February 24, 2004

Next: Credit Card Statements and Evil Links

Notes and Note Errors

Good morning,

Some of you may have noticed some glitches in note-leaving over the last ten minutes (about 9:30 – 9:40 a.m. EST). I was updating some files in the software, and one of the files went bonkers (that’s the technical term for becoming corrupt during transmission). This resulted in notes not saving for a few minutes, until I righted the wrong. Everything is functioning fine now.

Nothing clever to say today. Too busy mucking things up.

However, if anybody can tell me what those roadkill-wearing-hats creatures in the Quiznos subs commercials are supposed to be, it would be appreciated.

ADDED ONLY SLIGHTLY LATER: bless our OD members, because the answer to this came in several notes the first minute after I posted it. They are spongemonkeys, and their creator has a website here. The site seems to be seriously swamped, which means there are probably thousands of people playing this in their workplaces as we speak. I wonder if this is what Tim Berners-Lee and those chuckleheads at CERN had in mind when they came up with the Web?

Some of you had reported receiving a message that read like this:

“Your note contains the text: . This text is not permitted by the note system.”

when trying to leave a note on the system. This resulted in many problem reports saying, “Why aren’t periods allowed in notes? How am I supposed to form grammatically correct sentences without periods?” I have nothing against the period, or any other punctuation marks, for that matter. This was just an OD error message that was not working correctly (there’s a philosophical discussion in there somewhere, regarding error messages that should produce their own error messages – not today).

There are certain strings of characters that the note system of OD will not allow to be posted in a diary. You can guess at several of them – this is designed to keep people from leaving obscene notes in other people’s journals. There are also several HTML tags that are blocked, for security reasons. These are tags that have been used in the past by OD delinquents to mess up diaries. I’m going to skip any further description, because I don’t want to give anybody any ideas.

In any case, if you try to post one of these blocked words, the system is supposed to tell you that you can’t, and show you the illegal word you tried to post. That message works now, but in the past it wasn’t always displaying the word – just the period that was supposed to come at the end of the error message’s sentence (told you I didn’t have anything against periods). Now the message works correctly, and everything should seem somewhat more clear.

The DiaryMaster

i love those quiznos commercials…but i have no idea what those things are…hamsters maybe?

If you find out the answer to the road-kill quiznos thingies, would you tell me, please?

The bizarre Quiznos creatures are called Spongmonkeys, and they’re from this animation (and that website/creator in general): http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

hamsters….. they are poor stuffed animal hamsters… isnt that the most annoying ad ever though? ugh even my kids cant stand it

HAHAHAA I just saw that commercial. One of them seems to be a rat/mouse? That’s what it looks like to me anyway. I can’t figure it out but it’s the funniest commercial I’ve seen in a while. If you want a real laugh go to http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com I died LOL

they are called sponge monkeys. they did a big story on the local news here today. they are slightly off and weird but damn that jingle gets me everytime. i felt like digging up a hair plug coupon so i could get a dollar off.

I just read an article on the Quizno guys. The creator calls them “spongmonkeys”. Maybe if you google it, they will come. Hope that helps!

I got that once, and when I took all of the periods out of my note it worked just fine. Which doesn’t really support what you just said, but ok. 🙂

Son Kyle and I have determined they are rats, although they are probably supposed to be something cuter like a hamster. Kyle loves commercials, and even HE mutes that one. Bleck.

Those roadkill hats sound appetizing. I’m sure to go out and buy a Quizno for lunch now! 🙂

I don’t know what the rat-things are, but the person(s) who thought up that brilliant marketing ploy should go to work for the Bush re-election campaign. /sarcasm I’ll never eat another Quiznos sub.

D’oh… I thought this might solve my note dilemma. I’m sorry to be a pest, but I have some notes that have been made private when I made an entry private (they don’t go back to public after). Is there anyway to make them go back to public? I have filled out help forms about this but haven’t heard anything from them. Thanks.

LOL I would love to know waht those quizno things are to so let me know if you find out! -Shantale

I’ve been wondering the same thing about those Quiznos ads. Hope this site clears it up. “Chuckleheads”??? There’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a while.

what is the little sidebar thing on this entry? has someone hacked again???

this is how it starts: Nothing clever to say today. Too busy mucking things up. However, if anybody can tell me what those roadkill-wearing-hats creatures in the Quiznos subs is this you???? or the error, or?

ryn: thanks! :o) it’s terrible but the way things go these days, you never know! i couldn’t tell if it was you poking fun at yourself or someone else poking it at you! for the record i love your site and appreciate everything you do. it was a little scary while you were gone but it’s been great since you’ve been back!

Saw the site. Didn’t clear up anything. Still looks like a dead rat to me!

Why won’t it let me write “glad.stone” (without the period in the middle)? I am going to Glad.stone’s with a friend for dinner sometime in the near future, but I won’t be able to write about it because OD won’t let me write that word.

they are spongemonkeys. i read it in the newspaper.

*giggles* u know… i never actually read the report of the day, i just read the lil box. have a great day mr dm!! isabel

oh… i just read it… nm on the above note. so thats why i couldnt leave a note!! grr… ur silly mr dm. *shakes head in shame at u* *giggles* hope u still have a great day!! isabel

those are my most favorite creatures ever.

I think those Quiznos creatures are a little scary. Not quite the image I want to associate with a meal. Might be afraid that a Quizno visit would have them popping out of the shadows to screech at me.

Oh gosh, that’s funny. We like the moon!

Too many hours I have wasted pondering what in the heck those little buggers were, and where in the world they found those ugly teeth. You have answered half of my musing and I am forever in your debt. I may now die a happy woman. Thanks for a good laugh.

I have not seen these Quiznos commercials, now I am jealous. It is good to hear that you have no bias towards the period, it is a wonderful character that more students should use. Can you guess I was a Middle School English teacher?

tit

hello, i have noticed that the word f*ck is not allowed when you’re leaving notes. i find that quite strange when you can say almost anything else under the sun including shit, piss poor, bastard, to name just a few.

that’s been happening since i started writing in here, i thought it just was afraid to tell me the word because it was bad. hmm..guess i should have reported it?

When are you going to fix Teen Open Diary?

these note restrictions are not working. i get really obscene messages and notes from people faking my name and my friends’ names. it really is starting to cause problmes. i’ve reported it but it keeps being returned to me.

I was wondering if there was a way to decrease the hacking and if a diary was hacked then maybe if they told you you could put it in an entry or put it on the front page so people will know ?

hey, is there anyway that you can get the random links in entries and such to go away? like if you type a certain phrase or word like it automaticly links it to a pop up, is there any way you can turn it off?

I realize that I’ve never said this before but thank you. That’s it…Thank You. For everyone’s hard work. I love this site and if I weren’t a poor college student I would upgrade my OD to Plus just out of support. But I’m jobless, maybe one day because… I love you (but not in that creepy way). Have a great day. THANK YOU!

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! The spongemonkeys again!!!!! Dear, dear DM….PLEASE refrain from mentioning them….I have nightmares about the dratted things. “We love ze subs!….”

You can leave notes with cuss words in them. See? Fuck! Just thought I’d let you know.

so I had no idea that CERN created the web until I read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. Quite a freakin’ awesome book. I recommend it. (if you like to read, of course). Have a day!

Just a quick question that’s been bothering me for a long while now…I understand that there is a 7,500 character limit on entries, and thus I write all my entries using MS Word. I’ll then have an entry that’s 6,500 characters long, with spaces, and when trying to post it, I’ll get a message stating I ran over the character limit. Explanations? Suggestions?

It’s strange that you asked about the Quizno’s sub things and used Tim Berners-Lee in the same paragraph.. I too was curious earlier after the commercial and I too, got my answer shortly after.. and then I wrote a paper on Berners-Lee (I’m not joking..)