From the second episode of this season of Law & Order UK, in a scene in which two police officers (a middle-aged officer and a younger one played by Jamie Bamber) are questioning two just-into-their-teens kids while moving a trampoline across one of the kids’ yard:
Older Cop (looking over his shoulder as he’s backing up): Is there anything behind me?
Kid: Yeah, your youth.
😆… Read more
Warning: this is a pretty lengthy post, and pretty technical too. If you don’t give a flip about websites, internet security and the like, this would be an excellent one to skip. … Read more
If this works, then I think ye olde blawg may be back on the air. Hooray! More baby and cat pictures!… Read more
As I write this, my FTP client is firing an enormous amount of stuff at a server which will hopefully, in very short order, become the new home of my website.
It’s ironic that, in a year in which I’ve made such a big honkin’ deal about some of the site’s core content being 20 years old, and having been on the web for over 10 years (and at the same domain name for exactly 10 as of Memorial Day weekend), my site, which I’ll admit may well be celebrated this much only by its owner, has spent so much time being DOWN.
After spending a good deal of May fending off repeated hacking attempts, I held my breath as my hosting service sent out an e-mail to announce that they have new owners and management. I was hoping for some improvement – Globat.com (my web host since late 2003) had been steadily going downhill, with the most frustrating incidation of that in recent years being the tendency for their database server to collapse under even fairly mild loads of activity. As theLogBook.com has increasingly become a database-driven site (for the better, in my opinion), this was more than a little bit unacceptable.
I turns out that the new management and technical teams are, in fact, a step down from where Globat already was. I think these people were unfrozen from 2002 or something: their .htaccess defaults (which govern how your site can be accessed and by whom) was hardwired to favor Microsoft Frontpage, a web authoring platform that even Microsoft has stopped supporting. Additionally, their CHMOD settings – basically, the security level of your files and directories, governing who can write/change stuff – is hardwired to a setting of 777: in effect, anyone can change just about anything on your site. When you’ve been fighting off as many hacks as I have for the past month, this is so far beyond unacceptable that the light from unacceptable will take four billion years to shine on me.
The final straw? In an attempt to fix my blog, Globat apparently toasted the database. It’s gone. The post I wrote from the hospital on the night my son was born, and the accompanying congratulations from my friends? Gone. There is a backup, but it’s fairly old – thankfully, my blog posts have been automatically mirrored in two places (Facebook and Livejournal), so I can cut-and-paste missing entries back in once I get things set up at the new hosting service.
I’m incredibly impressed with the new place; not only was the price right, but the options and amenities are mind-blowing, and they go out of their way to show you how to do stuff, including migrating your site and databases from another site. It sure beats the hell out of unreadable-going-on-cryptic “support tickets” written in some sub-dialect of Engrish.
My site is not only one of my proudest (and certainly longest-lived) achievements, but it’s also a vital cog in my attempts to support my family and myself. With the site down and even my e-mail inaccessible, not only is no money being made, but I can’t even solicit future business or sell stuff I’ve already made. It’s having a tangible impact, not having the site working.
So it’s without much of a heavy heart that I plan to bid farewell to Globat very soon. If nothing else, I think the upgrade will be a fitting 20th birthday present for the old thing.
I’ll have more updates soon; for the moment, there’s a massive amount of files to move in order to make the whole thing work. Do not adjust your set.… Read more
Warning: geekspeak contained within
Not too long ago, I surprised my friends by suddenly switching to Firefox, something I hadn’t been too keen on before. Now, I may surprise them again – after an extended and extensively frustrating battle, I’m still trying to decide if I’m going to turn the media center PC I got for my wife for Mothers’ Day into a Linux box, or into an oversized and expensive doorstop. … Read more
Can you even believe this is the same kitten? … Read more
As I sit here, mini-waffles (and a few little graham crackers) are being consumed, stories have been read, itchy butts have been cleaned, and all is well. … Read more
I have a feeling I know who’s going to adopt this tiny morsel of a kitty… I think it’s that shaggy guy in the mirror! … Read more
Meet the new meat…
A little update from the plague house: my diagnosis was a nasty sinus infection …plus strep throat. This basically translates to “get the toddler and anyone else who isn’t a cat way the hell away from me.” The “alpha site” has turned out to be the in-laws’ place, so I’m sitting here with Olivia and Oberon, with occasional visits from the dog during bad weather. Supposedly we get a break from that weather over the next week – a pity I don’t feel like getting back out there and tackling the lawn (on the other hand, when I still have no appetite and my body temperature fluctuates between freezing and a brain-boiling near-104-degree fever, I’m not sure how trying to mow could actually significantly increase my physical discomfort).
For some reason I’m totally jonesing for Dr. Pepper right now. Not sugar free, not caffiene free, just good old Dr. Pepper, that same stuff that’s two molecular bonds away from being antifreeze. It’s the only thing that tastes “right” to me right now.
I really miss my kid, but I understand he’s having a blast at his grandparents’ place, and can already call all of their kitties by name (and they have twice as many kitties as we do here, and many more doggies!). He’s being a little angel over there. But I’ll be more than happy to have him back over here.
I completely skipped one week’s worth of update on theLogBook this week because I’ve been going around and hack-proofing – to the best of my ability – the various WordPress installs that make up the site. I’ve really about had it up to here with the explots and script hacks – I keep my WP isntalls up to date, but sometimes it just seems to have the security coverage of a mesh shirt from the ’70s. WordPress is becoming common/popular enough to be the de facto hack magnet – a position shared by phpBB and Windows/Internet Explorer. I’m not sure I’m crazy about that. I spent most of last night un-junking Phil’s 365 Films A Year blog after getting a Google warning about it via e-mail, and most of that “most of last night” was trying to unbreak the damage I did trying to fix it. :embarrassed: (Sorry, Phil.)
I’ll see if I can get it back in gear for an update on time this week. It seems like any time I put my foot down and say “this is the month where theLogBook.com is going to start kicking ass again” is precisely when it manages to avoid happening at all costs.
Back to the doctor’s office: my wife got us both in for appointments at a new doctor’s office, and apparently we’ve both been thinking the same thing without discussing it: we need a new “doctor of record.” With no disrespect intended toward the doctor we have been seeing for the past 2-3 years, because it’s someone who has put in their time over the years, but it seemed increasingly as though our old doctor was more interested in the golf course of late. Appointments were hard to get, and sometimes, it seemed, only begrudgingly given. This is why I’d been avoiding seeing that doctor for the past year-and-a-half and going instead to a walk-in clinic where one of the staff doctors is one of my best friends from elementary school (!). So finally it seems that we’re looking at this place as the new home base for medical needs…which suits me just fine, because the nurses are just hellaciously cute. Even the one who gave me shots in my butt, including one with a huge needle that was left in for so long that I thought she was drilling for core samples of ancient Antarctic ass-tundra or something. (But I kid – I’m sure having to stick needles in my fat butt was hardly the highlight of her day.)
Anyway, I’m on a whole cocktail of meds right now, including, for the first time in my life, an inhaler. I’m feeling kind of woozy, but a little bit better. I found out very early on that taking all of the meds right on top of each other was a very bad idea – we’re talking hearing-the-soundtrack-from-Heavy-Metal-inside-your-brain, effed-up bad idea. (And no, it didn’t work like “cheesing” on that South Park episode, else I’d be taking the meds like that all the time!)
That’s all I have to report. I have to go break up a fight between the only other two living creatures in the house. Bye bye.… Read more
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