...It's time once again for that erstwhile favorite (and hated) column of mine when I address the spammers in my life. Mr. Spammer must have heard that I've gotten a new boss and mistakenly thought that I must have some instability over my career...

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Dear Mr. Spammer,

I'd like to thank you for your recent letter that you sent about my job. I know that you're terribly concerned that I won't be staying in light of recent changes in control at my company, but I think you're worrying too much. I'm staying put for the time being. But I really do appreciate the concern and the idea. After all, how many of my friends would send me listings that would let me work from home with a minimum of interaction with anyone!

While it's very tempting to take your advice and start my own online casino, I don't think that that would be the right thing for my kids to know about. Just think of the looks on the teachers faces at the school whenn they start talking about their parents' careers and my children pipe up with "my mom runs an online casino and swindles stupid people out of their money". Considering that the school actually thinks I'm a "fine and upstanding" sort of person, I'd rather not break that illusion for them.

Still, being able to run something like that from my own computer, and being the tax collector for people who are bad at math is appealing, but I think that sort of thing might be illegal in California still. So I would have to set up a computer in an office somewhere in another state, and I don't think that would work for the bottom line when I actually need to go do something to said computer. I know all about remote access, and that would work fine for most things, but not for others that are necessary. Like kicking it when it won't restart properly.

Still, it was nice of you to include your phone number, even if it runs back to some sort of financial institution in Florida. Then again, I must have been looking at it wrong because your email address hailed from the UK. Assuming that you aren't spoofing the address. But you wouldn't do that, would you Mr. Spammer? Not after all these years of correspondance that you've sent to me.

After all, if I can't trust my friends who send me online casino work at home sca- er, opportunities, who am I to trust, right? Well, thank you for your concern Mr. Spammer. I think I'll stick with playing with the numbers that I work with currently.

-WG-