wonko.com

The following email arrived in my inbox this morning:

From: Josh Hagen <Josh@lookingtoadvertise.com>
To: ryan@wonko.com
Date: Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:12 AM
Subject: seattlemomblogs.com

Dear Blogger,

We are currently looking to sponsor ads or blog posts on websites associated with mothers. If you be interested in selling ad space or wish to write about an asigned subject, please contact us.

Sincerely,

John Young

I’m not a mom, nor am I a Seattle resident, nor am I a pirate (“If you be interested”?), but I do have a mom, so I guess that means my website is associated with mothers! I was so excited to be qualified for this once-in-a-blog opportunity that I could barely contain myself:

From: ryan@wonko.com
To: Josh Hagen <Josh@lookingtoadvertise.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Subject: Re: seattlemomblogs.com

Hi John (or Josh?),

I’d love to hear more. What subject would you like me (just call me Mr. Mom!) to write about?

- Ryan

A few minutes later I received a reply. And not just any old reply either; they put so much effort into this reply that it took two whole people to write it!

From: josh@lookingtoadvertise.com
To: ryan@wonko.com
Date: Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: seattlemomblogs.com

Hey Ryan,

Would you be interested in writing about personalized checks from VistaPrint.com?

URL: http://www.vistaprint.com/checks-custom-multi.aspx

Thanks,

John and Josh

I was pleased that John and Josh were undeterred by my male name, and while — to the best of my knowledge — I have no offspring, I suppose the fact that my mom occasionally posts comments on my blog was enough to make J & J consider me an honorary mommy blogger.

This responsibility weighed heavily on me, though. I felt it was my duty to be the best mom I could be, and a mom can’t just endorse any old product. I wanted some assurances that this here VistaPrint was wholesome and educational before I’d give it Momma Ryan’s stamp of approval.

From: ryan@wonko.com
To: josh@lookingtoadvertise.com
Date: Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: seattlemomblogs.com

Hey JohnJosh,

As a mother, it’s very important to me to instill a strong sense of financial responsibility in my children. Can you tell me a little bit more about how VistaPrint’s personalized checks will help my wee kidlets learn good check-writing practices?

Also, do you have any checks with a Sin City theme? My kids and their little friends LOVE that movie, especially the part where Benicio Del Toro gets his throat slit and pretends to be a pez dispenser. They watch it and then run around all day taking turns playing pez dispenser. It’s so cute!

- Ryan

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for Sin City-related financial edutainment seems to have overwhelmed poor JohnJosh. I never did hear back.

With the rise of social networking services, a disturbing trend has emerged. Whenever Facebook changes their design or Twitter has a glitch (or removes a feature), users erupt in a spontaneous worldwide ragegasm.

If the change was intentional, they’re pissed because nobody consulted them. If it’s a bug, they’re pissed because it isn’t being fixed fast enough. Half of them are probably just pissed because their friends are pissed and they don’t want to feel left out.

Few of these vitriol-spewing angerballs seem to realize that the companies behind the products they’re pissed about are made up of actual people, and for the most part these people genuinely do not want to make their users unhappy. What’s more, thanks to the nature of social networks, many of these people — real people with real feelings — actually read this hate-filled asshattery and are affected by it.

When Twitter goes down, they’re not playing a cruel trick on you. When they change or remove a feature you like, it’s because they thought they had a good reason. Maybe they’re wrong. By all means, speak up when these things happen, but don’t be a dick about it.

As a developer, nothing makes me happier than going out of my way to fix a problem for a user who brings it to my attention politely. On the other hand, when a user implies that I’m a moron and makes angry demands, I’m not exactly going to feel motivated to respond to that person’s concerns. And it might just ruin my day.

Larch 1.0.1 has been released. Notable changes in this release include the following:

• Ruby 1.9.1 support.
• Much more robust handling of unexpected server disconnects and dropped connections.
• Added --all option to copy all folders recursively.
• Added --all-subscribed option to copy all subscribed folders recursively.
• Added --dry-run option to simulate changes without actually making them.
• Added --exclude and --exclude-file options to specify folders that should not be copied.
• Added --ssl-certs option to specify a bundle of trusted SSL certificates.
• Added --ssl-verify option to verify server SSL certificates.
• Added a new “insane” logging level, which will output all IMAP commands and responses to STDERR.
• Fixed excessive post-scan processing times for very large mailboxes.
• Fixed potential scan problems with very large mailboxes on certain servers.
• POSIX signals are no longer trapped on platforms that aren’t likely to support them.

To install Larch via RubyGems, run:

sudo gem install larch

Visit Larch’s GitHub page for usage information and other documentation. If you have questions or need help with something, please use the Larch mailing list.

I’ve been so busy lately that this slipped my mind: April 1^st was wonko.com’s 10^th birthday. Here’s some useless trivia to celebrate the occasion:

• The domain name wasn’t my idea. It was a birthday present from Mom on my 16^th birthday.
• WonkoSlice, which was born sometime around April 1^st, was a clone of Slashdot (which was big back then) that I built as an excuse to learn ASP.
• WonkoSlice was originally hosted on my desktop PC running Windows 98 and Microsoft Personal Web Server, a toy version of IIS that was limited to 10 simultaneous connections. Traffic quickly became too much for PWS to handle, so within a few months I upgraded to a beta version of Windows 2000 Server.
• Before the site was moved to a dedicated machine, I would often take it down for an hour or two so I could boot Windows 98 to play Quake or Half-Life. Nobody ever complained.
• During the height of the dot-com bubble, a few advertising and blog network startups made attempts to “purchase” WonkoSlice in return for phantom stock. None of them exist anymore.
• wonko.com became my personal blog on February 11, 2003, with this post.

If you’re really interested, I posted a more detailed account of wonko.com’s early history back in 2006.

It has been brought to my attention that the ferocious Australian Dropbear (a type of carnivorous koala known for dropping out of trees onto their prey) is particularly fond of pale, balding web developers.

In light of this new information, Felicity and I have decided to call off our move.

Last October, Felicity and I moved back to Portland, Oregon, our home of many years. We had been longing for the Pacific Northwest’s cold winter air and constant drizzly greyness since moving to California, and it felt wonderful to be home again.

Over the long winter, though, our joy gradually diminished. We were snowed in for much of December, and the permanent overcast and unavoidable moistening upon venturing outdoors have really been getting us down. At times, we’ve wondered if we would ever see the sun again, or experience the glorious feeling of our skin gently baking in a dry heat.

That’s why, after a lot of careful planning and consideration, we’ve decided to move to Portland, New South Wales. We’ll swap drizzle for sunshine and America for Australia, but without having to leave Portland behind. And, as a bonus, we’ll be just a few hours drive from our dear friends Loren and Caitlin.

I’ll continue working for Yahoo! remotely just as before, but now I’ll be one day ahead due to the time difference, which means I’ll hear the latest Microsoft takeover rumors a day before everyone else.

I’ve created a mailing list for questions, comments, and discussion about Larch.