Category Archives: Administrative

Administrative, General

How Not To Get A Link

34 Comments

At least at this web site.

I just got the following email, subject : Hello from a republican blogger and Pajamas Media guy

Simberg,

I came across your site through the Pajamas Media site.

My blog is the [snipped to protect the guilty].

If you feel it is of a high quality, please consider a link or blogroll exchange.

Also, I get a decent amount (not Pajama-sized!) of traffic, in case you have anything
you would like to promote.

Respectfully,

[snipped to protect the guilty]

Let’s start with the subject line. I’m not a “republican blogger,” and anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time would know it. I’m guessing that if he came to the blog at all, it was only to get my email address. So it cuts no mustard with me to be informed that somone else is a “republican blogger.”

Next, no one addresses me as “Simberg” except spammers and trolls. Either use the honorific, or my first name.

Now there are general rules for how to get a link, none of which this guy followed. One of them is to read the blog for a while, so that you know what the interests are. A second is to send a permalink to some particular post that might be of interest to that blog’s readers, based on the prefatory reading. A no-no is to just say, “hey, here’s my blog.”

But here’s where the real joy comes. Just to do the guy a favor, I googled and replied with a copy of the rules for getting a link from Instapundit (though they’re generally applicable to other blogs, including this one) of which the two above are a subset.

And what do I get for my trouble? This:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

[snip link]

So, he sends me an email, but doesn’t bother to whitelist me to allow me to reply, instead expecting me to take the trouble to go to his site to do it myself, just so that I can provide him with useful information (while he’s provided me with nothing except a clueless request for a link). I’m all for blocking spam, but if you’re going to send someone an email and expect a response, I think it rude to make someone have to go through machinations in order to do so. Why isn’t this stupid anti-spam software set up to do that automatically? Anyone you send email to should be automatically white listed.

Anyway, rather than doing that, I decided to simply document it here, on the off chance that someone else will be educated, and perhaps avoid such things in the future.

[Monday morning update]

I have a follow-up post based on some comments.

Administrative, General, Science And Society

It’s No Ike

4 Comments

At least not yet. I hope that low east of the Bahamas doesn’t develop much, because all the models have it aimed right at me in southeast Florida. In fact, BAMD has it coming ashore in Boca, crossing the peninsula and exiting over Tampa into the Gulf. Fortunately, it’s struggling under shear right now.

My concern is that it may intensify suddenly right off shore early next week, with little time to prepare. At least we still have most of our shutters up from Hannah.

[Update a few minutes later]

Weather Underground is calling it an “Invest” (I wonder why they call them that), but it actually seems to be the remnants of Josephine. If it becomes a storm again, will they call it that, or Kyle?

Administrative, Science And Society

Can’t Wait

8 Comments

I just love Florida.

I’m in LA right now, but going home to Boca on Saturday. And right now, the models have a Cat 4 hurricane directly hitting my current home town on Tuesday night.

Patricia put up the shutters on the windows earlier this week in anticipation of Hannah, which is now a tropical storm and missing Florida. But at least we’ll be mostly ready for Ike. But I’ll still have to put up plywood on the patio doors, and a hurricane that strong could have a flooding surge. We may decide to head up to Orlando, but this weekend will give us a much better sense of where it’s really heading early next week.

Administrative

Surviving The Storm

1 Comment

It hasn’t been that big a deal for me here in Boca. Windy and rainy, but nothing damaged, and not so windy that I can’t go outside. We lost power this morning for a few minutes, but not long enough to knock down the computers on the UPS. And the pool is full, which is always good.

Administrative, General, Science And Society

To Shutter, Or Not To Shutter?

9 Comments

I don’t have to decide today–it looks like it will still be far enough away tomorrow morning, with a better track, to make the decision then. Right now, I’m inclined not to, even though we’re still in the uncertainty cone (but over at the eastern edge of it). Most of the models, other than GFDL, have the thing out in the Gulf or along the west coast of the state. We are on a tropical storm watch on the east coast from Jupiter south, but that’s all.

The best outcome overall (other than completely falling apart) would be for it to come up through the swamp and run up the middle of the state, where it would weaken pretty quickly. If it stays out in the Gulf and hits farther north, it could intensify and really pound wherever it comes ashore. Either way, though, barring some dramatic shift in conditions, it looks like we’re in for rain and tropical-force winds, at worst, over here on the east coast. That’s a lot better than it looked a few days ago, when it looked like it might have come right at us through the Bahamas.

[Early afternoon update]

Well that’s good news. Jeff Masters says that this won’t be another Charley, despite the similarity in track. One thing that I notice a lot of the weather people talking about are the sea surface temperatures, but they are ignoring the fact that the upper-level winds aren’t that favorable for intensification.

[Update at 4:30 PM EDT]

The latest model run (2 PM) has moved it farther to the west, which is bad news for the panhandle, but good news for south Florida. Unless they’re all wrong, this thing isn’t heading to southeast Florida, and we may not even get much in the way of wind, though we could use the rain. There’s actually an outer band moving through Miami-Dade on the radar right now. Hope it makes it up through Broward and into south Palm Beach County.

[5 PM update]

Heh. The headline of one of the stories over at Accuweather is “Florida Approaching Land.”

A lot of people who bought swampland down here probably wish that it would do it faster. Now, if they could just give the place a few mountains. Or even hills.

In “The Swamp” (an excellent history of south Florida) the author quotes an early settler who reportedly said, “I’ve bought land by the acre, and land by the foot, but by God, this is the first time I’ve ever bought land by the gallon.”

Obviously, it was supposed to be “Fay,” not “Florida.”

[Update a few minutes later]

That was quick. Good thing I caught the screenshot. It now says “Fay Approaching Land.”

[Update about 6 PM EDT]

OK, it looks like shuttering tomorrow is definitely off the table. The track, per the models I described above, no longer has us even within the cone. I expect some wind and rain (which we need) but nothing more at this point. The only preparation I did this weekend was to fill up the tank of the car, and it looks like that’s all I’m going to do for Fay.

But the hurricane season is still young, and we’re heading into the heart of it. It’s particularly problematic because I’m going to be in LA for the last week of August and the first week of September, which is one of the highest-probability times for major storms here. I may have to shutter up before I leave, just as a precaution.

[Update a half hour later]

The first squall line from the storm is approaching. Unfortunately, I don’t have a camera handy, but it’s looking ugly to the south, and the winds are picking up (and the local radar confirms it). We just put in a new tree, which needs watering every day. I’ve put off doing it all day, in anticipation of this.

[Tuesday morning update]

We didn’t actually get much rain from that squall line last night, but about 8:30 this morning, the heavens opened up. The rain’s been hard and steady for an hour now. Guess I didn’t need to water that satin leaf.

I should note that Brendan Loy’s Weather Nerd blog is the go-to place for blogging the storm.

As he notes, it’s kind of good news, bad news. The good news is that it’s shifted eastward, and will hit Florida sooner, which means it won’t have much time to develop. The bad news (for me) is that it will affect the east coast much more than anticipated. Hope I won’t regret not shuttering, because it’s too late to do so now, unless I want to attempt it in wind and rain. The rains have come sooner than I expected, and a wind gust has already blown off a down spout that I hadn’t properly tied to the wall. If I get a break, I might try to fix it later today, though it’s not a big problem–just blasting water against the front wall.