Every morning, I open the dashboard to my website and see if I have any new commenters worth allowing past the Comments’ gate so that their posts will appear at the foot of my daily blog.
Quite honestly, it’s a real pain in the ass, but a necessary evil, given all of the bots and weirdos out there who would love to coopt my website. I get about 20 of those a day.
Most come from porn, gambling, Ukrainians and Russians,
and the worst vice-mongers of all, personal injury lawyers.
Each one of these posts show up separately as an email notice, but I just delete them as they arrive. I then go into the Dashboard before I blog and perform a huge delete. But not before I eyeball the list to see if there might be some new real legit reader who antes up and contributes to the common discourse. There have been a few along the way, and each one is precious to me.
The scary thing is that if I accidently let the Bots past once, I have to find them and block them manually in the future.
So, I have to be diligent. One of the most common Bot’ tells is when they comment how informative my blog post is on a particular, unidentified subject. There is nothing educational about my work.
The foreign ones are the easiest to spot, given the Cyrillic lettering.
The porn and gambling ones can be trickier, so I have to check their email sources for telltale wording that gives them away.
The PI lawyers are a rather new phenomenon. Luckily, like a Vampire can smell one of its kind in a crowded room, my eyes are just as sensitive to spotting the word lawyer.
But if there is a real person out there – stranger or friend – who happens upon this website and reads one of my blogs, and feels the urge to comment, I will cull you from the barbarians, drop the drawbridge and welcome you to the party with open arms.
Indeed, on those rare occasions when I do find a real diamond among the Fugazis – FUGAZI Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster –
I will welcome you with open arms and probably even respond to that comment. So, please say hello.
Well, it’s another magical Friday for my fine, five readers.
Finish that last cuppa and slide in one door of work only long enough to be noticed by the powers that be, and then take a weekend long coffee break at the first possible moment. You’ve earned it.
I’ve got to take care of updating my annual registration for my Toyota – yes, the one in TCS. I had to take it for its emissions test yesterday. Passed with flying colors. Wonderful SUV.
And no matter what else we get up to, let us all make today a great one.
