Just Like (a) Human

So, earlier tonight, I noticed I was being bombarded by email that all fit a similar pattern:

• Most of them are ‘bounced’ emails
• All of them have an attachment (either 1.msg, or a GIF with a random filename).
• The emails that are not ‘bounced’ often have a large amount of legitimate text in them, along with a GIF, often copypasta’d from all over the Internet, to make filtering a bit riskier.

I spent an hour looking for a way to simply obliterate GIF attachments, save for a small number of email addresses that I expect the content to, if only to stem the flow of crapmail hitting my inbox. Since I wasn’t getting anywhere, I turned to ChaCha, whose search guides get paid to search.

Here’s the log of that conversation, and GayleneW, thanks for being friendly about the whole thing, even though it took perhaps ten minutes.

Status: Looking for a guide …
Status: Connected to guide: GayleneW
GayleneW: Welcome to ChaCha!
You: ‘allo!
GayleneW: hello, I will be assisting you today!
GayleneW: What exactly are you in search of
You: Well, I’ve been poking around to find a way to use procmail to deny emails that contain attachments of .gif images.
You: And, for once, I’m stumped.
GayleneW: ok let me see what I can find for you one moment please
You: Okay.
GayleneW: Thanks for being patient! Rest assured I’m finding the most relevant results for your search.
You: Not a problem.
GayleneW: What exactly is Procmail, so I know if I am in the right area with my searches
You: Procmail is a mail agent used mostly on non-Windows servers, to process email.
GayleneW: look over this site while I try to find others and let me know if I am in the right area
You: Unfortunately, that site only covered how to pipe mail with certain headers to a separate mail spool.
GayleneW: ok I am reading a few others, sorry, thought I got lucky there.
GayleneW: I am still searching for you
You: That’s okay.
GayleneW: Look over this one and I will continue to look again
You: Doesn’t cover procmail, actually; They’re dealing with old HTML Imagemaps.
GayleneW: I havent given up, now it is a challenge haha
You: That’s what I ended up saying. I spent an hour, and feel like I’m going in circles.
GayleneW: how about this one?
You: Hm! That just might do it.
GayleneW: oh that would be awesome!
GayleneW: Here are some links to things about procmail
GayleneW: Would you like me to continue looking?
You: Delicious. That second link is one I lost years ago.
GayleneW: oh great then I have been helpful!
You: I think I can pick up from this point. Time to get in the kitchen and whip up some image spam blocking.
GayleneW: hahaha great good luck and thanks for choosing Chacha!
You: Thanks very much.
GayleneW: Your welcome, have a super evening!

It’s guides like her that would tempt me to use them more, if only to give them something to search for and earn money with.

I had another guide a while back when I was first trying ChaCha that would make anyone not want to come back. I flagged her as bad, with her attitude, and not even asking if the search results (Seburo Compact-Exploder) were relevant — while one of the results was interesting, and the other was the port of the gun to Second Life, it wasn’t what I was seeking. Notice how Gaylene asked me for more information so she could tune her search to find what I was looking for, and actually made the effort on a topic that isn’t asked about so much.

She even helped me find an old link I used to use for Procmail recipes, which I promptly delicious’d.

This is good service.

(progress report: 92% done with the curriculum :D)