Extra Time, Spam Jokes

A couple of days ago a friend asked me about a bug in his program.
The program was simple: it calculated the time and date a couple
of days from now. So, if it were 9:00 P.M. March 29th, 2004 right
now, a week from “now” would be 9:00 A.M. April 5th, 2004.

Unfortunately, the program kept giving 10:00 A.M. April 5th, 2004.

After writing a second script to calculate all the dates with
discrepancies for the next thousand days, we noticed that the time
difference came and went every couple of hundred days.

A friend then messaged me, asking what’s up. I started explaining,
“But for some odd reason certain days will give us an extra hour,”
when it dawned on me.

Daylight Savings Time!

Recently spam has been getting through my Bayesian filter, which
just means that it’s supposed to learn to recognize spam from real
mail automatically. It worked very well at first—and still
does—but recently I’ve been getting around one or two spams
a day (as opposed to a week).

It’s always interesting to analyze spam that gets through, because
they usually rely on new techniques to sneak by spam filters. The
old way was to just avoid using words that all spam contain, such
as “viagra.” These still get caught because they look nothing like
the E-mails I normally get.

These “new age” spam have been including entire texts to pass through
as normal E-mail. One included some politician’s speech. I haven’t
seen any more political speech spams; maybe my filter has smartened
up and realized that I never talk politics.

The last couple of ones, however, have been including jokes. Jokes!
Although I rarely exchange jokes via E-mail, they still get through.
Perhaps it is the casual tone. I don’t really mind them for the
most part, as long as the volume stays low. The jokes are pretty
amusing. Here are two I received today:

In some Government offices the clerks, upon arrival in the morning,
have to sign their names in an “attendance book.” This book provides
space for signature, time of arrival, and “remarks.” Ten minutes
after the hour and official draws a red line under the last arrival’s
name, and all those coming subsequently are expected to furnish an
explanation of their tardiness in the “remarks” column.When a real
“London particular” occurs the number “below the line” is legion;
the first of them writes: “Delayed by fog,” and the rest scribble
a “ditto.” One morning—a foggy one—Mr. Jones became a
proud father; but even this only caused him to be about eleven
minutes late. Proudly he wrote in explanation: “Wife had twins,”
which was followed in due course by the usual string of “dittos.”

A young executive was leaving the office of a major corporation
late one evening when he found the CEO himself standing in front
of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand. Eager to make a
good impression, the young exec introduced himself and asked if he
could be of any help. “Why yes,” said the CEO, holding up the piece
of paper. “This is a very sensitive and important document, and my
secretary has gone for the night. Can you make this thing work?”
“Certainly,” said the young executive, happy for a chance to help
the boss. The young man turned the machine on, inserted the paper,
and pressed the start button. “Excellent, excellent!” said the CEO
as his paper disappeared inside the machine. “I’ll need two copies.”