Chinese Inflatable Spam

I almost deleted it, but somehow it had a curious look to it, so I clicked an unsolicited email from a Chinese company which sells huge custom made inflated plastic "toys".

"We manufacture high quality and good price inflatable products in any size or style, please browse the inflatable products sorts."

Bouncers______Castles_________ Sports __________ Slides_______ Fun City


This, unlike 99.999% of spam, was an interesting ad, from an honest company with a Real Product , They gave their real location, and legitimate contacts, opt out click, etc.. In short, if all our unsolicited mail were like this, we could tolerate it! I mean how long are we, as smart mail consumers, going to put up with these fake mortgage, drug ads, scams, not to mention the viruses, that we have to find ways to filter out?

But spam discussion aside, I love these things and the company ad with its pretty-good English. Althought they never mention the prices, which they quote when you inquire, I bet they range form 200$ up. The shipping alone is estimated at ~$250 if you only order one. They come with electric fan blowers that keep them up, and a repair kit. I don't mean to sound like an infomercial, but they are interesting! (Just think of Richie Rich's birthday party) Some of them are huge - 30 feet high - and complex. You've probably seen them as grand opening displays, on top of shopping centers for promotions, etc., but they have hundreds of them, and will custom make one to your design if you want!

Internet vs Katrina

My internet hosting company, DirectNIC had an intereting challenge last week. You can see from my sitemeter graphs here that there was a bite out of page views mainly on friday and saturday. DirectNIC offices and servers are in an office building in New Orleans. One of the owners has had media attention with his blog during the hurricane and aftermath. He put out pictures and stories from the streets when others were escaping to high ground. When the power went out, the city shut down, support service companies left, and everyone advised them to throw in the chips, they stuck it out and with luck and hard work, never lost connectivity, even though they admitedly had problems and loss of some activities. They ran on deisel back up generators, as did the company next door who supplied the OC3 line to the internet. They waited for resupply of fuel that was promised, but not delivered on time, they kept tech support up for existing customers, and this is not a trivial thing, since they are one of the major internet hosting companies in the country.

Interestingly enough, my web sites were available at first when the hurricane went through, but finally went out on fridayand saturday, but bounced back quickly. I was impressed that they sent me a quick response to my email and let me know what was happening.

Here was an entry in the "Interdictor" blog yesterday:

The city really does look like a ghost town. It's so bizarre to see streets which are normally highly trafficed having such a limited flow of vehicles. And at night it's weird to see all these high rises with no light coming from the buildings. No street lights, no traffic lights, the clock on the Whitney Bank building on Poydras and Camp -- a widely recognized feature -- is stopped. The debris is still everywhere. Cars abandoned all over the place. Abandoned and trashed. And the quiet. Aside from the occasional vehicle, this place has no sound. Every piece of glass that used to be a high rise window which hits the ground can be heard blocks away.

I wonder how things will be different in this city when this is all behind us.

Update: On cam, way down the street, you can see what appears to be an armed military foot patrol. First one I've seen.

Oh, yeah they have a live web cam: Web Cam