I must be getting senile.

I almost always take a red eye back to Florida from LA, so I’ve been going merrily along for the past few days thinking I had a flight tonight. Well, when I logged on this morning to see if I could improve my seat, I discovered that my reservation was cancelled. Why? Because I was supposed to leave this morning.

No credit for the ticket. The only way to get back without buying a one-way is to go standby. So I’m off to LAX, with hope in my heart for a seat on a plane to Dallas, and then hoping I won’t get stuck in Dallas because there’s nothing available to Fort Lauderdale (the flight I missed was a non-stop that would have had me in about three this afternoon).

Probably no blogging for the rest of the day, unless there’s wireless in a terminal.

I must be getting senile.

I almost always take a red eye back to Florida from LA, so I’ve been going merrily along for the past few days thinking I had a flight tonight. Well, when I logged on this morning to see if I could improve my seat, I discovered that my reservation was cancelled. Why? Because I was supposed to leave this morning.

No credit for the ticket. The only way to get back without buying a one-way is to go standby. So I’m off to LAX, with hope in my heart for a seat on a plane to Dallas, and then hoping I won’t get stuck in Dallas because there’s nothing available to Fort Lauderdale (the flight I missed was a non-stop that would have had me in about three this afternoon).

Probably no blogging for the rest of the day, unless there’s wireless in a terminal.

I must be getting senile.

I almost always take a red eye back to Florida from LA, so I’ve been going merrily along for the past few days thinking I had a flight tonight. Well, when I logged on this morning to see if I could improve my seat, I discovered that my reservation was cancelled. Why? Because I was supposed to leave this morning.

No credit for the ticket. The only way to get back without buying a one-way is to go standby. So I’m off to LAX, with hope in my heart for a seat on a plane to Dallas, and then hoping I won’t get stuck in Dallas because there’s nothing available to Fort Lauderdale (the flight I missed was a non-stop that would have had me in about three this afternoon).

Probably no blogging for the rest of the day, unless there’s wireless in a terminal.

And it looks like a beautiful day for a drive. Often when I leave LA heading east, there’s a thick marine layer, and clouds that don’t break up until Palm Springs, but it’s blue sky and mountains all the way from the beach today.

This is the most beautiful time of year in southern CA. There’s been a lot of rain and the hillsides are green in a way that they only get for a few weeks, spangled with yellow mustard flowers that make their greenness look all the brighter from a distance.

If I see anything worth taking a picture of on the trip, I’ll post later.

I’m waiting for a flight at Fort Lauderdale. The airport now has free wireless in the terminal. I’ll be flying into LA today, then driving to Phoenix tomorrow for the conference. Probably not much posting today, but I’ll check in tonight. Hope to see some of y’all in sunny Arizona.

Google is at least making an attempt to do something about splogs. I’d like to allow blogspotters to link and ping here, but I have to wait and see if this works, first.

Probably little to no posts this weekend. A guy is coming in tomorrow to do the drywall, and we’re frantically trying to finish up the electrical and plumbing so that the ceiling is ready to be buttoned up and closed.

OK, I’m still getting these weird blog spams, like this:

A new comment has been posted on your blog Transterrestrial Musings, on
entry #4886 (Lousy Salesmen).
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/004886.html

IP Address: 61.102.44.56
Name: Kimberly
Email Address: naomi@pochta.net

Comments:

Great work!
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They tend to come in pairs, with the same nonsense URLs, but different email addresses and IP addresses.

I’ve been just deleting them without adding to the blacklist, because I don’t want to clog up my blacklist with these nonsense strings that seem to be one (or two) shot deals.

But how about refining previous attempts at a pattern match? Instead of just looking for a string of consonants, how about a string of five consonants containing at least one of the letters “z,” “x,” or “q”? That would seem pretty safe to me, from a false positive standpoint, and would catch most of them. If so, what would that regex look like?

And I’d like to know what the point is, other than annoyance. Any theories (other than perhaps incompetence on the part of the spammer)?

I’m still bogged down in kitchen destruction/reconstruction. I’m installing recessed lights from Halo, and when I open the box to find the electrical connection I find they’re connected to connectors that I find a mystery. The wire to the socket is already installed in them, as is the ground (two stranded wires, one to the socket and one to the housing).

Am I supposed to use these to connect the incoming power (and perhaps outgoing, to the next light in the series, as well)? If so, how does it work? It’s just a little plastic thingie, with multiple holes to stick wire into, but no obvious places to poke to release pressure on the conducting clamp that holds the wire in place.

Or does it just grab the wire, and it’s a one-way deal?

I can’t figure it out from any on-line search. My options are to just hook it up and hope it works, or cut the existing wires and wire nut them together (which was what I’d figured I’d be doing, but if this dealie works, I’m happy to use it–I just want to know how it works).

As I noted on the post update, I thought that I’d come up with a clever way to eliminate a lot of these nonsense-domain spams, by blocking the letter “q” followed by anything other than a “u,” “a,” or a period, comma or space (so we could still write “Iraq”). Here’s now I implemented it: q[ua\ \.\,]

Unfortunately, in testing it, I get a large number of false positives (about 25%) When I see the comments flagged by the new filter, I don’t even see a “q” in the comment. What’s the problem?