Category: Site Info

I’ve got about 50 good links in the queue to post, but haven’t had a chance to post them. And probably won’t be able to any time soon. The AC adapter in my laptop (my main production PC at the moment since I’m on my back all the time) started hissing and smoking a minute ago. I unplugged it as soon as I could, but the battery life on the thing sucks. So I’m posting this, ordering a new part, and getting offline while I can. I’ll try to blog on my wife’s system, but sit tight for a couple days.

With all the latest news about Michael Jackson and his court charges, people are searching Google for sites related to the King of Pop. People are searching for info on his face and about his surgical habits and they’re getting sent to my site, to a couple different entries (old, dated ones, of course). The last few days have brought more comments to those old entries. Many of the comments, old and new, are in support of Jackson, but there’s a few that I, truly, think are entertaining:

hi, um, i think michael jacksons face is gross, and he should be proud of his heritage also he looks like a stuck-up GIRL! so HA( the last comment was made by my friend, although i think he looks like someone stepped on him)

Oh, and they get better:

No it doesnt matter what he looks like, or what his music sounds like or how he dances. You people need to realize that child molesters are people too, they laugh and joke and live just like everyone else, they are everywhere among us and you probably will never know. Ive read the first 13 year olds police reports and it does sound like what he would say and do. Love him all you like, how sick does that make you? Because you dont really know, do you.

And a couple more:

Ok, if you think Michael Jackson has never had plastic surgery I have a great bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. Seriously people, does that nose look hereditary? And since when do people just “develop” dimples in their chin?

And the best of the bunch:

WHY DID MICHAEL BOND OUT OF JAIL? THERE’S PLENTY OF BOYS IN JAIL THAT HE WON’T HAVE TO DRUG TO MOLEST!

Again, read this entry and this one for the entertaining read.

(Note that just by having Jacko’s name in the title of this entry, I’m sure I’ll have more crap posted here. Just like the mentions of Eminem.)

Regardless, I can picture Jacko trying to get away from police:

I posted yesterday about the guy who tried to bill his comment spammer. Jack commented that he was going to throw some text on his site saying that he reserves the right to bill spammers. He’s gone ahead and implemented a change on his site, and I’ve done the same. Below the comments form on my listings, I’ve added the following text:

Note that comment spamming and commercial solicitation will not be tolerated, and by posting here I reserve the right to bill you for my wasted time of removing the comment and for the wasted bandwidth (and my standard one-hour minimum labor rate applies). If you’d like to advertise here, e-mail me, and you can pay for it.

OK, after delete a dozen comment spam and rebuilding, it’s official: tomorrow (if I have time) I’m getting spam prevention of some sort in place. This is insane, and a waste of resources, that’s for sure. I don’t need any prescription drugs, teenage sex, or eBay business advice. If you don’t have anything useful to contribute, don’t. I love the comments on this site, and are happy to have them, but when they’re crap like this, then it bugs me.

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that’s getting hammered with this stuff. Granted, I maybe get 1 or 2 spam comments a day, but nothing major. This site just ain’t that popular. But it still annoys me to have to delete them.

But every MovableType user is getting these spam. Hell, just look at all the posts about it at popdex. This is obviously a big problem. Six Apart has an official response.

The problem with 90% of the solutions? They involve hacking the CGI scripts and files. While this isn’t a problem, you’d better damn well better know what you did, otherwise when you upgrade to a new version of MT, your changes will be overwritten. But the MT-Blacklist plugin looks like it will help quite a bit (I haven’t looked at the install instructions as of yet, as it was just released about five minutes ago). I’m also considering adding a graphical feature that only humans can decode (similar to what you see when you register on PayPal). And there are a bunch of solutions posted here that could very easily lessen the stress on the comment system.

But what’s the problem with all of these? Most of them require changing the MT CGI and PM libraries. I don’t have a problem at all with changing my templates, as they don’t get overwritten on an upgrade, but my CGI and PM files will.

What needs to happen? Six Apart needs to integrate some of these features into the core MovableType installation in it’s long-overdue next version, that way we won’t be required to do all this hacking ourselves. But you know what they’ll probably do? They’ll probably put all these features into TypePad, and will eventually put them in the main MT distro. Only time will tell.

Update a couple years later…If you’re seeing this page, it’s because your domain is really hammering my server with external image links. Knock that crap off before I replace my redirected image graphic with something really graphic. Currently, xanga.com and myspace.com are on my s**tlist.

For those of you who are regular readers here, this is old news, but for the folks who are coming here wondering why when they externally link to images under this domain, they get blocked, here’s the reasoning (and this blog entry is always available at www.utterlyboring.com/block because of what it now says on my redirect image).

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I’ve been getting a pile of stupid comments on the site, many of them loaded with URLs for casinos, male enhancement, among other crap. I don’t want to have to resort to moderated comments, but I will probably implement Neil’s partial solution as well as a duplicate comment hack at some point and see if that helps (as I’d like to avoid editing my Movable Type files as much as possible, as I’m sure they’ll get overwritten during the next upgrade cycle).

Back in June of this year, I posted an image that showed some Army Reserve troops holding a sign saying “One Weekend a Month My Ass.” I received it from a friend of mine whose daughter is in the reserves.

About a month later, the picture (not my site, the picture, as I know I’m not the original source for this article) was mentioned in a New York Times column, and everybody started linking to my site, and directly linking to the graphic, stealing my bandwidth (luckily I had some to spare). Why? Because if you search for one weekend a month my ass on Google, my site’s listed first.

Regardless, many people have obviously commented on both of those, especially the one with the original image. Some of the comments posted were from former and current reservists, and are good reads as to why the Army’s “One weekend a month, two weeks a year” marketing gimmics are bunk.

About a month ago, I was e-mailed by a reporter from the Victoria Advocate, a newspaper in Victoria, Texas. Apparently, the troops in the original photo are from Victoria, and he was going to write a story about the whole division, etc…, and wanted to use the image. I told him, flat out, journalist-to-journalist, that the image was sent to me and I’m not the original source — it wasn’t mine to take credit for. He understood, and was going to discuss with his editors how to cite the source as he still wanted to use the image.

Long story short, the story was written, but the editors at the paper didn’t want to have the word “Ass” in a photo. Go figure. Regardless, a story was written, my site and its comments were quoted.

Unfortunately, the Victoria Advocate is owned by one of the big newspaper chains, and the editors there don’t see the need to post all their stories online. I did, however, receive permission from the original reporter to publish the story here. Click on the “Continue Reading” link below to read the full story. It’s a good read (and the captions for the “One Weekend a Month My Ass” photo are included, even though they didn’t get printed).

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If you search for “shemale in oregon” on MSN, my site’s listed in the top 20 — twice.

I really need to quit looking at my Analog stats. Otherwise, I’ll find out what kind of messed up people are really visiting my site. Based on the logs, you’d think I run an Eminem fanboy site or something, and based on past experience, people seem to think that by posting comments on my site, I can somehow communicate with him.

For the record, I don’t know Eminem, nor do I even listen to his music (I hate rap/hip-hop/whatever-the-f**k-you-call-it). The most famous person I know would probably be Emmy-winnger Jack Smith, executive producer of The Young and the Restless.

Someone on my shared server decided to use our server for a spam account. Needless to say, they’re getting a virtual spanking right now by my host, and things should be back up to normal soon.