These are the thoughts of Matt, unless otherwise indicated.
The system is dying.
This day, it is a virus. Death shall come soon to this honeypot.
Yes, very soon.
(Update 5/31/06 01:18 -0600 MDT: It is the ever-popular SpywareQuake program… from what I’ve read, it doesn’t look very harmful - just a piece of adware. We’ll see how difficult removal is.)
Right, so it looks like AOL hates DreamHost.
Perhaps not the entire company, just their customers. I really wish they’d start seeing things from the point of view of the people who give them money on a regular basis - their own customers. I have personally sent numerous emails to the AOL postmaster (from my AOL accounts), asking them to fix their damn mail blocks.
I have always hated AOL’s server-side mail shankers. Back when email over at vandusens.us still worked (yet another problem I’ve been trying to get fixed; long story there), I made several attempts to have my domain whitelisted on the AOL server, just so I could send email to my own accounts over there. They never would do it, because the server was shared between 1000 domains. Well, ever since I moved to Dreamhost (the 23rd largest web host in existance), it’s been rather spotty. I can send mails one day, but not the next. And of course, if any of my members (forums; blog; etc.) register with an AOL address, they will bounce on a regular basis, generating several problems for me.
The problem is, Dreamhost’s mail servers are fixed up on AOL’s servers to be able to send mail there - but if their servers trigger a volume alert (which they do on a daily basis, being one of the larger hosting companies), ALL domains are instantly blacklisted by their robots, and a human has to come reset them. Of course, several spammers DO reside on Dreamhost, and they are dealt with in a most brutal fashion. That still doesn’t stop most large domains from blacklisting their servers; therefore, they are creating an environment where if one is on a large email service (i.e. AOL, hotmail, gmail, yahoo), then all mail is sent but not all mail is recieved. However, if if you have a smaller service (i.e. mattfast1.com), you recieve all mail but cannot send to some trigger-happy servers.
There needs to be a better solution than having blacklists consisting of IP addresses. Perhaps we can start actually targeting spammers AND the companies that hire them to make them stop - permanently.
We all knew running around in the sprinklers is fun.
But does anyone know how much fun it is to run around in the sprinklers naked at 2:45 in the morning?
Because that’s what I just did!
WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(UPDATE 5/28/06 8:59am: The next best thing is getting into a nice warm bed directly afterward.)
So I’m driving down Hampden earlier today on my way home from my grandma’s house, and what should I see right after the speed changes? Why, nothing but the Laser indicator on my radar detector going wild. Well, I thought the speed limit was 65, so I slow down to 70, which is within a reasonable amount, and I still get pulled over. The office politely informs me that the speed limit is 45 and that he will have to issue a summons for Sheridan municipal court.
So, if you need me on June 8th around 6pm… you know where to find me.
And you know I’ll still be speeding to work tonight.
So, now that I’ve finally figured out what website keeps spamming me (unitedpharma - online . com - spaces added to prevent automated linking) with their referers, I’ve done something about it. Anytime someone refered from that domain wants to come to my website, they get a big fat 403 error. Not only that, but the files and directories they are requesting? Well, those will dump anyone who tries to visit them out to Google so they can find something they were looking for. It’s not like I’m hurting my users, since those files and directories DON’T EXIST and never will.
More on this later, as I collect results from my current experiments. However, as of my last stats run (about an hour ago), I have 1,611 code 301 redirects listed, where I had none on this domain before I implemented this. I hate to spam google… I need to find a place more deserving of recieving my referer spam… any ideas?
When will these people stop doing dumb things?
Yesterday, when I walked in to work, I was given the news from my team lead: she was going to be trading jobs with one of our GSTLs; she would be learning how to manage the front lanes, and he would come back to Starbucks. (Incidently, this is the same GSTL who was my team lead before I started at Starbucks.) The only reason provided to us by the ETLs is that she did her job too well at Starbucks, and they wanted to give her a challenge.
The thing about the whole thing that really stinks is that she wasn’t given an option. They didn’t ask whether she would like to leave Starbucks; rather, they told her that she would be leaving. At least when I’ve moved my workcenters, they’ve always asked… well, except for that first time when they moved me off the sales floor. Then again, if they’d asked me then, I would have said “YES PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!”. A rather moot point, I suppose.
So what does that mean for me? Well, I have spoken to the guy who’s taking over, and he has told me that he not only wants to get everyone on a set weekly schedule, but he wants to have a mid from 9-5 every day. What will probably happen is, he’ll start looking at the schedule (with 4 of us working full-time and 2 part-timer college students home for the summer) and he’ll figure out that he’s got people who want 160 hours, and he’s only got 120-130 every week to work with. Then he’ll see that he can’t do the mids he wants, so he’ll have to start comprimising, putting some mids as 10-2 and cutting back opening and closing shifts - just like Brandy has had to do since the first of the year.
Then, we’ll probably start having him look at the schedules for Guest Service, Cashier, and Cart Attendant to fill some hours with. If he starts doing that, I’ll volunteer for those shifts, especially if I know Brandy is going to be the GSTL on duty at the time. After all, she’s always been my favorite team lead (which is part of the reason I started at Starbucks in the first place), and even though Starbucks is still my favorite workcenter (for now), having her over there might make the shifts a little more bearable.
So, I’ve been looking at the CPU usage reports that DreamHost generates for all shared users, and I found a disturbing trend: I use somewhere around 25% of the CPU minutes on the machine known as Caesar. What do I use it on? Well, on a day when I don’t access my site via SSH, I see awstats.pl running for 5424.4800 CPU seconds, attempting to generate readable statistics for me. Other big users are php.cgi at 552.6800 CPU seconds, and perl at 24.0800 seconds. That 5424.4800 CPU seconds ALONE is worth 22.608% of the CPU seconds utilized by ALL users on Caesar that day.
They’ll probably move me to a different (hopefully, more powerful) server at some point… y’know, where there might be 5 high users on the same machine, and we duke it out for access to the resources. Either that, or I can try to reduce usage. I think I might try that… perhaps running the stats every hour IS a little too much… but I actually do use that info. So who knows what I’ll do?
I have finally published my 101 things in 1001 days list.
You can find it on the blog I just set up, specifically for tracking my progress on this list. You can find the blog sitting right here, and the list is posted right there as well. Feel free to comment.
Oh, yeah: those of you who only follow my site through my livejournal feed, you won’t see anything over there about the list anymore - at least, not until someone actually sets up a syndicated account over there for the new feed. If and when that happens, you will be notified. Now, time to go away and go to work in about 6 hours. I’ll post more over in the 1001 blog later.
I have found my inspiration to turn my life around. I am going to do what so many people have already started: I have made a list of 101 goals for the next 1001 days, and as I cross them off I’ll give you reports of what I’m doing.
I thought today might be a good time to start - after all, on this day (Wednesday, May 17, 2006), I am exactly 1001 weeks old. So, the list starts now. It will be posted around here later today though, since it is currently 2:21am and I have to work at 10. Look for the list sometime around 11pm Mountain Time. Barring any currently unforeseen circumstances, I should have the list up and posted then.
(This list was inspired by Triplux, which seems to be the one who thought this up - genius idea!)
I had a bad feeling about today when I woke up.
That was the first thing I thought when I woke up. I thought, “Jeez, this day’s gonna be terrible.” Then, I looked at the clock. 7:15. Dang, that means I still have a while to kill, since I don’t go in to work until 9:30. Fast forward to 9:20, when I can’t get my car started because the battery is so dead. So, I finally get it started, get to work 10 minutes late to find a huge rush at Starbucks. About an hour later, the phone rings, and it’s Nathan on the line, calling out for his shift tonight. So, since no one else will close, I end up “volunteering” to do it, which makes my day 10 hours long.
At least I’ll be paid well for it.