CoffeeBear.net

Dear Mr. S. Bot

Dear Mr. S. Bot,

Mr. S. Bot, do you mind if I call you Spam? No? Good. I thought I would take a moment to let you know this blog uses comment moderation to prevent you from ever appearing on its pages. Additionally, I use a variety of plugins to prevent you from even showing up in my moderation queue. Unfortunately, you've managed to find a few ways to sneak past those plugins so I actually have to do something about you. I'd rather not have to do that and since you are never going to be allowed to display any information on this blog or link to your own sites from it; please give it up and go bother somebody else.

Sincerely,
Mark

P.S. I know the odds of this actually cutting back on the flow of spam to this site are less then the odds of me throwing a snowball from my office parking lot at the sun and hitting it, but it's nice to dream.

Tags: comment, Link, office, park, Plugins, Snow, spam

Lovely Weather

As I'm sure I've mentioned previously, I live in Iowa. The last couple of years we've had cold winters but haven't really had that much snow. Apparently, Mother Nature was feeling it's time to rectify that situation and we've been having quite the snowstorm. Seeing how I like taking pictures and dislike getting cold; here's a quick shot I took out my bedroom window. I apologize for the grainess of the image, but I took the picture during my lunch hour and I didn't have enough time to try removing the window screen before taking it. That and I didn't want to stand around outside in the cold taking photos; unlike some people I'm not all that eager to suffer for my art.

Tags: coffee, gallery, IM, Love, moving, photo, Photos, Snow, Weather, Winter

Review: Just A Geek

On the advice of a friend (Pukka), a while back I began to read Wil Wheaton's blog. Though I'd seen Stand By Me and Toy Soldiers, my firmest memories of Mr. Wheaton were of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was one of the few sci-fi shows that my parents were willing to watch and I have to admit while I enjoyed parts of that show (Picard rocks!); I hated Wesley. He always struck me as this smart ass; who'd lucked out his way into working on a starship. Of course, probably what really irked me about it was that it was him and not ME! Even so, that initially made me reluctant to visit the blog, but Pukka has a habit of sending me interesting links. Since he's rarely wrong (unless I've already seen what he's sent); I checked out Mr. Wheaton's site and have been faithful reader ever since. Then back when I ordered my copy of Ghosts in the Snow from Amazon.com; I had one of my oddly, cheap moments.
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Tags: Books, Car, cli, collection, fiction, geek, IM, Life, Link, Links, movie, reading, review, Sci-fi, Snow, war, work, working

Review: Ghosts in the Snow

A while back on the advice of AWelkin, I picked up a copy of Ghosts in the Snow. I read it, loved it, got distracted and never wrote up any kind of review. A couple of weeks later, I read again. I still loved it but I still didn't write up a review of it. Sometimes, life just works against you. *sigh*

I think the best description of Ghosts in the Snow, by Tamara Siler Jones, that I've heard is "forensic fantasy". It's got ghosts, magical items, foreign religions and gruesome murders. Dubric Bryerly is the Castellan¹ of Castle Faldorrah and it is his duty to keep the peace. Recently, a serial killer has been stalking serving maids and killing them, one after another. The troubling part for everyone is that no one has seen the killer. The real trouble for Dubric is the ghosts of the slain are haunting him.
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Tags: Author, cli, family, fantasy, foreign, IM, journal, Life, Love, review, Snow, weekend, work, writing

200 Things About Me

I've seen this meme in several different places. I finally decided to heck with it and that I'd do it myself. The items in bold are the ones I've done and the rest are viewable after the jump.

01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula.
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said "I love you" and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Done a striptease
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Tags: abortion, action, Airplane, article, Author, avoid, broken, Car, cli, con, cookies, drink, fantasy, flash, Food, foreign, friends, HAL, health, home, IM, Japan, job, journal, Life, linux, Love, Meme, money, movie, moving, offer, office, party, photo, Sick, Snow, strange, tea, television, war, weight, windows, work