if your mother says she loves you

“If your mother says she loves you, get a second source.”
“If your mother says she loves you, get a second opinion.”

One place attributes the latter to Dan Rather; another to the movie Primal Fear. Clearly the saying predates both of them.

Other variants:
“If your Mother says she loves you, get two independent sources of confirmation.”
“If your Mother says she loves you-get it verified.”
“Even if your mother says she loves you, get two references.”

So: who said this first? where? when? and what did they say?

guerilla usability: ice oasis hockey

For the past two years, I’ve been playing hockey at Ice Oasis. It’s a nice enough rink, but their web site is terrible. While they’ve since ditched the neon colours, the schedule page is pretty awful:

  • you have to see all of the teams at once
  • white text on a red background is hard to read
  • it’s hard to tell when your next game is

My ice oasis schedule fixes all of those problems, and gives you even more. Features include:

  • A bookmarkable URL for your team
  • A choice of formats: HTML, plain text, iCal and RSS
  • Your next game is highlighted in green, and if that game is today, it is highlighted in red.
  • The colour of the team you’re playing is shown
  • A dynamically repopulating team menus whenever you change the day of the week

The site caches data from their site and converts it, much like Google makes PDFs and Word files available in HTML. It’s pretty gentle, not hitting the real site more than once a day.

the YASNS spammer unmasked

At danah’s suggestion, I took the bait and sent a reply to the YASNS spammers. I picked “Carrie,” and sent her a note full of spelling mistakes and a run-on sentence:

i got your email on myspacester isn’t it nice you are in san jose too now. its pretty nice but no san frnsacisco.

do sned me some more pictures of you.

“Carrie” replied, pushing an adult personals site:


X-Apparently-To: [email protected] via 66.218.94.73; Mon, 26 Sep 2005 13:47:00 -0700
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 69.42.68.182
X-Originating-IP: [69.42.68.182]
Return-Path: <carrie00 @meethemnow.com>
Authentication-Results: mta109.mail.mud.yahoo.com from=meethemnow.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 69.42.68.182 (EHLO meethemnow.com) (69.42.68.182) by mta109.mail.mud.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 26 Sep 2005 13:47:00 -0700
Received: by meethemnow.com (8.13.1/8.12.11) id j8QK1OOF024349; Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:01:24 -0400 (envelope-from [email protected])
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:01:24 -0400
From: "Carrie"
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Reply-to: [email protected]
Subject: Hey you - Here are my pics!!
X-Mailer: PHP v4
Content-type: text/plain
Content-Length: 604

Hey, thanks for getting in touch with me again! I am definitely ready
to hook this up with you. According to Myspace, we live really close so
we could meet up whenever you want. Come check out my newest personal
at http://www.centralpassion.com/carrie00 My profile is listed inside
the site under "BackSideBabe". I decided to post my personal info (i.e.
phone # and my personal email address) on this site for 3 simple
reasons. 1) It's DISCREET 2)I never have to worry about being contacted by
children since only adults are allowed in the site and 3)I know all the
replies I receive are genuine. Well that’s about it for now, I really do
hope to meet up with you...and let's make it soon!

Talk later,
Carrie

***The following is a requirement of this website: "If you are offended
by adult material or are not of legal age to view such material, or if
you simply would not like to hear from any members from this website,
follow this link to be removed:"
http://www.centralpassion.com/subscription.php

The host 69.42.68.182 doesn’t reverse, but if you check the two domains mentioned in the email, you see that meethemnow.com is 69.42.81.182 and centralpassion.com is 69.42.81.180.

The IP block is owned by Webair Internet Development Inc. at

333 Jericho Tpke Suite 200
Jericho NY 11753

Their AUP states:

Spamming (sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet). This includes, but is not limited to, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, informational announcements, charity requests, petitions for signatures, and political or religious tracts. Such messages may only be sent to those who have explicitly requested them from your domain. Using spam to promote a Web site hosted on the Webair Network ("spamvertising") is also prohibited, even if the spam is not sent through the Webair Network

I’ll be dropping them a note shortly.

great americans

anne tipped me off to an interesting book: Great Americans, which chronicles the stories of regular people with famous names:

Did you know Elvis Presley lives – and works as a data supervisor at a hospital in Texas? That Jackie Kennedy is a sales clerk at an outlet mall in Mississippi? Ever met Marilyn Monroe, a retired politician in Iowa; Al Capone, who works at a food distribution center in South Philly; Bob Dylan, a cashier at a Las Vegas casino; or Muhammad Ali, a University of Minnesota freshman and aspiring neuroscientist? What do they look like? Where have they been? And what does it mean to them to be American?