Sweet, Glorious Comment Spam Detection and Other Random

I was all set to come and post something about how it's going to be an interesting day today seeing how I got a whopping grand total of about 3 hours of sleep. But then! At the top of my Blogger screen was a little note about how they have implemented comment spam detection. And suddenly things were looking a little brighter.

Seriously, this is delightful news to me. Lately, most of the comments round these parts have been from Chinese spammers. Which really isn't the commentary I've been hoping for. Now, I realize that there probably hasn't been much to comment on otherwise, but, all things being equal, I really didn't think things were so bad that I needed to become a clearinghouse for Chinese spam. And actually, I'd been thinking just this week about turning comments off altogether to save myself the hassle of deleting the spam on every post.

Fingers crossed that it works as well as I've come to expect Google-related spam filtering to work.

The Friday Fiction prompt today was rather odd. I had decided as I tiptoed downstairs that I would spend some time on that as a sop to my sleep deprived brain. Then I saw the prompt: The conversation took off when Louise mentioned Bruce Willis. Really? First off, I can't see myself naming a character that I could love and call my own Louise. No offense to the Louises out there, but it's just not likely to be a name I would come up with. Secondly, why would this mythical Louise be talking about Bruce Willis? It kind of forces you into a time period and a genre. Finally, why would a conversation about Bruce Willis ever progress beyond "Gosh, he's looking old these days"? So, yeah, no Fiction Friday today.

I got an email from my advisor - well, it was a mass email to all his advisees - letting me know that he likely wouldn't get to anything in the review box until after classes started. Everyone who's shocked and amazed by this, raise your hand. No hands? Really? Yeah, me either. A desire to just graduate already clearly doesn't constitute any kind of emergency on his part.

Did I mention yet that I've ordered a Kindle? I took the release of the 3rd generation as a sign and promptly plunked down my preorder. Now I just sit here chomping at the bit for it to arrive. It's not going to ship til August 27th at the earliest, so I need to not focus on it, but really...it's rather exciting. And there are books that I want to read! Books that I could buy for my new Kindle! But I'm waiting til I have it in my hot little hands, cause I'm just not going to sit at my computer and read a book. I know this already.

I'm zipping up on major crisis #2 for my main character in the current writing project and I find that, despite knowing exactly what needs to happen and how I want to write it, I'm avoiding it. Cause it's going to hurt her, rather badly at that, and, well, she's been through so much already, I'm having a tough time doing this to her. But, it must be done, and perhaps I'll get that underway once I publish this post. But honestly, I think maybe I care about these little scraps of electrons just a tad too much.

That said, perhaps it's time to be on with the inevitable while the rest of the house is asleep.