Tag Archives: war

E-Mail Addresses on Web Sites

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Why you shouldn’t include a link to your e-mail address on your Web site.

Many people — including me! — use their Web sites as a kind of global calling card, a way to share information about themselves or their companies with others all over the world. It’s common to want to share your contact information with site visitors — particularly potential customers — so they can contact you. This is often done through the use of a mailto tag. For example, e-mail me! which appears as a clickable e-mail link.

Unfortunately there are people out there who want your e-mail address, people who want to scam you into sending money to Nigeria, advertise their online casinos, sell you prescription drugs, show you their porn sites — the list goes on and on. If you have your e-mail address on any Web site, you probably already get a lot of this spam. That’s because of computer programs that crawl through Web sites and harvest e-mail addresses that are included in the otherwise innocent mailto tag. Heck, they even harvest addresses that aren’t part of a mailto tag, so just including your e-mail address on a Web page without a link can get you on a bulk e-mail list.

So what’s the solution? There are a few.

One popular and easy-to-implement solution is to turn your e-mail address into a text phrase that a site visitor must see and manually type in to use. For example, me@domain.com becomes me at domain dot com or meATdomainDOTcom. You get the idea. Someone who wanted to send you an e-mail message, would be able to figure that out — if he couldn’t, he really shouldn’t be surfing the ‘Net anyway — and manually enter the correct translation in his e-mail program. But e-mail harvesters supposedly can’t figure this out (which I find hard to believe) so the e-mail address isn’t harvested.

Another solution is to use an e-mail obfuscation program. These programs take e-mail addresses and change or insert characters to make them impossible to read. The e-mail addresses look okay on the site — to a person viewing them — and work fine in a mailto link — when used from the Web site. WordPress plugins are available to do this. I don’t use any of them, so I can’t comment on how well they work. But they must be at least a little helpful if they’re available. You can find a few here, on the WordPress Codex.

The solution I use is form-based e-mail. I created a Contact Form with fields for the site visitor to fill out. When the form is submitted, a program processes it and sends it to my e-mail address. Because that address is not on the Web page that includes the form — or on any other Web page, for that matter — e-mail harvesters cannot see it. As a result, I’m able to provide a means of contacting me via e-mail that keeps my e-mail address safe from spammers.

The program I use is called NateMail from MindPalette Software. it’s a free PHP tool that’s easy to install and configure. But what I like best about it is that you can set it up with multiple e-mail addresses. Use a corresponding drop-down list in your form to allow the site visitor to choose the person the e-mail should go to. NateMail directs the message to the correct person. You can see this in action on my other WordPress-based site, wickenburg-az.com, in its Contact Form. If you want a few more features, such as the ability to attach files to an e-mail message, MindPalette offers ProcessForm for only $15.

Other WordPress users are likely to have their own favorite methods of protecting their e-mail addresses from spammers. With luck, a few of them who read this will share their thoughts in the Comments for this post.

One more thing…this doesn’t just apply to WordPress-based sites. It applies to all Web sites. And a contact form tool like NateMail will work with any PHP-compatible Web server.

If you’re already getting spam, using one of these methods won’t stop it. It’ll just keep the situation from getting much worse. Your best bet is to change your e-mail address and protect the new one. In my case, that’s a big pain in the butt — so many people I need to be in touch with have my e-mail address and, worse yet, I often use it as a login for Web sites I visit (which does indeed make the spam situation worse). I’m working on a plan to phase out the bad addresses and replace them with ones that I protect. Until then, I have to rely on the spam-catching features of my ISP and my e-mail software to sort out the bad stuff — currently about 20-40 messages a day — so I don’t have to.

The Eyes Had It

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I begin to lose my close vision.

It’s inevitable. As a person ages, he loses his close vision. Now, as I approach my 45th birthday, I’m beginning to lose mine.

My far vision has always been bad. I started wearing glasses in 5th grade and I’ve been wearing contact lenses since my college days. Because I seldom wear glasses, however, people assume I have normal vision. I don’t. My vision is very bad. At this point, I wouldn’t trust myself to walk five steps without my contacts or glasses on.

It always makes me laugh when I see the “corrective lenses” restriction on my driver’s license and pilot medical certificate. Do they honestly think I’m crazy enough to drive or fly without some kind of visual aid?

I’m fortunate in that my vision, although bad, is extremely correctable. That means that with my lenses on, I can see just as well — if not better — than most people who don’t have “vision problems.” In my life, I’ve had two friends who weren’t so fortunate. Their vision was not correctable. Both worked with computers for a living. I still remember sitting with one of them at his desk while he stuck his face up against his 21″ monitor — considered very large at the time — reading something onscreen.

(Apple has a software solution for this called Universal Access. I wrote briefly about it in my Tiger book.)

Two years ago, I got an eye exam. My far vision had worsened again. My doctor gave me an option.

“You can keep the prescription you have or go with a stronger prescription. But if you go with the stronger prescription, you might have some problems with your close vision.”

I didn’t believe her and I went with the stronger prescription. After all, I liked being able to see things off in the distance, especially when I flew. The air can be so clear up here, away from the city. Visibility often exceeds 50 miles. I wanted to see those 50 miles as well as I could.

But she was right. After switching to the new prescription, I started noticing a problem with reading small print. At first, it was just a minor problem that could be solved by adding light. But it seemed to get worse and worse. I finally broke down and bought a pair of “cheaters” — you know, those cheap reading glasses you can buy in a drugstore. They were a +1.25 prescription and they really helped.

The trouble with wearing cheaters is that the more you wear them, the more you come to depend on them. I tried hard for a long time to just wear them when I was reading in bed. But it wasn’t long before I found myself needing them other times, like when trying to read package ingredients in the supermarket or drug store. Add more light.

I had an eye exam earlier this year and my far vision prescription has gotten worse again. But I learned my lesson. So far, I haven’t bought contacts in the new prescription. I don’t want my close vision to get any worse.

The doctor told me that with my new prescription, I’d need cheaters with a prescription of +1.5 or +1.75.

Oddly enough, with my contacts and glasses off, my close vision is still incredibly good. I can, for example, read the microprint on newly designed $100 bills. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff is printed in those tiny letters all over our new money! Of course, at the same time, I can’t recognize Mike sitting across the kitchen table from me. Or read the page of a book more than 5 inches from my nose.

I’m not complaining. I still consider myself very fortunate to have vision corrections available to me. So many people have vision problems that can’t be fixed. Many of them are probably grateful for what they have, too.

I saw an episode of Scientific American Frontiers yesterday that featured a man who’d been blind for the past 11 years. They’d given him an implant and a special pair of glasses with a video camera built in, enabling him to see up to 16 blobs of light. (Think of a computer monitor with a resolution of 16 blurry pixels.) He was so grateful to have even that — the ability to see the way the light changed when something moved in front of him, the ability to see something bright nearby. I’m lucky compared to someone like him.

You’re lucky if you don’t have any visual problems.

Right now, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, typing this onto my laptop. I’m having no trouble seeing or reading it. Yet.

But I know what lies ahead. I’m not anxious to go there, but I know I can’t stop time.

A Penny Saved…

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I put Ben Franklin’s saying to the test.

Not long ago, I wrote a post explaining how someone could take advantage of a credit card introductory offer for a low (or no) interest cash advance, put the money in an ING CD (or some other high-paying, insured savings account), earn interest, and then pay off the credit card balance before the interest jumped up from its introductory rate. I calculated that I could earn about $700 on a $20,000 credit card cash advance.

Well this works both ways. Mike and I have a home equity line of credit, which we used a while back to buy our Howard Mesa property and a few other things. Back when we signed up for it, the interest rate was very low. But today, it’s 7.5%. Not exactly a great deal anymore.

Enter Capital One (for the sixth time in a week). This offer was 0% for purchases and balance transfers for a full year. Best of all, there were no balance transfer fees. According to the offer, I could get up to $30,000 of credit. And the balance transfer option could be applied to a loan.

You might know where this is going.

I did some math. What if I put $25,000 toward the home equity line of credit, thus reducing the balance by that huge amount? Over the course of a year, I’d save $1,875 in interest (that’s simple interest calculation, which is close enough for me). Then, before the credit card interest rates jumped into their double-digits, I’d write a check from the home equity line of credit to Capital One, thus paying off the entire balance before any interest could accrue.

Of course, I would have to make those minimum monthly payments to Capital One. But if I got into a problem with that, I could always use the home equity line of credit to pay that, too. Besides, my payments on the home equity would be reduced — perhaps by the same amount as the Capital One credit card. Wouldn’t that be a kick!

Understand that the net effect of this on my personal debt would be zero — I’m borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (so to speak). I’d just save a bunch of money in interest. And, like Ben Franklin said, a penny saved is a penny earned.

So I applied for the account with the transfer. Let’s see if I get it.

The odd thing is, I’ve been taking advantage of those year-long 0% interest offers for years. I usually have $10,000 to $20,000 floating around in interest-free debt with a credit card company. (I paid the last one off about six months ago, though, and haven’t applied for a new one since.) With all the credit information available to credit card companies these days, they must be able to figure it out. Yet they still offer me free money, I still take it, and I still pay them back in full before they can start the interest clock.

I win, they lose. And they keep coming back for more.

Go figure, huh?

Some Anniversaries are Best Not Celebrated

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March 20 marked three full years of a U.S. military presence in Iraq.

CasketsSadly, not everyone will come home.

Although the photos of flag-draped coffins at the Dover Air Force Base were hidden from the press, they were obtained from the military on request using the Freedom of Information Act. The photos, which are a sad, yet dignified, reminder of the loss of human life, can be found at The Memory Hole.

When I saw this one, I felt a need to share it with readers here.

The war in Iraq has been going on for entirely too long now. It was begun on false pretences and it continues with huge loss of life on both sides. And all we hear from the President and his spokespeople is spin.

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

– George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

That was nearly three years ago. How many people have died since then?

More recently, the Pres began to reveal his true thoughts on the War: it’s a mess that someone else will have to clean up:

Question: Will there come a day — and I’m not asking you when, not asking for a timetable — will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future Presidents and future governments of Iraq.

– March 21, 2006 Press Conference

And more spin:

I wish I could tell you the violence in Iraq is waning and that all the tough days in the struggle are behind us. They’re not. There will be more tough fighting ahead with difficult days that test the patience and the resolve of our country. Yet, we can have faith in the final outcome because we’ve seen freedom overcome the darkness of tyranny and terror and secure the peace before. And in this century, freedom is going to prevail again.

– George W. Bush, March 29, 2006

With 94 years left in “this century,” I hope he’s right.

Another Great Gig in Buckeye

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Another great day of flying at the Buckeye Air Fair.

One of the things I like to do with my helicopter is to appear at outdoor events to offer inexpensive 8-10 minute helicopter rides in the area. I’ve done this as often as possible, notably at Robson’s Mining World, the Thunderbird Balloon Classic, the Mohave Country Fair, the ghost town of Stanton, Yarnell Daze, a shoot in Wickieup, and the Buckeye Air Fair.

We went back to Buckeye yesterday. The weather was better than last year — not nearly as windy — and although the forecast called for cloudy skies, it was mostly sunny. That drew in a lot more aircraft. That and the fact that the folks at Buckeye obviously know a thing or two about advertising their airport events to pilots.

It was a great event. There was an Albatross on static display, as well as a Groen Brothers gyroplane and a few other planes. Two medivac helicopters showed up for static display after I started flying and left before I’d finished, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to them. There was a bouncy thing for kids and someone selling pinwheels and kites. There were multiple food vendors selling barbeque, fry bread, chicken, hot dogs, and other stuff. A flight school was there, soliciting students. Game and Fish had a big trailer with some kind of display about shooting safety. (I guess they want to make sure Arizonans don’t mistake an elderly man for a quail while hunting.) They raffled off all kinds of prizes, including helicopter rides. Pilots flew in and out and were expertly guided to safe parking using a separate ground frequency. And there were parachute jumps, all landing at the northeast corner of the field. Sorry: no car show. After all, this was an airport event.

The event started late — from my point of view, anyway — at 10 AM. But Mike and I were there and set up by 9:15 AM. Although they’d originally positioned us on a dead-end taxiway near the parachute jump zone, I wasn’t too comfortable about that. I don’t think the jumpers would have been, either. So they moved us to a closed-off taxiway. It was an excellent location, clearly visible from the event’s entrance, yet easily secured. I parked with the helicopter’s nose facing the crowd and its tail pointing out toward the taxiway. There was no real possibility of onlookers walking behind the helicopter because there was no reason to go out there. Heavy-duty orange construction cones blocked off the taxiway on either side so planes wouldn’t be tempted to use it while I was out. The folks at Buckeye graciously provided a folding table and three chairs for us to set up shop.

It was a good thing we set up early. The crowd started coming in at 9:30 and I immediately have my first ride of the day. To say that I didn’t shut down until 4:30 is an overstatement, but only because I had to shut down twice for fuel, food, and a bathroom stop. My two breaks were only 15 minutes long; I flew the rest of the day. One of Mike’s co-workers, Steve (recently moved her from Iowa), showed up at about 10:30 to help out. Not a moment too soon; by then, the crowd was building.

The route started at the airport, headed south along the taxiway, and then east to the town of Buckeye. It passed over farm fields that were freshly sown with cotton or corn and alfalfa fields being harvested. Closer to town, you could clearly see that some farmers had sold out to developers and houses were being planted instead of crops. We circled back, crossing over a large (but not huge) dairy farm and more farm fields before landing back at the airport. My arrivals and departures were one of the big attractions at the show; at one point, I came in and saw at least 50 people lined up along the ramp area, watching me. Good thing the helicopter was clean.

When I first started out, the winds were less than 5 knots, so I’d come in for landing from the south. This would keep me away from any jumper activity. But as the winds picked up out of the southwest, I realized the folly of landing, sometimes heavy, with a tailwind and I began coming in from the north. I had to listen closely to the radio to make sure there weren’t any jumpers on their way down. If they were, I made a wide approach to the north east and landed along the taxiway, giving them plenty of space. It was nerve-racking to see those parachutes in the sky, high over my main rotor disc. I had to keep reminding myself that the wind would push them to their target well east of my position.

What was really amazing about this gig was that Mike and Steve were able to get three passengers on just about every flight. I price the flights — in this case, $35 per person including tax — so that if I took one person, I’d lose money; if I took two people, I’d make money; and if I took three people, I’d make pretty darn good money. Mike was able to put three on board for each flight because we had a pool of waiting customers from about 10:30 AM on that consisted of singles, couples, and trios. He sold tickets that were numbered and would use them to keep the order of the tickets sold. Then, if he had a couple flying next, he’d ask for a single with the lowest number and put him on board, too. This was not only an efficient way to keep the line from getting too long, but it was good for business.

That’s even more amazing than that is that I had at least one kid aboard for more than 75% of the flights. Flying kids is great for two reasons: first, I like to give kids what is normally their first helicopter flight experience. This goes back to my first helicopter flight experience (which I really should write about in this blog one day). I’m always happy when parents treat their kids to a ride. It tells me that they don’t have fears about flying that they’ll transfer to their kids. It also gives kids the opportunity to experience something truly different, to open their minds to the kinds of things they can do with their lives.

The second reason flying kids is great is because they’re light — usually under 100 pounds. So even with three people on board and 3/4 tanks fuel, I have no performance problems at all. That makes the flying easier — especially take offs and landings.

Once again, we didn’t finish flying until the fair was over and the airport had emptied out. Starting at around 2 PM, each time I landed, I’d notice fewer cars in the parking lot, fewer people walking around, and fewer vendors. By 3 PM, the only people left were the people waiting to fly. They were, for the most part, patient. I think they realized that if I started rushing the rides, they wouldn’t get as good a ride as the people who’d gone earlier in the day. I gave everyone pretty much the same ride, but would occasionally veer off to the south or north to show them their house if it was within range. I did a few flights to the west on request, using the helicopter’s timer to make sure I didn’t stay out too long or too short a time.

I haven’t done all the math, but I’m pretty sure I flew between 90 and 100 people. That comes pretty close to my daily record, which was set on a Saturday at the Mohave County Fair last September.

As for the money…well, let’s just say that I can keep the helicopter for another month. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’d like to thank the folks at Buckeye for putting on such a great event for the community and for allowing me to be part of it. And I look forward to next year.