Darth Apathy » State of the Blog

State of the Blog

Vic — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:46:06 +0000

No, I have not forgotten about the blog. In fact, there are some things going on in the background that I have been working on for a while. The roll out of these changes will take place soon, and I am sure my loyal readers (all four of you) will appreciate those changes.

I’m still standing

Vic — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:13:07 +0000

Yeah, I’m still here. Summer break is over, so it’s time to jump back into things with both feet. What better way to kick things off than with a song of defiance?

I’m Still Standing
by Elton John

You could never know what it’s like
Your blood like winter freezes just like ice
And there’s a cold lonely light that shines from you
You’ll wind up like the wreck you hide behind that mask you use

And did you think this fool could never win
Well look at me, I’m coming back again
I got a taste of love in a simple way
And if you need to know while I’m still standing you just fade away

Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I’m still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind

I’m still standing yeah yeah yeah
I’m still standing yeah yeah yeah

Once I never could hope to win
You starting down the road leaving me again
The threats you made were meant to cut me down
And if our love was just a circus you’d be a clown by now

Blog Funkiness

Vic — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:28:00 +0000

It’s Spring Cleaning™ time here at the blog, which means it’s time to make some changes. As usual, when I start playing around with the blog, on both the front end or the back end, things might start acting a little weird. The weirdness will go away when I eventually figure out what the hell I’m doing.

The goal in this paricular endeavor is to do a clean up of the way the blog presents itself. I’m trying to go for a neater, more organized look. I’m not sure if I want to keep the logo at the top, but it’s better than just a plain text greeting, I guess.

What do you folks think?

Blog update

Vic — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 08:55:41 +0000

I’ve been working on some of the backend coding to improve the performance of the blog. An area that has received special attention is the spam filtering code. One of the things that has been added is a more effective IP banning script. Previously, banned IPs could still view the blog, but any comments from those IPs would be tagged as spam. The new script completely denies all access; banned IPs cannot view the site at all. More specifically, banned IP ranges cannot view the site, as I don’t block just one IP – I ban entire subnets.

There will probably be a few more changes in the blog’s workings, so if things start to get screwy, it’s probably my fault. If something goes wrong, just wait a few minutes, and I’ll have it fixed quickly.

That went well

Vic — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:05:15 +0000

I decided to spend a little time working on the blog tonight. I was attempting to tighten up the spam filtering to block some asshat in Amsterdam. In the process, I managed to completely disable the entire blog. So much for my scripting expertise.

Attention spammers

Vic — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 14:31:49 +0000

When you attempt to spam my blog, keep in mind a few things

1. I don’t care what it is you’re trying to sell. I’m not interested.

2. I will ultimately defeat any measure you use to spam this blog.

3. I work as a system analyst for a webhosting company. If you spam my blog with an IP address hosted by this company, you can be assured your account with this company will be cancelled within minutes of me identifying your server. You know, kinda like the asshole I took care of this morning.

Have a nice day, and go fuck yourselves.

Time

Vic — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 08:06:34 +0000

Once again, I’m sitting here at work maintaining an eagle-eyed vigilance over the network and preventing ne’er-do-wells from assaulting our sacred network. Okay, okay. I’m sitting here on my ass looking at a bunch of squiggly little lines playing out across five different monitors, but that doesn’t sound quite as dramatic, don’t you think?

My new job entails me sitting here and keeping an eye on things. Oh, it also entails stopping server attacks, preventing IP conflicts, and rebooting random servers – just to keep people guessing. This gives me some time to think about whatever little rants I want to write. It also gives me some time to get caught up on my homework, so I’m not going to gripe overmuch.

As a result of this, you’re probably going to be seeing a lot of late-night rants about a number of topics, from politics to whatever thorn is currently poking me in the side.

No more Yahoo

Vic — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:06:06 +0000

Over the last week, I’ve been inundated with spam orginating from Yahoo email addresses. Until further notice, all Yahoo addresses are banned from posting on this blog.

Changes

Vic — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 19:16:44 +0000

I’m re-writing a theme for this blog. If the blog starts going crazy, then it’s probably my fault.

Technorati nonsense

Vic — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:10:09 +0000

A quick glance at the upper right hand corner of the blog shows my participation in Technorati. I wonder about the usefulness of this, especially since, according to Technorati, I haven’t updated my blog in 50 days. Their “update ping” is utterly useless.

What good is having a tool around when that tool works about as well as the current batch of Katrina refugees remaining in Houston?