I'm currently reading In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions...When It Counts as one of the first main books in my new O'Reilly Safari library account.

What an amazing book! Such insight! Such intrigue! I am going to make a zillion dollars with this secret knowledge of how to handle accusations from unruly people. I am certain that God himself would have wanted a copy of this to field all of Satan's accusations. Satan would have wanted a copy of it as well.

Today I received a seemingly innocuous email from a complete stranger, regarding PHP. That did not strike me as odd at all because I am somewhat of an expert on the subject.

The message was a typical plea for help and it started off claiming to have seen me posting on the newsgroups and forums, which was possible but unlikely, as I haven't posted on the PHP newsgroup in months, so I was immediately suspicious of the email.

The sender claimed they had a couple questions and then asked me to answer them for them and that they would like to hire me to do more consulting if they liked my response.

I responded as I always do to such requests, with a link to rentacoder.com and I asked the sender to let me know what their username was so that we could begin a business relationship together. I figure that if I am going to be spending any time helping a stranger, I might as well get paid for it, or I will be the one choosing who and when to help!

The person or bot on the other end of the discussion responded with a strange comment that seemed unrelated. I quickly fired back that they need to do what was asked before I answered any of their questions and that I would not discuss business over email because it has proven to be less than fruitful (and it really has).

The person quickly fired back an angry response so I told them to piss off and that I knew their trick was to get free writing samples from me.

Amateurs!!! :-) I get paid if I have to write anything (except this journal)!!!

So beware of this trick and don't fall for it. If you don't know them, give them a challenge question.

FINISHED! WOOOO HOO!!!!! ;-)

NOTE: I don't normally support the use of all caps, unless it's in response to someone finishing all their holiday shopping.

(from the inside) RAC caught some bastard trying to buy an IMSI Catcher. How stupid could you be advertising you need something like that? Jeez I thought this idiot was stupid.

Can I just say... it's about time! Oh it's sooooo nice!!!

AJAX and CSS perform wonderfully. There are still lots of little bugs but I think when they are ironed out it will be a pretty amazing experience. I'm quite pleased that Slashdot is evolving and you can really get a sense of how it will be so much better in the future.

Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's for the best. Not really sure but it's happening now. *sigh*

(any cute nerdy chicks in my fanlist? send pix hehe j/k)

New dupe notice:

I am afraid to comment on this duped Slashdot story due to Hindsight Bias.[1][2][3] (where each number is linked to the dupes available)

The new article stubs on the front page really work for me, but I'd like to see each new story remain a stub until enough 5-Insightful/Interesting/Informative comments become visible. In other words; everything starts sectional and earns the right to be on the front page based on quality -- not quantity (as others have suggested).

We should also have a new mod category: "Flag".

The Flag mod will indicate that an admin should read the comment because it's important. Typos, spelling, dupe notices etc can all fall under this category, and editors could re-thread the site to see these types of comments first. Reward moderators who correctly flag comments as a system notice with extra mod points. Keep the Flag comments collapsed for regular users, so the meat and potatoes comments all frequent higher.

Working on some new projects... a set of sales tools that might be picked up by a big corporation. Very cool stuff, yet no linkage yet. Does anyone know anything about interpersonal sales tools for retail? I've been studying up on it for this project, which I am in charge of, and it's fascinating me. PK is getting pretty damn spiffy when a n00b can go from being hired to appearing like an expert almost immediately... although there is a level of intelligence for using this kind of tool. Just working out UI issues now, and coming up with ideas.

From the customer perspective, what would you want to be able to do with a salesperson say for COMPUTER SALES, in order to make your sales experience better?

Anyway, hope all is well with you guys and let me know what's going on in your lives! ;-)

There is nothing much going on. Okay, there is lots going on right now in my private life, but I'm not sure I want to share it just yet. Maybe closer to New Years...

How are my friends on Slashdot? Any complaints?

Looks like I can comment again... but I posted something that might be considered funny, so you know I'll be banned again in short stead...

Truth be told, I wasn't sure I was allowed to post yet, so I simply hit submit, expecting the confounded comment-banned IP/Subdomain notice... but it went.

Slashdot's automated comment/karma banning is stupid. My karma is EXCELLENT, but yet I can't comment because of, surprise surprise, my latest comment ban.

I'm sick of this shit. They should shut it off for users with Excellent karma. How many lines of code would that be??? Like ONE???

PUDGE!!!!

OMG just logged in today and CSS /. totally rules. Nice job guys!!!!

Bout frigging time. ;-)

American Refugees Exist! Fact.

Let's not corrupt our language just to save face, or to disseminate PR(opaganda). The word means what it means.

You have them in your country now. Deal with that reality and vote with your hearts -- give with your hearts (but stay off Paypal for Katrina donations).

Mwhahahaha!

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