Category: Uncategorized

For some reason, since we moved to our new server, about 60% of my outbound e-mail is getting blackholed.
Typical messages:

Remote host said: 550 : Client host rejected: REJECT – We do not accept spam!
Connected to [IP] but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 Rejected: 66.216.97.162 listed at blackholes.intersil.net
Remote host said: 550-66.216.97.162 blocked by blacklist.mail.ops.asp.att.net. 550 Blocked for abuse. Please send blacklist removal requests to [email protected]
[IP] does not like recipient. Remote host said: 554: Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied

For those of you scoring at home, we are NOT a relay. We have never been a relay. Congressman, I can stand here before you right now and tell you, if you think we are a relay, you. Are. INSANE!
The uber-cool guys at logjamming have tried to contact the various RBLs that are blocking us, but none of the RBLs have responded. One of them went so far as to block our freakin’ request:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at logjamming2.com.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.
[email protected]:
Sorry, I wasn’t able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1) I’m not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

That’s sheer genius, osirusoft! Make us prove that we’re not an open relay, and bounce the freakin’ e-mail we send to prove it! Hooray for self-fulfilling prophecies!
Thanks a lot, Spammers. It’s bad enough that you clog my inbox with shit. Now you’re screwing up the Internet so badly, legit e-mails get killed.
Freakin’ brilliant.
UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out to me that the RBL issue is because of Rackspace, not WWdN or logjamming. I had no idea that Rackspace was so spammer-friendly. That sucks the most. It was also brought to my attention that I misread the qmail error (don’t tell anyone, okay? It will reveal to the world what a lameass non-technical-pseudo-geek I am) about osirusoft. They didn’t block our request. Our mailserver just timed out.
None of this changes my feelings about spammers, though. While we are all annoyed by the proliferation of junk mail, and its continued invasion of our inboxes, this problem of innocent people getting caught up in RBLs and the like is something I’ve never thought about until it happened to me.
Therefore, on behalf of the Internet, I would like to invite all the spammers in the world to kindly fuck themsleves.
And don’t cuddle after, you bastards.

I’m going to be at Powell’s Beaverton store in Beaverton, Oregon on Wednesday. I’ll be reading from and signing copies of Dancing Barefoot. I’ve been excited about this event since the day it was booked, and that excitement has grown exponentially over the past few weeks.
Well, excitement just hit a whole new level: Powell’s initially ordered 125 books for the event . . . and they just ordered an additional 75!!
I was so excited when the order came in, I did a little dance. Then I read this, and I did a much larger dance.
Then I read THIS and I shit myself.
While dancing.
I did the happy shit dance.
Just me and Domokun, trilwing around my living room like Beauty and the Beast.
It was freakin’ beautiful. A tale as old as time.

I went to Darin’s tonight for his birthday party. It was big fun. Nick brought the world’s best fruit salad, and Dee (Darin’s awesome wife) made this >deadly< rum punch. Sadly, I was only able to have one small cup, because I had a curfew tonight. :) While I was there, I played poker with some of the guys (managed to lose about eight bucks over three or so hours . . . but mostly played well). In between deals, David said to me, "Hey, that was a great article in the OC Weekly about you and your book." "OC Weekly? My book? What?" "Yeah, I just read it a month or so ago. I would have told you about it, but I figured you already knew." Funny how when I'm in a Fark headline, tons of people (apparently unaware of the hours a day I waste over there . . . thanks, Drew ;) will e-mail me about it, but when there's a story that I wouldn't ever know about otherwise, a month passes before I hear about it. It's a little weird for me to be posting two stories about myself in the same day, but I thought this one was fucking awesome, and really wanted to share it with WWdN readers.
Oh, we saw Blueman Group on Thursday night. If you live within an hour of a city that’s on the Complex Rock tour, you MUST go. And get there early enough to hear Venus Hum and Tracy Bonham.
Tell them Uncle Willie sent you.
You’ll be glad you did.

Tsukata just e-mailed me this review of my reading and stuff in Vegas.
It’s always cool to hear what other people think about my performances, because it gives me an opportunity to see things without my personal filters in place.
There’s no permalink to the review, so click MORE to read . . . uh . . . more.

I just saw this review ofDancing Barefoot:

Why do I like Dancing Barefoot? Because Wil Wheaton is a geek. Oh face it, we’re all geeks . . . And because Wheaton’s a geek, I feel much closer to his essays than I would someone like P. J. O’Rourke who is not a self-professed geek.

(and if you still haven’t gotten your “wil’s a fucking moron who screwed up my order” order, check your mailbox this coming week. All the orders I borked are shipping out over the weekend — about 30 of them have already been whisked away by mister Mr. McFeely.)