66.98.210.44

9/2/2004

Not entirely sure what’s going on, but lately I’ve got a ton of fake referrer entries from various sites’ mt-comments.cgi — and they all come from one IP: 66.98.210.44 .

Luckily, I know the magic of .htaccess, so now nobody from “Everyone’s Internet” can read my page. And good damn riddance.

Here’s an example of the log files:


66.98.210.44 - - [02/Sep/2004:20:05:43 -0400] "GET /mt/archives/002005.html HTTP/1.1" 200 16969 "http://WWW.katiehood.COM/cgi/mt-comments.cgi" "Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.x"
66.98.210.44 - - [02/Sep/2004:21:22:24 -0400] "GET /mt/archives/001302.html HTTP/1.1" 200 17057 "http://zero12.securesites.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi" "Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.x"
66.98.210.44 - - [02/Sep/2004:21:39:55 -0400] "GET /mt/archives/001981.html HTTP/1.1" 200 17365 "http://www.thoughtbomb.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi" "Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.x"
66.98.210.44 - - [02/Sep/2004:22:26:51 -0400] "GET /mt/archives/001467.html HTTP/1.1" 200 16895 "http://www.graysathletic.co.uk/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi" "Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.x"

And the .htaccess file (doesn’t block EI’s whole range, but it’s good enough):


order allow,deny
deny from 66.98.210
allow from all

1 Comment | Site News | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

Magellan Sucks

8/31/2004

Laura got me a really nice Magellan Sportrak GPS receiver for my birthday, because she’s the best.

Unfortunately, I made the critical mistake of purchasing Magellan Mapsend Streets and Destinations — and actually trying to use it.

Here’s the resulting love letter I sent to Magellan:

    Wow. I am utterly amazed that your corporate headquarters isn’t a squatter camp in lower Bangladesh, although I’m sure it will soon be.

    Only a nest of leper-rotting unskilled nomadic vagrants could produce software of such putrid quality. I cannot — absolutely cannot– believe that I was suckered into buying such an absolute pile of curdled feces.

    “Description of the Issue”: I’m sure that somewhere in reams of paper used to snort up the vast trails of cocaine your senior management must have blown all the QA budget on, there was something called a ‘Spec’. And I’m reasonably sure that in that ‘Spec’ was a requirement for your software to “work”. Now, being as all of you illiterate scabrous hobos haven’t been able to “work” before — what with all the stumps and scabs and all — it’s no suprise to me that your software doesn’t do that “work” thing very well.

    I can understand your choice of Serial Port as the communication method of choice, considering that 1984’s technology is the tech du jour in the Bangladeshi Bayou. However, you could (just a suggestion) ensure that your maggot-ridden software really does work with said high-technological Com Port goodness, instead of repeatedly showing a “busy” status.

    Thank goodness you outsourced your documentation to your semi-literate Chinese cousins. Based on the cleverly-crafted yet completely incomprehensible mash of troubleshooting instructions, I now know that Palm’s HotSync software “regurgitated the leapt kitten laterally dynamic.” I’ll bet your last three CEOs got a big laugh out of that one, before they fled the country with their trophy brides.

    Since you guys can’t make any money by selling a decent, working product, you have to wait for slimeballs like Best Buy to sell it for you, where hapless customers can’t get a refund even after sacrificing their firstborn to the General Manager. Since I made the mistake of supporting your near-criminal activities, I’ll pay penance by setting this hellspawned ware on fire in my back yard.

    I hope to be reading about your demise on F*dCompany soon.

    Love, Unxmaal.

Comments Off on Magellan Sucks | Tech | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

Friendster

8/31/2004

Another blogger, fired for blogging.

Hint: you can cancel your Friendster account here.

1 Comment | Tech | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

iPod 3.0

8/24/2004

For my birthday [which isn’t until next week, so you still have time], I traded my 3rd Gen iPod to Daniel, and got myself a new 20GB 4th Generation iPod.

Comments Off on iPod 3.0 | Apple | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

Stanford XGrid

8/14/2004

I’ve set up my G4/500 to take part in the XGrid@Stanford project. By installing and running Apple’s XGrid client, you can donate CPU cycles to this project. Currently the project only has about 150 Macs, running at a total of 123Ghz.

Comments Off on Stanford XGrid | Apple | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

Misadventures in Printing

8/12/2004

Last week I went to Birmingham and set up my sister’s home wireless LAN. She’s only now gotten her very first computer, which is a 14″ G4 iBook. She’s already complained about “all the porn on the Internet”, and she’s sent her first dirty email Forward.

I’m so proud.

I’d decided to hand-me-down my old Linksys 802.11b access point to her, but when I set it up at her house, it promptly died. This involved much obscenity, and a few trips to Radio Trash. She ended up with a nice Linksys 802.11g AP/Router, and I had none.

By the weekend, Apple’s Reality Distortion Field had convinced me to get an Airport Express. “Why, I need an AP now, and I need to get a printer, and this thing has a built-in print server.. for $130, which is about the same price as that Linksys and a separate print server.”

Right. Enough rationalization for me; I bought it.

In short, the AX is a very nice, very full-featured 802.11g access point/router, and is very very small. I was concerned about signal strength, since it had no external antennae, and since the old Linksys barely reached throughout my whole house. The AX gives out a very loud signal — full signal strength all through the house. I haven’t yet checked to see just how far the signal goes, but I’m sure it extends pretty far from the house. WPA was very easy to set up on both the AX and the client laptops, which is pretty important for such a loud device. I didn’t play with the much-touted ‘streaming of music to your stereo’ feature, since my PC speakers are much better than my old stereo, and I just don’t care that much about that feature.

Next up was the printer.

I asked around, and determined that the HP Laserjet 1100 was both cheap and reliable, so I found one on Ebay, and had Laura snipe it for $85. That’s a pretty good deal for a low pagecount laser printer, plus toner cartridge.

On Tuesday, the printer arrived. “Great! Except.. what’s this? No USB?! NOOOO!!”

Right. The nice, cheap, reliable laser printer had no USB connector, rendering the print server features of the Airport Express completely useless.

Since I really didn’t want to connect the printer to my [slightly unstable and very unloved] Windows PC, after much anguish I went to Microcenter and got the D-Link Ethernet Print Server, for $60.

Excellent! When I got home, I eagerly ripped open the packaging, configured the D-Link through its little web interface, plugged it into the home LAN, and tried plugging it into the HP 1100.

Except the printer had a port that looked like this, and the D-Link had a connector that looked like this.

ARG!

And back to Microcenter, to pick up a Mini-Centronics to Centronics adapter, for $9.

After all of that, setting up the printer was easy. The D-Link made it especially easy, as it advertises its services via Rendezvous. One trick for OSX: the Gimp-Print DeskJet 230 drivers work in place of the HP 1100 drivers. HP also seems to make some OSX drivers, but good luck finding them.

So, the total cost for my nice, cheap, reliable printer was: $130 Airport Extreme, $85 printer, $20 shipping, $60 D-Link, $9 adapter = $304. Which is about what I’d pay for a new, low/mid-range USB laser printer.

2 Comments | Diary | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

Apple Stores

8/7/2004

Here’s everything you could possibly want to know about Apple retail stores — and then some.

Comments Off on Apple Stores | Apple | Permalink
Posted by Unxmaal

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