CONGRATULATIONS: YOU WON £1,059,200.00
A never-ending circus
Inbred Ned: Margie, whaddya say we take a chance and send in what they want to know?
Inbred Ned’s wife: Whatever you think, dear.
Inbred Ned: It’s email. It’s free. I’m gonna do it, just in case.
Inbred Ned’s wife: All right, dear.
Because of some mix-up we advice that you keep all information about this prize confidential. You must adhere to this instruction, strictly, to avoid any delay with the release of your funds to your person. This program has been abused severally in past so we are doing our best to forestall further occurrence of false claims and internet Fraud.
This sweepstake was conducted under the watchful eyes of 8,000 spectators. This program is sponsored by CFI to compensate faithful Internet suffers around the globe.
Here’s a link to a New Yorker article about someone who was actually swindled. It’s quite a tale.
The Lobby and Anything Goes
(updated below)
Back in the ’90s there was a chat site known as ClubGabbay, or Anything Goes. It consisted of a number of rooms, most notably the wildly popular “Anything Goes” chamber, but also a room known as “The Lobby”. The crazies — of which I was one, I sheepishly admit — populated Anything Goes, while more sane individuals among us were known to frequent the Lobby.
In the search engines, the site was listed as being one for music appreciation, but from what I saw, no one who came in talked much about music. Eventually, in the late ’90s, the owner of the site attempted to sell his somewhat mediocre audio recordings to fund the operation, but that bombed big-time. Eventually the entire place collapsed into the one remaining room: the Lobby.
The chat room eventually ended up being given or sold — I’m not sure which — to a couple of people. Then the trolls arrived, during which time a couple of the regulars using multiple handles actually ended up destroying the place. Finally, the Lobby imploded and was closed. The domain remains still, but it comes up as a commercial search site, listing mostly inane plastic cookware and travel sites — such a fall for a once-popular and widely-known series of chat rooms.
During the course of the site’s operation, I went on the road to meet many of the chat site regulars, who were physically located far and wide across North America and the world. Most of those I met were located in North America, but some from offshore ended up visiting, and I eventually rode to meet them also.
When the chat room closed, we were limited to the various messenger services and their limitations. The crazy days were long gone by then, and the sillines that had pervaded the old site no longer ruled in the one-on-one world of the IM chat clients. If you couldn’t post a link to a silly picture, what was the point? Stay in touch without that? No, thanks. Consequently, we all went our various ways, and most ended up falling off the map.
I think it would be mildly interesting to find out what all the crazies are doing now. From personal contact, I know that a few have completed their Masters or PhDs, some have gotten married, others are having babies, and still more are doing what they always did, working away and killing time in other chat rooms or forums. Some have passed on from this life and are now in a kinder, gentler place but will continue to live on in our chat room memories.
It was a fun time in the early days of the wide-open chat room environment, but eventually most of us lost contact while moving on to live our lives.
UPDATE: It is with great sadness that I announce the passing on April 24, 2007 of Alf, known to us all as Fozzie. While Fozzie was working in his woodlot, harvesting trees to turn them into lumber for a building he wanted to construct, the little Furpot was called to the great kitchen in the sky, where beautiful cooks and lovely waitresses prepare and serve the finest foods and sweetest desserts known to exist, just for him. Fozzie will be sadly missed by all of his good and kind friends from Australia to North America and places in between.
Here’s a link to a forum, not often used, for all the old familiar faces.
And here’s another one that doesn’t take so long to load.
Winning hearts and minds
Moral highground finally regained
The war in Iraq continues to go well, with advances in health care being among the most notable, as evidenced by this May 17 news report from Gorilla’s Guides :
“Doctors, nurses, administrators, and all other staff in Fallujah hospital have gone on indefinite strike after the second episode in as many months in which the American controlled, directed, trained, and financed, green zone forces and police in Fallujah supported by American troops violently stormed the hospital, severely beat staff, and destroyed equipment and supplies.
The strike was called as the result of an attack on members of the rescue crews by green zone forces and green zone police. The police and militia beat the doctors and staff, smashed doors and windows and destroyed quantities of hospital supplies.
According to the young doctor in the hospital who alerted the news agency to this latest attack the attackers: “justified their attacks on the pretext that hospital staff treated the gunmen inside it”.
They obviously didn’t get it right the first couple of times, as seen below, so they moved on to Fallujah, as noted above:
“On May 1st there was a similar attack on Naaman hospital in Adhamiya Baghdad - the same Adhamiya that the Americans have walled off. During that episode all patients, except for three in the intensive care unit who were too desperately ill to be unhooked from their respirators, were ejected from the hospital onto the street, sometimes violently, and snipers were posted on the roof.”
Seamless WordPress 2.2 upgrade
I just this minute upgraded my WordPress from version 2.1.3 to the new 2.2, and it took only a few seconds. How did that happen, you ask? (Even if you didn’t ask, I’m going to tell you anyway.)
When I noticed that the WordPress software had just been updated - information here - I went over to my Plugins page and activated the Instant Upgrade plugin by Alex Günsche of Zirona. To my complete and utter astonishment, the plugin worked as advertised, and I had absolutely none of the problems that Mr. Günsche spoke of with regard to implementing the plugin. As advertised, the update was fully automatic, and it took only a split second.
Of course, before using the software, I backed up my database tables. I already had copies of all the other files that I use in my WordPress blog that I download as needed. I learned a long time ago that backups are a lifesaver, even if one isn’t having a near-death experience.
For database backups I use two programs - WP-DB Manager by GaMerZ, and WordPress Database Backup. The latter does timed backups, depending on the schedule you set, and will email, download, or store on-site my WordPress database backups.
Thank you very much, Alex Günsche.
There’s more to it than meets the eye
Dreamland IX
I’ve been reading a paper — The Sexual Harassment of Uppity* Women by Jennifer L. Berdahl (Journal of Applied Psychology 2007, Vol. 92, No. 2, 425-437) — that posits that the target of sexual harassment is perhaps the woman who is least identified as being the target: that is, she is not of the ‘attractive woman’ mystique, but rather is more ‘one of the boys’.
Ms. Berdahl did three studies
“to test the prediction that women who violate feminine ideals are most likely to be sexually harassed in ways traditionally identified as harassing to women.”
In other words, rather than testing once again that the victim of sexual harassment is the traditionally desirable, good-looking and attractive woman, she examined the role played by women who take on characteristics more acceptable to men.
Traditionally, harassers were thought to be motivated by sexual desire towards their victim, or were motivated by a desire for power over their victim. Through her testing, the author was able to show that, in fact, the victims of sexual harassment were more likely to be women who were dominant or more masculine in their workplace environment, and in fact the harasser may be motivated by a hostility towards women who demonstrate a seemingly more masculine persona.
Ms. Berdhal does admit that the sample sizes in her study were small, and that much more research is required before any definite conclusions can be obtained.
I find this all rather interesting in light of some of Sonny’s predilections for the women in his life:
- Lulu, his wife, charges through everything, not letting anything stand in her way. She raised their three children pretty much the way she wanted to, and from what I could see, Sonny didn’t participate a lot. Lulu and her sisters were sexually abused by their father, while their bipolar mother slipped in and out of awareness of what was going on.
- Celia was pretty much a fast-talking, hard-living lost soul who raised herself and was tough as nails. She was outspoken, too.
- Although I didn’t personally know the woman who he was chasing on the run down to Mexico, she certainly wasn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll leave that to you, dear reader, to decide on his motivation for that one.
- Erin was a no-bullshit kind of woman, pretty yet vulnerable. She had hard edges, but she didn’t appear to be overly tough on the outside, although she could be one of the boys if she had to. She dumped an abusive husband after he fathered her two children.
- Sonny’s present love monkey is just what the doctor ordered. She’s tough, hard-edged, outspoken and filled with anger at anyone and everyone. She too fits the profile perfectly. In fact, she’s pretty much a mirror personality of Sonny’s father.
Of course, it’s easy to sit back on a sofa — fat, dumb and happy — and pretend to think that any of this might apply to Sonny, but it is suspicious in its relevance to his situation. The fact that he appears to prefer women similar to those noted in the study is remarkable in itself.
* uppity: taking liberties or assuming airs beyond one’s station; presumptuous: “was getting a little uppity and needed to be slapped down” –American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2004.
Plugin blues
After installing the http:BL WordPress Plugin and successfully walking stumbling through building a new table for it in my WP database, today I discovered this: http:BL Lite. No database table modifications are required, since data logging is not built in.
Here’s what the author says:
The primary difference between http:BL Lite and the original http:BL WordPress Plugin is that my version does not include the logging feature. I did not feel that it was necessary and preferred the simplicity of the plugin prior to logging being added. After stripping out all of the code pertaining to the logging feature, redesigning the plugin’s option page, and cleaning up various aspects of the code, I decided to release my rendition…
I jumped on that bandwagon immediately and removed the long-winded http:BL, and replaced it with the much cleaner http:BL Lite. I’ll keep my database table addition, just in case.
Keeping it up
Tire pressure, that is
On a motorcycle, there are only two things keeping you upright, both of them critical to doing the job, and both of them manufactured out of rubber. When you think about it, two small patches of rubber aren’t much. The condition of those two rubber patches and the material surrounding them is critical to survival.
Ambient air temperature variations cause fluctuations in tire pressure. A change in air temperature of 10 degrees F. (5 degrees C.) will cause tire pressure to change by one pound.
Tire manufacturers show up at rallies all the time, and through their exercises we learn that up to 80 percent of all motorcycles have underinflated tires. Without a doubt, tire pressure is the most ignored problem affecting a motorcycle and its handling and stability. Too little pressure and your tires will overheat and cause premature wear. You’ll look funny wobbling down the interstate trying to pull off to the side of the road. You’ll have plenty to talk about with your riding friends when you tell them about your bike’s handling problems. On the other hand, I suppose it’s a good excuse to look for a new bike with better handling characteristics.
Avoid it all and check your tire inflation presures, and then when you discover that you’ve only got 20 pounds of air in the rear tire, and a garage isn’t nearby, fire up this little beauty:
It’s less than 10 bucks, it only takes a few minutes to take it out of the plastic housing, and after the fan is cut off with a hack saw, it’s ready to go. I added an on/off switch to mine, and I installed a Powerlet jack to replace the alligator clips that were used to connect to the battery. The Powerlet is compatible with BMW, Triumph and Ducati outlets.
I threw one of these — barebones, stripped of its plastic case — into a saddlebag years ago. I’ve used it exactly twice on my own motorcycle and three or four times on those of others who got a surprise when they checked their tire pressure.
For the long distance rider who finds himself in the middle of nowhere, it’s an item you shouldn’t be without, even if you subscribe to a tow package. A tubeless tire repair kit would be an added bonus for those who don’t run with tubes.
MADDOG MegaVault 3.5″ hard drive enclosure
Since last week’s AcomData fiasco, I’ve had an eye on obtaining another 3.5-inch hard drive enclosure. For ten bucks more than the AcomData, I discovered the MADDOG MegaVault version - Model MD-AEN350COM. It’s a nice little package with a black anodized case. The huge power-on indicator is up front, and the switch and connectors are located on the back.
It comes with USB2.0 and Firewire 1394 support. Power and both interface cables are included. For those of you still using Win98, a CD with drivers is included for USB1.1. The manual even shows how to format and partition the drive if you’ve not already done that.
After the simple task of installing my hard drive (don’t forget to set the jumpers to “master”) into the MADDOG, I plugged into the desktop, powered up the MegaVault, and voila! The drive appeared. If I want to use the drive with Firewire on my laptop, I’ll need to get a 6-pin to 4-pin FW adapter. That’s not a major problem since it also supports USB2.0.
The drive can be stored flat, or on edge with the supplied clear plastic stand. The stand isn’t the greatest, but it works. I’ve noticed that the hard drive appears to run substantially warmer when on its edge, so I set the drive flat on my table for the coolest running. I’ve had the drive running for a couple of hours now, and there’s no excess heat buildup since laying it flat.
I’m happy with it.
More WordPressWorld anti-spam plugins
Spam is a constant problem for blog sites. Consequently, I tend to scour the WordPress Plugin site for anti-spam plugins. I currently use Akismet, and it works exceptionally well. Thank you very much, Akismet.
I think I’ve found another good one. From the http:BL site:
“The http:BL WordPress Plugin allows you to verify IP addresses of clients connecting to your blog against the Project Honey Pot database. Thanks to http:BL API you can quickly check whether your visitor is an email harvester, a comment spammer or any other malicious creature. Communication with verification server is done via DNS request mechanism, which makes the query and response even quicker. Now, thanks to http:BL WordPress Plugin any potentially harmful clients are denied from accessing your blog and therefore abusing it.”
After installing http:BL in my plugin folder, I discovered that my WordPress database needed a new table for the http:BL plugin to record its data. lunarpages.com provides access via cPanel to MySQL account maintenance. From the bottom of that page, I selected phpMyAdmin.
On the right sidebar, I selected my database, which in my case was worp1, and then selected Databases from the main page.
The names of my databases appeared next. I then selected the name of the database for which I wanted to add the table.
When the new page came up, it showed all of my current tables in my selected database.
At the bottom of this page, I chose Create new table on database. I typed in the name of the table I wanted to create, and the number of fields in my new table.
Fortunately, ht:BL has included a php file (I wasn’t able to run the script) - httpbl_log.sql - with the information I needed to create the database table
CREATE TABLE `wp_httpbl_log` (
`id` INT( 6 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`ip` VARCHAR( 16 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘unknown’ ,
`time` DATETIME NOT NULL ,
`user_agent` VARCHAR( 255 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘unknown’ ,
`httpbl_response` VARCHAR( 16 ) NOT NULL ,
`blocked` BOOL NOT NULL
from which I was able to glean the six field identifiers (id, ip, time, user_agent, httpbl_response, blocked) for the creation page that popped up next. From the above, I filled in the appropriate field information, and was sure to scroll to the far right to insert all of the field information in the form, especially the PRIMARY KEY identifier.
When I viewed the actual code for the routine I created, I saw that it added at the bottom of the routine, TYPE = MYISAM ; After comparing it to the existing database table types, I saw that it was correct for the type of database I had just created.
Upon completion, a new table (The table is working. I checked later in the day and found data written to the table. Success!) was inserted into my WordPress database.
That was simple, wasn’t it?
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