About a month ago I received an invite from a friend to try out a social network called “Naymz”. I’m always one to take a look at such things, especially if recommended by a friend. So I clicked through and signed up. That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two (and ultimately a bigger mistake than actually signing up) came in the form of clicking the “See who you know on Naymz” link.

Under normal circumstances, the “who do you know” phase of social netowrk sign up goes something like this:

1. I select the form of my address book (Gmail, Yahoo, etc) and it searches my contacts.
2. It shows me a list of the contacts who are currently members and asks me if I would like to become “friends” or whatever the nomenclature they use may be
3. It then shows me a lit of all the unmatched addresses and asks if I would like to mail them an invite (to which I universally say no)
4. If I say yes, it e-mails my friends an invite (ONCE!)

This is where Naymz does things a little differently.

Naymz will let you connect to other social networks to find connections. I chose LinkedIn. It scanned my contacts and presented a list, just like the others do.

Naymz, however, actually combines step two and step three above. It presents the list, and lets you send your messages. Since I have signed up for dozens of these networks to test them out, and I have never seen anyone stray too far from the steps I outlined, I clicked ok. I failed to notice that Naymz includes a small icon and disclaimer that says only those people identified with the icon are users (very few of the people I know are – even now). It also says you should remove anyone you don’t want to mail. The icon and disclaimer are small enough that I missed it completely the first time through and only found it after I became aware of my original mistake.

Now, I had expected to see a list of unmatched addresses after clicking that button. What I saw instaed was an immediate inflow of e-mail that had subject lines like, “What the hell is Naymz?”

I spent the better part of a day apologizing to people for the Naymz spam and told them they should not take that as an endorsement of Naymz. I told everyone that I was simply testing it out to see what I thought.

Since that fateful day, I have recieved many more messages asking the same question. Until today, I had always assumed that was because they had just opened the original message.

However, upon actually logging in to Naymz today (I was looking for a way to turn off or limit their WAY too frequent messages to me), I discovered Naymz has been e-mailing constant reminders (a la Plaxo) to those who had not replied. It hadn’t simply used my name to spam them once, it was following up with mupltiple requests.

So now my Naymz account is cancelled. If you received a request from me to sign up, I apologize profusely. If you said yes to that request, doubly so. If you didn’t say yes, and have been bombarded by further appeals since, even more so.

I had told some people that I would let them know my thoughts when I got done with my evaluation. So here it is:

I would avoid Naymz like it’s the plague. It combines all the annoying characteristics of Plaxo with the disregard for informed consent typically reserved for malware.

I have deleted my account. That is a rare step for a guy who has littered the Internet with unused SocNet accounts. But I am not stopping there.

I hereby hope and pray that the good people at Naymz suffer the karmic ass kicking which they have rightly earned. They’ll go down with Plaxo and Gator as yet another Internet scourge.

Saturday morning I woke up with a terrible sore throat, and was convinced I had strep. Having had strep many times before, I was almost certain that was the case.

After a quick trip to the urgent care facility near my house, and a brief consultation with a doctor I could barely understand, I picked up on three things – not strep, ulcers, and something having to do with cold sores. When I got home, I Googled those three terms and discovered a wealth of information about the fascinating world of mouth ulcers.

Now most people are aware of canker sores and cold sores. They’re the nasty little sores that develop on the mouth and gums and on the lips respectively. Canker sores are generally tiny little things, but hurt much more than their size would suggest.

Mouth ulcers are like a canker sore’s really big, mean older cousin with a glandular problem and a short temper. They are likely to attack the throat or tongue as well as the gums. Mine is about the size of a dime and right next to my tonsils. It makes me pray for death every time I swallow. In short, they’re a lot of fun.

I’m sharing this for one reason and one reason only. I had no idea such things existed. I’ve never experienced the joy of a mouth ulcer and hope to God I never do again. They suck. However, I thought I’d throw this out there so anyone who Googles strep, ulcer, and cold sore will know that someone else feels (or felt) their pain.

Ok, I was kidding about the rectum part. If you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, you know the story of the watch Christopher Walken smuggled in his anus. Well, not counting Walken’s ass vault, MSN has a list of 16 places where you should not put your stuff. Some of these actually confirm long running beliefs I have had.

For instance, I can fall asleep very easily (almost instantly). Mrs. Quip has trouble falling asleep. The difference? Apparently it’s her tendency to completely cover herself with blankets. I always keep my legs outside.

Being overheated can keep you from nodding off, researchers say: A natural nighttime drop in your core temperature triggers your body to get drowsy. To ease your way to sleep, help your body radiate heat from your hands and feet… Don socks to dilate the blood vessels in the extremities ‚Äî then take the socks off and let a foot stick out from under the blankets.

The article is actually full of a lot of good information. Want to avoid airsickness? Avoid the tail section and sit near the wing. Want to avoid germs in public bathrooms? Stay away from the center stall. Where’s the worst place to store medicine? The medicine cabinet where high, steamy temperatures can exceed your medication’s safe storage temp.

My personal favorite, though was this little statistic.

[S]wabs showed up to 10,000 bacteria per square inch on purse bottoms ‚Äî and a third of the bags tested positive for fecal bacteria! A woman’s carryall gets parked in some nasty spots: on the floor of the bus, beneath the restaurant table ‚Äî even on the floor of a public bathroom. Put your bag in a drawer or on a chair, Gerba says ‚Äî anywhere except where food is prepared or eaten. (emphasis mine)

That’s right. Your wife’s or girlfriend’s purse is likely trekking the poo right into your house and kitchen – and they say men are the unclean gender.

It’s been a bad week to be sick. With so much celebrity embarrassment on parade, not having the energy to trash them is really troubling.

Let’s set the wayback machine for the VMAs last week. This show had it all – award winners trashing the network that hosts the awards, has-been rockers duking it out over whored out former TV stars, single moms trying to whore themselves out (but nobody was buying), and militant rappers getting peeved that the awards weren’t rigged for them to win. Your entertainment dollar was simply not going to go farther than the 2007 VMAs

Britney was supposed to warm up the audience, but left everyone feeling cold. Blame it on the hair, the lip-synching, the magic act that wasn’t, the drinking, the allergic reaction to eye drops (what?), or any of another 100 oft-repeated excuses for the train wreck we witnessed, the sad reality is we want to see a nubile 20 year-old in skin tight leather dancing like a tramp or tongue kissing Madonna (actually, skip that last part). The fact is, Brit is now a single mom who, with every public appearance, reminds us of the line from Sweet Home Alabama.

Look at you! You have a baby! In a bar!

Here’s some advice Brit. Put on some clothes, write/sing a grown-up song, and stop trying to convince us that you’re the hot little vixen of Baby One More Time. That ship has sailed. You were used up by a douchebag, and the only guy that still wants you is this loser.

Next up… Kid Rock and Tommy Lee. Even with Britney and Kanye melting down at the VMAs, this is probably the most pathetic story of the night. These two guys get into a brawl over a woman who, by her own admission, paid off a poker debt with sex. Yup. That girl is a class act that is worth fighting for. Go get her, guys.

Speaking of Kanye, I don’t think I could sum this one up any better than Joel McHale (host of The Soup). After recapping Kanye’s choice words about his perceived snub at the hands of MTV, McHale said, “Geez. 50 Cent didn’t whine that much when he got shot.” True dat!

In our last glimpse backward at the VMAs, perhaps the one shining moment in the telecast came when Justin Timberlake (surrounded by the vapid cast of The Hills) excoriated MTV for filling its programming with non-stop reality TV and begged them to actually play music occasionally. It seems Timberlake may be one of the few people who owes his soul to MTV, and at the same time feels bad because he’s old enough to remember that MTV used to stand for Music Television.

Finally, back in the present, let’s dip into the overflowing cup of comedy gold that is O.J. Simpson. The same week that his book (If I Did It) comes out, and the world may read his claim that he’s not a criminal (at least not a murderous one), he gets arrested for storming into a sports memorabilia show with armed accomplices and trying to steal pieces of his life. It’s not clear whether he actually owns any of what he tried to steal. And it’s not clear if he was armed, but a tape of the incident clearly demonstrates his anger and rage as he barks out instructions that no one is to be allowed to leave.

Wow, O.J., armed robbery and taking hostages. That’s a hell of a good way to prove you’re not a killer. Maybe next time you could sacrifice a small puppy on national TV and tell people your killing is limited only to the animal kingdom. By the way, aren’t you supposed to be out there trying to catch the real killer?

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from the owner of this MySpace page asking me to join her crusade against US Air. While I was impressed by her initiative, and understood her feelings, it had been almost a year since my last horrible US Air experience. I had forgotten how bad they are, and my own statement imploring others to never, ever fly US Air.

Well, yesterday I had to fly to Asheville, North Carolina for a conference. I was speaking at 9 AM this morning. My flight was supposed to leave Dulles at 4:00 yesterday, so I headed to the airport around 2:30.

I ended up leaving almost an hour late because the inbound flight was delayed leaving Dayton, OH. These things happen, so no big deal, right?

When I arrived in Charlotte for my connection, it too was delayed creating a 3 1/2 hour layover (even after my one-hour inbound delay. Since Asheville is only about 2 hours from Charlotte, I figured I’d simply rent a car and drive. I approached the gate agent and asked to have them pull my bag so I could grab a rental car.

Here’s where the story goes from simply pedestrian to tragically ironic.

The gate agent told me that my bag could not be taken out of the stream because it had already been routed to the holding area for my connecting flight. They assured me that doing so meant my bag would arrive at my destination.

See where this is going?

It didn’t… I arrived at my destination after 10:00pm (8 hours from DC to Asheville BY AIR – a new record). My bag however, went into some sort of luggage limbo. After a half-hour trying to explain the concept of a missing bag to the gate agent in Asheville, the guy next to me indicated he was also waiting for an errant bag – and had been since Wednesday (5 days).

I did without the bag, grabbed some new clothes for my meeting, and headed back to the airport at 10:00 AM this morning. upon check-in, I asked them to check the status of my bag. It had not been located, let alone routed to Asheville.

After a half hour flight delay leaving Asheville, and another hour delay due to a blown air conditioner in Charlotte, I was batting .1000 for late flights on this trip – and all of them were due to mechanical problems (nice reliable fleet, huh?)

The US air lost baggage tracking system tells me they have found my bag, but not where it is or when I can expect it.

Under most circumstances, I’d say this was an unbelievably bad trip, but it’s par for the course on US Air.