I was going to write a long detailed post, but in the interest of maintaining the family’s privacy, I will just ask those of you who pray to pray for my supervisor’s son, who is in the Cardiac ICU at Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC. He is on the fast track for a heart transplant because they hope that will make him well again - but they don’t even know what’s wrong. It’s a very grave situation, so if you are the type to send well wishes or good vibes, please do that too.
Edit: Redirect your good vibes a little bit north; he’s being moved to Johns Hopkins as soon as a bed is available.
I heard the song “Christmas Wrapping” (by The Waitresses) on the radio the other day, and I wanted to download it. I searched the web and couldn’t find it, and I didn’t feel like using a torrent or something like that. So I was about to open up iTunes and just buy it, but then in my search results I came across AllofMP3. They have songs cheap! “Christmas Wrapping” was something like 20 cents, and I also picked up Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” from Band Aid. I was a bit skeptical about ordering at first, because AllofMP3 is a Russian site, making their downloads of dubious legality. But this TechCrunch post made me feel much better, so I went to pay - but credit card balance refills weren’t available. I checked back at the TechCrunch post, and a lot of commenters said that refilling their balances through XROST was okay too, so I added the minimum ($10) to my account.
I also did a bit more searching around, I added a few Michael Jackson songs I didn’t already have, and I added the entire original 1982 soundtrack album for Cats. All this for only $6.61! Plus, because I signed up through XROST I got a 10% bonus, and AllofMP3 has a 20% holiday bonus for a few more weeks, so I ended up with a balance of $13 total. Woo!
PS: The download speed is pretty fast, too.
Here’s an equation for you:
Setting up PHP 5 on Dreamhost + How I configured a custom php5 build on my Dreamhost account - Installing PHP5 + CR Puzzles = A Happy Me
That only took forever. The latest version of PHP is 5.2.0 and I’m running 5.0.3, but that’s okay. The funny thing is, I don’t even remember why I wanted a custom PHP install. I guess it was so I could mess with the restrictions on uploads and processing time, since those didn’t seem to be affected by changes to .htaccess. But I also kind of like running independently. Of course I’ll probably never be able to upgrade, but at least now if I decide I don’t like it I can just add some #’s in my .htaccess and fall back on the Dreamhost PHP installation anytime.
I finally decided that the increase in 500 errors after my deletion of php.cgi had to do with Dreamhost switching their Apache servers, or something like that, rather than their installation being somehow weaker than my custom one was. But still, I am happy to run it myself, so I can tweak stuff. At least I hope I can, or this was all for nothing!
Hopefully this will be the last ultra-techie post for a little while, I imagine some of my readers are starting to get bored!
Well, I screwed up my site big-time. I was trying to make WP-Validator work, but I have close to 10,000 entries for it to analyze (that’s posts + comments) and so it needs altered max_execution_time and memory_limit variables. While I was playing around with different ways to resolve this, I managed to delete my custom php.cgi file. Oops. Most of my website is built on PHP - photo galleries, weblog, personal FTP, everything.
So I tried reinstalling custom PHP, but it broke. I filed a support request, choosing the OMG EXTREME CRITICAL EMERGENCY!! EVERYTHING’S BROKEN! People are DYING! option for the first time ever. I realized that the error I had gotten when it died was that the process was killed, and DreamHost occasionally kills processes for no apparent reason, so I figured I’d try again. This time it broke in a different way at the same point, but apparently it was enough for my journal.amanita.net domain to start working again. I’m glad I moved it from /amanita.net/journal to /journal.amanita.net because I think that’s what helped fix it.
Unfortunately my personal FTP and photo galleries are still down; I assume anything that’s actually on amanita.net itself is dead. I am assuming my journal has fallen back on the default PHP installation used by DreamHost; at this point I am more than happy to have it all go back to the default!
I realized I didn’t have any way of checking stats easily for CyDy Blog (NSFW), so I wanted to find a WordPress plugin that could do it for me. Colleen had recommended a WP plugin called ShortStat, but I thought I would look for other options and I came across the seemingly-robust FireStats. I’ve installed it over at CyDy Blog, and I decided to put it over here too. I never remember to check my MeasureMap stats (a quick glance reveals 59,332 visitors since I started using it a year ago, minus some from when I changed my design and forgot to put the MeasureMap code back) or my Analog stats, and Google Analytics doesn’t like me for some reason, so I thought perhaps having it in my WP admin screens would get me to check it out more often.
I’ve also installed Anti-Leech on both sites. It’s another WP plugin, this time with the intention of fighting back against splogs that steal your content.
Well, it’s done. I’ve deleted the catch-all address I’ve used for years at my domain. I’m actually pretty scared of what’s going to happen…I don’t know if it’s an aversion to all change or if there’s legitimate reason to be scared of losing mail at this point. I visited 233 websites and changed my registered e-mail address. There are another 139 addresses that were either already established as legitimate, or for which I couldn’t change the registration information for whatever reason. The legitimate ones are being forwarded to my Gmail, and the ones I couldn’t change are being forwarded to a webmail account on my host that I can check periodically.
I’m pretty sure everything I would want to receive has been taken care of in one way or another, but it’s still nervewracking. Cutting down on the 1000+ spam e-mails I received daily (and all the bounces from falsified headers) will be nice, but I’m still nervous about possibilities. I’m not sure if I should bother enabling Dreamhost’s Junk Filter on my domain…if it doesn’t apply to forwarded addresses, then it’s only good for whatever is getting delivered to that spare account. I think for now I’m going to leave it turned off; if I continue to get lots of spam in either my Gmail or the spare account maybe I will use it.
If you need to reach me, the e-mail address you already use probably still works. Ask if you have questions about that.
I used to use a catch-all e-mail address on my domain as a form of spam tracker. I signed up for JobsOnline.com using jobsonline at my domain name, for Callwave.com using callwave at my domain name, etc. Originally, this was not a bad idea. Several sources refer to this as a practice that was effective in the past for making sure mis-addressed e-mails didn’t get lost, but those sources also acknowledge that it’s no longer a good idea to use a catch-all because it’ll overwhelm you with spam. I get over 1000 spam e-mails per day, to addresses like zvwrlkj at my domain, etc. That doesn’t count the spam I get in the form of bounced e-mails from people spoofing addresses at my domain. But I’ve been doing e-mail this way for years, and I was just putting up with it.
Now I’m trying to consolidate my accounts into a couple of e-mail addresses. I reviewed my “Site Registration” folder in my e-mail (I knew I kept that stuff for a reason) and I came up with a list of about 400 e-mail addresses I have registered with in the past. Now I’m visiting all of those sites and changing my e-mail address to meredith at my domain. That’s what I’ve spent a lot of today doing. I’d really like to be able to turn off the catch-all and use Dreamhost’s junk filter, so I am going to go through these 400 or so addresses, and then try turning it off and seeing what happens…