Aleen and Michael’s Blog

I’m getting pretty annoyed the last couple of weeks, as I’m finding that I am getting a lot of comment spam on my blog entries.  Every morning I wake up and see like 10 of my entries have been spammed with useless comments of a word or two with weird URLs.

It started with traceback alerts and then comments.  I shutdown comments and forced users to login to comment, but I was still getting them.  I took the site down for a few days and when I brought it back up it didn’t take long to get hit again.

I read online about something called Traceback Spamming and how they attack WordPress blogs.  It made me look through some of the blogs that keep getting hit and I realized that I didn’t turn comments and tracebacks off properly, which was odd cause I thought I did so for every entry.

Anyhow, I now set things up right I hope and I have a spam filter setup, so we’ll see what happens in the next few days.

Haven’t posted for a while so some people were wondering if we are still alive.  Honest truth, nothing special has really happened.  Keeping busy still unpacking stuff at the house.  Bought a Blackberry Pearl, which has kept me busy too.  Pretty cool gadget, getting used to all of its many features.

Aside from that we’ve done some more wedding stuff.  Aleen found a florist, we registered for our tuxes and we also booked our honeymoon.  The latter was probably the most fun of all the wedding things so far.  We booked a 1-week all-inclusive trip to the Sandals Grande in St. Lucia.  We’ve always been intrigued by the island’s exotic landscape, but the cost has always been a bit higher than what we normally wanted to spend on an “average” trip, but since this is for our honeymoon, we decided to splurge a bit and make sure it’s a trip to enjoy and remember.

With the wedding being in September and that still being hurricane season, we delayed the trip until the end of November this way we avoid any disappointment.  With the recent crappy weather here, wouldn’t mind going on that trip now! 

Every once and a while you feel like helping someone else out.  Tonight when we came home I noticed our neighbour across the street having to shovel through snow all by herself.  But not just normal snow, but the pile left in front of your driveway by the snow ploughs. 

At first Aleen and I went inside, but from my window I could see her struggle through the half snow, half ice mix.  I felt bad, so I got dressed and grabbed a shovel and offered to help her.  Seeing that we are also new to the neighbourhood, it was a good chance to introduce myself and make friends.  Anyhow, spent 20 minutes doing that and I felt good that I did my good deed for the day.

Over the years in Scarborough, my parents were never the ones to follow Halloween tradition and give out candy.  Rather they turned off the porch lights as an indicator that they weren’t interested in giving out any candy.  For those who didn’t pick up on the sign, door bell rings and knocks were left un-answered as they watched tv.

Old fashioned…yes, mean…debatable, but to everyone their own.

Anyhow, because of my parents’ choice, I get to suffer every Halloween.  No, not because I don’t get candy, cmon now, I’m way past that , but because my lonely car is the only one ever standing out in the driveway.  Not sure where everyone else is from or who knows this, but Halloween eggings are a usual occurrence in my area in Scarborough. 

An egging, for those who don’t know, is when someone literally throws an egg (or more) at something.  In this case, IT ALWAYS IS MY CAR!

The past few years, the morning after Halloween I would always find a few eggs shattered across my car.  With the weather at this time of year quite cooler, by morning time you can imagine the egg white/yolk has solidified quite nicely.  A nice little present from the local kids…a thank you to my parents for giving out candy.

So this year we moved to Lindsay.  There aren’t that many houses even built yet in our neighbourhood, nor many kids, but before night fall even hit, my car was already victimized again, this time while my Dad was out shopping with his car.  In bright day night, before 5pm even hit….how did they know what the ensuing evening was going to bring?

Was it some local kids?  Like I said no kids really around us, no school around us, our house doesn’t even get much through traffic.

Maybe it was some of the builders?  Saying thank you to us, note the sarcasm.

Anyways, I guess it wasn’t just a Scarborough thing after all, like others have always told me.  Instead I got a welcome to Halloween in Lindsay.  With a rag I cleaned up the welcoming mess.  I grudged into the house as nightfall arrived and my Dad yells to me to turn of the porch lights again.  Unwillingly I do and now I wait until the morning.

Hope you all had a fun and egg free Halloween!