Note on Family Nomenclature

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According to the Relatives Chart, the standard English label for a first cousin’s child would be “first cousin, once removed.” Filipinos, however, use the term “pamangkin” — preferably translated to English as “nephew” or “niece” — to clarify the generational removal, distinguishing cousins (“pinsan”) from their children, as well as from more distant relatives further up the tree who would also qualify as removed cousins in the standard nomenclature.

Hence, whenever I use the words “nephew” or “niece,” it’s just as likely to refer to any of my many cousins’ children as to my brother’s boy. As a corollary, when I refer to an “uncle” or “aunt” (or the Tagalog “tito” or “tita”), I may mean a relative of greater than first degree who is above me or my parents on the family tree.

An Open Letter to Pingdom.com on the Topic of Referrer Spam

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Update, 11/16/2006: Pingdom responds.

Please note also that JDCDesigns is innocent: jdcdesigns.com.

Hello! Lately I’ve been noticing hits in my referrer logs from pages on pingdom.com which seem to be linking to my site, but when clicked through, do not actually exist. The false hits are coming from 66.98.148.24, which is a server on EV1 used by jdcdesigns.com. User agent is “Pingdom GIGRIB v1.1 (http://www.pingdom.com)”. It seems the idea is to provide a pointer to an uptime monitoring page, but the link to the supposed page just 404s and redirects to the index page, which strikes me as being either buggy or deceptive. May I know why I would be getting what appears to be referrer log spam for pingdom.com from jdcdesigns.com?

Update: EV1 forum entry by JDC Designs regarding DNS problems caused by a spammer formerly at that IP. It looks like JDC may be suffering the misfortune of a bad server history, or some unpatched vulnerability.

Update: Response from Pingdom:

Our development team is doing some research which involves scanning off large parts of the Internet. It is not something specific for your site. A visit from us will not show up more than a maximum of 3-5 times per month, and will not take any more resources than a regular website visitor would (less, actually). We hope this is not a bother.

The hits are continuing, and it seems a lot more often than 3-5 times per month. Pingdom and JDCDesigns both appear to be legitimate services, but I wish that Pingdom would execute site crawls with a blank referrer, or else with a referrer pointing to a working page with an actual link to the site, so as to avoid the appearance of deceptive marketing practices. As it is, I consider this referrer spam.

Grits: Redux

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Grits I asked the question over four years ago. Since then, I’ve had a few bites, but now I’m going to take the Full Corn Plunge.

That’s right, America! I’ve bought a can of grits! So how do I eat this? Is there some sort of ceremony or something? You don’t slice bananas and strawberries into it, do you? Somehow I don’t think that would work, considering that one of the flavors of Instant Grits in packets on the shelf beside this can was “bacon.”

Update: Terry at Possumblog sees this entry via a comment, and very graciously offers us More Help for the Wayward, which includes words of wisdom which apply not only to grits, but many other things in life as well: “Don’t put sugar on them or I’ll hit you.”

African Violet Wiggle

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You’d think that with the unseasonable cold we’re having lately, my plants would hang back a bit on the flowering, but not this hardy African violet. For the third time this year, it’s put out buds and is blooming yet again. Enjoy the 3D wiggle effect:

Lost 3.01-3.03: Benjamin Linus, Fishbiscuits, and Polar Bears, Oh My!

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So are you all enjoying the new LOST season so far? All pausing your video recorders and poring over screenshots of easter eggs and Googling left and right for clues? Me, I’m especially liking how LOST is able to maintain an aura of the unknown. I had feared that the increasing sci-fi-ness of the plot, plus the big DHARMA reveals in “The Lost Experience,” were beginning to detract from the overall narrative mystery, but as the “Book Club” scene showed, LOST can still pack a surprise or two.

I’m very much behind on recaps and analyses, so I’ll just note a few quick bullet points, and leave the rest to the Pompatus.

* Well, now that we know that Fake Henry Gale’s real name is Benjamin Linus, what’ll the fans call him now? Henry, Fenry, Benry … I guess now he’s BLENRY.

* Kate seems a lot less conflicted about kissing Sawyer than Jack, eh?

* It’s kind of implied that a lot more went on at Kate’s breakfast with Ben than was shown on screen, since she came back crying and all. What happened?

* Fishbiscuit gag = brilliant. The writers know that Sawyer makes great comic relief when he’s flustered (e.g. the boar episode, or Hurley jumping on him) and him dancing to polar bear reward music only to receive fish biscuits and animal feed played that humor advantage to the hilt.

* Well, they certainly establish what happened to the Hatch: imploded to foil. No more showers or Island Network Chat and Numbers games for you.

* The character of Locke suffers a constant tension between the Crippled and Coercible Codependent and the Survivalist Mystic Island Shaman. The Hatch brought out the former, but now that it’s imploded, Locke is back to his knives and spirit quests.

* Desmond appears uninjured from the Hatch Failsafe release, but naked. A reference to Adam in the Garden, perhaps? Who’s Eve, then? Kate? Rousseau? Kelvin?

* That polar bear sure looked fake. Real world explanation is that the 3D animators probably had a hard time making realistic bears, but I’m sure there’s some DHARMA-based excuse. Maybe fishbiscuits cause bear ugliness.

* Locke’s being mute until his prophetic sweat lodge vision was a clear allusion to Zechariah the prophet, who was mute until the naming of his son John the Baptist, who would prepare the way for Christ.

* I’m not entirely convinced that Desmond is really there. As of LOST 3.03, the only people who have been depicted as directly seeing him are Locke (who talks to islands in sweat lodges), and Hurley (who had an imaginary friend). Note how in 3.03 there is no solid acknowledgment from anyone else but Hurley of his presence. (Update: Okay, never mind, he talkes to Claire and Charlie and Paulo too.)

* Speaking of Christ, Desmond, and Hurley, they’re certainly going to great lengths to make Desmond look like someone, added on to his newfound power of omniscience and precognition. Someone profoundly famous through history, someone who was a great prophet and a teacher to many. You know who I mean:
Desmond and The Dude from Big Lebowski
That’s right, Desmond is The Dude! I mean come on, think about it: what does Hurley call him???

More from DCeiver:

The Pompatus of Lost: 3.01–Jack In A Box

The Pompatus of Lost: 3.02–The Glass Mendacity

The Pompatus of Lost: 3.03–Panic! At The Sweatlodge

Also more from Faded Boxers: 3.01, 3.02, 3.03.

Amy, Washingtonian

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mo_666_.jpg I’m happy to announce that my fianceée is now a Washingtonian. (Well, partly a NoVAn, but that still counts as DC.) She’s landed a library job and a room near the river, and is this moment buzzing around, unpacking and moving things about.

We’ll still be going up to NJ once a month or so for family visits, premarital counseling with the Pasta, and pilgrimages to the Water Sphere, but the first step to Amy’s DC-ness is complete. She is One Of Us now.

reCaffing

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IMG_5433 Remember when I deCaffed? I was successfully off caffeine for over a year and a half after that, with only an occasional root beer or venti frappuccino in emergencies. I say this in the past tense because I went back to drinking coffee in January, thanks to the pressure of my ventures into entrepreneurship, plus the lovely Christmas present of a coffee maker from my fianceéw’s parents.

IMG_5428 Now I’ve got it bad — even worse than before, when I was just a Starbucks and Folgers dabbler. Now I’ve been buying those scoopable gourmet blends at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, running them through the store grinder at a slightly finer setting than is recommended for paper filters, and partaking of the wonder of coffee at least once daily every morning, with lots and lots of milk and a cube of sugar. I’ve learned to keep bags of ground coffee tightly sealed so as to preserve the oils in the blend from contact with the air, and am seriously considering the purchase of one of those “As Seen on TV” vacuum seal pumps.

IMG_5426 Now I worry I’m turning into one of those “Whole Bean” snobs who needs an electric grinder to enjoy the coffee at its freshest. I’ve made the mistake of getting bagged preground Starbucks and grocery-brand coffee, so it is with bitterness in my mouth that I ask you: what coffees should I be getting aside from my random selection from the Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s bean bins? Any recommendations?