This was a pretty hectic weekend. I attended a 3-gun competition at Pine Island on Monday and spent most of the rest of the weekend doing major server upgrades (thanks Shell Shock). Unfortunately that means I didn’t get time to write anything. It also means that this site, which runs on one of my servers, may run like shit for a day or two while I shift virtual machines from physical machine to physical machine as I do upgrades. That also means the site may go down and come back up from time to time. I’m hoping to have all of the upgrades done by Wednesday but it will depend on my available time.
Tag: Site News
At Agorafest
Nothing to see here. I’m at Agorafest and since I have to help setup the mesh network and had to prepare two presentations I didn’t have time to scour the web for things to rant about. You should be at Agorafest instead of here anyways.
On Vacation
It’s time again for me to take a little vacation. In all likelihood I’m not going to have reliable network access for a few days so you shouldn’t expect any timely updates. However, as with previous vacations, I’ve taken the liberty of writing some posts beforehand so you won’t even know that I’m gone (except for the fact that I told you).
During this vacation I will not be responding to e-mails and comments from new commenters probably won’t get approved (your first comment has to be approved on my site as an anti-spam measure, sorry) until I return.
Technical Difficulties
Last night wrought a whole bunch of technical difficulties with the machine I usually write posts on. I’ll get some fresh material up later today but as of right now there’s nothing to see here. In the meantime here’s a picture of a tortoise cuddling with some dogs:
Nothing to See Here
Last night I was busy creating aggregate demand by helping tear down my friend’s old deck. Paul Krugman would have been proud since we destroyed the shit out of that old deck but he also would have been unhappy that we left the rest of the house standing. I would like to say we walked away without injury by a high speed 2×4 did manage to clip my friend in the knee. But that may have further stimulated the economy by encouraging him to drink more beer to help relieve the pain!
The point I’m trying to get at here is that I didn’t get around to blogging last night because I was wrecking shit. So if you want more content you’ll have to check back tomorrow.
I’m Back
Obviously there were no posts yesterday. As it turned out I had suffered a nasty sunburn Sunday. For me that means a very unpleasant allergic reaction that involves some of the worst pain imaginable. After a day of Benadryl and ibuprofen along with bags filled with ice I’m finally at the point where I can function again.
The only upside to this shit is that I tend to avoid being in direct sunlight for very long so my chances of getting skin cancer are probably lower than most. Let me just take a moment to give a gigantic middle finger to that fusion reactor our little spaceship continues to orbit.
Welcome to the New Server
Sorry for the lack of new content on Friday but I chose this weekend for server migration. Back in May I changed my server over to OpenBSD 5.3. Since then I’ve found OpenBSD to be a good server but upgrading it and adding features is a huge pain in the ass. Since I am my own server administrator and I have less free time than I did last year I’ve decided to change my server over the Ubuntu 14.04 Server. Why Ubuntu? Because it’s easy to setup, update, and there are guides for doing anything and everything posted all over the Internet. In other words I’m getting lazier in my old age.
I’m hoping this move will cut down on my maintenance time a bit. When Heartbleed struck I was basically left to compile a new version of Nginx with OpenSSL 1.0.1g in order to patch the vulnerability. The reason for this is because OpenBSD doesn’t offer much in the way of support for older versions of their operating system and if you want to use the patch provided by OpenBSD you have to download the operating system’s source code and compile the patch. That’s more headaches than doing sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade. While the OpenBSD method may be better in many regards it’s more time consuming and that’s a tradeoff I can’t afford at the moment.
Anyways there are likely a few bugs I haven’t figured out and fixed yet so bear with me.
I’m Back
Some of you may have noticed that the website was offline most of yesterday. As it turns out the SSL certificate for this domain expired yesterday, which was fine because I was going to have to revoke it due to the Heartbleet bug recently revealed in OpenSSL. Unfortunately I was traveling for business when this all happened so I decided to take the server offline until I could return home and get the problems fixed.
Yesterday I installed new versions of OpenSSL and Nginx to alleviate the Heartbleed bug and verified the fix via the Qualys SSL testing tool (this blog has an “A” rating). I also loaded a new certificate onto the server. Fortunately, thanks to the use of forward secrecy, any traffic that may have been intercepted from my server still remains undecryptable even if somebody did manage to exploit the Heartbleed vulnerability to acquire my private key.
Nothing to See Here
There’s nothing for you to see today and you can blame E. E. Knight for it. Baltic Gambit, the latest novel from the Vampire Earth series, was released yesterday and I spent a good chunk of the evening reading it instead of blogging. So far the book has been great so if you’re looking for something to read (which I’m assuming you are because you’re here) I recommend acquiring a copy.
Whose Cheerios Did I Piss In
Anybody who has sent an e-mail to my blog account knows that my response times are seldom speedy. I usually don’t touch my e-mail in any regard over the weekend so last night when I finally got around to checking the weekend’s e-mails I was surprised. Normally I get two or three e-mails on my blog account over the weekend but this weekend I received 43. 40 of these were from people who are apparently very upset with me. What I find most interesting about this slew of e-mails is that the accusations don’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Here are some of the more entertaining messages I received (poor grammar preserved for LULZ):
I found you nazi shitbag.
I don’t like nazi shit bags. You think you can write about white rights and get away with it? I’m going to call your host and have your site removed!!!! What do you have to say about that you piece of shit?
Um… good luck?
Hey you mens rights fuckhead, we know who you are. We don’t tolerate misogynists in Minneapolis. We’re going to burn your fucking house down.
Well that’s not very nice. Also, mens’ rights? I’m kind of curious where that accusation stems from.
You scumsucking shitforbrains. Im going to kill you you fascist piece of shit.
I’m sorry sir or ma’am but it appears as though there is a line forming to kill me. If you will take a number I’ll help you as soon as possible.
You think your so smart but we know where you live. You either take down this blog or we’re going to take you out. You have been warned.
Take me out where? I do enjoy Chinese food. Can we go somewhere that serves General Tso’s chicken?
Hey Christopher Burg,
Do you think you and spread your Nazi filth without getting your ass kicked? We’re going to put you in an oven and roast you alive. I hope you have your will in order.
I don’t recall writing any form of Nazi propaganda on this site. In fact, as an anarchist, I probably hate Nazis more than the most zealous social justice crusader. Also, as a word of warning, burning flesh and hair smells awful. Seriously, pluck a few hairs from your head and light them on fire then take a whiff. Do you really want to be smelling that for the several hours?
Christopher Burg,
Your a sexist racist nazi asshole. I take pleasure in killing sick fucks like you. I know where you live and I’m going to get you when you least expect it. When I do I’m going to start by skinning you slowly. I will take a strip of skin off of you with a vegetable peeler once an hour. Then I’m going to hang you from your arms and light a fire under your feet so they burn. Then I’m going to pour vinegar in your wounds. Then I’m going to make you drink rubbing alcohol until your insides turn to must. Then I’m going to finish it off by covering you in gasoline and lighting you on fire.
There are several things worth noting here. First, the art of closing a written message is dead. Not a single angry e-mail concluded with “Sincerely”, “Yours truly”, “I hope you die”, or anything like that. This saddens me. Second, I really need to put ads up on this site so I can make some money off of these people. I assume that they visited my site before sending off their angry e-mails but I can’t be sure since the accusations really don’t jive with the articles I’ve written. Third, the art of intimidation, like the art of closing a written message, is dead. Before the days of the Internet people at least had the courtesy of sending a letter composed of individual letters cut out of newspaper and magazine articles and pasted to the sheet of paper. Sometimes if they really wanted to intimidate you they would nail a burlap sack containing a dead cat or severed horse head to your door. Now people are lazy and just send angry e-mails. People need to own their anger and take pride in it. Fourth, starting each successive sentence with the same word is dull. Take a look at the last letter. It’s all “Then I’m going to do this” and “Then I’m going to do this”. There’s nothing more disappointing than a grammatically lazy death threat.
But I think the most important thing that needs to be pointed out is how disappointed I am in my newfound fan base. I partially attribute my disappointment to the shorter attention span most Americans have today. But if you are angry enough to write a death threat to somebody you should at least have the decency to perform a followup. According to the timestamps the vast majority of angry e-mails were sent on Friday. A few more came in on Saturday and only two of the e-mails came in on Sunday. There wasn’t a single e-mail from yesterday. Talk about a lack of dedication. If my newfound fan base was truly dedicated to hating my guts I could have had posting material for several days. But they’re lazy so I really only have enough material for a single post, which means I will have to actually look for things to write about.
Before I close this post I have a favor to ask of my newly found fan base. If one of you would be so kind as to inform me of the specific post that made you so upset I would greatly appreciate it. That way I can write more of the same. Then you can continue your feed on your impotent rage and I can stick some ads up on this site and make a little money. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship.