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Ultimate Category Excluder Upgraded to Version 0.7

Ultimate Category Excluder has now been released with support for internationalization (i18n). Thanks to Patrick Skiebe for the suggestion and code. UCE is now shipping with support for English and German. Please send me other languages if you can generate the translation. Download UCE from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Ultimate Category Excluder (UCE – unfortunately the same abbreviation as unsolicited commercial email) is a WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly and easily exclude categories from your front page, archives, and feeds. Just select which categories you want to be excluded, and UCE does all the work for you!

New Spam Network?

Since April 13th, I’ve been getting three to five spam messages a day that are slipping past my Postfix and SpamAssassin filters. The messages include a lot of text copied verbatim, sans links, from online discussion forums. The messages are not CAN-SPAM compliant in that there is not a mailing address in the messages. Websites mentioned in the messages have entirely blank home pages. Whois records for the domains are not useful as the info is protected by WhoisGuard. (Does anyone have any experience with reporting spam to WhoisGuard via their web site?) URLs inside the spam message are all hashed, even those for images.

A few of the domain names involved are:

  • haidagren.com
  • dvragents.com
  • jaobswone.com
  • carumvehm.com
  • brevsstad.com
  • arrgtcyon.com
  • shop1ofakindjewelry.com
  • gartdeess.com
  • na-xa.com
  • iraqianniv.com

Junk Mail Update for May 2011

I’m on my anti-junk mail kick again. I really don’t get that much junk mail, because I clamp down on the mail that we do get. These are the egregious junk mailers I’ve tried to deal with today. I went to their web sites to contact them. Hopefully they will respond to my request that they stop wasting their money with their junk mail to my home.

  • Chase (Ink Cash Business Card)
  • Comcast (six mailings in the eight weeks)
  • TCG (Theatre Communications Group)
  • Hendrick Honda
  • Community OWL (Form 1500 filed with the Post Office)
  • Best Pick Reports (a huge waste of money for this catalog report about local home services).

I also am receiving junk mail from the Domain Registry of America again. I can’t believe I haven’t written about them before. DRoA sends out junk mail that looks like an invoice for your domain name registration. It is a scam! While the mailing itself is legal, it is also targeted to make it look like the bill is for services you’ve already agreed to. The fine print acknowledges that if you pay the bill, you are actually transferring your domain name from your current registrar to DRoA. Their rates are horrible, anything over $10/year and you are paying too much! I’ve had several clients pay the bill and then I’d only find out what happened when I get the transfer request via email. I think I’ll need to file a Form 1500 on them as well.

On a positive note, I have stopped receiving the The Washington Post/PostPlus mailer. Call 202-334-7730. You’ll get the voice mail for a gentleman who works at the Post. Be polite, leave a message with your mailing address, and the mailings will stop in about two weeks.

Misc Update for 2011-04-06

Using tagged email addresses comes in handy again as I’m now getting spam from an address last used on 7/4/ 2008 given only to garryconn.com

Misc Update for 2011-03-19

Loving my iPad 2 so far.

Misc Update for 2011-03-18

Woohoo! My iPad 2 is doing its first sync with iTunes. The 16GB iPad 2 is actually only 14GB free.

Misc Update for 2011-03-15

Is it weird that my iPad 2 won’t arrive until later this week and I already have 76 apps?

Misc Update for 2011-03-14

My iPad 2 shipped from Apple (Shenzhen, China), with expected delivery by Thursday, March 17th!

Misc Update for 2011-03-12

Just ordered an iPad 2. My first major technology purchase in three years. So no pressure on Apple.

Misc Update for 2011-03-05

“It’s a shame, almost, that we squandered the term ‘personal computer’ 30 years ago.” – John Gruber