I’ll be riding my bike in the Harmons MS Bike Tour this year on June 23 in Cache Valley, Utah. Read on to find out how you can help me.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, inflammatory disease that interrupts the flow of information from the brain to the body and, in severe cases, causes impaired mobility and disability. There is currently no known cure for multiple sclerosis and more than 400,000 Americans live with this debilitating illness. This tour (and about a hundred more like it across the country) is a chance for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to raise awareness and funds, and it’s a great way for me to get in shape and have some fun this summer.

I’m posting this primarily to ask you—yes, you!—to sponsor me in this event. My goal is to raise $500 for MS research and programs. Your contribution is tax-deductible and will be used not only to fund research toward a cure in the future, but also for programs addressing the needs of people living with MS today. Here’s a breakdown of where your dollar goes:

Your contribution can, and will, make an immediate difference for everyone who must face the unpredictable nature of multiple sclerosis. Because of your help, each mile I ride in the MS Bike Tour becomes more powerful and brings us closer to a cure.

However much you can give—great or small—will help. Thank you for your support!

I’d also like to invite you to join me on the tour. Feel free to [contact me] if you’d like to come along for the ride or if you have any questions.

For more information about the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, how proceeds from the MS Bike Tour are used, or the other ways you can get involved in the fight against multiple sclerosis, visit fightmsutah.org. :syzygy:

Here’s one of the first videos I uploaded to YouTube myself, a demonstration of why Simba is my favorite cat in the world.

Update August 2, 2007: This video (along with all my videos) has been moved to Vimeo. I don’t like some of the new features YouTube released recently so I went looking for an alternative. Vimeo seems to have better privacy controls and I just like their interface a little better than YouTube’s.

Also see “Simba, my favorite cat pt. 2” →

I just finished a couple of great books: Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem and Basic Christianity by John R.W. Stott.

If I had to choose one of these books over the other, I think it would be Christian Beliefs. It follows the same major topics as most full-blown theology texts, and, in fact, is a condensation of Grudem’s 528 page Bible Doctrine, which is itself a condensation of Grudem’s 1,296 page Systematic Theology. As such, there is a wealth of information packed into this svelte volume. I especially found the Westminster Catechism, the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, and the ancient Christian creeds in the back of the book to be a nice touch. Grudem also provides a list of roughly 45 books for additional study from a variety of perspectives. I can’t think of a better, more easily digestible introduction to Christian theology than this book, and have already recommended it to several friends and others who have inquired about what I believe.

Basic Christianity is considered a modern classic, and I think it’s deserving of that reputation. It was written in 1958, and Stott is from England, so I found his manner of writing at times quirky and difficult to understand (it reminded me of Talmage ((James E. Talmage was a Latter-day Saint general authority, theologian, and apologist. A few of his classic works are Jesus the Christ, The Great Apostasy, and Articles of Faith.)), actually). That said, he offers a well-organized and cogent summary of Christian belief and duty. He divides his book into four major topics: (1) Christ’s person, (2) man’s need, (3) Christ’s work, and (4) man’s response. It was clear from the outset, and from several things he said throughout the volume, that Stott values concepts like the Sovereignty of God and Unconditional Election, but he spoke much and often about man’s duty, to the point that I wondered at times if he was not Arminian. In this respect, Stott reminded me a lot of Spurgeon, who was also clearly Calvinist but spoke at times like an Arminian. I think nowadays too many Christians shirk from anything resembling duty and I appreciated this new (or rather, old) perspective and insight from Stott.

Both these books are excellent introductions to the Christian faith, and I would commend them to anyone, especially if you are unfamiliar with the basic tenets of Evangelical Christianity and would like something you can read in one or two sittings.

When I first started hosting my own domain five or so years ago, I was happy to discover this really neat thing called a catch-all email account. Basically, I can set up as many static email addresses as I want or need, but any unrouted mail, no matter who it’s addressed to, is redirected into the main catch-all account.

This comes in handy for tracking who I’ve given my email address to (among other obvious reasons). For instance, if I were dealing with a fictional company called Wally’s Widgets, Inc., I might give them the address, wallyswidgets@joeyday.com. That way, if I start getting a lot of junk mail pointed to that address, I know it’s either coming from Wally’s Widgets, or Wally’s Widgets has sold my email address to the evil spammers. Over the years that’s happened with a few of the addresses I’ve given out, and when it does I simply add that address to a server side filter that bounces those emails.

Unfortunately, the spammers have developed new tactics in recent months. Perhaps as early as a year ago, I started getting a low volume of mail addressed to random names at my domain, like joshua@joeyday.com or antony@joeyday.com. I also started seeing strange addresses like tjoey@joeyday.com and oey@joeyday.com ((This is actually somewhat clever. It appears that when they get an address they know is legitimate, they are assuming either one of two scenarios: either (1) the address is a last name, and adding random letters of the alphabet to the front of it might allow them to stumble across other legitimate addresses, or (2) the address is a first letter and last name, and dropping the first letter or changing it to a different letter may help them stumble across more legitimate addresses. I’m confident this is what they’re doing, because I’ve had mail come to almost every address from ajoey@joeyday.com down to zjoey@joeyday.com.)). A few months later, really weird ones started coming in, like ijjojkl@joeyday.com and zz3z22z3z1@joeyday.com. The stranger they got, the more I realized my blacklist system wasn’t good enough anymore. As of last month, I was getting around a thousand junk emails a day to random addresses like these.

All this madness stopped as of last night, when I switched from using a blacklist system to using a forwarding whitelist. I compiled a hopefully comprehensive list of the 200 or so addresses I’ve given out over the years, created forwarding rules so each of them is redirected to my main account, and nuked the catch-all. As of this morning, I’ve got 72 junk emails in my account, which is a very happy improvement from the thousand I’ve been getting each day.

The main reason I’m blogging about this is to let friends and family know they can no longer make up random addresses to send me email. I’ve very much enjoyed getting mail to awesomeguy@joeyday.com over the years (that never actually happened, but a few similar ones did), but unfortunately that also must stop as of last night. I’d actually prefer to switch as much of my personal correspondence over to my Gmail account as possible. If you don’t know my Gmail address, feel free to shoot me an email using my contact form and (assuming I know who you are) I’ll be happy to give you my contact info.

Oh, and by the way, as I was searching for a good Spam image for this post, I came across Spam’s official website. It’s hilarious!

(Hat tip: Grooveshark Blog)