Big Jeff has reappeared on the pavements, and in a timely fashion. Jeff is the disk jockey who knows the address of every homeless shelter on the west coast. He does the sports trivia show, the one I can never find on the AM dial. The point is, he knows all about advertising, and is an excellent source of those free coupons to restaurants I never patronize. He needs some computer work done this Friday. Time to negotiate for the flyer.By now everyone realizes my medical conditions are far more interesting than everybody else’s. But today I do have some new information. My recovery has been more than complete, which sounds odd and it is. I’d been told things were irreversible, but in fact, my heart is now functioning 5% more efficiently than six months ago. As best I can now understand, the heart can go into a state of numb hibernation in conjunction with an attack, and can come out of this state when “detraumatized”. Does this mean I can go bungee jumping?
This is still Florida and one has to be on the constant lookout for evil minds. I caught one this afternoon trying to tell people that I slept in every day all I ever did was play games on the computer. I stepped in and corrected the situation but what a pity to have to.
Here’s how it works. My most productive time is early morning, for instance right now it is 4:03 AM. This is computer time; that is where I do my work. I don’t work with a pick and shovel. Don’t have to. Went to school. Now, I may go back to sleep for a couple hours around 5:30 AM, my privilege. A lot of the complicated programs I use take time to render, meaning by the time other people crawl out of the sack, I am wrapping things up. At this point, I sometimes take a break and will play FreeCell while I’m waiting for the computer to catch up with me. (FreeCell is lo-res and doesn’t tax the system.)
Let’s take a look at this same situation through the fog of misunderstanding. People who are sound asleep at 4:03 AM assume so is everybody else. By the time they get up, the hardworking people may have gone back to bed for a nap. Happens all the time. The only thing some people know about computers is games. They don’t recognize spreadsheets and databases, only games. They see you arrive at the office in mid-morning. Add up the facts that comical way, and of course, all I do is sleep in and play games. They don’t know what anything else looks like, duh.
Without going into detail, I must say that Craigslist has greatly tightened up their code and have finally hired real programmers. I admit temporary defeat. I can’t tap into anything as of a week ago and it seems they have narrowed it to a computer at this end where I had bypassed their old safeguards, including their anonymizer. I’m already working on the counter-measure, but these new people are gifted and I may finally decide it has become too time-consuming to single-handedly spar with them.
The main thing Craigslist has against me is that I altered their algorithm so that jerks who flagged me were really voting me onto the “Best Of” list by the dozens. I’m also the guy that designed that beautiful phishing screen which spoofed everyone for nearly two months in 2007. What do I have against Craigslist? They allow unlimited flagging. A group in the musician’s list started flagging all gigs except their own and Craigslist would not stop them.
This really hurt when I was beginning my solo career. So I took matters into my own hands, beginning the cat-and-mouse game that exists between Craigslist and people like me ever since. Some people go to Craigslist for information, the poor souls. I go there to exploit weaknesses in the code.
