Caveat Lector

Last week’s interview was a bit of a disappointment (not their fault—mine), but I can’t stop for that. I got one more acknowledgment over the weekend, and sent out one more application yesterday.

(Interestingly—at least to me—yesterday’s app went to a place I’ve already submitted. The previous app was for a lovely, lovely job that I’m dead sure they wouldn’t give me. This one actually seems within reach, though. I told them in my cover letter that I’m impressed with their commitment to digitalia, and I mean that. I am.)

Today I’m heading over to Digital Content Group to start in on some actual work (yay work!). Looks like I’ll have to switch backpacks, as I expect to be hauling the Silver Surfer back and forth for a while. Hope it holds up; I really can’t afford to replace the poor old thing at the moment.

Our friends the Bulgarian referrer spammers have apparently figured out they’re being blocked. They’re clearly not sure why, so they’re experimenting.

What they’re experimenting with at the moment is breaking apart my tidy URLs and adding them as parameters after a question-mark, as in a typical search string or PHP-based URL.

It’s not working for them, but it’s a cute tactic. There’s probably a way to block based on it, but I’m too lazy to work it out, given that I derive no immediate benefit from it.

Correction: Nope, nope, nope, that’s not what’s happening. What’s actually happening is that the 301 redirect I’ve got for them sends back the PHP URL, which the bot tries to fetch, only now the referrer is my site, so the bot tries to 301 over to that, and so on and so forth. Cute. Almost honeypottish.

But I don’t really have the bandwidth to spare for these schmucks, so I’ve gone back to 403ing them. You may wish to do the same.

I heard the other day that the grand new architectural plan for the UW campus may involve demolition of Van Hise Hall.

I’d pay good money to swing the first wrecking ball.

Which isn’t fair, of course. It’s not the building’s fault that there are (or were) some people on its tenth and eleventh floors who need to be dropped off the roof (repeatedly, if necessary). Even so. I spent many, many unhappy hours in that place. I’ll cheer on the wreckers with a light heart.

It’s a butt-ugly building, too, which is why it’s on the list. (I hope they trash its fraternal twin Van Vleck too, for the same reason.) People in high places finally seem to have realized that the UW campus is horribly, unnecessarily ugly owing to Iron-Curtain slum-style architecture. Nobody’s talking about laying a finger on the Red Gym or Music Hall; it’s the ugly stuff that’s going. All to the good, that.

I just can’t help thinking that eliminating some of those buildings will greatly lighten the campus’s psychic load, too.

An excellent block for our referrer-spamming friends here at CandyGenius. Dorothea-Bob says check it out.

(In brief: These guys have been leaving a telltale in their HTTP headers that this block uses to advantage.)

As much as I read (and I read a lot—and no, that isn’t why I’m becoming a librarian), I don’t often talk about it on CavLec. About the only books I mention for the sake of mentioning books are books that utterly disappointed me.

I am going to break my streak and recommend a book now, so y’all listen up. Because you must, you simply must, read this book. And get your local library to buy it so that other people read it. And buy it yourself (I’m going to) because the author simply must be persuaded to write more books, and publishers simply must be persuaded to publish them.

The book is by Minister Faust, and it’s called The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad. And you have to read it. It’s great.

It’s getting very mixed reviews, from what I’m seeing, and frankly I find most of the criticisms mean-spirited and unjustified. One or two demonstrate quite clearly that the reviewer wasn’t reading; it’s perfectly clear to me where the “Coyote Kings” monicker came from. Yeah, Faust drops tidbits for geeks like Hansel and Gretel dropped crumbs—but so does Neal Stephenson, and so do half a dozen others, and they get lickspittle praise for it. The book doesn’t depend on readers getting every single allusion (and while my percentage is high, it’s not 100%), so what’s the beef? This is how geeks act, sheesh, haven’t any of these reviewers ever sat in on a roleplaying game?

And who on $DEITY’s green earth demanded that the reader has to like every single point-of-view character? Please. (Though I agree with one reviewer that the treatment of Mugatu was cruel. It didn’t bother me as badly as what Gaiman did with women in American Gods, though.)

Look. This book is what American Gods wanted to be but wasn’t. It puts the “urban” back in “urban fantasy,” much (no doubt) to the chagrin of sad poseurs like DeLint. It’s got tremendous energy, terrific language, and just the right banality-of-evil touch in the villains to make them truly, truly creepy.

So go read it. Now. If you have any true geekitude, or true poetry, in your soul, it’ll rock your socks. (Which is exactly the turn of phrase that would cause Minister Faust to poke sly fun at me, but so be it.)

Some good spam sleuthery suggests that “Fetch API Request” should be added to your list of bad user-agents, if you have one.

I’m not entirely sure how the phone interview went. I didn’t bomb, but I could have been better.

Ruritania U wants somebody who puts the “meta” in metadata. Now, I know my way around metadata reasonably well, and can pick up the finer points as I go—but I’m not a metadata geek quite the same way I’m a text geek, and I fear it showed. (Plus, their collections are heavy on the maps and the geography, and I don’t know nothin’ ’bout integratin’ with no GIS. Not that I couldn’t learn, of course. But that’s the truth.)

I was basically right about the parameters and politics of the position, though, which shows that I’m learning to read between the lines of a job description. Not at all a bad thing.

I can’t really guess at my chances at this point. It depends heavily on what else they’re getting by way of applications. I don’t think I did anything to knock myself immediately out of contention, but if I’d been on the other side of the phone line listening to me, I don’t think I’d be at the top of my list. Er, if that makes any sense.

Our friends the referrer spammers have quit referrer-spamming named domains, in favor of the IP 12.163.72.13. Which, when clicked upon, goes nowhere. Seems to be part of an AT&T netblock, though I am not skilled in online sleuthery and could be wrong.

If you’re using the User-Agent trick, you’re still protected.

Well, I’m afraid that one casualty of this job search is going to be my commitment to Madison Literacy Council. They want a promise of six months, and I just can’t honorably make one. I don’t know where I’ll be in six months.

I’ve put myself on the sub list for their drop-in tutoring program, and I’m going to finish the training sessions anyway. Wherever I end up there’ll be a literacy or ESL program that I can help with.

However. I’m told they have a major backlog of people wanting tutors at the moment. If you’re local and you’ve got a few hours a week free for six months, please go to MLC and sign up to tutor. Thanks.

I got home from three hours of class and errands and had just sat down with a peanut-butter sandwich when the phone rang.

I said something rendered unintelligible by a mouth full of peanut butter (and just as well, too), chewed fast, and managed to answer the phone on the third ring.

“Hi, is this Dorothea?” (Pronounced correctly and without hesitation. Not a telemarketer, then.)

“Yes, it is.”

“This is Jane Doe from University of Ruritania Libraries. You sent in an application for our Wonder-Librarian position, and we’d like to talk to you on the phone. Will tomorrow at 4 your time do?” (I am fudging details slightly, as you may have already guessed.)

“Tomorrow’s Thursday? Yes, that will be fine. Looking forward to it!”

That’s a day-brightener and no mistake.

Y’all will have to excuse me now, though; have to go bone up on Ruritania U and its libraries.

ETA: Well, this is nice; they’ve got all their people’s vitas up on their website. Eclectic group, almost none of them lifer-librarians; a lot of outside experience and interests, and plenty of evidence of continuous development and growth. That’s an environment I could get to like in a hurry.