One of the downsides of having a blog, as well as a domain that’s been around for 16 years, is that the spam volume is unbelievable. The email spam would be unmanageable without the excellent gmail filters (I average over 450 spam messages each day), but the blog comment spam is also pretty daunting. Most of them are simply annoying, but lately I’ve been getting some that are at least mildly entertaining. Today’s winner was: “If my prolebm [sic] was a Death Star, this article is a photon torpedo.”

For future reference, see below.

Leaving work late does have one or two advantages, at least during the winter months when it gets dark before 6pm.

I have to admit that I haven’t been following the whole Penn State coach scandal in the US, despite the best efforts of CNN “International” to alert me to the Urgent! Breaking! News! But I did just happen to read about the rioting that took place on the Penn State campus after the firing of the head coach, and some quotes from the rioting students are, frankly, depressing:

• “We got rowdy, and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach.”
• Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked sport utility vehicle and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle.
  
• “It’s not fair,” Mr. Muir said hurling a white ribbon. “The board is an embarrassment to our school.”
• Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police. “Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”
• “My friends were like, ‘I don’t want to get maced,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to miss seeing this, so I guess that means I do kind of want to get maced.’ ”
  

Nothing gives you some much-needed perspective while stuck in traffic quite like looking to your left and seeing hundreds of burial crypts overlooking the highway.

Sofia squeezes the Angry Birds pig that I won for her in a claw machine in Girona.

Drove to Barcelona early this morning for work. The streets are nearly deserted because of the puente (long holiday weekend), so at least there was no traffic to deal with.

In Girona for the night, checking out the Alta Temporada fira and having some nice meals out. The rest of the family will be staying there through Tuesday, but I’m back in Barcelona during the day on Monday for a normal workday.