Blogflog: Saga of the Stripper Name, part the third

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I'm going to apologise for spamming up the comm, but following the saga of the contest is proving to be my soap opera of choice.

URL: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2008/02/apology.html

Darla's back! I missed Darla! She's in bold! I'm abusing exclamation marks! *headdesk*

Okay, I got asked why didn’t I check the spam filter sooner? I do check the one on my end, on my machine. That one I check every day to make sure that something hasn’t gotten dumped that I don’t want dumped. Which is why I have it set to hold the emails till I dump them.

Yeah, um, great.  But this doesn't actually explain anything.  Not unless you had the emails sent to a whole other computer that you don't check regularly.  Or something.  Whut?

I got an email from one of the two people who suggested Ripley that she had done so. But I didn’t have the email. The spam filter that grabbed it was the one on the service we use. Which is where I found six emails. It grabbed six out over 12,000 that were sent. Which is one reason I hadn’t checked it.

I think what she's trying to say is that she got an email from a person asking why their submission wasn't seen, and this led to the discovery of the entries stuck in the spam filter.  I should not have to sit there wondering how you can get an email but not get an email so how could she read it if it wasn't there? Unless she's getting emails from the ninjas in her office.

Not to mention, after saying that she checks the filter religiously...now she doesn't? Because the spam filter may well be full of spam? Whut?

Darla goes on to say that she has no idea why those six entries wound up in the spam filter, and speculates that there maybe something about the name "Ripley" that means that it'll be OM NOM NOMMED by the filters...but then she does something totally unexpected.  She apologises.

It was my fault for not checking. I do check it. Usually once a month or so and it is rare that anything in there is something useful. Rare enough I check it occasionally, but often enough that I do have it hold them till I delete them personally. I should really have checked it after the contest ended. So totally my fault.

That's great, but what about this whole, "I check my spam filter every day!" as stated above? This is what's making me rub my temples; either you do it, or you don't.  Okay, for all I know it could be like I said; two computers, one is Darla's personal and the other is her work computer.  But it would be nice to have this mentioned somewhere to avoid such confusion.  It'd really, really help if this post were written in oh, say, English.

The two people who suggested Ripley as well as the person who suggested Ridley will receive signed books. Which is what we originally said we would do.

HUZZAH! The original Ridley is gonna get a prize! My faith in humanity hasn't exactly been restored, but now I'm less likely to try and set small animals on fire to make myself feel better.  However, this warm, fuzzy feeling is quickly lost:

And one of the two Ripley’s will be in the acknowledgements.

1) An apostrophe does not mean, "oh look! here comes an S!"
2) I'm sorry, but no.  If all three are getting prizes, they might as well be in the acknowledgements too.  It's two extra names, it won't kill anyone to type them.  Again, I have that urge to write a politely irate email that will probably get eaten by the spam filters!

We still will have the usually drawing and auctions, if I can get arc’s to so with from the publisher. So for those that didn’t win, you still will have a chance to get a book before the release date.

...I have no idea what's being said here.  Anyone, can you please help me translate this? All I can muster is a WHUT?! O_O

Seriously, wtf? This wasn't brain surgery, yet how in the hell could it have gotten so strange and confusing? HOW? All we're really missing is Dr Nick Riviera. (HI DR NICK!)

Comments

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

LOL, Darla's in for damage control! Except all she's doing is creating a bit more confusion. It warms the cockles of my black heart whenever Darla posts, it really does. Gems like these don't turn up nearly as much as they used to.

Obviously this little contest turned out to be a lot more work than actually, say, LKH picking a name herself. Plus, doesn't it seem just a *tad* shady that of the six emails that were sent to spam, TWO of them contained the name Ripley? I don't know, it isn't impossible, but still that's a pretty huge coincidence. I have a feeling LKH was planning on simply saying that Ridley inspired her to choose Ripley all by herself.

And that last sentence went in 4 different directions, none of them resembling English.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I think the moral of this story is not to mess with the internets. The people are savvy. *nods sagely*

I'm trying to think back to when I had the Ubar Spam Filter on Jurassic PC to deal with stuff, and it's all kinds of hinky that out of the some 12,000 that she's saying, only SIX wound up in there. The only explanation I can come up with is something to do with the email address, but that's shot down as Darla mentions that emails from those people got through A-OK. So if it's not the subject (which should have been the same for all 12,006?) and it's not the email address...

...then someone was putting things in the wrong folder? Gremlins? Office ninjas?

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

Even funnier, she seems to have neglected that LKH's spin on it was that the whole debacle was due to her dyslexia. Which, fine, is understandable and not something to snark at her about, but now suddenly out of the woodwork come mysterious spam-filtered emails that she hadn't noticed before, and two of those magic emails contained the name Ripley. Which only makes sense if Sigourney Weaver, in an effort to prevent LKH from tainting her legendary performance, hacked into the email server and junked anything with the words "Ripley" and "Alien"

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Ahh. I was wondering if ARC stood for anything, or if somehow this had something to do with Arc fantasy where AB:VH used to be published (or was it Tor? I'd have to consult my paperbacks and that requires sneaking through the house so as not to wake up my parents). But that makes more sense.

And you also manage to clarify something in one sentence! You help stop my brain from melting! *sends you cupcakes*

But I also dread what kind of auction/competition they'd hold to win an unedited book. e_e

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

The text has been edited in a broad sense (ie, chapter 10 would work better as chapter 12, these two side characters would be better combined, this Clever Plot Trick is a bit too clever to be believable), but generally it hasn't gone through the very final copyedit/formatting/layout edit. So it's the same text pretty much, but occasionally you'll run into some weird spacing stuff.

Generally, the appeal is getting your hands on a copy of the book 3-4 months before everyone else.

[hellozombies.livejournal.com]

When I worked at Borders, we got in an ARC of Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job. When I saw it hit the shelves, I compared it to the ARC I was allowed to keep and was kind of amazed at how different they were. The general story was the same, but the grammar was poor and some things were vastly shifted around.

In Moore's case, however, somebody actually edited his work. In LKH's...well...we know what goes on there.

[lilacwire.livejournal.com]

The grammar queen inside of me dies a little every time I see a word with an unnecessary apostrophe before the S. Seriously. Did these people not attend, say, MIDDLE SCHOOL?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

But she's DYSLEXIC, and this apparently means you get a free pass to ignore all the conventions of language. Which is an insult to all those dyslexics out there that put the effort into being coherent.

[gweneth-syeira.livejournal.com]

sure she isn't Dysexltic instead? Mwuaha

[lilacwire.livejournal.com]

LOL! Great pun.

[clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com]

As an RPer, I run into this all the time. >_> One friend who's dyslexic used to be kind of hard to understand, but now she just makes the occasional slightly odd error. -waves, since she's probably reading this!-

Then there was the friend I lost track of... also says she's dyslexic. Um, okay, but that shouldn't mean she has no grasp of capitalization and little of punctuation!

For that matter, I'm learning disabled--found that out about a year ago. Most of the time, nobody can tell this from my writing, because I actually make an effort to be coherent even though my brain wiring makes that a bit more difficult than it should be!

[gothgoddessrhia.livejournal.com]

Darla should not be allowed to post. Ever. Though, it is funny when she does. I'm conflicted here.

Darla writes confusing gibberish. So does LKH. Both are hilarious in their own way.

Yet, they make my head want to hit my desk repeatedly.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Darla fills me with joy, as each post is a veritable goldmine. It's just...yeaah, trying to avoid that concussion is the hard part.

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

You know if this was me? "I'm sorry if you sent it and it got chucked into my spam folder. I dump my spam folder without checking it, 'cause you know, it's there for spam. But THIS entry over here is the one I ended up getting the name from, so this is the person who gets credit. I'm terribly sorry, but such is life. Love, me."

Seriously who checks their spam folder at all, never mind every day? It's there for the crap you don't want to read!

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I do, because the spam filter makes mistakes. I don't do it often, maybe once a month or so. I skim the message subject lines and senders to make sure it didn't incorrectly round-file an email from someone I actually want to hear from.

I did it this morning, coincidentally--and I found a couple of emails that shouldn't have been tagged as spam. So I whitelisted the senders' email addresses before deleting everything else.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

*cough* I do? I've had a few things wind up in spam that shouldn't have, so it's worth just seeing if it's anything I recognise before I hit that "empty folder" button. And this is where I shift things from the spam folder out into the regular inbox.

Still, it's all kinds of hinky that six out of 12,000 wind up in the spam filter.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

*sheepish* I do as well, mainly because my e-mail service is, er, a little high strung. When I freelanced, I HAD to deal with new e-addresses regularly, so I had important work-related e-mail wind up there often. Sometimes from addresses that weren't new too. (But you can't lower your filter settings or you'll have people trying to enlarge your penis all day.)

So if they're dealing with career- and business-related stuff, they really should check their spam, especially when they SOLICIT a whole bunch of strange e-mailers. Spam on a casual or personal e-mail account I can see dumping unread.

[hellozombies.livejournal.com]

(But you can't lower your filter settings or you'll have people trying to enlarge your penis all day.)

Off-topic, but why do I, as a female, get emails offering to enlarge my penis while some of my friends, male, get tips on how to increase their breast size?

Internet Thought of the Day.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Same here! Well now that is weird as hell. Do you know, it never even occured to me that there WAS breast enlargment spam? THAT would have been at least somewhat relevant to my life. *grumble* Rather than the vaguely insulting ones offering me help in pleasing my disgruntled, sad, and unsatisfied hypothetical woman. *feels kind of bad for men*

[easol.livejournal.com]

If I actually took advantage of those stupid penis enlargement offers, I'd be at least half as large as Micah's Monstrous Member. And I'm a woman. :)

[calenture.livejournal.com]

On a completely unrelated note, Zero Punctuation icons make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

They're a thing of beauty. I need to take more screencaps and I have this huge urge to make a ZP mood theme. *nerdy hearts*

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

You rock so much for your icon! I can never find anyone else who's seen Charlie the Unicorn..... *must now go watch Charlie the Unicorn again*

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Ack, creepy! (In a good way. ^__^)

[calenture.livejournal.com]

I approve of this course of action.

[surcia.livejournal.com]

Y'know, it seems like a lot of the things Yahtzee says about the worse games are applicable to Mz. Hamilton. For example, the one from http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2694-Zero-Punctuation-Assassin-s-Creed (Assassin's Creed) about enjoying a nice, if rather bland grilled cheese sandwich, when somebody snatches it from your mouth and replaces it with a spoonful of watery ejaculate between two pieces of cardboard. Pretty accurate description of what happened to the series, in my opinion...

[surcia.livejournal.com]

Gah, sorry. My HTML has failed me. That was supposed to be the link saying "Assassin's Creed"

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Ah ha ha! I also like the one from Super Mario Galaxy (?) that went, "like cockslapping the Mona Lisa" *just keep smiling* Or from the latest CoD4 with "screwing the pooch so hard that the pooch has to go to the bathroom and apply soothing ointment for an hour."

[vlredreign.livejournal.com]

She makes my brain bleed.

I remember her when she was a fledgling mod at the old LKH boards. Still stoopid, I see.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

And now she's UBAR! mod. Which is really freaking scary.

[easol.livejournal.com]

You know, the more they try to excuse LKH from any shady biz, the sillier and less innocently inept they look. It really smells like LKH is desperate to hold Teh Contest, but end up being "inspired" so she doesn't cede even the slightest shred of control.

And like sharkbytes said, what are the chances that THOSE TWO emails out of thousands would just happen to jam in the filter? Well, I'm pretty sure it's so small that it's not worth thinking about.

The fact that Darla can't write anything coherent doesn't help either.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The whole thing smells fishy, and the more posts there are, the worse it gets. This whole thing is...mesmirising.

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

If Laurell puts the real story of this contest in her next book the ackwoledgements would have more drama in them than the next 700 pages of novel. I'm glad you are keeping us updated on this. :) I think it's funny in that train-wreck kinda way.

Darla's aplogy sounds like the rambling excuses I won't accept from my nine-year old for why he doesn't clean his room. "I'm sorry I didn't, but I did, but it just didn't work. Not my fault. SPAM FILTER." Just doesn't have the same mature, humble impact as a simple: "I am so sorry I messed up this contest. It's my fault and I promise to make it up to everyone. I'm going to fix it." The apology should come from Laurell anyway.

I guess I'm being a nitpicky bitch to LKH but a woman who can't simply admit she messed up, then sends in her assistant to take the blame and apologize gets no respect from me.

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

Nuts-they are all nuts. Who in their right mind drags out their mistakes?Once simple apology, thanks to everyone who participated and give away three signed books and move on. I mean really, are they going to go into bankruptcy because they give away three copies of the book?

[bad-habit.livejournal.com]

Well, I would HOPE so. But I guess it wouldn't actually bankrupt them. However, now this whole book has created a lot of publicity (albeit be it amongst fans and lashers. I cannot imagine anyone else reading her blog. I mean... why would you?!) and people are starting to realise that it will be published. Soon. YES! You cannot change the inevitable! And you know. Keep in the minds of people that there'll be a book soon. Something.

I wonder if the drama continues. Well, I hope the drama continues because it amuses me. But that's a different matter altogether.

And I think they are the sort of people who give nuts a bad name.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Aww, thankyou! The train wreck is mesmiric. :D

I'm pretty sure your nine-year-old can come up with a better apology and solution to all this were he in charge. ^_^

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

that it'll be OM NOM NOMMED by the filters

I read that three times before I understood what you were saying, and then I couldn't stop giggling. ^_^

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Hee! OM NOM NOM NOM will never get old to me. ^_^

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Why are they going to all this trouble over this nonsense? Give three people the books and be done with it. What would it cost LKH? 35 dollars, tops?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

If I'm reading it right, three people are getting the books. It's just that one of them is getting their name in the acknowledgements. Adding two more names costs them nothing.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

That's the part that's got me unstuck! Yeah, great, prizes won...now cough up on the rest of the bargain where all three wind up in the acknowledgements. I have no idea why this part is so difficult and it makes my brain ache.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I actually just assumed that Darla had written it wrong, and the problem was with sharing one prize among three people--not about typing two extra names in the Acknowledgments.

Why do I constantly underestimate the degree of stupidity in Team WhoreNita?

It would be clearer if Darla were more articulate.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

As near as I can tell, there were two spam filters: one run by their ISP, with a spam folder residing on the ISP's servers; the other running on their own machine, filtering the mail after it's been passed by the ISP's filter.

Darla checks the spam-folder on her machine every day, and checks the spam-folder on the ISP's server once a month. Of the 12,000+ emails sent to them (for the contest?) the ISP only intercepted six. This very low intercept rate is why she doesn't check the ISP's folder more often.

Re: It would be clearer if Darla were more articulate.

[eseme]

Yes. Exactly. I understood this to be what Darla meant.

However, I have a computer science degree and could translate her garbled tech-speak. I imagine that for many, it is just garbled. I bet the contest "winners" are still confused and this didn't help any.

Anyone want to take bets on when Jon, the "tech guy," will make a post trying to further explain the spam filter issue?

Re: It would be clearer if Darla were more articulate.

[roguetailkinker.livejournal.com]

I don't have a comp science degree, and I got it. I'm a computer geek, but a relatively untrained one.

But yes, one spam filter on your own computer, one on your ISP's server.