The comments are back! Do you guys even KNOW how difficult this week has been for me? I said to the Snook in a moment of frustration on Wednesday: “It’s like I keep having all these THOUGHTS, and I don’t have any outlet to share them with the world! If Kristy has a thought and doesn’t blog it, does it ever really exist?” Hyperbole, sure, but I really missed my little site.

And we are BACK!
Man, that was annoying. I got up Tuesday morning and opened up my site to see… nothing. Forbidden errors everywhere. You know; you saw them too. I fired off a quick support email to my hosting provider asking what was up. I got a reply back pretty quickly informing me that my site had been the target of a DDOS attack for the previous 72 hours, and they’d eventually been forced to shut it down because I was knocking all the other sites off my shared server. The support person claimed that access was now restored. This was not the truth. Not only could I not see the site, I couldn’t ssh or ftp to it either. I was able to get to the access logs though.

There are some assholes in this world, let me tell you. Some person (or persons) is hitting my comment submission page upwards of 70,000 times a day. Luckily my little “captcha” question does a great job of keeping them off the site. Not a single one actually made it into the database. Unfortunately whoever has turned on this firehose doesn’t actually care whether their comments make it through or not. I’ve been explaining it like this: Say someone is prank calling your house every ten seconds. You’ve got caller ID so you know not to pick up the phone, but your phone line is still tied up the entire time. Plus it costs you time and effort to look at the number every time it rings. My php script was filtering them, but it was using up too much processing power to do it. I needed to block them before they got to the filter. Unfortunately they were changing IP addresses every couple hundred requests (mostly using open relays in Bulgaria and Turkey) so I couldn’t just block them outright. Finally the Snook and I hit upon a solution. It involves mod_security, an Apache module that allows me to set rules and kill bad requests before they tie up my system. So far it seems to be working. They’re still pointing the firehose at me, but hopefully I’m deflecting the worst of it.

So the upshot is – I’ve changed to Quadra Hosting, which is based here in Australia. I don’t begrudge my old host for turning off the site, but I am annoyed that they took 72 hours to give me access to my files. (No, I didn’t have a recent backup. Yes, I know this is stupid.) That’s why commenting is still restricted; even though they gave me ftp access, they’ve still locked down that particular file. Anyway, we seem to be back in business. I’ll hopefully have commenting back on as soon as possible. Thanks for hanging in there!

Another Moving Update*: I’d say we’re about 20% along now. I managed to successfully cook dinner in our new crappy oven, which was mildly gratifying. The cat has finally emerged from the closet and seems to be eating. Here’s the truly amazing thing though: We just realised that it’s been 48 hours since we’ve watched any television. I cannot remember the last time I’ve gone that long without turning on a TV. On one hand I feel oddly free, and almost like I never need turn it on again… and on the other hand, I friggin’ love our bigass TV and I can’t wait to see it in the new living room. Technology will win.

* You’re going to get a lot of these, because I have nothing else to talk about until IRON CHEF on Wednesday night…

Wow. This story about a Bahraini man who was raised as a woman is very Middlesex. They don’t name his specific genetic disorder, but it sounds just like Cal from the book.

Farewell to the Fabulous Moolah, who passed away last Friday. I remember watching WWF with my brother back in the 80’s, and being absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that there was an actual WOMAN on the BAD GUYS’ TEAM. She was pretty cool.

Help! This is an official plea for Moving Assistance. We’ve come to the conclusion that our television is just two big for two people to move without serious risk of dropping it. I know some of you have said you’d help… so here it is. Let me know if you’re free either some night this week or this weekend. Free beer and eternal gratitude as yours for reward.

Moving Update: So far everything’s on schedule! We weren’t technically supposed to move in til Sunday, but Saturday afternoon we saw the owners leave and said to each other, “Let’s get started.” So Saturday night we moved over the barbecue, outdoor furniture, and most of the outdoor plants. For Sunday our goal was to to move over the bedroom and the cat. We started by pulling out all the clothes we don’t wear anymore, and then sorting those for the Op Shop and the trash pile. (This is the part I was looking forward to.) Then we pulled apart the bed and reassembled it next door. We took a break and headed to Balmain for lunch with Kenya, who was lending us his trolley. We then spent the rest of the day moving over dressers, night tables, the mattress, bathroom stuff, everything. Then it was time for the cat. The actual transportation was pretty easy. I set down the empty laundry basket and waited for her to jump in as usual. Then we plopped a tray down on top for a lid and carried her over. She… freaked out a little. The place is still so empty, and the wood floors make it more echo-y than the old place. She pretty quickly found a favorite spot though: Up high on the shelf in our closet, watching us putting things away. She refused to eat or use the litter box at first, but we knew she’d come around. With the bedroom finished and energy to spare, we decided to bring over the necessities. We wrestled over the couch (swapping the brown cover for the old blue one, so look for that upon CouchCam’s return!), the bar fridge, and breakfast supplies. Then we made the happy discovery that we’re close enough to access the wireless point at the old house… hence we’ve got Internet. Sweeet!

So I write this on the couch from the new house, having spent our first night here. It was weird. I still can’t believe this place is really going to be ours, and theoretically we could live here for the rest of our lives. There’s still so much more to do. But the kettle is boiling, the cat just pooped in her litter box, and I’ve got to get ready for work. We’re adjusting.

The Story of the House
Moving Day has finally arrived, so I thought I’d tell all you little children the magical tale of how we found the house. On September 1st, the Snook and I headed out for another day of looking at apartments. I was still a little bummed out about losing the (first) Google job, but I was trying to be optimistic. We had a list of half a dozen places to check out, and we thought we might swing by an auction in the afternoon (just to get an idea of how they work). One of our first stops was at Renwick Street in Redfern, to look at some new flats that had just been built. They were fantastic. (I can’t find a link now; looks like they’ve all been snapped up.) Huge 3 bedroom flats, very modern, all very cool. And the price was definitely right. (Under $600K.) It was tempting. We spent the new couple of hours trying to decide whether we wanted to live in Redfern. The location wasn’t great (right off Regent Street), but supposedly the ‘Fern is going to be the next big real estate hotspot. We debated. After lunch, we decided at the last minute to check out the auction in Chippendale. I noticed as we walked over that there was an older woman ahead of us that seemed to be going in the same direction. The three of us rode up in the lift together, and all three of us got the same cold shoulder from the agent when he discovered we weren’t there to bid. I heard her asking him what he expected the property to sell for. I thought it was a decent flat, and if we’d known about it a month earlier, we might have gone for it. Anyway, we decided not to stick around and headed back to the elevator. The woman was in there with us. “So, are you two looking to buy?” she asked conversationally. “Oh yes,” we said. “How many bedrooms?” “Welll… ideally 3, but whether we can afford that in the area is a different story.” “We’re selling a 3 bedroom,” she said. “Would you like to see it?” So she led us back down the street… and straight to our own apartment. Or rather, the apartment RIGHT NEXT DOOR. We looked at each other. “You’re JOKING.”Nope. Our apartment is the last one in our block, and this one (which is really more of a townhouse) is the first one in the next block. We’d actually looked at a few in there to rent a few years back, but they weren’t a huge step-up from what we have now. What we didn’t know is, the end unit is actually far bigger and nicer than any of the others. We knew it had been rented out before to this weird guy who kept pet turtles (he once stopped by to ask if one had gotten loose in our garden), but we’d seen him move out a few weeks before. It turns out that the woman (Carol) and her husband (David) owned the place and had been renting it to the turtle guy for some years. He was a Bad Tenant though, and now it seemed they just wanted to sell it and not have anymore headaches. They were there that day getting the place ready to have new timber floors installed, and she’d headed over to the auction on a whim just to find out what prices were like. We were wandering around in a daze. The place was easily twice as big as our current flat, and it ticked off all the major requirements we’d discussed (lots of outdoor space, decent sized kitchen, great location, internal laundry and built-in wardrobes, etc). The husband filled us in on some more juicy details: no, they hadn’t put it on the market yet; no they hadn’t even signed with an agent yet, so we could deal directly with them and save on commission; yes, it came with *two* undercover car spaces (one of which was already rented out at nearly twice what we were getting for ours). And then they said the magic words: “We’ve been told we could probably get [a price that I felt was probably pretty low, actually] for it, but we’re happy to take [a price that was even lower].” We choked. We needed some time to take it all in. We headed to Una’s for a much needed beer and a discussion.

We hashed it out. “Okay, disregarding the magical fact that it’s right next door to where we live now… What are the pros/cons?” “We’ll have to get a building report done and make sure there isn’t anything super wrong with it.” “It’s at the high end of our budget, but we can afford it. It’s way more than we ought to be able to get at that price.” “Are they nuts not asking for more money? They could easily get another $100K if they put it on the market.” “I get the feeling they just don’t want the headache.” “Maybe they want it to go to a nice family who’ll take care of it.” “I can’t believe we’re this lucky. HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? You’re not supposed to fall ass-backwards into the Deal of the Century!?”

We walked back over an hour later and knocked on the door. “We’d like to buy your house,” we said. We all went over to the Broadway Cafe for coffee, and half an hour later we shook hands on the price. Done.

Well, not “done,” actually. Turns out buying a house is a huge hassle, even when you have a sale as simple as ours. We quickly arranged for building and pest inspections, neither of which turned up anything we didn’t expect. I got a great lawyer recommendation and had him start the paperwork. Ma and Pa Snook came down the following weekend to have a look and give their advice. We got our mortgage broker over to walk us through the loan application. The past few weeks have been a flurry of faxing documents and signing forms. A particular highlight was being handed a bank cheque for the deposit (nearly twice my yearly salary) and walking it across town to the lawyer’s office. (“Question: What happens if I fall down in the street and lose the cheque?” I asked the teller. “I was just about to give you that speech,” he said. Evidently I am not the only anxious clumsy person in the world.) There were First Home Owner grants to be applied for, and Stamp Duty Exemptions, and all sorts of things I had hoped to never deal with in my life. But we did it, and on November 22nd, we finally get to settle and call the house ours.

But in the meantime, Carol and David are happy for us to move in early, rent-free. How much luck can two people have? I wonder if we’ve used up all our Luck Allotment for the next twenty years. Anyway, Moving Day is upon us, and I better get moving…