Well, I’d had some light brushes with spam commenters before, easily cleaned up with deletion or excision. But the last two days, my spam-comments went through the roof, and I’ve commissioned the Disseminary’s trusty technical services librarian (I’m hoping that’s a welcome job description; if I’ve missed the mark, Dorothea, please just let me know) to install Jay Allen’s anti-comment-spam prescription in our MT set-up (which I learned about from Liz). That said, I spent a lot of time searching out and deleting unwelcome spam today, time that might have been reduced if Movable Type had a more powerful comment-editing option.
In a moment of vanity, I vaunted myself on having gotten an average of two comments for ever post at this site; deleting the spam has reduced that average considerably, which simply reinforces the old adage of pride going before a fall.
And that was time I could’ve used for other purposes. I took part in a Disputatio in Early Church History this afternoon; Trevor argued the case that in the year 150 CE, Christianity was appropriately viewed as an entity distinct from the Judaism within which it developed; I argued that even as late as 150, Christianity should be understood as one of a variety of Judaic sects. (I cleaned his clock, but that’s probably just because he felt sorry for me.)
I could’ve used that time for paying bills, a necessity catalyzed by (a) my impending departure for Cambridge, a neurosis I evidently share with Frank, and (b) the arrival of the first post-operative medical bill (they don’t waste a second, do they?). Luckily, I may be able to impress someone at BloggerCon with Josiah’s usefulness as a gofer, and lease him out to raise funds.
I could’ve used that time for responding to some of the sharp insights going down over at the Disseminary “Ethics of Interpreting the Bible” blog, and to David Weinberger’s kind appreciation of my “Seeing Hermeneutics” posts.
Instead, I was weeding spam (now, that’s an ugly picture!).
DRMA: "Edison Museum" by They Might Be Giants; "Where The Hell Is Bill?" by Camper Van Beethoven; "Down Along the Cove" by Bob Dylan; "Postcard" by the Who; "Picasso's Last Words" by Paul McCartney; "I'm A Little Dinosaur" by Jonathan Richman; "Ladybird" by XTC; "I Am a Lonesome Hobo" by Bob Dylan (big night for John Wesley Harding on iTunes); "Sing Oh Barren One" by Sweet Honey In The Rock; .
Tomorrow morning. Early. Promise.
And, yeah, tech-services librarian suits me just peachy.
Posted by: Dorothea Salo at October 2, 2003 09:33 PM