Tickle My Kittens

It was 1989 when I got my first computer - an Apple II GS.  I used to program in BASIC.  I remember Delphi, Prodigy, and the Internet before the Web.  I remember BBSs and measuring your dial-up connection in Bauds.  I remember when hard drives were an “add-on.”  I remember boot disks and 5 and a quarter floppies.  That computer was such a huge part of my life that eventually I would major in Computer Science and take a job as a patent attorney specializing in computer-related technology.  Now I spend my days pondering the inner-workings of high speed routers.

So when I see this CNN article about the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64, my inner dork wet himself a little.  Though I never had one, I remember the Commodore 64, the Apple II, II+, IIc and IIe.  The Tandy at Radio Shack.  But then I got to this line:

“The computer featured 64 kilobits of memory (a lot for 1982)…”

The Commodore 64 had 64 kilobytes of memory.  If you’re going to do an entire article on the Commodore 64, you might want to get that one fact straight.  Saying that it had 64 kilobits of memory is like saying the Titanic sank because it hit some driftwood.    Ok, back to the nerdery for me.

 UPDATE:  They’ve fixed the story, but my point still stands.  I should have taken a screen shot.

I really miss the days when spam e-mails were things like “Viagra 70% off Discount” or “Cheap replica watches 4 SALE!” I even miss those Nigerian money scams. Those days are gone.

I first noticed something was awry when I logged into my work computer a few weeks ago and saw e-mails coming to me from me. I e-mail myself files between my work and home computers all the time, so I thought that, in addition to the e-mails from Dr. Cialis from Freehomepharmacy.com, maybe there was some sort of freaky coincidence there. It still looked like spam, so no big deal.

Because I work in the media industry I also receive a lot of e-mails for books and DVDs on sale. One of the most recent ones was for a “Buy 3 get 7 free DVD EXTR4V4G4NZ4″ from 347dvds.net. Still clearly not within the realm of reasonable e-mails but a little more targeted than the typical drug e-mails.

It was just this morning that I realized how smart spam has become. Like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, my spam now has self-actualized. No longer do I get scattershot messages. My spam is out to get me, and somehow, it knows what I’m thinking about before I even log in! I have been talking with friends about making a trip to Vegas in March, and we just decided yesterday to book the hotel. So, I log into my e-mail this morning, and what do I see? “Vegas Big Hand Blackjack Tournament” e-mails. Three of them.

I can only imagine what will come next…Dr. Cialis will be waiting for me outside my office with a replica watch on his wrist and a stack of DVDs in his hands. Then he will challenge me to blackjack, and if I lose, the world will explode. Wait, when do I double down? I’m sure I’ll get an e-mail about that tomorrow…