How Depressing

I tried upgrading to WordPress 1.5 yesterday after hearing just how much better everything was. I heard that the spam filtering was outstanding and it's prettier, works better, blah blah blah.

I took the site down for about an hour to do the upgrades. I figured... well, 250 comment spams a day is enough motivation for me to get something that really blocks the spam without my having to get an email every 10 seconds letting me know about a new (fake) comment. While upgrading, my email was blessedly silent from comment spam. Immediately upon putting up the proper PHP files for WP, the comment spam started up again. So I turned off all commenting so that I could get a grip on the configuration options and stem the tide. The comments kept coming. So I turned on moderating all comments. And still they kept coming. 45 comment spams actually made it onto the site in about 2 minutes yesterday. To make matters worse, the entire site renders wrong in FireFox! Not just little nitpicky things either -- things like the title show up overlapped with other text on the page. Basically, I was underwhelmed by WP 1.5 -- so I turned everything back to WP 1.2 with all my crazy modifications and rolled the old database back. Now life is good.

If anyone is interested in modifying some PHP files so that comment spammers cannot post comments directly, feel free to speak up. I'd love it if I never saw another comment spam in my inbox again (side note: since I have a very public email address, I already get around 400-500 spams in my inbox a day. So adding on another 200 or so is just annoying).

I got home and decided to start doing my taxes. What a cluster fuck! I realized after filling everything out that I filed online last year (can't remember with whom!) and don't have a printout from what my tax return was last year. So when it asks for my 2003 adjusted gross income... and I don't have it... I get cranky. Just ask Lis. :-P Normally I don't mind taxes -- it's just filling out a workbook and really isn't that bad. But it sucks when I don't have my records from last year. :-/ Any suggestions?

The planning meetings are done now (finished up yesterday), so it's back to work as usual. We're focusing on getting RB 2005 out the door in good quality before we do any work on the next release (pssst: it's code name is Aruba, don't you feel special now?) -- but I'm excited about it! There are going to be some really cool new things in the upcoming releases. But... I still have to focus on getting this release stable and pretty. I think it's coming along though.

I plan on doing some packing tonight. I tore apart my "den" last night looking for my paperwork, I might as well start packing the entire room up.

Happy day! Dave let me know I used TaxACT last year (the same service he uses), so now I think I can get my 2003 information and just use TaxACT instead of TurboTax (it's cheaper too! w00t!). So perhaps today will be a better day.

I am thinking of keeping my digital camera with me when I wander around Austin from now on so that I can take random pictures of things I see on the side of the road. Texas is so pretty in the Spring!