I’ve been bad at keeping in touch with all my friends around the world, so this year I decided to atone for my sins by writing a letter to include with this year’s Christmas cards. If you don’t know me, this won’t be very interesting! But I wanted to provide an on-line version with references to other articles here at nonfamous. Read on if you wish.
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I owe everyone an apology for being so slow to post anything here about our trip. Let me start by saying it was, without question or exception, the best vacation in my life. My anxiety at meeting my new family melted within minutes, and our cruise down (and up and down and up and down) the Murray River was as blissfully relaxing a time as I can recall.

This relaxation has been, I think, part of the problem–I returned to all the work that had piled up but was still, mentally, sipping champies with Meg and quite untroubled by the realities of deadlines and timesheets and clients. Eventually, though, the work had to get done and that precluded this.

The other thing I’ve struggled with is where to start. The beauty of the world’s oldest, dryest continent? The many charms of the Smiths of Adelaide and their amazing, hilarious, lovable friends? The comparative advantages of houseboat vacations? The wisdom of the ethos of “death before dishonor and booze before lunch”? The maritime and landlocked glories of Sydney?

I still can’t decide, and I’m still a bit stymied by narrative. Oh, and then there’s the issue of my Mac, which is so full to the brim with digital stuff (mostly music) that I haven’t even been able to fully download my camera yet. That WILL happen this week, and hopefully pictures will help me tell the story.

The most important thing to mention is the great hospitality of David’s family, and the unmatched pleasure of meeting them. I had a strong suspicion we would get along, but was afraid to hope I would (let’s not mince words) come to love them as quickly as I did. You Smiths are all amazing and hilarious originals, from Molly, to Meg, to Becca. Now I truly know where David gets it. Especially his mischievousness. Best of all, the Smiths and the Porters are equally crazy in their own lovable ways–so no more worrying about the dynamics of the wedding party for me.

At this brief entry, work is already piling up–that doleful sound of the inbox filling as with so many noisy snowflakes. So I know I owe more commentary, but hopefully this is a good start. Better than nothing, at least.

From an article in BBC News Spammers turn to Classic Prose:

Grant Hutchinson specialises in three-line subject line spam poems but others, such as Paulette Adell who contributes to the Nonfamous blog, are happy to use words from inside the message too.

Here’s a link to Paulette’s poem. Read and enjoy!

It’s a purely American delusion that there exists such a thing as free money. (Allow me my sweeping generalizations, please.) More services and less taxation? Sure thing — that’s more in my paycheck, right! Rebates on my purchases? What a bargain! Suing my doctor for malpractice? Bonanza!

What’s never counted is the cost of free money. But this amazing essay shows starkly the cost of medical litigation — steadily worsening medical care. (Thanks to overlawyered.com for the link.)

Some choice quotes:

our judicial system appears to have so easily dispensed with the basic elements of tort law: In order to have a claim, a defendant must have been negligent, and that negligence must have caused injury to a plaintiff … [but] only the degree of injury, not negligence, predicts how a jury will decide a malpractice case.

This is … unfathomable. How do these cases even survive in the court? There seems to be this impression of plaintiffs, and apparently perpetuated by the judiciary, that if something bad has happened, someone must be negligent. And we’ll damn well sue until we find them.

Another quote, from a juror of a successful plaintiff who sued after her husband hit an overhead wire with a metal pole:

“Oh, we didn’t think the electrical company did anything wrong, but this way the children will be taken care of.”

But is she truly willing to pay for their care, I wonder?

If only I could have three mice and pointers! Play Snowcraft (?) and see why.

Public service announcement follows:

A new exploit in Internet Explorer has been identified, where it’s possible for a URL to appear to go to one site, but in fact directs you to another. The chicanery is very difficult to detect.

For example, this link to Amazon.com actually sends you to Barnes and Noble, instead. It’s easy to be fooled by this, because the status bar (when you hover over the link) and address bar (after you follow the link) still read “www.amazon.com”.

Of course, it’s obvious in this case you’re not actually seeing amazon.com. The danger here is that a link in an HTML email may appear to send you a valid site, but which is in fact a clever near-identical spoof designed to capture sensitive information (credit card numbers, for example). Spoofs like this (e.g. redirecting to convincing-looking but fake Paypal sites) have existed for a while, but they’ve been relatively easy to detect by looking at the address bar. With this exploit it’s hard to tell you’ve been duped.

Microsoft doesn’t appear to be taking this very seriously. I do, though.

Be careful out there, kids, especially when clicking on links within emails from people you don’t know.