when

God is getting to bless us.

Remember the children of Isreal just before the cross the red sea no where to go

and GOD derliver them and then did not have the Holyghost ha had dont gve up.

Loveyou

Mamma (..) (..)(..)

Sparging my first all-grain batch last weekend.

Boiling the wort, same batch.

Jonah labels a Scotch Ale.



Happy 2011!

Seems like every year holds major changes for us, and 2010 was no exception, so we’ve included some highlights. As you may remember from last year’s letter, Berck joined the ranks of the unemployed. While he waited for the flying industry to improve, in February we decided to purchase a 1973 Honda CB 350 as a hobby project.

Unfortunately, we had to wait a month between purchasing the bike we dubbed Yoshiko (Japanese for, among other things, “little, pretty, green girl”) and actually getting to ride it, since we really wanted to take a motorcycle safety course first.

Berck has had fun replacing all the worn out parts and tuning the engine. We took many trips during the year around the area just for fun. And we found out an added benefit of owning a motorcycle later in the year…but more on that later.

In March Berck went down to Florida, where his Uncle Stacy had graciously hired him to give him flying lessons. Coming back from dropping him off at the Denver airport, however, Joanna hit a patch of iced slush, having already driven 40 miles of clear pavement, and spun Berck’s car around, which led to another driver crashing into it.

Amazingly, despite driving at Interstate speeds of 75 mph, nobody was hurt badly–the other driver just suffered the effects of her airbag deploying, and Joanna had a giant bruise on her left thigh. But Joanna was charged with a misdemeanor of driving recklessly and causing bodily injury and had to go to court in Castle Rock. Fortunately, because she had a clean driving record, she was given a plea deal of operating a defective vehicle and given a $35 fine.

Joanna got to visit Berck during his six weeks away, and we had some fun on Uncle Stacy’s lake when Berck wasn’t working.

In the meantime, Berck had found the car of his dreams, a ’91 Special Edition British Racing Green Miata with ABS to replace his wrecked car. Instead of flying home, he went to Portland, Oregon to pick it up and drove it to Seattle to Joanna’s sister Stephanie’s house to replace most of what was under the hood, with a little help from a nephew, before driving it back to Colorado.

In June Joanna made a job switch and left the foreclosure firm, which had been forced to cut everyone’s hours down to part-time, to a workers’ compensation firm downtown, where she works full-time and has great insurance benefits, even if she does have to dress up a little. She is currently in charge of going through 30 years’ worth of files, deciding which ones need to be kept and which can be shredded and contacting each client to see if they want to pick up their files first.

In July Berck’s sister Sydney and high school friend Dave came from opposite ends of the country to spend the 4th with us, eat lots of grilled food, explore Bishop’s Castle, hike up part of Pikes Peak, and do some driving in dual convertibles.

Over the summer, the two of us went on a lot of bicycle rides on the nearby New Santa Fe Trail, regularly making the round trip to Palmer Lake (two towns away) on weekends, stopping at O’Malley’s for wings and Blue Moon before heading back–a 32 mile trip total.

As fall arrived, Berck decided to take advantage of all his free time and put it to good use by becoming the newest junior at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, pursuing a computer science major and math minor. If all goes as planned, he’ll graduate in spring of 2012. Here’s where the motorcycle came in handy, since a bike parking permit is substantially cheaper than one for a car, saving us a couple hundred bucks a year. Also, he can park in the parking garage in the spot closest to his classroom buildings.

In October, we each took off a few days to head down to Mobile to celebrate Joanna’s dad Robert’s 65th birthday with his entire family a couple weeks early, then drove up to Highlands, North Carolina with her brother Ben and his wife Amanda to meet Berck’s mom Cynthia and sister Sydney.

Sydney joined us again at a wedding a week later and then for Thanksgiving, at which time she bought us our 7-year-late wedding present, a batch of brewing equipment. Berck has been enjoying his new hobby over his winter break and has already brewed three batches of beer.

Finally, we ended the year with Ben and Amanda, who joined us in Colorado for the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Our favorite Christmas present was probably the one from the federal government in the form of extended unemployment benefits for the time being. Despite the past year’s changes, we are continuing to get by, have fun, and enjoy this beautiful part of the country we call home. We are grateful for family, friends, and love and wish you better year than last!

Berck and Joanna