kasia in a nutshell

It's a Saturday, so after spending several hours doing my usual geek stuff, taking my usual morning run and various other regular activities I decided to finally install the cycling computer I bought several months ago.. Once installed, of course I had to try it out.Normally you would see me zipping down hills on trails in a park somewhere, but due to my inherent laziness (whole five minutes to put the rack on the car!) I just went for a spin in my local suburbia. In misty rain.

I learned some new things from this experience.

• You can do all sorts of weird things in Connecticut suburbs, from walking your cat on a leash to painting tiger stripes on your car -- but strap a camera to your back and take out the two wheeler for a spin and you're the weirdest thing since the Keebler elves.


• Do not mess with large women exiting large shopping plazas in large cars for they are angry and have more bulk than you.


• Twelve miles on a bike is a lot easier than twelve miles running and really shouldn't be considered exercise.


• Bugs look much scarier at a distance of five millimeters from your sunglasses.


• Riding on sidewalks is only marginally safer than riding on streets. On one you have 2-ton vehicles driven by insane soccer moms - on the other - seventy year old angry people with canes, hatred in their eyes and crackling backs. You do the math.


• One big, barking dog with lots teeth provides about 5 more miles per hour in your average speed (see, that cycling computer is handy).

I think I'll do it again tomorrow.

Posted by kasia at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Stewart asked me about the netflix queue listing I used to have on my weblog.. (was a pain in the ass to maintain due to page design changes and expiring cookies, not worth the hassle) which made me think..

Wouldn't it be cool if you could get your netflix queue as an RSS feed? Password protected.. of course.. don't want the whole world to know the particular brand of pornography I enjoy.. (wink)

Posted by kasia at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you're using spamassassin and have rbl checking turned on, it's pretty important to either turn it off or hack your spamassassin install to not use osirusoft anymore. Due to some wonderful DOS attacks the service has become totally unreliable (more offline than on) and when it does return results they're unpredictable. It flagged several of my e-mail as coming from open relays.. ones I knew for a fact were not... So you could be dropping email and not even know it.

To turn off rbl checks in spamasassin:

skip_rbl_checks 1

To just turn off osirusoft, you can be an idiot like I and hack the .cf files.. or just use the simple directions over here (thanks Steve).

Posted by kasia at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

It went something like this.. (variable names changed to protect the innocent)

public List getWhatever(int id) throws NotFoundException
{

    return (List) thisList;
}

Just like that.. stupid casts and all.. *banging head on wall*

Posted by kasia at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

As spotted by one of our mods.. this spywareinfo.com article uses materials taken from dslreports forums without acknowledgment or for that matter, permission.

Now, we all know that pretty much anything posted on a public forum becomes de facto public domain.. however, if you're going to stick a copyright notice on something you've taken from elsewhere.. please make sure you credit the original authors.. Asking permission might be nice too!

Their copyright notice:

This article is located at http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/direcway/. © 2001-2003 Mike Healan. If copied in its entirety to message boards, blogs, and newsgroups, this notice must be included with it. Please see our terms of use for more information.

Original materials posted here and here.

Well, Mike Healan, you can't copyright something that doesn't belong you. I'm sure you're just learning about this whole web-publishing dealy.. but how about acknowledging those users whose screenshots you used? Hmm?

Posted by kasia at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Don't forget.. Today is the day Mars will be closest to Earth since the Neanderthals. Of course, I think the Neanderthals may have had better digital photography equpiment than I.

Posted by kasia at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's finally out on DVD.. I've been waiting to buy it for a long, long time.. and, ironically enough, picked it up at Walmart today (of all places.. hey, LOTR too).

It's such a depressing documentary.. not just the violence, but our society in general.. and now before everyone jumps out with evidence how Moore staged some of the material. Save it.. I've heard it all, doesn't change the fact that we are a society living in fear.

My particular fear right now is of the SUV-driving (hey, gotta get those kids to school over the rocky, paved roads of suburbia -- can't have them walking a whole mile!) neighbors. But that's not new.. I'm just more depressed about it now.

Manson has it right.. scare the crap out of them then sell them an Acura.

With a car alarm.

A gun-rack?

Posted by kasia at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

.. or Karl rants some more about lazy, unemployed IT workers.

Rant on, Karl, it's very true.

Posted by kasia at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Some virus statistics.. To a mail server with around 800 users..

Week statistics:

Total msgs Received: 103730
Total msgs Sent:      15899
Spam:                   507
Misc Viruses:            81
Sobig rejects:         5473

Peaked on Wednesday.. has been going down a bit since.. but still coming in at a rate of over 1000 a day.

Posted by kasia at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the 'lazy entry' department:

• Matt whines about wines -- Just pick Pinot Grigio.. always safe (that's assuming you don't eat meat) and sounds cool.


• Jeremy enumerates dumb things you hear around the office -- and of course already several comments about TPS reports..


• Derek makes the claim dating sucks.. he's right..


• Karl is always a good read I just wish he'd do it more often..

.. and no, no new powerbook yet.. waiting on the news.

Posted by kasia at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Flooding my bloody inbox.. I've gotten couple dozen copies of the damn thing before I put a stop to it by blocking it at the server level. It doesn't affect my pc, since I don't use windows, but it does affect my server resources, time and sanity (yes, it takes time to hit the delete button).

Postfix rocks.. and Steve has a tip on how to block the virus if you're using it.

Linux users may laugh at windows users.. but in reality we're all equally affected by these problems and insecurities. Maybe it's time to start attacking the real problem.. the idiots who write these things. You want to prove that windows is insecure? Give up.. it's been done.. thousands times over. It won't make your pathetic little life any fuller and it won't get you laid, it will just annoy the hell out of people like me. In other words, the people you really want on your side.

Posted by kasia at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Rumors about new powerbooks being released in the very near future.. and since my new one is backordered.. I've decided to cancel that order and wait for the really, really new ones.

I just wish someone would confirm the gossip :)

I did order a new iPod today though.. 15GB.. ah, I feel like a kid again.. all these new toys.

Posted by kasia at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Well, the three-oh one anyway. As of today I have lived for three whole decades. I should feel like an adult by now.. I don't. So to celebrate my 30th birthday I bought myself a playstation and spent several hours playing gran turismo 3. Not as much fun as gt4.. but I guess I'll have to wait for that one. It's the network-able version.. so anyone want to race me online once it's out? I should warn you.. I was 3rd in the contest at E3!!! (out of 4)

Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes.. One year ago.. I was whining about being 29 heh.

Posted by kasia at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Through the amazing powers of grep and various other assorted unix utilities I think I can conclusively say that whoever is the proud owner of 64.237.60.52 is a referer spammer.

Out of the 50 or so domains that two websites on my server were spammed with, this one IP is common to all.. and is the first hit with such referer.. consistent browser string, not a bot and very pingable.

NetTransactions, LLC CHOOPA-NETBLK01 NET-64-237-32-0-1
64.237.32.0 - 64.237.63.255
VIREX c/o Choopa.Com CHOOPA-64-237-60-0 NET-64-237-60-0-1
64.237.60.0 - 64.237.61.255

NetTransactions, what a surprise.

Posted by kasia at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (1)

A brand new 15" powerbook is making its slow way to my doorstep to serve as my brand new mobile computing unit to replace my rather old and quirky 400mhz dell mobile unit.

Neat.

Posted by kasia at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (2)

Now these lovely people are hitting my site as well.. and my conclusion is, they're just grabbing recently updated weblogs from weblogs.com or blo.gs.

Mark is exactly correct as to how it's done.. (see comments in my previous entry), it's a fake img link back to the weblog they're targetting.. So the IPs are not bots.. they're real users of said sites.. maybe if I published a running list of the IPs, their users will get annoyed enough that they will stop this? Maybe?

Maybe if every targetted blog did?

First hit recorded is probably the coder/owner..

Posted by kasia at 01:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (6)

What an annoyance, referer spam bots (a whole lot of them) hit my friend's website.. resulting in over 7000 hits today from nearly 2000 unique IP addresses. All for about 25 domains. All porn sites, of course.. all but one. We expect slimy behaviour from porn sites, right? That doesn't suprise anyone.. but it seems a wannabe webhosting company akiraweb is using this lovely method to advertise their website. Not nice.. So looking for hosting? Go elsewhere.. anywhere else. Don't give these assholes a dime.

For those who are already filtering referer spam with mod_rewrite rules.. here's a few domains to add [text file].

And here's a complete list of their 1574 unique IP address for your hosts.deny file.. not like they probably don't have more anyway.. but.. what the hell.. [Nevermind, see my comment below].

I'm annoyed.. they've been going at it for hours and are not stopping.. so.. akiraweb is now getting all this spam traffic.. have a taste of your own medicine guys... Thankfuly, these are stupid bots.. they do follow redirect.. tested and confirmed, heh. At least that's worth a modemecum of amusement.

Posted by kasia at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (5)

Complain to them about all those annoyings bugs here. I have a list.. I'll post it there as soon as enough noise opens up so I don't stick out like the sore, complaining, annoying thumb I am.

Just ask Jeremy.. he's listened to enough of my yim-for-linux rants by now.

"Oh look a link in a msg, let's click...[core dump]"

sigh.

[via Jeremy]

Posted by kasia at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

New worm out and its target is windowsupdate.com. Oh well.

Steve is doing analysis.. he's my tipster over at dslr.

Posted by kasia at 08:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I would offer my laptop, my desktop, my digital camera and my mp3 player for one non-humid day. Really.

Posted by kasia at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Let's have dinner.. or lunch.. or just coffee. What say you?

Posted by kasia at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I run every day. Almost, I take Sundays off. The picture is of my new friends, my old running shoes are getting worn out (I've had them since January) and I picked up a new pair. That's well over 300 miles since January.. running. It's probably not much for someone who has done it for years, but it's a lot for me. I run about 20 miles a week right now.. increasing it to 35 in a few weeks since I'm in the mid of training for a half marathon this coming October. Eight months ago I could barely run a mile after being sick for a week and not exercising for months. It feels good to be back in the swing of it. I'm slow, but I'm running (personal best is 5 miles in 45 minutes, not exactly speedy gonzales here). I read a post in a forum today.. that said essentially this (grammar errors included): hi unfortunately my family has a history of diabeties and now im 17 and i also have it im wondering if there is a short workout say 5-10 mins or so that would do real good since im real lazy to work out an hour a day to stay alive before the side effects took place That post scared me. Here's a 17 year old with a serious condition that is not willing to do anything more than a 5-10 minute workout a day.. I myself was not a vision of health at 17 (alcohol, smoking, partying all the time.. ) but I was active.. But this isn't how people are meant to be, sitting on our butts all day long.. no physical activity. Our bodies were meant for movement. Men used to hunt animals by running them down.. literally.. tiring them out by running. If our young people have this attitude (and not that I'm old, but I'm not a teenager anymore) what will happen to us in 30 years? I live in Connecticut, I'm sure most people realize our state has become the state of casinos lately.. went to Mohegan Sun for some fun a few Saturdays ago. What I noticed most is not how much money people lose (they really do, but it's just money) but how many people there were, well, fat. It's an ugly word, but it's true. People are fat and getting fatter. I've been guilty myself -- years of no exercise -- but at one point I decided enough is enough. These days I cannot imagine not exercising.. It's addicting. Yes, hard to start.. but if you stick with it, it's like a drug -- but good for you. It seems particularly poignant among computer geeks.. we have a reputation for being fat, lazy and slobs. It doesn't have to be true. I run.

Posted by kasia at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Nice pictures here.

Posted by kasia at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (2)

Sometimes even in the rain you can grab a decent snapshot.

Posted by kasia at 06:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Scenario I encountered recently which has me stumped..

• httpd at max showing many backed-up requests
• Incoming traffic is far below normal and pages load incredibly slowly (2-3min per request) -- understandable since most clients connecting are seeing timeouts and slow page loads -- I'm measuring traffic at eth level, so it's not just apache traffic but all traffic to the machine.
• outgoing traffic is also far below normal
• machine is near idle, far below normal on cpu and memory usage
• Plain text pages load just as slow as mod_perl pages
• Restarting httpd doesn't help.. server goes right up to maxing out on requests
• Cycling the box doesn't help.
• Http servers downstream are zippy and mostly idle, only receiving few requests from the main (the problematic one) server
• Everything else on the machine is fine.. no other issues that can be found.. log files are at their typical size, hard drive has plenty of room
• Firewall is logging absolutely nothing unusual
• No errors in any log files (systems and httpd)
• Scan of access_log shows nothing out of ordinary (other than fewer requests than normal due to slowness)
• The same slowness occurs when loading pages locally on the machine itself.
• Nameserver isn't the issue either.. nslookup to the two servers configured were zippy.

Now after couple hours of tearing my hair out, I shut the site down at which point it was only serving a very small text file with a "technical difficulties" msg for any request. This file was taking just as long to load as the pages when site was active. After 15 minutes or so of shutdown, the problem went away. Turned the site back on.. been on for hours, problem has not returned.

I'm suspecting some sort of httpd attack that threw apache in for some internal loop.. but then again, cpus were nearly idle, so it wasn't processing hard.. just spawning processes at the max and not returning pages.

Anyone have any ideas?

Posted by kasia at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)