@Jefromi Just had him last night, actually :D 9:23 pm.

woohoooo!!!!!!!

He's Bennett Alexander.

:D :D :D

@Stephie Look what I made ^ A hat! (and a baby).

awww you made the hat too!

It was a great experience, really. We got to the birthing center at 7 pm or so and he arrived at 9:23... and we got home at 2 am.

I did. :D

Wow, sounds really smooth!

I was close. Did most of the laboring at home... even then, it didn't really get consistent until 2 pm or so, so I think I got lucky with a short labor.

Fortunately, I had time to make frosting for the carrot birthday cupcakes I'd made the day before. Andy did the piping and we had a "0" candle for it.

@Jolenealaska I didn't realise you meant curling during baking!

I think what I will do is wrap a sheet right round the pan so it can't do it

The paper itself is great non stick wise

@Catija Congratulations! :) He's precious!

@Catija that's adorable. The baby is too ;p

@Catija By Hades, well done!!

Congratulations!

I'm glad everything seems to have gone well.

@Cindy @JourneymanGeek @Cerberus Thanks! :D We're really enjoying having him around.

@Catija Ah, you're still not crying for mercy?

Good, good.

@Catija I'm so very happy for you and Andy. It sounds like you're doing very well. Treasure every moment. Time can get away from you so easily..... Thinking about your joy reminded me of when I had my son, and that my 'baby boy' will be 38 this coming December.

@Cerberus No! It's been great, actually. A couple of hard moments but, otherwise, magic.

@Cindy Awwww, I don't want to think about him growing up yet. I'm happy to have him next to me where I can peer at him, sleeping, and pet him whenever I like.

@Catija Wow, very good.

Seem to be getting a lot more amazon affiliate spam these days.

protip: if you see a link of the form http://amzn.to/<id>, especially from a new user, there's a good chance it's spam. (details below)

Theoretically that's just the amazon url shortener and it could be anything, but very very often it's used to redirect to a product on amazon with someone's amazon affiliate id, meaning they'll get a cut of the money if people buy the product. You can check this by clicking the link and seeing if the url contains an affiliate id, something like &tag=givejefromimoney-20.

Really blatant example from today: someone linked to a product made by "iHomeInnovations" and the link url contained &tag=ihomeinnova0f-20

Oh.

So they are posting those links in spammy places?

I've also seen folks who probably weren't affiliated with the product, but just wanted the commission, which is still pretty spammy.

@Cerberus Generally it's the whole half-answer thing, oh you're having this problem, you should try this product (and make me some money).

On SA?

Yeah.

That does sound annoying!

Does the shortening help to mask the destination?

To mask that it's spammy?

Only on the surface; if you click on it you can still see that there's an affiliate id.

Right.

It is possible that someone got the link from some other site so it wasn't the poster's own tag. But the context will probably make it clear that/if it's intended in a spammy way.

Yeah, if it looks like the answer is high-quality (especially if it's an experienced user), might've just been a mistake. Haven't seen that much though.

Some people might not know what those tags mean.

But it seem like an extra clue that something might be spam.

Yup yup. But most amazon links, people will copy-paste the actual amazon link, while looking at the product itself.

True.

And I believe even if the affiliate id was in the link you copied, stackexchange will strip it out.

Oh!

Smart.

So that might explain the shortener.

In any case, whatever the reasons, it's a very strong signal. Maybe it's happened, but I don't remember a legitimate example with a shortened amazon url redirecting with an affiliate id, while I've seen lots of this kind of spam, so I'm pretty okay with people using it as a sign they should be suspicious and flag if in doubt.

@Cerberus I doubt spammers are looking carefully enough to know what stackexchange does, but it's certainly a solid general practice for affiliates, gives you a clean un-suspicious link.

@Jefromi Makes sense.

@Jefromi Ah OK, in that way.