The concrete crew is working on the foundation, today they are putting in the drain system. Pretty basic, they lay a perforated pipe around the perimeter of the foundation on a gravel bed, then route the drainpipe into a hole where the sump pump will go. This is done on the inside of the foundation. On the outside, there is a similar bed of gravel which is covered with a fine mesh fabric to separate it from the backfill dirt. Water trapped in the gravel finds its way into the interior drains through small conduits spaced every 4 feet placed in the footers of the foundation. Once all the drains are laid, the basement floor is covered with crushed stone, and the foundation is sealed, then backfilled.

  Its pretty low-tech at this point, with most of the work done with wheelbarrows and a cement mixer to pour the stone into the hole. During the concrete pour, they used a concrete pump to transfer the concrete from the trucks into the forms, a piece of equipment every bit as impressive as the well drilling rig.

I was hoping to keep my old mailbox open for a while, and guide what legitimate E-mail I had left there over to my new box. I also set my mail client to truncate the larger messages. Within 2 days, my inbox reached its quota for size (5mb), and I was locked out. I contacted my ISP about this, and asked for some suggestions about coping with this, and their only response was that they could clear out the inbox, but to keep it clear I would have to download all of the crap anyway. The upshot was that I ended up having to close the box. Hope nothing important is being sent over it in the near future.

Congress has passed antispam legislation, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, it will do little to help, since it appears most of the most egregious spammers operate outside the law anyway. I don't have too much of a problem with Amazon or Crutchfield emailing me about their specials once a month, it is the outlaws that clog my box with viruses, trojans, porno, and so on. They are already breaking the law, and this will have little effect I am afraid.

I finally had to break down and change my E-mail address today. My E-mail box was getting 6 megabytes of trojans disguised as the notorious Micro$oft service pack, or a variation of the same. If the spammers used the same energy and imagination to do something constructive on the web or hell .. even in Meatspace who knows what they could come up with.

I have had the address since I got on the web 7 years ago, and my friends, family, and coworkers all know it, but unfortunately so do the spammers. While my new address is here on Slashdot, I am curious as to who will be my first spam on the new address. Will it be Yahoo, who I use for a mailing list of my radio club? My long distance carrier, who bills me online? My Credit Card company? Some trojan that scans my hard drive for pR0n, CC#s, and E-mail addresses? My Alma Mater? Al Quaeda? Who Knows?

Spammers are more aggressive than ever trying to get addresses, but there are a few tricks I know of now to keep them off balance when surfing the web. Perhaps I can use Yahoo's free webmail to my advantage. Other tricks are out there, and I will employ them as well to keep my mailbox clean.

SPAMMERS WILL BURN IN HELL FOR THEIR SINS !!!!!!!!

Saw that Slashdot has an article today about prefab homes, a topic near and dear to my heart. I am in the process of building one, but am only in the process of putting in the foundation. From what I can see, the contractor is doing a good job. The subs that I have seen so far seem to know their stuff, and the work has been progressing well. The main dig of the foundation took a day, the footers another day, and the walls formed out and poured the next. Those guys really work hard and gracefully on the narrow ledges and edges of the forms. It is certainly work I would not want to do myself, one slip and down into the hole you go, and while probably not fatal, such a fall would almost certainly result in broken bones, torn ligaments, or painful bruises. As of today, the foundation is nearly complete, save outside stairs, the installation of French Drains, the outside waterproofing, and the stone base for the basement floor.

The modules of the house will be ready in about 5 weeks, and delivered just before Christmas, so the builder has plenty of time to finish up the foundation work. I hope the early winter here in MD is more benign than last year, though most of the work is inside there are still things like septic systems, well hookups, and other things that are at least a little dependent on the weather. Time will tell...