We've packed our bottles of "Crystal Springs Bottled Water" as it's pure and SPAM-free, we've got our Champagne, sandwiches are packed, laptop and cameras charged -- It's off to the hospital for Isis and myself!  As she's now 10 days overdue, the doctor has decided it's done and ready to come out; so we're booked in for a Monday morning birth.  Why today?  Several reasons...  It's the 19th today, that means nothing but I thought I'd mention it.  Mondays always suck, this may alter our perspective on Mondays.  We're going to hit a record high of 25°C today so the windows are open and spring's here; perfect!  That and of course game 7 of the Leafs vs. Senators is tomorrow night.  Thank-you all once again from both of us for all the letters and well-wishes; we appreciate each and every one of them.  Checking in to Hotel ScreamAlot now -- enjoy your Monday.

 

Everyone will agree that SPAM has become a very real problem, this week the unthinkable happened to me; while in a meeting, my cell phone’s email alarm went off – swiftly I grabbed my phone thinking it must be Isis telling me she’s ready to birth, but that was far from the case; the following message appeared: “I know you’ve been looking for a great water company that delivers. I found one, go to orderbottledwater.com, for great pricing and service.” This is where the shit hits the fan; with email SPAM raging out of control, I can at least take measures to contain it, but someone actually sending SPAM to my personal cell phone – you have no filter ability for this and most people pay per message. Enraged by this complete violation, within 3 minutes I had tracked the SPAMMER down, the parent company, his full name, his work address, his email address and his cell phone number… You won’t believe who it is; a company whose reputation just took a complete shit in my books (…as it should in yours…) The following is a complete transcript of our email exchange thus far:

From: MeatMan Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 3:22 PM To: michaelgabbard@rogers.com Subject: Oh no... You've SPAMMED the wrong phone, Michael!

Mr. Gabbard... I consider Cedar Springs to be a reputable company selling a decent product; all of that just went to hell in a hand basket after my CELL PHONE received a SPAM from your company under the URL of orderbottledwater.com I will not go into the details of my utter distain for SPAM, but I will tell you how offended I am to think companies actually have the impudence to SPAM someone's cell. This costs me money. I do not use "opt-out" listings until I'm sure that's exactly what's going to happen when I press submit. Who is doing the actual SPAM mailings please and how do I get removed from it? Further, I strongly suggest Cedar Springs INSTANTLY discontinue this practice. Craig Milton

He did reply promptly, however the reply did not reach me so I re-mailed him (…his first reply was delayed due to SPAM traffic I’m sure…) but he quickly answered:

From: Michael Gabbard Sent: Wed 14/04/2004 12:28 PM To: MeatMan Subject: RE: Oh no... You've SPAMMED the wrong phone, Michael!

Mr. Milton, Thank you for your email. We had inadvertently emailed a small series of cell phone numbers, among which was your cell phone, with our offer to visit orderbottledwater.com. We apologize for this inconvenience, and will of course take steps to make sure that your cell phone is not emailed again. If you would kindly pass on your cell phone number, which will be kept confidential, I will make sure that our provider removes it from their database. I appreciate your opinion on the spam issue, and I will pass your comments on, which will be reviewed and taken into consideration in deciding if this is a marketing approach that we wish to pursue. Thanks Michael Gabbard

Although personal, I consider this to be a somewhat canned answer, also full of untruths; my retort was fired back:

From: Craig Milton Sent: Thu 4/15/2004 11:15 AM To: michaelgabbard@rogers.com Subject: Some times marketing departments don't have the "right" idea.

Thank-you Michael… There appears to be an issue with our mail server then, afraid I did not receive your first message, my apologies. My cell number is 555 555-1234. I find it disturbing that someone can “inadvertently” email someone’s cell phone, when the site the SPAM directs you to has a cell phone number removal box on it, which suggests the SPAM was indeed intentional to my cell phone; I liken that to “inadvertently” beating someone over the head with a baseball bat 23 times. You have to understand the total scourge to the internet that SPAM has become, but taking it to the level of actually intruding on someone’s paid for cell phone in order to force your advertising message is in very simple terms, not acceptable at all. I would like Cedar Springs to send me .10¢ cash to cover the cost of their advertising as incurred by myself on your behalf when I was text-messaged without provocation. You may want to also “pass on” that this form of marketing will result in corporate suicide as I have full intension of letting the public know exactly where and from whom this cell-phone text messaging is coming from. Companies who hide under the ambiguity of the net are one by one being held accountable for their actions. If notification in a very public forum about Cedar Springs new “marketing idea” bothers your company, then it’s obvious that your company is aware they’re doing the wrong thing morally. Period; it's not even a discussion. …your product is supposed to be clear, clean, pure and healthy; SPAM is none of these and I don’t think attaching Cedar Springs to SPAM is going to go over very well at all. Perhaps they'll have the idea of selling Viagra over the internet next to go with the water? Regards, Craig Milton

So where to go from here? Well, that all depends on what their answer is to this last letter; but I’ll tell you one thing – Abattoir.Net will never again order Cedar Springs bottled water, nor will any of our four coolers at work be refilled with their product and the same goes for three other companies in my direct influence who have been told to pull their product; I encourage all loyal Abattoir.Net readers to do the same…  Cedar Springs, you're all wet.

 

Now that we've gone HD we're finding out there's a little more to the purchase than just the digital system – turns out that the software which comes with the JVC GR-HD1U camera will not allow you to edit the footage you've taken, which is fine since that's something you would do within a product like Adobe® Premiere® Pro or "that there Apple stuph"; problem is, there's no support for HD editing… So with the software from the box, I can back-up my HD footage to my computer as a ".m2t" file, but cannot edit it, I can only view it and I have to do that through the camera; not until you buy the "plug-in" for Adobe by CineForm called AspectHD for Windows, an HD Editing package who's authors even sport the JVC on their site. This little add-on will expose itself for a shy $1,199.00 USD. My first question, what the hell is an ".m2t" file?! Some times things aren't always as complex as they seem; rename your ".pk3" files in Quake to ".zip" and you can open, edit, add, delete and generally goof around with it in WinZip, simply put Quake's ".pk3" files are just ".zip" files renamed. So let's just rename one of the imported ".m2t" files to ".mpg" and lookie-lookie; playable in Windows Media Player and importable of course to Adobe for editing, seems it's just an ".mpg" renamed to ".m2t" (…places money back in pocket…) Now to start filling up folders with digital droppings we think we can't live without and that others will want to see.

In our last super-captivating and spectacular minutes update, we spoke of a young man named Josh (zookrabbi) Fortier who walked the planet as an inverted Q-Tip with a mission; the term "get a hair cut" bounced off this superman of split ends in his pursuit to produce a large harvest come shearing time. We’re very proud to announce that zookrabbi lost 20 pounds and we have the before and after shots to prove it. Everyone at Abattoir.Net is proud of you zook, plus you look more aerodynamic. Josh raised over 80,098.24 JPY (Japanese Yen) for two cancer causes; nice job! Josh is now on a fundraiser for wigs - If you would like to contribute a few bucks, the foundation's still accepting and I'm sure Josh would be thrilled to add a few more Yen, or if you just want to comment on his new mellon, hit the Abattoir.BBs (Forum)

Time to talk BTM LAN Party; although there's a spawn about to enter the Abattoir at any given second (…Isis can be heard jumping up and down in the kitchen as I’m typing attempting to enduce…) we are fairly confident MiniMeat will arrive well before May 1st. Members have first run, but consider this the official announcement for BTM43 "May Day" Edition as Battlefield 1942: Vietnam and Unreal Tournament 2004 make their debut at the Abattoir BTM along with the premier of FarCry. We would like to thank EB Games in Oakville at Trafalgar and Hwy 5 for all the great swag to throw out at this BTM! If you're in need of any great game titles, it's one stop to EB Games and you're in the game... Summer's coming Folks, it's been a long time between BTM's and we thank you for your patience; let's get some rockets flying. Sign-up now! Remember to wear your best, we're going to be filming Abattoir.Net's first HD spot on LAN Parties. BTM43 "May Day" Edition – May 1st.

As there is an excellent chance that this Minutes update will be the last one written by a father of none considering that today is Isis' official due date, I would like to thank everyone for all the support and well wishes over the last while; Isis and I are thrilled that there will be a new addition to the Abattoir any minute… There's still so much to do and I find myself saying; "I'll get to that as soon as I have time" more and more these days, yet I'm still trying to figure out what button creates more time… I'm sure MiniMeat will tell me. *grin* Let the sleepless nights begin. Thank God for the Canadian government who banned "dangerous" baby walkers yesterday in Canada; they're asking anyone who has a stroller to destroy it immediately. I think they should just start a "walker registry" where legitimate walker enthusiasts can practice safe walker use in a controlled environment; I think it's called parenting. If you place your child in a rolling scooter on a hardwood floor in front of open stairs that head down, then I guess you're lucky to have made it as far as you have in life. Stupid people; stop wrecking everything for the rest of us. I stuck my finger in the sockets over and over because I got off on the buzz; I turned out okay.