May 28, 2023

📬 Where did all the spam go? SpamSieve – Great Success

I’m not sure what’s happened, but the number of incoming spam message has dropped to almost nothing, and it has nothing to SpamSieve. Once I got my original configuration snafu sorted out, with unnecessary rules deleted, SpamSieve was trashing 40+ spam messages a day. There were a couple of false positives, but that’s expected. Then all of a sudden the spam messages stopped. Literally overnight it dropped to 6 messages a day. Do I still exist? For spring cleaning, I removed myself from a slew of newsletters. There we large lists like Target and smaller ones like Udemy. If a message came in and had Unsubscribe, I clicked it. The only ones I’ve kept are Steam, Amazon, along with a very select few. Was it that? Was it all the newsletters? Did I finally manage to get myself on the right list, or conversely off the wrong list? Did I make it into the Do Not Spam category? Or were […]

General 0 1 min read
May 21, 2023

🎮 I miss the days when you could buy an iPad game

I remember when the iPad was new, and you could go to the App Store, buy a quality game and play it for hours, even days, without interruption. Sure, some were classic remakes like Monopoly, or Yahtzee, but let’s not forget the more advanced titles like Need for Speed or Real Racing. For the time, they were impressive, and you could get lost in them for days. They weren’t 8-bit pixel art. They had plenty of replay value where, once you finished with one car, you could start over and do it all again behind the wheel of something different. It was portable gaming where you didn’t need an Internet connection. Now, you can’t play a game for 10 minutes without some damn prompt about buying gems or coins. Or that you can watch an ad to get coins. Or download another game to earn some credit. Every game in the store shows “In-App Purchases” next to the title and […]

Games 0 6 min read
May 14, 2023

🗑 When will SpamSieve start working?

In my battle against the hundreds of spam messages I’m getting, I’ve installed SpamSieve, because the reviews say you train it to block all types of spam. After flagging over 500 messages as spam, SpamSieve has blocked exactly zero (0). Even though it has 730+ blocklist rules, and filtered over 73k words, not a single message has been flagged as spam. It clearly isn’t doing shit. There are two problems, there was a misconfiguration on my part, and the rules are overly specific. In looking at the Blocklist, I see why there are over 700 entries. The rules are set to use is equal to for way too many fields. Take the use of address: That’s a useless set of rules. Obviously the From field will never be the same thing twice. That problem persists for other fields, for example there are dozens of rules where the subject is equal to followed by a load of gibberish. Loɯe’s Reɯαrds”” “”,9225018 […]

General 0 1 min read
May 7, 2023

🧹 Massive spring cleaning and digital detox

It’s time for spring cleaning and I’m engaged in epic battles against several of my digital nemeses – old/unused apps, unwatched channel subscriptions, duplicate files, and all those damn scam messages that keep showing up in my Inbox. Looks like my email address has been sold for $1. First order of business in getting away from digital distractions is to ditch digital “communities.” This is a two pronged attack against YouTube and Discord. I started with a handful, but I’ve unsubscribed from all but 3 YouTube channels. There is a lot to choose from, maybe too much, but despite the click bait titles from content creators, I’m not watching their videos. After skipping over them for a couple months, the best course of action is to unsubscribe and focus on channels I will watch. The second course of action was to leave all the Discord servers and delete the client. Discord is cool and I used it to look in […]

General 0 4 min read
April 30, 2023

💰 Some awesome deals on Bundlehunt

Time to share the love of a discounted software sale. I’ve mentioned Bundlehunt several times in the past as a source to get quality apps for a massive discount. Ironically they have an app on sale I said was awesome but too expensive – Wordcounter. To reiterate, it’s a good app, but worth $5.99 max. Bundlehunt now makes that a reality. I just picked up a copy of Wordcounter for $3, down from the regular $19.99. At that price, I snatched it up without hesitation, and if you’re into writing, whatever the style, it’s worth looking into. Track how much you write, and in which app. Very useful when the price is right. There are other great bargains on other great tools like Find Any File, which I’ve been using to find and delete files across all my drives. It has fantastic features and there is no way you can argue with the $1.50 price tag. There is also the […]

General 0 1 min read

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