[knodi123]

I got a really cool vanity email address, back in the early days of gmail. But the downside of that is 100s of goofball people around the world randomly guessing it when they want to put some bullshit value in a field on a web form. The worst was when my address got posted to to some indian jobs forum, under a title like "test job" - I got dozens of applications per hour for a few days. I had to make filters to block all email that included the words "bangalore", "delhi", or "hyderabad".

Anyway, the job applications have died down, but I still get plenty of others for people who are creating accounts. I unsubscribe when I can, and "mark spam" when I can't.

[bokkeman]

This sounds like the Steve Wozniak story from his college and early Apple days. He was apparently an inveterate prankster, especially phone related. After starting Apple and gaining some influence in the tech world, he managed to secure a mobile phone with the number [phone] - something he'd desired for years but could only realise once the 888 area (mobile) code came into use. Well his life became a living hell - he'd receive calls at all hours, usually with only rustling or scraping sounds, sometimes breathing and the occasional gurgle. The penny finally dropped when he heard a stern motherly voice in the background of one of these calls shouting: "Put down that phone, Jimmy!" He realised that babies all over America were picking up push button telephones and hammering the most obvious button - the one right in the middle of the bottom row... He had to change his number because there was no way around this DDOS prank by The Universe.