Not sure if all the Aussie knitters have heard the news yet, but YARN mag is no more. That sucks.

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.