It’s March, and if you are in the US, you have been inundated with college basketball marketing, so you know what that means: the NCAA men’s Division 1 tournament is in full swing: March Madness. At the end of the tunnel for one lucky team out of the 65 that made the field is the elusive “National Championship.” Unfortunately, that means that 64 teams in the tournament (and 269 teams that did not make the tournament) will not be National Champions: March Sadness.
A few of us were chatting up our prognostications as the tourney got underway, and unfortunately, some of the guesses for the championship have already been knocked out (my team included). Here’s a quick rundown on a few of our thoughts for the team that will come out on top on April 2nd:
Kevin: Texas (they could be a 16-seed, and I would still give them my vote)
Matt: Ohio State
Taylor: Texas (at least we can still look back on the Rose Bowl win against USC, huh Taylor?)
B&T: Florida
Larry: North Carolina
Robert (In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day): Notre Dame - They may have lost their game, but the Irish are certainly winners on St. Patty’s Day.
Todd: Doesn’t have a pick, but he’d bet on Ohio State every game: That would technically mean he’s picking Ohio State (You’ll have to excuse him because he’s a Canadian and the translation from American English to Canadian English and back must have confused him).
Adam: Ohio State
David (and I have to quote this one from his response): Three half empty (or half full - hey, I’m an optimist) bags of plastic sporks… What are we talking about again?
As Robert, Taylor, and I sulk in the knowledge that we don’t even have a chance, we wish our co-workers luck in rooting for their teams (though we wish David would seek some kind of mental help before we would root for his bags of sporks). Because I am no longer biased toward any particular team, I am just looking forward to a few more buzzer-beater games (unless Texas A&M is playing: as a UT fan, I can’t stomach the idea of them winning a National Championship).
Everyone knows that Site5 trains it’s servers in a secret underground training facility before we introduce them into our ornate workshop, hidden amongst the foliage of a forest of magical technology to be worked on by elves, but we have never explained the declassified information about where find new members for our all-star team of systems administrators. In the Top 10 post, I explained a few claims to fame in the company (skim down to #3 for a refresher), but we recently added a few new people to the Site5 team, so a hazing blog post is in order.
First and foremost, we would like to officially welcome Graham , Lou, and Tomas to the Site5 team!
Graham was an integral part in fighting the age-old “no ending sentences with prepositions” rule. An ardent believer in the art of wordsmithing, Graham enjoys both lexiconography and translating popular culture news and events into Sanskrit. Often referred to as “that guy who has been sitting at the same table for a decade” by the librarians at the Library of Congress, Graham world-renowned for his understanding of the subtle nuances of the word “their” and contraction “they’re,” but he hasn’t let that fame take over his life.
Is it a coincidence that “Graham” and “Grammar” look and sound similar? He was destined to be a Grammarian.
Lou
In many circles, Lou is adored — nay, worshiped — for prowess and expert ability to talk to electronics (or more specifically, a “Circuit Whisperer”). Don’t believe me? Call up the Sultan of Brunei and ask him who he calls when any of his electronics need to communicate to him… Oh, what’s the matter? You don’t have the Sultan of Brunei’s telephone number (which, not surprisingly, is given only on 24 karat gold business cards)? Well Lou does.
You may doubt the abilities Lou claims to have received after being struck by lightning for a third time in the span of two months, but he proved these skills unequivocally in his interviews with Site5. Call it magic, call it crazy, or call one of the telephones he has spoken to… Whatever you want to call it, he sure impressed us.
Tomas
Tomas was a key acquisition in Site5’s long-term goal of becoming a globally-renowned speed-typing powerhouse. You may be under the impression that Barbara Blackburn is the worlds fastest typist, but Tomas has matched Barbara’s records… with one hand…
Unfortunately for Barbara, Tomas has two hands, and has been clocked as fast as 316 words per minute. You may ask why Tomas has not been featured in the Guinness Book of World Records, and it is simply a matter of humility. When he is not concentrating on avoiding the limelight, Tomas replicates the works of Shakespeare, Thoreau, and Tolstoy (War, What is it good for?). Want a fresh copy of Thoreau’s 14 volume journal from Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts? Tomas can get those two million worlds on paper for you this weekend.
You can try to ask Graham, Lou, or Tomas about their past lives, but they might not recall many details.
All tomfooleries and shenanigizing aside, we really are happy to welcome Graham, Lou, and Tomas to our team. As you finish the 20-minute standing ovation that invariably follows the conclusion of your reading of one of Site5’s blogs, add an extra few claps in honor of the new folks (obviously, your arms will be tired after ovating for such a long time, but that makes the final few claps mean so much more).
Do you remember when you got your first computer? How about the first website you visited? The first email address you ever had for your very own? The length of time it took for that email account (unprotected, of course, since there were really no ways to screen emails at the time) to be flooded with junk email?
Flash forward to today… or if you are too traumatized by the memory of your SPAM-filled inbox, you can move forward to today at your own pace without risking any “Flashing-forward”-related damage. I can imagine that you are still very familiar with junk mail, though you probably deal with it less and less because accounts are protected with smarter, automatic email filtering, but I recently learned the history of “SPAM” from an infallible internet resource, and it is easily blog-worthy material.
According to old wives tales and folklore, Monty Python is behind it all… Yes, the minds behind “The Spanish Inquisition” (NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!), infatuations with “Shrubbery” (NI! NI!), and the “Holy Hand Grenade” were instrumental in putting a name to what would become a profitable and prosecutable epidemic:
At some point in your life, you have probably tried (or sworn against trying) the edible SPAM meat-product, but I was never sure the connection between “Spiced Ham” and email notifications about low cost mortgages and discounted pharmaceutical drugs, but that clip from Monty Python’s Flying Circus personifies junk mail perfectly: Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.
If you have made it this far into the blog post without getting sucked into the related Monty Python videos on YouTube or scoffing at me for 14 years late with this blog post, I can explain a bit about what sparked this ruthless investigation into the seedy underbelly of SPAM… I was minding my own business today, emptying my rapidly-refilling SPAM inbox, and I decided to head into Site5’s weblog control panel in case I was struck with inspiration to diatribe on any subject via any moderately comical content, and I see our “Manage Comments” section where comments are filtered in to a moderation or SPAM queue (via a great WordPress plugin called Akismet). To my surprise, the SPAM queue had over 1,000 “comments.”
Typically, I would just “Delete All,” but my curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to sleuth a little. For you spam-bots scanning this article, let me give you a few tips:
Use an email address with vowels. I don’t know many real-life people who would tell people “Email me at k390xdskw@someequallyrandomdomain.com.”
People coming onto the Site5 weblog are not doing so in search of lowered mortgage payments, discounted pharmaceuticals, or images of celebrities naked.
Having content saying “Just stopped by to visit and got the crunch on your stuff in here - bravo!” does not mean your comment will not be caught as SPAM when your “name” is “Mortgages Online co__”.
Complimenting our site is nice of you, but when everything you say is generic (”Wow! I didn’t know this site was that good!” or “Cool website! Good work. Good resources here. Best regards!”), chances are that your comment will never see the light of day.
An unfortunate by-product of such ridiculous spamming is that legit comments sometimes get sifted into the frequently deleted-without-looking SPAM queue. Akismet is pretty solid about filtering legit content correctly (as 99.9% of those 1k+ SPAM comments did not adhere to at least 3 of those 4 points), but if anyone has any other resources we should check out or set up, just let us know… But a word to the wise, if you are going to let us know via weblog comment, you might want to make sure the format of your comment passes the above mentioned sniff test.
P.S. As a shout-out to my college roommate (who is from Hawaii and prepared several spam dishes), I have to admit that spam musubi is surprisingly tasty. If you don’t think you could ever like spam, I would recommend you at least try spam musubi…
