End of Silence

Sometime early last week the database powering my site got corrupted and apparently MC Host only keeps one day of backups. Since I noticed it a day or two after it happened (I was out of town), I was screwed. Luckily, I had backed everything up myself just before Thanksgiving. Since I got crappy with them about the data loss, they blamed me for the corruption:

Also, you may want to look into the reason this has happened, which appears that some table entries are zero and others are incomplete, which may have been caused by an unfinished write from the script to the database.

I’ll be looking into that claim myself, but can any mySQL gurus make sense out of that quote?

Anyway, the magic of Google allowed me to recover the two missing posts and repost them. Not sure if that means dupes for anyone reading this site via RSS.

I’ve been using AllConsuming for my currently reading or “Legere” block over there on the right for quite a while. Unfortunately, it was hacked a little over a month ago, so the creator, Erik Benson, decided to revamp the site and rewrite it using Ruby on Rails, which boasts quick development time. I think he even challenged himself to do it in 24 hours as some sort of contest promoting the platform.

Anyway, he did get something up and running…only it doesn’t completely work. He’s reformatted how items that you’re consuming are displayed and I can’t seem to edit old items without running into errors. I don’t want to nag the guy over a service that he’s providing for free, but until he gets a chance to work out some of the issues, I’m going back to pulling my own images and linking to Amazon directly. The convenient thing about allconsuming is that I didn’t have to host the product images myself.

Today’s my three year blogaversary. I switched to this format on January 19, 2002 and started posting some stuff.

Some things have stayed the same.

• We’re still in the same house.
• I’m still at the same job.
• We still have a chimp for a president.

Other things have changed:

• I’m now a father of two.
• My paternal grandmother is no longer with us.
• We’ve joined the minivan cult.
• I’ve started playing drums in a gigging band again.

Most of the changes have been chronicled here in one way or another. My posts have become more political and more outwardly-focused as opposed to targeting a readership of family. I’ve made several cool friends via blogging and started participating in a group blog.

I’m hoping to have the time to add some stuff this year. I’ve got one project that I’ve been wanting to do for several years and should finally have the time this spring or summer. I’m still also seriously considering splitting off all of the family stuff to a separate site and keeping this one for my interests/rants. I really, really need to re-design the band site. If you followed the link, you know why.

Anyway, happy blogaversary to me!

I guess it’s time to move away from phpNuke or at least make sure that I don’t get too far behind on the versions. Some of you may have noticed the banner this morning, but I got hacked last night.

The pinhead who did it got admin access to the phpNuke system, but I don’t think they got access to my hosting account. I’ve saved off the access logs and the entire database at the time of the hack, so I’ve got their IP address and the exploit that they used. I’ve patched the hole.

As with the person who hacked me a couple of years ago, I’m coming after the ones who did this. I got the last person’s site taken down and also tracked them back to the university computer lab that they used. I’ll be doing the same thing to the pigfucker who did this.

What is it with Albanians and hacking phpNuke sites via well-known security holes? It doesn’t take any imagination and you’re certainly not gaining notariety attacking a site that’s read by all of 10 people. Sigh.

EDIT (4:10PM): I’ve sent e-mails to TheGenius’s [sic] web hosting company, Lycos Europe, and the owner of the IP address from which he hacked my site, South Eastern European University. With any luck, my friend’s site from which he boasted about his hacks will be taken down shortly. In fact, I already don’t seem to be able to access it. Wow, that was fast. Lycos is definitely on the ball.

EDIT (05.26.2004): I spoke too soon. It’s still there. That did seem a little too fast.

If you’re reading this, it means that you’re looking at the the site in it’s new location. Congratulations. What does this mean to you? Nothing really. Now that the transfer seems to be propagating, I’ll post new pictures from Thanksgiving when I get home tonight.