Randomness #6

I feel like a slacker.  I haven’t posted here since Monday, but that happens on this blog occasionally.  What makes me a real slacker is I hadn’t posted on My Sports Obsession since Wednesday.  Why does that make me a slacker?  Because I actually have completed draft posts saved up for that blog and I still hadn’t posted until just before I started typing this.  I just haven’t been in the mood.  I even let my Tumblr posts run out and I usually have those queued up for a week or so.  I suck.

On my work days, I’d get home, shower, eat and then spend the evening in front of the tv, barely even touching my laptop.  So I guess you could say I haven’t been in the mood to do anything.  We did get fully caught up on the DVR from being gone all weekend though so that’s one thing.  But now we’ve been renting movies all weekend from the Redbox because we were caught up.  We watched “Seven Psychopaths” and “Taken 2” last night.  This afternoon and evening we’ve watched “Ted”, “Pitch Perfect” and are watching “Alex Cross” at the moment and will probably watch “Bourne Legacy” later tonight.  I know, we lead such an exciting life.

My latest ecard creation.

Last night, I took my kids to supper, then Samantha and I went to see her cousin at pep band.  If you follow my Instagram, you saw the picture when I posted it during supper.

That was at Arby’s because we are high class in this family.  But I’m showing you this picture so I can show you the first take when I was trying to get it.

Just as I go to click the button, Samantha goes “wait, I got something in my teeth” and starts digging in with her nail.  Ain’t she beautiful.  Anyways, we went to a high school basketball game but we were mainly there to see her cousin (technically my ex-niece) play in the pep band.  I’ve said before that I talk and hang out with theEx’s sister still.  Well, her daughter has been texting me recently too.  Which I love.  As much as I don’t like to be around theEx anymore, I do miss her family.  They were my family for 13 years so I guess that’s to be expected, but I didn’t really think the nieces would remember me because they were younger and I haven’t been around them for a few years now.  So I was surprised to receive texts from her and even more surprised that she’s been inviting me to come watch her play.  So that’s what Samantha and I did last night.  Then Samantha had girl scouts this morning and then again tomorrow night so it’s a busy weekend with a lot of sitting around in between.

One thing I have been doing lately is constantly checking my blogs for spam.  Both of them have been pounded lately.  It’s nice to see my stats on certain posts rise but I expect that they it is mainly spammers adding to that.  I did cross a couple of milestones recently on both blogs.  I’ve reached 200 posts on this blog as well as reaching my 2 year anniversary yesterday.  This is actually post 202 so I reached it last week.  It also crossed 20,000 pageviews a few days ago.  My Sports Obsession passed 600 posts last week as well as 40,000 pageviews.  Maybe reaching those milestones is the reason I’ve been spanked with spam lately.  Most of you don’t know (because you don’t leave comments) that I just use the spam filter, I don’t use the captcha crap because I hate trying to read it.  The filter does pretty good, it stops 95% of the spam but I get an e-mail from blogger with EVERY comment, even spam comments.  It would be nice if the emails said that it stopped it for spam but all it says is there was a comment and I have to go to the blog post to see if it got posted.  This blog has had 34 spam comments in February, but 17 of those have come in the last week.  My Sports Obsession has had 15 this month and only 5 in the last week so it’s something on this blog that has gotten the attention of the spammers.  Particularly the post “Kids and Social Media” has been nailed.  It posted on January 28th, less than a month and it is already my 3rd most read post all time.  Like I said above, spammers are giving me nice blog stats.

In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t talk about working out anymore.  Because I got lazy again.  I think if I could do it most everyday, I would stick to it more.  The problem is, I can’t work out on the days I work and when I work a weekend, it’s 3 days straight of not working out.  Apparently that was all it took to get me to stop.  So I guess I’ll just have to get use to the fact that I’m fat.  I’ll have to come to the fact that the only 6 pack I’ll ever own is of Mountain Dew.  Oh wait, I don’t buy pop anymore.  I won’t even have one of those.

I guess I had more to say than I thought.  Maybe I should make myself do a blog post every few days.  Apparently if I sit down and make myself type something out that I can.  I’m sure it will be nothing exciting but then again, only spammers read my blog anyways.  I know they read it because they always say so in their comments.  They would never lie, everything on the internet is true.

Spammers

I’m so sick of spammers.  And they are all over now, Twitter,  Facebook, Email, Blogs and even Instagram.  Filters do a good job on my email and blogs, but it just pisses me off that they try.  I think in my case, I take it personally because I think your calling me an idiot.  Am I really going to fall for your stupid attempts to get me to click your links.

I don’t use Twitter for anything personal, I do on occasion, but for the most part it is a tool for my blogs to get more exposure.  So this morning, I tweet out links to 2 blogs I posted and not long after, I get a reply.  I guess technically it’s not a reply because this spammer thought by including my twitter ID, that my readers might click on their ID and then click on one of the links in his About Me section.  I report it as spam, I always have and I always will.  If everyone would use the Report as Spam, it would make it a lot harder for these spammers (or dickheads as I prefer to call them) to spam.  We will never stop them because there are always going to be dickheads trying to get their crap out.  Lowlife’s that can’t make it in the real world so they resort to tricking people.  There’s a reason you have to resort to spam, your too stupid to learn how to advertise correctly.

Facebook is personal, sure I have a few pages for my blogs, but being as I have very few Likes on either of them, I generally use them the same way as I do Twitter, to advertise my blogs.  I would like to use them more for communicating with readers and fellow bloggers, but with the very few likes I have, I don’t really see a point to it.  Facebook is good because it does allow you a lot of control, most of the people just don’t know how to use it correctly.  Did you know that even when he join an app or community, that you can always prevent them from posting on your timeline?  Before you automatically click the accept button, change the “Friends” button to “only me”.  Yes, it will still get posted on your timeline but it doesn’t go out as a status feed.  And who really goes to your actual page to read about you, most people use the status feed.  So next time you sign up for a game, change the view by button so I don’t have to see every time you get on your stupid game or that your 60% happy today.

                                                    

Now when it comes to email, I do get a lot of spam, but I use Yahoo and Gmail and both have great spam filters.  I have multiple accounts, especially with yahoo.  I even pay Yahoo $20 annually so I can use multiple addresses from the same account.  I have 2 yahoo addresses that both go to that account as well as multiple disposable addresses.  I use multiple addresses depending on what I do.  I have a personal address that I only give out to family and friends.  I have a couple of different accounts that I use to sign up with things such as Facebook, Twitter, ect.  I also use those accounts when I have to give an email address to sign up with something just in case they decide to sell it to spammers.  And I also use a Gmail address that I use to associate with all of my Google accounts.  Which I really started using more when I started blogging.  Plus my phone is an Android so it’s Google as well.  My spam folder always has stuff in it because I get a crap load of spam, but like I said, I never see if because of the filters.

Blogging has been great, and I love comments.  But not so much that I want spam bullshit in my comments.  I do get a crap load of spam comments but rarely does it get posted because of the filter.  Other bloggers have talked about the stupid crap they say like complementing my post that you didn’t actually read is going to get me to click on it.  Now most of these are my fault, because I don’t use the captcha to weed out actual comments and other people’s comments.  And unless they actually start getting through the filters, I won’t use them.  The only reason people use them anyways is because of the afore mentioned asshole spammers.  So if you use the captcha, I implore you to get rid of it.  Your comments will be fine.  It’s just annoying to leave a comment and try to figure out what they are saying.

The last few weeks, anytime my wife or I post pictures of our cat on Instagram, we get spam comments about how to get more followers.  Guess what?  I don’t care how many followers I have.  These comment’s take advantage of those needy people who think the more followers they have on their various social media outlets, the more popular they really are.  So these spammers are created by you people who are stupid enough to believe, “I have 1000 friends on Facebook, I’m so popular”, morons.  Your as bad as the spammers, you’re the reason these spammers exist.  Because of your low self-esteem issues.  Get over it, there is probably a reason nobody likes you.

And there’s a reason I don’t like spammers.  You are no good to society, pushing your agenda on everybody else.  You can’t follow basic social rules.  You want to be popular or rich by taking advantage of other people’s stupidity or insecurities.  I have 2 words for you, FUCK YOU!

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes.  Stop by, read them all and vote for me and 4 others.