I was reading an article on spam, and suddenly it hit me, why didn't I get in on this cash cow? Think about it, it's a pretty interesting problem to work on, very hands-on technology. And it's interesting from a psychological point of view, because spamming is an epic battle between the good and the bad. :D It is a point of ingeniousness on part of the spammer to circumvent every obstacle he is made to cross. This is a pretty exciting mix of technology and psychology, on either side of the fence. And plenty of cases to boost your ego, whenever you successfully draw up a successful obstacle, or you overcome it. Then of course it's the money, which we keep hearing is good, but since spammers probably don't file tax returns, we don't really know.

Although, the problem doesn't really evolve much, does it? The point of spam (and spam itself) is pretty much what it was 10 years ago, just that the method of getting it to the public have become clever. But it's still doing the same thing they always did, so once you've gotten sick of that, there's nothing more to sink your teeth into, no other goal that you could pursue.

Besides, the problem itself, while being circumstantially interesting, is not in itself an interesting problem to solve. It's basically mailing out envelopes, or sending out the traditional junk mail letters. Just doing it in a highly organized and automated way.

Another downside is that it's not a socially applaudable career. You won't be getting any good references from spamming when you're applying for your next job. The average person from the current generation of young adults is expected to change their career 4 times in the space of their work lifetime. But going from spamming to something new might be tricky, because your past x years are poorly accounted for, unless you state that you were in the business of spamming, which may be frowned upon.

So though I've never evaluated spamming as a career choice before, I have now, and it may just look a little more appealing than it really is.

Jerry is absolutely right. It terrifies me. I was gonna have some cereal today and for some reason or another it's been a while since I had milk. I still had a carton in there, pretty full. But when I saw the date on it, it was two days past the expiration date. I actually glanced at the container, saw the date, put it back in the fridge, went back to my room to check the date on the computer and decided "no way". I've seen bad milk in the past, it curdles, awful stuff. For added drama, the brand I usually get was actually sold out, so this carton was another brand I hadn't tried before. It tasted remarkably..... alike. But that doesn't mean I was going to take a chance on it past the date. I poured it out into the sink, it actually looked perfectly fine. But two days is way past the accepted standard, even when I have milk on the day I'm sort of thinking "did they mean noon or 8pm?", it already makes me uneasy.

I may be liberal on some things, but on milk past the date I'm definitely conservative.

I used to be a huge Michael Jackson fan as a kid, my room was plastered with his posters, I had all the albums, I listened to his music _all the time_. In 1993, he was on tour and I badly wanted to go to the concert in Oslo. One Saturday morning, at about 8am, my friend and I had just left Oslo S and we were heading for a record store. The line from the entrance almost encircled the entire block and finally we arrived at the end of the line. We were an hour early, quite a few people had gotten there ahead of us. Literally minutes later we witnessed the line grow incredibly fast, we couldn't even see the end anymore as it was wrapped around the last corner of the block. At 9am, the doors opened and the tickets went on sale. We got ours and it felt pretty amazing knowing we would be going to a live performance.

The problem with these concerts, of course, is that there are way too many people, and when you're 12 years old and pretty damn short, it's pretty much a given you're not going to get much out of pushing your way to the front of the pack. We actually grabbed our seats at the very back, the stadium where the concert was had this grassy hill on one side and we sat there quite comfortably. (Seeing wasn't a problem either with huge screens on either side of the stage showing what was happening.)

I haven't been to anything like that concert. Michael Jackson had a reputation for amazing live shows, people who didn't even like his music would go just to see it. Years later I would meet people who had been there and who still remembered it. Of course, for me it was just unbelievable. Not all of the concerts had the same format, but in Oslo he performed quite a lot of old and new songs, and the music, the scenography, the atmosphere - indescribable. Best concert I've ever seen by a mile.

So with my background, I'd say I know Michael Jackson pretty well (even though it has been over a decade since I listened to his music). And among all the things that are said about the guy, the one thing I don't understand is how some people say "he looks like a woman". (This is more of a throwback to the past, after the last surgeon butchered his face I haven't heard people say it anymore.) It's just hard to imagine women would take a look at him and say "yeap, he's one of us". How exactly does he look like a woman? :confused: Is it the long hair? Is long hair the only thing you need to have to be a woman? I mean he doesn't dress like a woman, does he?

Since when is that women's fashion? Do you see a pink blouse? Red bows in his hair? A tank top? Purple sunglasses? Lipstick? I don't get it. Is it the hair then? Do women think anyone with long hair is a woman? How can that conviction not have backfired at least once in life? I can just see it now, working out at the gym, you spot another woman working on some machine.

"How you doin' girlfriend, haven't seen you around here before.. "
*guy turns around*
"Whoa! Sorry, sir."

So do all men with long hair look like women? Does Yanni? Well, the moustache may be a tip off, it nothing else. Who else looks like a woman? Oh, I know.

Check out the long hair!! That's a woman if I ever saw one.

For a lot of people, 'normal' seems to be the holy grail. A lot of people want to be normal and don't like to stick out. To me, more often than not, being 'normal' is sort of not good enough. This is certainly not the rule for every aspect of life, but in many ways I just don't find myself on the middle ground. And I don't want to either. I do too much of something or not enough. I do something early or too late. And as far as I remember, I've always been this way. Of course, there are outside pressures, influences. But if I want to be 'true to myself', this is who I am.

When comparing myself to other people, I always want to be better. Feeling 'equal' doesn't really do anything for me, unless it's aspiring to be equal to a group of people I consider beyond my level, in whatever sense. This comes to fore in the most obvious way in a sports context, where direct competition and vindication is clearcut. So I tend to try hard if I think I can be better than someone. On the other hand, if it is obvious that I can't, I don't really try. This doesn't have to be an instant thing, I've often times played sports with people far better and tried to gradually reach their level. But if I don't believe that I can, then I don't see why I should even try. So I don't really apply myself.

There is no way I could articulate this conviction, and as such I don't really think it is a conviction on any logical grounds. It is just an instinct that lies within. And it isn't necessarily to do with competition either. A lot of the time, the pride for doing something well comes from doing more than the norm. More, or better, than what is considered to be sufficient, or 'good'. That doesn't mean I consistently do so, my lazy side counters that instinct and often times I end up doing too little, which feels like failure. On the other hand, doing 'just enough' doesn't seem to have any kind of vindication. The only thing I feel is that 'I've done it' and it's over, because I know it is. But I don't feel happy about it, I don't feel fulfilled. There's a lot of things I've done 'just okay', like getting a driver's license or graduating from high school. But I don't feel any pride about those. It feels like I did what I had to, and had I not done it I would have failed. But I don't deserve credit for doing 'just alright'. Even if it is something that matters a lot. Conversely, I take pride in doing things well, even small things. And I sometimes remember them for a long time.

I suppose it is a passion, coupled with a fairly one tracked mind. When I like something, I immerse myself in it. I remember when I was a kid and I was just beginning to play sports. 'Play sports' doesn't really describe what a four year old, or a six year old, does. But that's where it begins. And every time I played something, like kicking a ball back and forth, the other person would always want to stop before I did. I always wanted to go on. Finally, after about the third time of asking, I would agree to stop. I always wanted to keep playing. And I can trace that right back into the present. I still want to keep playing when others have had enough. And I still want to keep doing something after others have quit. Of course, provided it's going well. I don't blindly do the same thing over and over when I don't feel that I'm getting somewhere. But that just comes right back to the notion that there is no 'just enough'. There's either 'not enough' or 'too much'. In school we used to have 'ski day', the whole school skiing once a year. I loved those days. We would be up there from about 10 to 2 in the afternoon. That was when school ended ordinarily, so ski day would too. I always wanted to stay on. This was tricky, you had to get a note from your parents saying they let you stay longer and take the later bus home. (My parents never minded, but I was never good at remembering these little bureaucratic twists.)

Always wanting to do more. Countered by a strong force of inertia. If I do less, I feel like a failure. If I do just enough, I don't feel any pay off. Then there are things I never really wanted to do, but it's a necessity. Like cooking. I do just enough and I don't even think about it as enjoyment or achievement of any kind. It's just something to get over with.

There is no middle ground.

So you drive a car to work everyday. You get up, have breakfast, head to the garage and get in. Start the car, put it in gear and drive off. Day two. Same deal. Then comes Day X. Car won's start. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while, the car will fail. In fact, all mechanical devices fail sometimes. Because that's what they are, constructs whose success rate is 'good enough' for what we need them to do.

Ever noticed how the human body is equally prone to error? Less probable to fail perhaps, in a period of time, but just as likely to fail when the time comes. And I'm not talking about sickness, inborn defects or hereditary disposition. I mean plain everyday things. Like you're in class and the teacher asks you a question and you open your mouth to speak, but... no voice comes out. So you clear your throat (the proverbial 'reboot') and it's back. It's such a weird thing, it probably doesn't happen more than a couple of times a year (so just imagine how reliable your voice is!), but you never see it coming and it does happen. And it's not triggered by any kind of special situation, sometimes it happens in high-stress cases, sometimes in trivial settings. It's almost as if you want to test your voice before you're about to address a person in a crucial moment, just to be sure.