One problem I witnessed, however, at least one of my genius buddies used their tactical light as a handy flashlight; running around the house pointing their gun at all kinds of stuff.  Tactical lights are very bright and designed to startle whatever they are pointed at, and you’re only suppose to point your gun at things you intend to shoot, so if you do get a tactical light and mount it to a gun, don’t use it like a flashlight!

Yeah, don’t do that.

• More on why I hate cops
• Cops: serving and protecting no one.
• R.I.P. Ed Freeman: Medal of Honor Winner

…the sign eventually came to signify, variously, that the one gesturing is rocking him or herself, is encouraging the recipient of the gesture to rock as well, that he/she emphatically appreciates the rocking that may have already commenced, or at the time others may have already commenced the rocking while in a large crowd or other situation where one would generally rock out.

That’s the best description of the horns ever.  \m/

I think that needs to go on a t-tshirt.

• If Macs "just work…"
• Perhaps Ubisoft should…
• So where’s the RC10RC?

On top of that, Office Web Apps’ landing page usually sticks an ugly ad in the lower-right corner, one you’re probably used to seeing on the sites of newspapers that have lost touch with their advertisers, blogs hungry for monetization, and other hey-whatever ad sections. It’s less than appealing, especially when the design seems to blend into the beige-ish focus of Live.com’s design. (Note that you can change your Live.com theme, but the ad doesn’t ever go away).

You could read the rest of the article if you want… but there’s nothing really to see there, kinda lame.

• Useless javascripts
• You’d think they’d catch on after the 45th time…
• Updated: More on Windows Live Writer

No related posts.

• Windows Live Writer Strikes Back
• Updated: More on Windows Live Writer
• R/C sites I read every day.

THREE DAYS LATER IT STILL HAS NOT ARRIVED.

So DHL can ship something 1200 miles in 24 hours, but it takes the USPS more than 72 hours (much more at this point) to move something 1/10th the distance.  Sounds like a government program to me.

• Is the SC18 coming sooner?
• Hopes and dreams… dashed…
• Why Are Airplane Seats So Miserable?

Akismet – This is a spam filtering plugin, it comes with the default WordPress installation, you just need to activate it and sign up for a WordPress.com account to get your API key to start using it.  Akistmet’s not going to stop the spam, but what it will do is identify comments that come from common spam sources.  It will segregate those comments and you can then review them later to make sure there weren’t any comments labeled as spam erroneously.  (Plugin Directory link: Akismet)

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam – You’re starting to see these everywhere.  It’s a small image with a series of letters and numbers that you have to type in to confirm that you are a human.  These work on the principle that a human would be able to read the image, while a computer (spam bot) would not. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam is a simple to use plugin, usually all you have to do is install and activate it and it starts working out of the box.  Some people may need to make a small change to their theme to get it working but most downloadable themes are already setup to use it.  (Plugin Directory link: SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam)

TTC User Registration Bot Detector – Some spam bots try to get around non-open comment systems by signing up for an account at your blog and then using that account to post comments.  The TTC User Registration Bot Detector checks every computer that tries to register an account on your website against the list of known spammers at Spamhaus.  It also logs all registrations so if you see one IP address trying to register multiple accounts you can put it in your own blacklist to keep it from trying again.  (Plugin Directory link: TTC User Registration Bot Detector)

WP-Ban – Sometimes, no matter how hard they try, the plugins above still let through a spam message every now and then.  WP-Ban lets you ban computers from accessing your WordPress site based on their IP address, domain name, web site referrer, or user agent (browser type, bot type, etc.).  When a banned computer tries to access your site, they are given an error message, which you can customize, telling them they have been banned.  It prevents them from accessing every page on your site, including directly going to the wp-comments.php page which is the only place most spam bots go on your site.  (Plugin Directory link: WP-Ban)

Those are the plugins I use to keep spam out of my comments now.  There’s a couple other configuration changes you can make to your WordPress installation to assist those plugins as well.

Under the Discussion Settings you have three options that you can set to moderate spam.  The first one is to hold a comment in moderation if it contains more than a certain number of website URLs in it.  I currently have that set to two, which I believe is the default setting.  The next box down will hold comments in moderation if they contain certain words, URLs, or IPs.  You can specify words that are commonly used in spam messages on your site.  The WordPress.org documentation Wiki includes a list of spam words that you can copy and paste into this box.  Comments that are held in moderation are not considered spam until you mark them as such.  Every time a comment is held in moderation you should get an email asking you what you want to do with that comment.  The next box below that is the words blacklist box.  This list bypasses comment moderation and automatically marks any comment containing the words in the list as spam.  I consider this one to be a little more dangerous to use, so I don’t really use it.  But if you wish to, you could again use the list of spam words from the WordPress documentation wiki.

I’ve been running this combination of plugins and settings for a week now and I went from about 15 spams per day on average down to zero.  If you have a self-hosted WordPress installation and are struggling with spam then you might want to give this a try.

• I like it.
• They should move the Statue of Liberty…
• Excuse the mess…

• Pueblo, CO
• Colorado State Fairgrounds - Kitchen Craft Hall (former Ag Palace)
  • Friday the 29th — 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm
  • Saturday the 30th – 10:00 am – 10:00 pm
  • Sunday the 31st – 10:00 am – 5:oo pm
• Admission $2

Just posting this because I haven’t seen the info anywhere but on the Colorado State Fair’s events page.

• Getting in alignment…
• I'm not that smart.
• Deal of the Moment: Losi Rebates

• Cop Tasers 72 Year-Old Granny

• 10. Hot Chicks – They still avoid me like the plague, but I can’t stop looking (…leering…) at them.
•   9. RC Driver Live @ 5 – An informative and entertaining (infotaining) r/c hobby show.  Monday through Friday, live, at 5.
•   8. Sloppers – A delicious staple food of Pueblo, an open face cheese burger smothered in green chile.  Also, it’s pretty easy to make at home.
•   7. Behemoth – Their latest album, Evangelion, is a fantastic piece of work that takes death metal to new heights.
•   6. Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld – It’s one of the few news shows worth watching any more.
•   5. This List - Falling two positions from last year.  As a now annual list for four years running, it’s not as new or unique as it once was, but it still manages to stay random, so it sneaks into the top five.
•   4. Gravity Crash - Neo-retro gameplay stylings combining Choplifter, Subterrania, Lunar Lander, and vector graphics into a challenging yet fun shmup gaming experience.  It was a tough choice between this and PixelJunk Shooter.  They’re both awesome games, but I’m enjoying the challenge of Gravity Crash more.
•   3. Tamiya – They still release r/c cars in kit form for the true hobbyists out there, even though the rest of the r/c industry has gone RTR.
•   2. RiffTrax Live - I went to the movie theater three times this year, two of those were to see a RiffTrax Live event.  The other, Transformers 2.
•    1. Nothing.  Life is pointless.

• 2006 Top Ten Random Things
• 2007 Top Ten Random Things
• 2008 Top Ten Random Things