Undistinguished Blog

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Awarding Assholery : A widely accepted but completely unacceptable Email pastime

bubsmeany

@bubs@undistinguished.com

2025-04-10 03:38:09

Disclaimer : I generally deplore email as a form of communication and I pretty much always have. Spams, scams, and "thank you ma'ams" (as well as a lot of other shit that doesn't rhyme quite as nicely) are all culpable toward making email a hot mess. "But filters ..." I hear folks cry like marginally wounded animals fortunate enough to escape a bear trap with the majority of their appendages intact. But the fact legitimate sites ask you to "check your spam filter" for missed correspondence only confirms this weapon of protection is oftentimes too blunt. And while it's easy to blame the "worst email" offenders like those I mentioned above, far too many legitimate websites only compound the issue.

An amazing online community I want to be involved with that requires an email confirmation? Sign me up! A super cool blog that wants my email address to continue reading? Well that's.. passive aggressive.. Not sure why it NEEDS my email address but.. Okay? 15% off my first order and future discounts via email? Ehh.. we all like to save money...

horrible drawing of a stick figure running a lot of letters to an already overflowing mailbox

...aaannnndd... now my inbox is an absolute clusterfuque. Sure - there's an argument to be made that it was all my fault. But I'd retort by adding I shouldn't have to sign up for everything, everywhere, all at once to squeeze what little bit of enjoyment out of this horrible-ass 2025 internet experience as I can. Maybe there's a middle ground to be had? I have.. thoughts..

I operate my own website based game that sends its players sporadic emails. When a player signs up initially for an account, I send an email confirmation. When a player needs to reset a forgotten password, I absolutely send them a password reset email. And.. ? That's it. That's the list. I won't send a player anything they don't expect.. because I completely, hundo p respect my player base.

"But newsletters are a different beast..." Well, okay... ish... But are they really? Almost everyone in my immediate universe would rather read a creator's takes on a well formatted website instead of an inconsistently formatted email client. Oh wait? That's offered.. but only after I sign up with an email address? Well - that sucks phat ass, especially if I'm being sent an email EVERY... DAMN... TIME there is a blog update.. or new merch drops... or there's a new sponsor to pimp... etc.

And, yah, I casually doled out some "alternative facts" a couple of paragraphs prior - I totes understand the concept of email advertising and why newsletter folks want my email address to send me garbagio constantly even if I send that shit directly to my spam folder. I'll opine eventually on the "phantom engagement" models many third-party advertisers employ to prop up sketchy business props like "email advertising" and "podcast advertising". But what if you aren't one of these (intentional) agents of inbox "phony engagement" chaos and actually care about your user-base? Here's a thought :

If an individual doesn't respond to an automated email after XX attempts in a row, automagically cut the blast rate.. rinse, wash, repeat. Example : a daily email (please don't do that.. but) that goes ignored for 14 days in a row would turn into a weekly email... which if ignored 12 weeks in a row would turn into a monthly email.. etc.. you get the idea. And if a person that was previously ignoring emails reacts a couple of times in a row? Well - move that person back to a "blastier" tier.

And I realize no third-party bulk email senders (which most newsletter honks rely on) offer this sort of customer "quality of life" hack... because... ? Well, sending a metric fugton of emails is relatively simple. Customer service and product nuance is a much, much trickier (and expensive) beast.

Now that helps explain some of why our inboxes are a fuggin' mess. But as lame ass media consumers and small-time internet schleps, our options are limited... in theory. In practice? Absolutely not.

We all gotta start working towards a better experience because the one we have now is fugging EXHAUSTING. If you run a site, don't be embarrassed to wear the "quality of life" things you do to offer your users a better experience on your damn sleeve. Let's all work to collectively and passive-aggressively expose the "secret assholes" that happily bomb their "supporters" inboxes. And if you don't run a site - stop supporting anyone/anything that doesn't respect your mental well being.

And no.. I'm not one of those "never support consumerism at any cost" turkeys - I personally don't mind being the collective consumer+product under the right circumstances (and, as such, I support multiple podcasts and websites via direct donation). But when I become part of a simple "numbers game" that turns into a mini-propaganda machine simply to drive traffic?

I quit Twitter and Meta products for those reasons and, IMO, an indie creator being a "non-corporate yet still inconsiderate dillhole" isn't a "good enough" reason for me to support them even if I agree with their message.

And if you are the sort of indie creator I am unintentionally referencing with this blog post? Seriously.. just be better - the people that love you and your message deserve it.

DEV

The bell tolls louder for Classic ASP

bubsmeany

@bubs@undistinguished.com

2025-03-29 18:18:09

Full disclosure I'm not overly proud of : I (currently) still have a site humming right along using Classic ASP. Prioritizing my site's conversion to Python is kinda how my whole journey into writing the Jenkwerx framework started but, as a busy boi, my progress has been slow. The goal is to be completely Microsoft OS web free in 2026; fingers crossed there! But I'm not the only website that has to eventually quit kicking this pesky can down the road.

horrible drawing of the grim reaper about to give a classic asp supporting cat the ax

For being as short lived as it was (development period was only 4 years between 1996 - 2000), Classic ASP was wildly popular in the early days of the "first internet boom" and has been surprisingly resilient. Microsoft has been slowly trying to kill it since its last stable release, originally by introducing ASP.NET in 2002. But what makes Classic ASP almost universally hated by "code purists" since its release lends itself to how it lasted so long : it leveraged VBScript.

People forget (or are unaware) of how insanely popular Visual Basic was in the mid-to-late 1990s , not to mention Excel leveraged (and still uses) VBA to help put Lotus 1-2-3 out to pasture. And when that internet money train pulled into the stations in the late 90s, ASP Classic allowed many devs (professional and hobbyist alike) a familiar onboarding that Cold Fusion and Perl couldn't match.

Sadly, that's all irrelevant now. While understandable, Microsoft continues to chip away at Classic ASP dependencies, most notably the recent deprecation of VBScript.dll. And while anyone running a Classic ASP website is well aware our current websites are all pretty much living on borrowed time, the timeline to address it gets shorter by the day. We do know a few things, however :

ASP Classic appears to work on Windows 2025..

....sometimes...

But it almost always leverages VBScript.dll, which has been deprecated...

..and will need to be activated as an FOD in the future, with no specific date as to it's complete removal.

Some optimistic and very experienced developers believe Classic ASP will continue operating just fine through 2030 and beyond and I hope they are correct. Pessimistic developers like myself, however, aren't convinced, and this VBScript depreciation with nebulous "complete removal" dates feels like Microsoft trying to speedrun things. For that reason I'm getting even more proactive to convert this insanely large Classic ASP site I currently operate. Classic ASP has been a "manual add-in" for years now, and each time I have to start on a fresh server I always experience some wonkiness; I fear (even if it's technically "available") it's only going to get worse as time progresses.

I'm trying to get my site completely rewritten by mid-year 2026 at the latest, but I do honestly believe I'll have until "around 2027" (as Microsoft quoted as the second phase of VBScript.dll deprecation) to complete things from my end. Best case scenario : I'm acting a bit chicken-little like and Classic ASP continues to function on newer OS's well into the future so as many sites as possible can safely be refactored. Given, however, that scenario would require me to put my eggs in the Microsoft corporate basket...again... I think I'll just get my ass firing on all cylinders instead..

POTPOURRI

You gotta know when to code 'em, know when to fold 'em... coding burnout is a mo faux...

bubsmeany

@bubs@undistinguished.com

2025-03-24 12:19:42

For all intents and purposes, coding/software development is still a relatively new profession. Its effects on the mind have thusfar gone pretty much unstudied to any great degree.

Enter - my lame ass. I've gone through several professional iterations but all of them share one thread : a form of computer coding. Between those career reboots, writing bulletin boards as a teenager, and creating online games, I have been coding full-scale projects in some capacity for roughly 40 years. As such, my perspective is a bit more long-term than most folks.

One of my recent incarnations has me collaborating with younger coworkers who plan to "code as a career." But, after years of "coding is cool and I can't wait to learn" conversations, their enthusiasm toward coding has recently waned .. and I totes understand their unfortunate position. I, too, have hit varying levels of "coding burnout" over my lifetime. The spells have usually ranged from several months to upwards of a year.. and I'm not alone...

horrible drawing of a guy with his head on fire

And, while I've opined on the weaponization of Scrum by shitty organizations, that's only part of the "burnout factor". I could ponticate on that ad nauseum, but here is a well-rounded article written by The Senior Dev instead that I (almost) wholeheartedly agree with that touches on the majority of issues better than I ever could. But my ass is old enough to at least add a unique postscript : I can confirm first-hand that even nearly-perfect work situations will usually lead to coding burnout as well. It may not be 5 years.. Or 10 years... but at some point when you put enough miles on your coding tires, you will almost assuredly need to deal with it regardless of how nice the roads you navigated were. Even creative+fulfilling coding requires long hours staring at a screen, hyper-focusing on the minutiae. All professionals are coalescing there, of course, but early coders were one of the first set of professionals trapped on that digital hamster wheel.

So what solutions can I offer? I'll tell ya, fug being a bootlicking mid-level manager unless you absolutely wanna be. I tried that once out of desperation to avoid another extended burnout and just added fuel to an already raging mental dumpster fire. So sadly, outside of anything more than having a temporary backup plan and a bit of savings, I'm still working this Rubik's Cube out mah damn self... I can tell I'm careening toward my fourth (or is it fifth?) coding burnout, and the causes are too complicated to solve via a Reddit thread full of know-it-alls. I'll keep you guys updated...

POTPOURRI

AI still generally sucks, but it's getting better at writing rote code than it used to be... and that sucks even worse...

bubsmeany

@bubs@undistinguished.com

2025-03-18 20:13:44

Local Water Commissioner : "Only a psychopath would speed up climate change for his own profit!"

Pi Pi (pronounced pee-pee) : "Yea, well.. ya see.. ManBearPig, eventually, he gonna kill everybody.. he just gonna kill you first"

The Simpson's understandably gets a lot of love for "predicting the future" but, for my money, I'll take South Park. Most notably - ManBearPig. Initially a throw-away metaphor for climate change in 2006, South Park expanded his assholery to become a complete disruptor of the environment in 2022's "South Park The Streaming Wars". This more-defined version of ManBearPig would absolutely thrive watching modern-day asshole-on-asshole environmental crime like crypto vs AI, so I doubt we've seen the last of him.

Oh for the official record - fug a bunch of crypto! Its sole "value" is based on FOMO coupled with false scarcity. Don't @ me bro - I'll write that blog article another day. But (so called) AI? That argument gets a bit more nuanced. In the case of data-based, scientifically specific machine learning that is hyper focused and open sourced? More please! The majority of LLM's on the other hand? Big ol' hells to the nahs from this side. I won't even touch on the environmental impact of training "AI" (usually LLM) models in this blog post; I prefer, instead, to keep my pleb-level conclusions tolerably frustrating to the reader.

Back to Blog Villain #1 : Pi Pi. He, as do most CEOs, gets U.S. capitalism; demand drives profit... the potential for profit-driven wealth inspires a swath of unscrupulous entities to give zero shits about how they make money... unscrupulous entities weaponize demand with reckless disregard to all non-selfish outcomes as long as they can "get in and get out" before their disingenuous model collapses... rinse, wash, repeat... This brings us back to ManBearPig 2.0 - this time with sweet AI flavoring.

Hilariously awful drawing of a computer monitor on a body with AI on the screen

First AI came for our artists, which was generally met online with a resounding... meh. Then it came for our writers and.. well... you can guess the outcome. Why the complacency? It's easy to blame the ability to suddenly generate sick shit like a hyper-realistic poster of a heavy metal band named Bark Sabbath led by a dog along with a shit backstory. My guess? Well, that's part of it.. But it likely also has something to do with decades of untethered "internet theft culture" (1:10) coupled with long-term, wide-spread shitting on creative endeavors as anything more than a "hobby." Fact or fiction, my guesses are ultimately irrelevant to the overall outcome : our beloved search engines are now ripe with creepy+shit "artwork" and "informative articles" with all the flavor of a plain, untoasted bread sandwich and all the accuracy of a mad-lib.

..and if you've been tortured by my artwork or have previously read my blog, you realize these specific issues don't directly affect me... yet. But oh lawd I've heard AI is a comin' and, as such, I felt it necessary to understand first hand how good/bad AI was getting at invading my immediate wheelhouse : coding. Luckily(?) I spend a lot of my "money makin'" development time in Google Colab and Databricks, both of which have AI enabled by default. So the groundwork was easily laid.

As with most experienced coders, I (almost) always know exactly what I plan to type dozens of lines ahead when I get to actually typing stuff. For this reason, I decided to leave AI activated on these particular platforms and leverage it as a kind of "IntelliSense on Steroids". I made a decision to start each coding day with AI engaged and abandon it as soon as it made an inexcusable recommendation.

When I first began this experiment, I ended up immediately frustrated almost every damn morning. Initially the AI was, to put it gently, absolute ass at determining what I was trying to actually accomplish. But something peculiar happened over the last 3-4 months...

The internal AI's became surprisingly good at guessing some of the most boring parts of my "pre planned" code several lines in advance. It wasn't really "solving" anything I didn't prod it with, mind you, and it definitely required me to perform a "diligent code review" due to sporadic bed shitting. Still, it became admittedly better at coming up with basic-to-mid-level code than a lot of co-workers I have pair-programmed with and, honestly, reduced my development time a bit.

Overall, my experience has convinced me that AI is nowhere ready for solo "primetime" coding tasks. But honestly - most entry-to-mid level coders are nowhere ready for that level of trust either. So what does this mean for non-expert level coding (or coding adjacent tasks like RSS / website UI creation) as a whole? Given the sheer number of CEO's like Pi Pi in the world, the immediate future for entry-to-mid level coders feels quite grim.

Now entering the arena - the humble business analyst. I've worked as an "analyst" at times and have also worked alongside many brilliant analysts as a "coder". A lot of analysts I know are pretty good "proof of concept" coders that simply aren't interested in coding as a primary occupation (and BOY do I feel that). As such, they instead end up focusing most of their time and curiosity towards becoming diligent problem solvers and experts in their immediate professional sandbox. Dollar for dollar, top-shelf analysts are some of the most affordable assets any company can have. Entry level coders? Ehhhh...

Coupled with improving AI and affordable, easier to manage "horizontal computing", it feels inevitable that a lot of companies will begin to lean more heavily on their product-expert analysts and allow them to "vibe code" previous POC ideas into quickly working, horizontally scalable models.

Am I happy about my conclusions? Absolutely not. But with Pi Pis filling the C-Suite seats at most companies, we're all on ManBearPig 2.0's future menu regardless of how good we are at.. well.. anything ..

...even Pi Pi surmised that...

POTPOURRI

Comeuppance is best served HOT: behold the ADH!

bubsmeany

@bubs@undistinguished.com

2025-03-13 02:14:17

I'll start with a confession : I never liked the show Seinfeld. Primary reason : I'm not a big fan of the "asshole solely to be an asshole" type character; just not my thing. The show did just fine without my support so I must be in the wrong here. But I do recall some of the simplest people I know loving the show and raving regularly about how "sarcastic" it was. But when they had me watch and rewatch scenes while they guffawed aggressively, I noticed it wasn't the (supposed) sarcasm they enjoyed; it was the randomness and borderline cruelty. "You just don't get sarcasm" they would lecture me; "You would love the show if you got it."

But shitting on old acquaintances (many of which, unsurprisingly, went on to be the absolute worst type of Facebook asshole) isn't really where I'm going with this. Nor is questioning whether Seinfeld was ever really funny in a sarcastic way.

The internet is massive, and social media is what most people seem to enjoy the most about it. Which, of course, requires direct interaction with others to be.. well.. social. And that's where shit can get tricky because a non-zero percentage of people out there seem to not get the "it" part of "social media."

And if you know what I mean when I reference "it" you probably get "it"; most people do. 95%+ of my 1:1 social media interactions are amazing (in no small part due to the fact I don't interact on any Meta platforms or Twitter.. yes Twitter.. eat a dXck Elon... ) these days. But there are still ~5% that fall into a few wonky categories : Usually people you have never interacted with whom -

miss the entire damn point of what you were trying to say
try to hijack your thread
try to one up your post with something "wittier" or "deeper"
chastise you while also somehow oddly agreeing with you
are just chodes

Pitiful drawing of a guy saying : Ill f*cking do it again!

Of note - There is a non-zero subset of random folk that have seemingly lost their damn marbles on the socials and I can't speak on how to handle them. But the "usual suspects?" Maybe I'm onto something...

You already knew there was a likelihood that 5% of those dopes would pop up and pop off. But character limits on most social media posts are (thankfully) a thing and, even if they weren't, there's no reason to chastise/bore 95% of your readers that act in completely good faith. So I present you with a simple concept/idea that could be incorporated relatively quickly and easily.

Behold : ADH - The Asshole Defense Hash

How does it work? Post a seemingly random series of 32 hexadecimal characters at the end of your post and preface them with "ADH-".

For instance, the message below would be a perfect message to use the ADH with :

My brother got a virus on his Windows laptop. Any ideas on the best software to help get rid of it without completely wiping the system? Thanks ahead of time! ADH-1048c4a538d0cde83c55dd57ea02b75b

This one here is a phat, juicy burger. You'll definitely get the cellar-dwelling Linux fanbois coming hard into your paint; they just can't help themselves. So you can expect at least one response like this :

"Tell your brother to stop being a pleb and just use Linux; it's safer and doesn't support the billionaire class"

Disclaimer : I am only referring to the worst part of Linux honks here. I run Linux on every machine I can (including this blog - Ubuntu running Apache) and am NOT shitting on the Linux OS.. at ALL.. but I will ALWAYS shit on people that virtue signal without understanding (or even caring about) the nuances of a situation before they show their whole ass. And this is where ADH can serve these buttmunches a proverbial shit souffle.

(wont quite work copied from here due to formatting) - ADH (Asshole Defense Hash) for: 1048c4a538d0cde83c55dd57ea02b75b is MD5 for: My brother needs Windows software that doesnt work with WineHQ... he tried; it shit the bed. Also, its none of your damn business if you can

That seemingly random assortment of hex characters? That's an MD5 hash. I'll get into those weeds a bit below but the main objective is this : it allows you to post a premeditated follow up message that 100% calls them out even BEFORE they spew their vitriol.

If you are a hash nerd like me you get this but if not you may ask "How does this prove.. anything?!?"

This is where the fun, geeky part happens. And it's not a complicated concept :

Go play around on this URL :

https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/md5.html

If you type the phrase referenced above and below EXACTLY (upper/lower case.. returns and spaces matter.. check end spaces) in the input box :

My brother needs Windows software that doesn't work with WineHQ... he tried; it shit the bed. Also, it's none of your damn business if you can't answer the question and just stopped by play "Linux Bootlicker"

..you will receive this in the MD5 output result box (which, unsurprisingly, matches the "random 32 characters in the initial example above):

1048c4a538d0cde83c55dd57ea02b75b

And if you don't type that phrase EXACTLY, you will get something wildly different. Notice I had a typo near the end of my "follow up" message? Too bad - I need to be more careful next time I guess!

Try it yourself.. Change one character.. Even just adding a stray space screws the pooch.. Shit goes cray. And this, my friend, is 100% by design. But cool story - we can use that to our advantage when we use ADH.. because the hash we posted with our original message proves we knew exactly what kinda assholes were gonna litter our feed even before they dildoed around...

"I still don't get it" you may lament - well, yea.. the "how it works" details can get a bit mucky...

Hashing is some -ish high-level math bullshit that few people care about logistically, but a primary use is to "fingerprint" information (which, as a side-note, obfuscates the information as well). Files.. Messages.. Passwords.. It's a quick way to ensure two things match one another.

In this case : it's that an unhashed message we posted later matches a previously hashed version of the exact same message we posted previously.

MD5 is a less robust hash than SHA based hashes but is still wildly unique (your odds of winning the powerball 4 weeks in a row with only one set of numbers is greater than choosing 2 completely sensical yet unique phrases off the top of your head that share the same hash). Given that truth, coupled with the fact it is relatively short (32 keyboard characters long), it makes a lot of sense to use for our "post your own ADH" purposes.

So if you sell what this blog post is cooking and want to add your own ADH manually -

Go to the link referenced above (there are many sites and programs that can create an MD5 hash; this is just the most convenient I found quickly online without scammy ads all over the place)
Type a message you KNOW will apply to a future responding asshole (probably relatively short if you have to post the follow up; again - post character limits)
Copy the MD5 hash it returns and include it at the bottom of your post with the ADH- preface
When an asshole ultimately can't help themselves to asshole, post your ADH reveal similar to the way presented above
If they call you on it because they "can't understand it", point them to this blog post

Even though this is a blog, I added an ADH to it as a "proof of concept." And, for the record, this article is the first I've posted with an ADH!

I would LOVE to see social media sites add a built in ADH option that doesn't take away from your character limit (300 for Bluesky, 500 for Mastodon). Maybe it keeps the worst of the social media asshole crowd from bothering to respond if you include it, afraid you pre-flexed on their weak ass... Yea - it's a long shot.. But stranger things...

And YES, I KNOW Mastodon is technically part of the Fediverse, and I KNOW Mastodon instances can set their own character limits.

And I did you a courtesy telling you that BEFORE you could pull out the mansplain card on me.. But had I not, the ADH below my article here would apply to the paragraph immediate above this one. 3 days after my last edit of this page eYap here will "reveal" this exaxt paragraph below.

See how this works?

ADH-013933f1ce878cba6a816288c6d64324
..is MD5 for...

And YES, I KNOW Mastodon is technically part of the Fediverse, and I KNOW Mastodon instances can set their own character limits.

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