So allo there, come one, come all, to this month's close-out geeking-out bonanza. I'm Chester Butterbottom, your moderator and guide through this wonderful world of dorkiness and fanboy miscelleny.

(note to regular readers- fear not, I shall be playing the role of Chester Butterbottom. Didn't want my satirical and self depricating style to make people think I was doing another guest author piece, as it did not go over well last time.)

Starting off with the computery and sadly necessary, I've had to supplement my spam-killing system. I've raved many times about the bounty of Popfile, which sorts the spam. However, I'm now getting 60 spam mails a day, and while auto-sorting is nice, I'm still having to download the crap and wait for my email program to trash the stuff I don't want. As you may imagine, since I am not Mr. Popular or Strong Bad, this means many times I wait for email downloads to find 60 trashed messages and 0 good ones. Weak.

Enter mailfilter. When properly configured, (a simple process that took me approximately 6 hours) mailfilter connects to Popfile, (or any mail server) and nukes stuff directly off of it, based on rules you have given it. Then, when you go to get your mail, all that is left is the stuff you've chosen to allow - in my case, the stuff that my trained puppy Popfile says is hunky dory, and not penis-pill related. This works by me having Popfile change the subject line of spam emails, inserting the ultra clever "dickspam ufuels" shibboleth. Then, mailfilter cans anything with that in it. Please, don't everyone take this as an opportunity to send me an email with that in the subject. I specifically chose it as one of the least possible subject line strings I would ever get in a legit email - especially given the ufuels, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite in-jokes of all time.

NO ONE WILL DARE TO OPPOSE US, ONCE WE HAVE CAPTURED THE UFUELS!


Ok. So. Here's a crude metaphor to explain how my new spam setup works. Mail comes in, like a letter, to my various mailservers, or what we'll call the Post Office. Then, a very wise Postal Worker, who we shall call Mr. Popfile, sorts it into good and bad piles, based on my vicious, iron-fist-like guiding hand over the course of the past year. Then, my spam Butler, who we shall call Mister Mailfilter, goes into the Post Office every 15 minutes, and sets fire to the "bad" pile. He then urinates on the ashes, burns them again, and scoops them into a little pile shaped like the word "Spam." Then, he gets on his knees and begins an ancient voodoo enchantment to hex the people who sent that bad mail. The ashes then disappear in a flash of light, to the sound of hundreds of tortured souls screaming out. Then, he tips his funny butler hat to the perplexed postal worker, and goes back home.

This way, when I click "check mail" on my email client, which, what the hell, we will analogize to yet a second Butler, who goes to the Post office, scoops up the good pile, and delivers it to me, with no trace of the burning and incantations that Butler #1 went through. I seem to have a bizarre predilection toward considering computerized services butlers.

Suddenly I am able to check mail and have to download less than 10 messages. And they are ALL GOOD.

There now. I'm sure that was fascinating to you all.

But we're just getting started here at the Bonanza. Next up is the excitement of minute, almost unnoticible changes to the blog.

The alert reader (phrase on loan from Dave Barry) will have noticed the super sweet fade effect when you mouse over links. Some may consider this silly or tacky. I admit it is a fairly cheap effect, but for reasons beyond my understanding, I am FASCINATED BY IT.

Seriously, I can sit there for 10 minutes at a time just going over various links and giggling. But I can certainly see how someone would think of this as a really insignificant trifle, a digital bauble not worthy of that kind of attention. However, I will go to my grave calling anyone who says such a thing a dirty fascist, not worthy of the lethal beating I will have inflicted upon them with rusty bicycle chains.

Next up on the blog change list would be the image behind the "Stuff I do" part of the main page interface. It, uh, has a brainbomb now. That's about all there is to that one.

I've added several boxes of links to the right side of the main page interface as well, though I'm still tweaking that.

Those are the only blog changes that are up for public consumption at the moment, but after the beginning of this week, when, you know, there are some things going on on the national stage, I shall be changing some more things. I may finally be ready to redo the templates for the monthly archive pages, a blog improvement that is literally 2 years in the making.

In closing, the Bonanza will continue the fanboy raving from the last entry, about Arrested Development.

Holy. Crap. Not only is it a truly amazing show, but they didn't chintz out on the DVD set. I'd have liked for them to uncensor the episodes (though the extended pilot is uncensored) but I'm one of those who can appreciate the fact that a well placed bleep occasionally makes something even funnier than the actual curse word.

They include 99% of the music used on the set as a special feature, which is excellent given that the show's music is part of its wonderful style. There are only a couple songs not included, for example John Hiatt's Cry Love, but there are only about 3 of those, and as I did for that one, they can be picked out and downloaded purchased from a legal provider.

Beyond that, I'm simply glad Jason Bateman is back on TV. The man is amazing, and it has been too long since The Hogan Family.

It shouldn't surprise me that I love this show so much - Its executive producers include Ron Howard and Brian Grazer - 2 names that appear in the same capacity on a little show called Sports Night, which in case none of you were aware, is the Best Show Ever. I don't think I've been as happy with a DVD set since Sports Night, actually. Though, in fairness, the Sports Night DVD set had zero extras - it was more the ability to posess the finest in television in one compact box that made that one so great.

This has been Chester Butterbottom, with the geek news you couldn't care less about. From New York, we bid you adieu, and remind you: we could do this more than once a month, so be thankful.

[chester butterbottom is a funny name to me]