Rants

Help A Noobie Out

This morning I got an email telling me that I was getting close to exceeding my bandwidth for the month. Interesting, that’s never happened before. So I checked my stats and sure enough I’ve served up 8.6 Gigs out of my 10 alloted.

Things were running about normal until the 23rd of the month and then usage quadrupled. Normally I was using between 150-200MB a day when all of a sudden it jumped to over 900MB. Visits and hits stayed pretty much the same, but pages went way up. The biggest page served was “/archives/ miatatude/” which is automatically generated when requested.

Further delving into the stats, a lot of external links had web addresses with names like: http://phentermine.us.tt – http://phentermine.dnc.pl – http://phentermine.rocken.de – http://phentermine.220v.org – http://party-poker.dnc.pl – http://www.cialis.wczasy.com – http://hgh.dnc.pl – http://hydrocodone.dnc.pl- http://www.rape.wczasy.com

Next I looked in the raw access logs and found a bunch of entries that looked like this: 210.0.200.2 – – [26/Aug/2005:00:00:08 -0500] “GET /archives/miatatude/ HTTP/1.0” 200 26131 “http://phentermine.us.tt” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7” and 148.244.150.58 – – [26/Aug/2005:00:02:00 -0500] “GET /archives/miatatude/ HTTP/1.0” 200 1723287 “http://phentermine.rocken.de” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7”

I did some reading up on deciphering that mumbo-jumbo and what is really strange is that both those requests are for the same web page, but for one a lot more info is returned, but the big question is what is going on here? I found like the top ten IP addresses doing this requesting and denied them access so they will get a 403 instead content. What really worries me is this looks a lot like comment spam roaches, you squash one and several more crawl out from the base boards. Am I going to have to check my logs daily and ban IPs until I close every one?

Upgradation

Last Friday this web site went off line for several hours. I checked someone else who who uses the same host and his site was up when mine was down. Well, We Are The Cips met the same fate as Mr-Miata a day later. Tom decided to open a help ticket (something I couldn’t do, as that feature was down at the same time as I was) and here is a synopsis of of it went:

Monday 8/15 at 11:59am – I open the ticket with the following:
What happened this weekend? According to Intersteer, my site was down from Saturday 8/13 2:09pm to Sunday 8/14 10:09am. I also received an email from another customer that their site was down as well. Also what is going on with the forums? I went there first looking for information and they are not up. Thanks.

Monday 8/15 at 12:51pm – Their reply and they closed the ticket.
Hi,
The site wearethecips.com is loading normal now without any problem and our NOC Engineers are monitoring the log files for your site downtime and update you once we received information for them.
Thanks,
Support Team.

There were a few more entries back and forth that I will not bore you with but the gist of each one was they would close the ticket with no explanation of the down time and I would reopen in. Below is my last entry and their reply.

Sunday 8/21 at 3:10am (I couldn’t sleep)
Why do you keep closing this ticket. No one has answered my question. What was the reason for the down time last Saturday (8/13/2005).
Thanks.
Tom

Sunday 8/21 at 4:27am (Cut and pasted right from the ticket)
Hi,
We had some upgradation done on the server due to which there was a downtime and everything is back to normal. You will definitely be intimated if there is any hereafter.
Kind Regards,

I echo Tom’s sentiment in his last email to me, “Let’s
hope there is no more upgradation in the near future.”

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 281

Forced Night Off

Almost.

When I got home from work there was no new email at any of the mr-miata.net accounts. Strange. Especially seeing as I had sent an email from work to one of them. Clicked on Send and Receive All in OE and got nothing. Checked for this web page, 404. Tried to connect via FTP, couldn’t find site. Checked the web host’s forum for a maintenance update announcement, their site was 404 too. Not good. Checked the web host’s parent site (he is just a reseller) and it was alive, at least that is a good sign.

I hope this wasn’t a repeat of my ThatHostingCompany fiasco. After they disappeared with mastersmiataclub.com I swore I would never let the web host register the domain name for me, but here I was again, seduced by the low cost, right in the same pickle again. Wait a minute, that reminds me, a fellow THC exile is also using the same host (ssWebHost.com) maybe I’ll check his site. It appears fine. That’s strange, maybe it is a random hard drive crash and I’m on the wrong platter.

I don’t know how long I was down, last time I looked was last night, but mr-miata.net was back online at around 9:30 tonight. First thing I did was do a back up of the “Life of Brian.” I was long overdue, last one was March.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 271

Bike Afternoon (sort of)

Two weekends ago before we went for our little bike ride I noticed that there was a slight wobble in the rear wheel. Living dangerously I broke out the spoke wrench and gave 3 or 4 spokes around a full turn. Loosened two and tightened two depending on which direction I needed to pull the rim. I got most of the blip out, but after our ride the wobble was back. Time for a professional. Last Thursday I dropped off the wheel at the local bike shop and when the mechanic went to put the wheel on the truing stand, she noticed my problem right off, the rim was cracked at one of the spoke holes and the nipple was puling through.

We had to order a new rim, so she said give her a week. This afternoon we went and picked up my newly rebuilt wheel. She was just finishing up the job when we arrived, putting the tire tire back on and pumping it full of air. We were planning on a late afternoon bike ride, but I had a few hours so I just put the wheel in the garage. The rains came this afternoon, so riding was out, but I went out to put the wheel on the bike because Plan B would be an early morning ride on Sunday. The tire as flat.

I pulled out a patch kit from a cabinet and the rubber cement for applying the patches was long evaporated. Donna has some glueless patches in the seat bag of her bike, I could use them. I found the hole easy enough and applied the patch. Pumped up the tire and mounted on the bike. A couple hours later I checked the tire, flat again. We never did have good luck with those glueless patches. We may head out and get a patch kit tonight or forget about the bike ride tomorrow and go for a hike in Hitchcock Woods.

All I Want For Christmas Is…

…a subscription to People Magazine. Caught a blurb about this while channel surfing the other day and in this morning’s paper there was a small article about it too. Brittany Murphy will be the new Jordache jeans girl. It was said and written with almost breathless excitement, so I know that Brittney Murphy is a famous person, I just don’t know what she is famous for. Singer? Actress? Reality TV Show Star?

I feel so left out.

How Much?

This is from the Friday before last:

Every Sunday for the past month I have had to go out and put air in the left rear tire of the MSV. I put 30psi in and a week later it is down to 15. Never really have had a chance to get it taken care of, but as we had the afternoon off today I figured it be as good a time as any. We came home and picked up the car and headed down by the mall. There is a Goodyear store right next to a Chinese Buffet that would be perfect to go eat lunch at and wait for them to fix the tire.

The perky girl behind the counter took down my information and the car’s information and said that it would be $27.71. To which I said, “I just want a flat fixed, not a new tire. Why so much?” “Well,” she says, “We have to patch it, then rebalance it and then there is the new valve stem.” “Valve stem? Huh? That is way too much, the last time I had a flat fixed elsewhere it was $15,” I tell her. She sighs and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll see what I can do to cut you a break.” She points at a stack of 2-liter Pepsi bottles and says, “Take one. It’s free because of a promotion.” No thanks,” I reply, “Dr. Pepper’s my drink.” Donna and I leave to get lunch.

When we are done eating we walk back over to the Goodyear place and the car is in a different spot, so we figure it is done. When we enter the store the perky clerk says, “It’s ready. That’ll be $18.41.” I write her a check and as I head to the door I turn to her and say, “I think I will take one of those Pepsi 2-litters. I can sell it on eBay and recoup some of my costs.” She wishes us a good weekend.

Do they tell you that it is $27 so you will feel good about paying $18 for a $15 job? My favorite bit from the invoice is: “Shop Supplies*…$1.19.” The asterisk leads to the bottom of the page and an explanation, “*Shop supply fees cover misc materials used in servicing your vehicle that do not appear elsewhere on this invoice and for profit.” What you aren’t making enough profit charging $25 and change to fix a flat!?!

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 238

Appliance Schizophrenia

This afternoon when I cracked the first ice cube tray and dumped it in the bin I noticed that there were fresh ice maker ice cubes in there. Huh?!? Did turning the temp down fix it? Did removing the filter fix it? Was it a combination of both? Why did it take 48 hours instead of the 24 mentioned in the troubleshooting section of the Refrigerator Use & Care Guide? Or does the fridge have issues?

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 238