Killing Referer Spam
Apparently spammers have taken to hitting up web servers and flooding them with REFERER spam. Stuff like this:
219.235.236.225 - - [07/Feb/2005:14:34:23 -0800] "GET /pictures/index.cgi?mode=album&album=/cars/misc/rally HTTP/1.1" 200 11108 "http://texas-holdem.crescentarian.net/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; iRider 2.21.1108; FDM)"
Notice the texas-holdem stuff. So that appears in my log analysis software, flooding it with this junk. I figure it's either bots that do this on purpose or people who have downloaded spyware/adware. Either way, it's annoying. This is my solution:
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer
"(holdem|hole-em|casino|viagra|chatt-nett|diet-pills|poker|mortgage|roulette|valium|phentermine|loans)"
referer_spam
order deny,allow
deny from env=referer_spam
CustomLog /home/nathan/logs/www.mybrainhurts.com-access.log combined
env=!referer_spam
CustomLog /home/nathan/logs/www.mybrainhurts.com-spam.log combined
env=referer_spam
So, the first line sets an environment variable "referer_spam" if it encounters any of the regex in the Referer. The next section disallows them to access files on the server and tosses a 403. Heh, bastards. The next 2 lines define different log files for the stuff tagged as "referer_spam". Easy.
Kryptonite Margurita's
I am Superman. Yep. And normally jumping down 2 flights of stairs is no problem for me. But that damn waitress must have put Kryptonite in my Margurita because I nearly broke my damn foot. I thought I tasted something funny after the 3rd glass. Luckily, I didn't drink 4 of them or I might have actually broken it. Instead, I just twisted it and am walking with a limp. Damn agents of Lex Luthor!
sigh
Yea, so I took a long step down some stairs last week, missed and twisted my ankle pretty bad. Not the bad leg, the other one. The strong one. Luckily I am a pretty flexible guy or I might have snapped something. I went to a friends house afterwards and put ice on it for a while. But the next morning, it was black and blue and red so I carted myself down to Urgent Care thinking I had broken it...sure felt like it. I waited nearly 3 hours, but when I finally saw the doc he sent me off for an x-ray and determined that I hadn't broken anything. Whew. I couldn't handle a cast right now. Turns out that the 'bruising' I had was not a bruise but FROSTBITE! Guess I held the ice on there too long. It went away after 2 days. It's been 5 days and my foot is still a bruised from the inside but feeling better. I had been using crutches last week and am back to the trusty cane action. 'Click-pop...click-pop' as I walk down the hall. Heh, feels like 2 years ago.
Oh well, I guess I'm not too hurt. But that's because I am Superman.
Link of the day: 48 Laws of Power
HH @ Karl Strauss
The beer on the right is a Karl Strauss Red. Will, Zac and I went out to happy hour tonight. It's not actually happy hour -or- happy hour prices, we just call it happy hour because we drink beer after work. We should do that more often.
Work has been pretty fun lately. I have been giving lots of presentations. Guess I like teaching people new things and I have always been pretty good up in front of an audience. I've also been spending a lot of my spare time doing work stuff at home. I generally try to keep that to a minimum but it's motivating when you like what's your working on.
This weekend is the SuperBowl/Best Commercials of the year. Party at Geoff's. W00t!
Tracy's first IV
So
I finally let Tracy stick me with a needle. For practice! I must be in
love or something. But it had to happen one day, might as well get it
over with. She's been salivating over my veins since the first day we
met. She and her nurse friends would say "wow, you have such great
veins!" while gathering around my arms like vampires. But, it wasn't too
bad. She did an IV for practice. A weathered nurse does it in about .5
seconds, but since Tracy is new, it took her a bit. And it was the first
time I started to feel ill at the sight of my own blood. Mostly because
I watched the little plastic thing wiggling around in my vein. Shouldn't
have done that. But I lived and she got more practice.
The only bummer is that she didn't hook the IV up to a keg. Even though I specifically requested it. But she swore that's not good for your liver and so I got 0.0 proof Saline instead.
Body Worlds
Tracy and I went up to LA today to see Body Worlds at the California Science Center. It's an exhibit of a new technology that has allowed plastination of human bodies. It is bascily a chemical process that turns living tissue into plastic/rubber material. The bodies are on display in various active positions so you can check out what a body looks like with no skin, muscle, etc. They have the ability to only preserve the parts they want (the blood vesseles for instance), which was pretty neat to see. It's only in California for a little while longer, I highly recommend you go. It is very cool, especially if you are in the medical field or have any interest at all in health or your body. Beware to those of you that are squeamish: it's gruesome.
The tech behind it is neato. They wash all the blood from your body and let it soak in water. Then they replace the water with acetone. Once all the water is gone and only acetone remains, they suck out the acetone and replace it with a checmical that plastinates it. Then they cure it with light or heat. Pretty neato. They even had a full horse and rider near the end, pretty amazing.
Traffic afterwards was terrible, but David and Ann met up with us for some Korean BBQ in Hollywood. Good stuff, and my first experience with it other than my man Nick. ;)
2005 LA Auto Show
Geoff, Karen, Zac, Will and I ventured to LA to see the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show. The weather was incredible, raining the whole day and absolutely pouring on the way home. But we survived.
Saw a lot of neat cars and a lot of stupid ones. Saw the Spyker, a car that I have been wondering about since we saw it parked outside a resturant in Carmel, on our 2004 Monterey trip. It was dark and we couldn't see much other than they looked neat. Well, in the light, they are ugly as hell. Airplane theme on everything (because Spyker used to make plane parts), even the steering wheel. is shaped like a prop, ugg. Read the blurb here.
I think the most interesting car was the Venturi Fetish, an electric sports car. It costs 600K but the rep said that in 10 years or so the parts would be cheap enough to build it for $30k. I look forward to that day. I also pretty much decided that I'm going to buy a Lotus Elise in 2 years.
My pics here.
San Diego Weather
So, the storms ripped down my TV antenna and tossed it in the pool. It tore off my pool's solar heater panels and hurled them into the street. And asshole neighbors drove over them, ruining them completely.
Broke my fence at the base in 2 places on opposite sides of the house.
What the heck man! Hurricane gusts? I expect this in a place like Florida, but not here!
Update Jan 10: Apparently it's all covered by insurance. Yay!
Christmas 2004
This year, Tracy and I stayed in town. After our trip to TN for Thanksgiving, traveling again was just too much. Plus, my family decided to come out here so it made staying in SD an easy choice. David and Anne, Mom and Todd and Joseph came out to visit.
Tracy and I spent a week cleaning the house and I spent 2 weeks building a shower into the guest bathroom. Well, I wouldn't say 'building' so much as 'engineering'. But it looks good and it works. I cleaned out the room previously known as "junk storage". Good to organize all that stuff. I was very proud that my very first exterior illumination project featured 1 kilo-bulb worth. Still not too impressive, but it was fun and cute. We waited a week too long to buy a tree, which we thought would be a bad thing. I figured prices would be way higher. Nope, huge discounts. We went to a Xmas tree lot and saw a Douglas Fir for $70. Screw that. Then we went to Home Depot and the same tree was $49 marked down to $20. Done. This is the first year I've ever had a real Christmas tree. It was so nice to see it in our house, and it smelled so good.
Mom and Joseph stayed with me the first night they arrived. The next day we went up to mom's husband's family's Christmas party. It was fun. Met a distant relative (mom's husband's brother's wife's mother) with foot drop and exchanged my story of success with her and gave her advice on how to deal with her injury. I also realized that I had thrown out some equipment a few days earlier that could benefit her. So, that night when we got home, I dug it up to give to her. When I was tossing it out, I knew someone would want it!
My Mexian neighbors invited my entire family over to their house for their family Christmas celebration. They had broiled a full size lamb in a 50 gallon steel drum that was lined with cactus leaves. Joseph, Mom, Todd, Tracy and I went over to celebrate with them. The food was great and even tho there was a slight language barrier, we had a great time. I drank Tequila with the men when the party was winding down. What a neat experience. David and Ann came down near midnight that night after spending an evening celebrating with Ann's family.
Christmas morning was excellent in San Diego. We all exchanged gifts and watched holiday TV shows. Tracy bought me a GameBoy Advance SP! That thing is so neat! It came with the original NES versions of Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda. Hearing the sound effects sure brings back memories.
Arne and Gislea joined us for Christmas lunch/dinner around 2pm. The plan was to go hiking, but we ended up going to the beach that afternoon instead. The weather was great and the setting sun made for some really amazing pictures.
The next morning, they all left for LA, Mom and Todd taking the train and David, Ann and Joseph driving up. Our house was back to normal.
Implosions and Wil Wheaton
ApacheCon 2004 in Vegas was definatly a good convention. Technically it was great, the speakers were good, the people were brainy, the partying was hard core and the demolitions were huge! Tracy came out to stay with me for the first 2 days of the confrence so there was a little bonus there too.
So, a few cool things. Wil Wheaton (aka Wesley Crusher of StarTrek and child star in "Stand By Me") was the keynote. He has been keeping a blog for years, and is one of the few (only?) celebrities to do so. This makes him mega cool in my book. I always identified with his character on the series (imagine that) and so naturally I thought he must be cool. Reading his blog, you realize he's a normal guy like you and me, and he's also a geek! I got to meet him, shake his hand, had a small chat, bought his book and got him to sign it. What a neat guy. The thing that I found intriguing was his keynote. He started off by telling us all he was scared to death to be up in front of all us geeks. A humble celebrity, rad. As he got into telling how the internet and software from Apache.org changed his life for the better, etc, etc (go read his book), he was dropping well placed, obscure and relevant jokes that I found to be quite funny. But most of the geeks in the audience weren't laughing...meanwhile I was giggling away. When I talked to him again later I mentioned this and he told me "I subscribe to the MST3K school of thought...if 5% of the audience laughs I've done my job". I just really like this guy. I felt like kind of a dweeb getting all nervous and telling him I thought he was so cool, etc. I mentioned the implosion, to which he got real excited. I hope he got to see it.
Implosion!? Yes, they blew up the Desert Inn while we were there. Damn, it was cool. We waited around till 2:30 am on Tuesday night just to see it, but it was worth it. While we waited on a sidewalk corner less than a block a way, a friggin jerk semi-truck driver cut the corner and drove over about 3 feet of the curb. He nearly crushed a reporter's camera and tripod and nearly took off this poor girls head with a ladder hanging off the side. The cops didn't even care! But who cares bout that...BOOM! The blast scared us...they gave little warning, just a policeman saying "you have one minute". He was off by 10 seconds. I got some pretty poor shots and a very lousy video. But I got some neat shots of the dust cloud! It shook the ground and thumped our chests. Way cool!
The rest of the trip was mostly doing some gambling in casino's and getting drinks. We stopped by the Las Vegas Hilton on the last night to do more gambling and get a nice dinner...Dan, Mark and I went to the Star Trek Experience. The Klingon Encounter was neat, a 3D ride in a shuttlecraft that feels very real...like the rides at Universal Studio. The Borg Invasion 4D was neat too...wore 3D glasses and got assimilated the chair jabs you in the ribs, it was creepy. They had some cool live action stuff...at one point a borg pulled one of the crew/actors thru the ceiling! It was neat! We went out later that night for some Japanese Steakhouse experiences at Beni Hana.
The rest of the pics are here.
The only problem with the trip in my mind is that we had to get up at 6am to catch a flight back to SD on Thursday, and GO TO WORK. Blech. Maybe skip that next year.
This next week, Tracy and I travel to TN for some t-day fun. Should be a good time.
ApacheCon 2004
So, QC sent me to Las Vegas for ApacheCon 2004. 4 days of nerdy days and Vegas nights. But I nearly missed my 8:30am flight this morning...overslept by an hour, skipped shower and breakfast, had a security escort to the front of the line (keyword "I'll miss my flight" works wonders), ran thru the 1/2 the airport in my socks with my shoes in my hand, etc. But I made it. Whew.
This pic is me in the Hackathon. More to come later, gotta go get Tracy from the airport.