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By Scott, October 25, 2005 3:03 PM

Today, a coworker sent me an email purportedly containing the 2005 winners of the Mensa Invitational, sponsored by The Washington Post.  Being an email administrator, I despise chain letters (though I am a fan of Wired Magazine’s article that traces the history of the oldest email chain letter), joke emails, etc.  But this one did make me smile.  Researching its true origins, however, revealed that not only is this not from 2005, but it is practically urban legend worthy.  First, the text of the email:

The Mensa Invitational once again asked members to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year’s {2005} winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
18. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

If you Google any of the terms you will find lots and lots (and lots) of blogs that have posted this as if it were legitimate.  But you can’t find anything on washingtonpost.com.  Well, almost.  There is an archived page on the site for their Style Invitational, which is a weekly column in the Style/Living section.  The page is for Week 281 (08/02/98), but at the bottom it lists entries from Week 278 (07/12/98), containing the very words in question.  If you manually change the URL to use the July 12 date, you get a 404.  I even tried the Wayback Machine, but the Post site isn’t indexed.  So it looks like we’re stuck with only a fragment of the original post.

In any case, the email isn’t real, but the humor remains just as funny.  Thanks to pushback.com, who blogged about this over a year ago.

Comments (1)

By Scott, October 24, 2005 9:21 AM

The Christmas Sessions was released on September 27.  I ordered it in early October, shipping via media mail.  Wow.  That is like shipping via mule.  I think it took two weeks to arrive.  I don’t recommend it unless you really are in no hurry to get your item.  Upon first listening, I was a bit disenchanted like I was with Hymned since the songs aren’t originals by MercyMe.  Track 1 is a little too heavy for my taste, at least for Christmas music.  But after listening to the entire album again I warmed up to it.  What makes it more enjoyable each time are the arrangements.  My favorite track, Silent Night, has such a MercyMe sound to it that it points out to me how much I enjoy their musical style and Bart’s arranging and voice.

Comments (2)

By Scott, October 5, 2005 8:43 AM

There are a lot of scripts out there to report a mailbox’s current size and others to report the quota for a mailbox.  And some might even do both, but for an entire domain, server, etc.  I wanted one that I could use to list a single mailbox’s current size and where it falls within its quota.

This script allows you to find a user based on login name (samAccountName) or email address.  If multiple matches are found it will report on all of them.  It uses WMI to query Exchange for the mailbox’s current size and then uses LDAP to determine the quota.  Since there are multiple places a quota can be set (system policy, server, mailbox), the script factors those in and backtracks to the resulting quota in effect.

The results are output to the screen and to a popup window.  And since it is nice to know, it also will display if default or custom limits are in use.  This script is nice because you don’t have to customize anything.  Just download\copy it and run it.

Option Explicit
Dim objGC, objOU, strADPath
Dim strUserLoginName
Dim objADOCnxn, objADOCmd, strSearchFilter, strReturnAttrib, strSearchDepth, objResults, intMatchingRecords
Dim strUserDisplayName, strRawExchServer, strExchServer
Dim wmiConn, strWQL, wmiColl, wmiObj
Dim mbstore, strquota, stroverquota, strHardLimit, strmbsize, strquotasum

'
' Messages to be displayed if the scripting host is not cscript
'
Const kMessage1 = "Please run this script using CScript."
Const kMessage2 = "This can be achieved by"
Const kMessage3 = "1. Using ""CScript script.vbs arguments"" or"
Const kMessage4 = "2. Changing the default Windows Scripting Host to CScript"
Const kMessage5 = "   using ""CScript //H:CScript //S"" and running the script "
Const kMessage6 = "   ""script.vbs arguments""."

' Make sure running with CScript
If Not IsHostCscript() Then
	Call WScript.echo(kMessage1 & vbCRLF & kMessage2 & vbCRLF & _
         kMessage3 & vbCRLF & kMessage4 & vbCRLF & _
         kMessage5 & vbCRLF & kMessage6 & vbCRLF)
	WScript.quit
End If

' Connect to a global catalog for the forest
Set objGC = GetObject("GC:")
For Each objOU In objGC
	strADPath = "<" & objOU.AdsPath & ">"
Next
Set objOU = Nothing
Set objGC = Nothing

WScript.Echo "* Searching within: " & strADPath

' Get input - strUserLoginName
strUserLoginName = InputBox("This will search for the user's mailbox and display its size." & _
 vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "Enter a user's login name, or" & vbCrLf & "their primary SMTP address:" & _
 vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "(LDAP wildcard characters are supported.)")
If strUserLoginName = "" Then
	WScript.Echo "User Canceled"
	WScript.Quit
End If
' Use ADO to query on the given user login name
Set objADOCnxn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
objADOCnxn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
objADOCnxn.Open "Active Directory Provider"
Set objADOCmd = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
objADOCmd.ActiveConnection = objADOCnxn
strSearchFilter ="(&(objectCategory=person)(|(mail=" & strUserLoginName & ")(samAccountName=" & strUserLoginName & ")))"
strReturnAttrib = "displayName,msExchHomeServerName,samAccountName,mdbUseDefaults,homemdb,mDBStorageQuota,mDBOverQuotaLimit,mDBOverHardQuotaLimit"
strSearchDepth = "SubTree"
objADOCmd.CommandText = strADPath & ";" & strSearchFilter & ";" & strReturnAttrib & ";" & strSearchDepth
Set objResults = objADOCmd.Execute
intMatchingRecords = objResults.RecordCount
WScript.Echo "    AD Search Returned " & intMatchingRecords & " Records" & vbCrLf
If intMatchingRecords < 1 Then
	' User name was not found
	MsgBox "The specified string was not found!" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "No matching user name or SMTP address(es)", 0, "Search Results"
Else
	' We found a match, for each record in result set...
	Do
		strUserDisplayName = objResults.Fields("displayName").value
		strRawExchServer = objResults.Fields("msExchHomeServerName").value

		' only proceed if the msExchHomeServerName attribute contains an '=' character
		If InStr(1, strRawExchServer, "=", vbTextCompare) Then
		' Parse out the actual Exchange server name (everything to right of last '=')
		strExchServer = Mid(strRawExchServer,InStrRev(strRawExchServer, "=", -1, vbTextCompare) + 1)

		' Create a WMI connection to that server
		Set wmiConn = GetObject("WinMgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strExchServer & "\root\microsoftexchangev2")

		' Search for the display name of the user
		WScript.Echo "* Looking for '" & strUserDisplayName & "' on server " & strExchServer
		strWQL = "SELECT * FROM Exchange_Mailbox WHERE MailboxDisplayName = '" & strUserDisplayName & "'"
		'WScript.Echo "    DEBUG " & strWQL
		WScript.Echo "  Searching... Please wait"

		Set wmiColl = wmiConn.ExecQuery(strWQL)
		If wmiColl.Count >= 1 Then

			' Get quota limits
			If objResults.Fields("mDBUseDefaults").value = true Then
				Set mbstore = GetObject("GC://" & objResults.Fields("homemdb"))
				If mbstore.mDBStorageQuota = "" Then
					strquota =  "No Quota"
				Else
					strquota = formatnumber(mbstore.mDBStorageQuota/1024,0)
				End if
				If mbstore.mDBOverQuotaLimit = "" Then
					stroverquota =  "No Quota"
				Else
					stroverquota = formatnumber(mbstore.mDBOverQuotaLimit/1024,0)
				End if
				If mbstore.mDBOverHardQuotaLimit = "" Then
					strHardLimit =  "No Quota"
				Else
					strHardLimit = formatnumber(mbstore.mDBOverHardQuotaLimit/1024,0)
				End if
				If strquota <> "No Quota" Then
					strquotasum = "    Storage Quotas (Using store limits):" & vbcrlf
					strquotasum = strquotasum & "    Warning Limit: " & strquota & " MB" & vbcrlf
					strquotasum = strquotasum & "    Prohibit Send: " & stroverquota & " MB" & vbcrlf
					strquotasum = strquotasum & "    Prohibit Receive: " & strHardLimit & " MB" & vbcrlf
				Else
					strquotasum = "Storage Limits: No Quotas Configured" & vbcrlf
				End if
			Else
				If IsNull(objResults.fields("mDBStorageQuota").value) Then
					strquota =  "No Quota"
				Else
					strquota = formatnumber(objResults.fields("mDBStorageQuota").value/1024,0) & " MB"
				End if
				If IsNull(objResults.fields("mDBOverQuotaLimit").value) Then
					stroverquota =  "No Quota"
				Else
					stroverquota = formatnumber(objResults.fields("mDBOverQuotaLimit").value/1024,0) & " MB"
				End if
				If IsNull(objResults.fields("mDBOverHardQuotaLimit").value) Then
					strHardLimit =  "No Quota"
				Else
					strHardLimit = formatnumber(objResults.fields("mDBOverHardQuotaLimit").value/1024,0) & " MB"
				End if
				strquotasum = "    Storage Quotas (Using custom limits):" & vbcrlf
				strquotasum = strquotasum & "    Warning Limit: " & strquota & vbcrlf
				strquotasum = strquotasum & "    Prohibit Send: " & stroverquota & vbcrlf
				strquotasum = strquotasum & "    Prohibit Receive: " & strHardLimit & vbcrlf

			End if

			' for each mailbox found (should only be one), display the size
			For Each wmiObj In wmiColl
				WScript.Echo "    Found: " & wmiObj.MailboxDisplayName
				WScript.Echo "    Mailbox Size: " & formatnumber(wmiObj.Size/1024,1) & " MB" & vbCrLf
				Wscript.Echo strquotasum
				MsgBox "    Mailbox: " & strUserDisplayName & vbcrlf & "    Size: " & formatnumber(wmiObj.Size/1024,1) & _
				 " MB" & vbcrlf & vbcrlf & strquotasum, 0, "Search Results"
			Next
		Else
			' No mailbox found
			MsgBox "'" & strUserDisplayName & "' mailbox was not found on server " & strExchServer, 0, "Search Results"
		End If

		Set wmiColl = Nothing
		Set wmiConn = Nothing
	Else
		WScript.Echo "* No Exchange Home Server defined for " & objResults.Fields("samAccountName").value & vbCrLf
	End If

	'move to the next record in the record set; quit when EOF is true
	objResults.MoveNext
	Loop until objResults.EOF

End If
Set objResults = Nothing
Set objADOCmd = Nothing
Set objADOCnxn = Nothing

WScript.Echo "Done!"
WScript.Quit

' Determines which program is used to run this script.
' Returns true if the script host is cscript.exe
Function IsHostCscript()
	On Error Resume Next
	Dim strFullName
	Dim strCommand
	Dim i, j
	Dim bReturn
	bReturn = False
	strFullName = WScript.FullName
	i = InStr(1, strFullName, ".exe", 1)
	If i <> 0 Then
		j = InStrRev(strFullName, "\", i, 1)
		If j <> 0 Then
			strCommand = Mid(strFullName, j+1, i-j-1)
			If LCase(strCommand) = "cscript" Then
				bReturn = True
			End If
		End If
	End If
	If Err <> 0 Then
		Call WScript.echo("Error 0x" & Hex(Err.Number) & " occurred. " & Err.Description _
			& ". " & vbCRLF & "The scripting host could not be determined.")
	End If
	IsHostCscript = bReturn
End Function

Comments (0)

By Scott, October 2, 2005 10:47 AM

Prior to July 31, Summit View’s sermons were only available via copies of an analog tape recording.  So I took it upon myself to bring SVCC into the late 20^th century by digitally recording the service.  I do some minor editing (like removing silence that works fine with a visual service but is awkward when listening only to the audio portion) and make them available in MP3 and WMA formats.  In addition, I make a mixed mode CD with both the CD audio portion and a data portion containing the mp3 and wma files.

Then I was recently asked about making the sermon (or message as we call it) available on iTunes so it can be downloaded automatically and listened to on the go.  So, to bring SVCC into the 21^st century, the message of the week is available as a podcast.  You can subscribe to it by searching for the keywords Summit View, or you can subscribe manually (or for anyone who doesn’t want to use iTunes and has another reader they want to use).  The feed is at http://www.flobee.net/SVCC/podcast.xml.