How can anybody think that an e-mail looking like this one is legitimate? HOW?!

Subject: Fw:
From: “Peter”

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COPY the Addreass below and paste in your WEaB BROaWSER:

Caradoc.y838x.[deleted]

(more…)

15 new entries have been added to The Proofreader’s Hall of Shame to mark the end of yet another year. May 2006 see many more typos…

For a while, I had wondered exactly what font is used on all the signs for buildings at the University of Georgia. I’ll have to post a picture on Flickr when I get back on campus, so you can see an example of the sign typography— it’s definitely distinctive.

Anyway, the font, as it turns out, is Ron Arnholm’s VGC Aquarius, which was designed back in the ’70s and more recently converted to digital form by Red Rooster. And I’ve seen Arnholm’s Legacy Sans used on various UGA promotional materials as well.

But the interesting part is why they used those particular fonts. Well, why not, when the designer is right there in your midst?

Edited 2006/02/05 to add: Here’s an example of one of the signs using the Aquarius font… with an added misspelling, to boot.

You know that spammers are starting to get desperate when they spell things in such a manner that you aren’t entirely sure what they’re talking about. “Tigera”? I guess that’s the drug that succeeded Panthera and Jaguara…

And I quote, completely verbatim except for the edited URL:

Subject: Fwd:
From: “Sonia B. Johnson, VI”

Good day sir,

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Try us and you will NOT BE DlSAPOlNTED!

copy the address below and paste in o your web browser:

Carthusian.brainbonus.[deleted]

for 48 hors.

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I cannot, for the life of me, figure out where my cell phone is. I didn’t see it at all in my room this morning (it could very well be there, but I couldn’t find it), and it’s not in the computer science department’s lost and found (which is the only other place I can think of that it might be).

And to make things worse, I tried calling it with a phone card to see if anyone had picked it up and would answer, and immediately got my voice mail – which means that the phone has either been turned off or otherwise ran out of battery life.

Though I’m hardly one for idle conversation, this is still frustrating me. For one thing, it is sort of important to be able to call my teammates for this group project I’m working on… not to mention that I need a way to keep in touch with my dad while out of the room to arrange a ride back home once the semester’s over.

Edited to add: Turns out that I’m not entirely phoneless after all; I still had my old bare-bones cell phone lying around in my apartment, and as it was from the same provider, I was able to transfer the number over to it for the time being. That definitely makes me feel a bit less stressed out, anyway!

The state motto of Georgia may be “Wisdom, Justice and Moderation,” but the drunken revelry I so frequently see around UGA is hardly wise, just, or moderate, at least as far as I’m concerned. So much for the whole symbolism of the Arch.

And sure, life may be unjust, but one would think this town would do a better job at making it possible to get places without a car, particularly with the large student population. I know I’ve said it before, but really— in lieu of better transit, are sidewalks and pedestrian crossings every couple of blocks too much to ask for?

Mrgh. I’m not asking for any preferential treatment or anything— just being able to get from store to store without either waiting an hour for the bus or trying to cross six lanes of busy traffic without getting run over would be nice! Some of us students can’t afford cars; then there are those of us who are too spacey to actually drive one without great difficulty… >_<

It’s time for another round of spamonyms! Who doesn’t like finding absurd entertainment in junk e-mail, after all? And, well, I realized I hadn’t made one of these sorts of posts in a while, so there was quite a backlog…

Once again, all of these names were actually found in the ‘From’ field of messages in my spam box. I only wish I were making these up…

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See this two-mile stretch of Atlanta Highway in Athens, GA? There are lots of big-name franchises along the way, most of which can be found nowhere else in town, including the shopping mall, Carrabba’s, and Krispy Kreme (why isn’t there a Krispy Kreme downtown?!)… but there is not a single place for pedestrians to cross. Not much in the way of sidewalks, either. In fact, the only crosswalk I know is at the easternmost point of the path I’ve highlighted; I’m not sure how much further west one needs to go before one actually finds another crossing, but I know there aren’t any in sight from the westernmost point marked.

Oh, yeah, and it’s an eight-lane highway, naturally. Which means that there’s pretty much no chance you’ll be able to cross the road without ending up as roadkill.

(Edited to improve the map; the original path had a U-turn in it which made it even longer. I guess it’s not too easy for cars to cross either!)

Oh, how I would love to live somewhere with public transit that was available seven days a week and at least part of the night. That, or a taxi service that was reasonably affordable. Even just having more than one or two little things in reasonable walking distance would be nice. It’s so frustrating being unable to drive sometimes. I hate my attention span. :-\

Restaurant owners… please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t blindly accept the suggestions of Microsoft Word’s spell checker, unless you’re willing to serve up another sort of flesh entirely:

And yes, that is a completely unaltered screen shot. O_o

Edited to add: Egads… it gets worse. OS X’s built-in spell checker— the one used in Safari, Mail.app, and iWork— also suggests ‘prostitute’ for ‘prosciutto’. Ouch! OpenOffice.org, on the other hand, actually recognizes ‘prosciutto’ as a word…