Spam Strikes Again

It amazes me that just a week after re-adding comments, I'm already getting comment spam. One I deleted yesterday, and one today. I had long thought that such posts were enabled by so many sites running standard tools like Movable Type, etc, and that by doing my own thing they would have to manually account for my site.

Well, either the comment spam tools are more thorough than I had imagined or the spammers are pretty bored. In any case I just added IP address logging to comments, so I think my solution for now will just be to start banning IPs that produce comment spam. If that doesn't work I'll get a little harsher.

Update (4:06pm): The first spam to have its IP logged came from a dynamic IP pool under http://interbusiness.it.

It's Wet Outside*

Local Radar So it started raining this morning. Not hard yet, but even just walking across the street to pay (cash) for my parking was frigid thanks to a whipping wind. The little image to the left is a thumbnail of what our local radar looked like when I pulled it up just now.

To really understand how much rain LA's gotten recently, take a look at these pictures from USC's Facilities department. That's a lot of water, in a lot of places it shouldn't be. City Hall's having the same problems, according to an article in today's Daily News.

Update (12:21pm): I just walked to the little market next door to pick up a 2-liter of Coke, and they were working to move merchandise and cover up items near a couple nice drips from the (very high -- 20ft?) ceiling. There was a decent amount of standing water on the floor.

Doh

One of the things I needed to do before I left for Michigan was pay ahead for my January parking, since I wouldn't be back until today. I went down to do that the morning of the 21st, but they weren't really prepared for people to do that, so they told me just to pay when I got back. That's cool. So what do I do? I leave my checkbook in Michigan. And I should have extra checks around here somewhere, but I can't find them for anything.

So now I need to figure that out in the morning, before the rain comes.

It's Good to Be Home

As good as it was to be back in Michigan for a few weeks, it's definitely nice to be back in LA, sitting at my own desk, about to sleep in my own bed.

The flights were uneventful. On the Detroit to LA leg I sat next to a guy who's running the Bentley exhibit at the Auto Show. He was cool; we talked some during the flight and then ended up giving him a ride to his hotel since it was right downtown. I need to get over to the Convention Center sometime to check out the show. I went a few years ago and enjoyed it, but haven't been back.

Watching the Weather

Things are a bit slow in this last day before I head back to LA. I'm still a little in shock over the game last night. My heart told me we would win big, but all the things the "experts" were saying were starting to convince my head it would be close. Moral of the story: If the media ever picks USC to be out-physicalled in a bowl game, put all your money on SC.

The big question mark tomorrow is the weather: how's the snow situation going to look both here in Muskegon and in Detroit? And then from there it's back to LA and to several days of rain. I'll take it over the snow. It's too cold for me here.