Some right-wing group sent us mail trying to tie Kay Hagan’s energy polices to Jimmy Carter’s. I found it highly amusing. Just think where this country would be now if we had heeded Carter’s call to invest in renewable energy. We might have kicked our petroleum habit for good.
If this is Kay Hagan’s policy I want more of it!
Either the economic sky really isn’t falling or my credit is better than I think. The stream of credit-card offers sent to me has continued unabated. I got one yesterday and another today. Normally I’d find this annoying but it has now become strangely reassuring.
It was quite a busy day for me. I began the day by skipping breakfast and heading out at 7 AM to get my cholesterol checked. I had to drive to the Cary lab near my doctor and had an unwelcome reunion with the concept of rush-hour traffic. It didn’t take much staring at brake lights to make me so happy I don’t face that every day.
I got done with my appointment in time to park downtown and race to my office in time for a 9 AM conference call. This was followed by an 11 AM conference call, followed by a noon conference call.
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I’ve had in one week and already its the best album I’ve heard all year. What amazing songwriting.
Phantom Limb (YouTube)
The Shins
Foals in winter coats
White girls of the north,
File past one, five and one,
They are the fabled lambs of Sunday ham, the EHS norm
And they could float above the grass in circles if they tried
A latent power I know they hide
To keep some hope alive that a girl like I could ever try,
Could ever try
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The market is tanking today, and the Wachovia battle isn’t helping. Citigroup and Wells Fargo are still fighting to own Wachovia. Citigroup filed a $60 billion lawsuit, which is, I think, a bit much.
Citi also cites the $225 million “golden parachutes” Wachovia senior executives would receive under the Wells deal. While I’m not usually a fan of golden parachutes, if I were a Wachovia shareholder and the board spurned a $1/share deal for a $7/share deal, I’d say that’s the way to go. As a taxpayer, any solution that doesn’t involve my tax dollars is a no-brainer, too.
If the fighting keeps up, though, there might not be anything left of Wachovia worth buying.
No account of my weekend system administration adventures would be complete without acknowledging the outstanding customer support provided by my blog host provider, VPSFarm.
I emailed VPSFarm’s customer support first thing Saturday morning requesting they shut down my server. This was completed for me in a matter of minutes, and Vinay at VPSFarm sent prompt replies to my emails throughout the entire weekend (even close to midnight). He even provided a tarfile backup of my system. In short, Vinay and VPSFarm went above and beyond the call of duty – far beyond the meager amount of money I spend would justify.
Its easy to be a friend when times are easy, but when the chips are down you find out who your friends really are. Vinay Selvaraj and VPSFarm are the real deal. If you’re looking for an Xen-based Linux box you’d be stupid to look anywhere else.
Bravo Zulu, VPSFarm!
Kelly and I took the kids up to Creedmoor Saturday to visit the Oakleys, the family of Travis’s best friend Carson. They were hosting an arts festival at their farm, known as Cedar Creek Gallery. I’m amazed this place has been here for forty years and I never knew about it until now.
We watched as Lisa Oakley did some glass blowing, creating a long string of glass which will be used to create beads for necklaces and bracelets. It was fascinating: I’d never seen glass blowing before. There were other artists around, too, including some very talented potters and sculptors. And the event attracted a crowd. At one point, their one cash register had no less than thirteen customers waiting. I was tempted to buy a few things myself.
The kind of studio where one can practice glass blowing, welding, and the like is what I’d like to see Raleigh Parks and Rec provide. Something like a Mythbusters or Techshop kind of place. Maybe some day I’ll be in a position to do something about it …
If you’re interested in some of the coolest pottery, sculpting, and whimsical handmade products around, take a morning drive up to Creedmoor and see the Cedar Creek Gallery. You’ll be glad you did.
I’ve been working all weekend to seal up the leaks in MT.Net. I feel I’m at a point where things are pretty much back to normal. Passwords have been changed, databases scanned, files examined, and all possible patches have been applied. I went far beyond simply fixing WordPress: updating the operating system was long overdue, so I did the whole nine yards.
Lessons learned? Whenever strange behavior presents itself, don’t stop hunting until you’re sure you’ve found it all. Sometimes this means ruling every possible thing out, as its very tough (and also very foolish) to say “I’m secure.” Only time can answer that.
If you run a WordPress site, fire up a MySQL session and run this query:
select * from wp_users where user_login=”WordPress”;
If you find a “WordPress” user, delete it. It doesn’t belong there.
delete from wp_users where user_login=”WordPress”;
Also, you should not have entries in your user table with invalid dates. Delete any users that this query brings back:
select * from wp_users where user_registered like “%0000%”;
I found this page to be useful for the final cleanup.
If you’ve got an MT.Net account (for posting comments, for instance), please take a moment to change it.
Its been a busy weekend here at MT.Net. I’ve been cleaning up the MT.Net webhost after some script kiddies went wild with an exploit. I have a hunch the kiddies attacked an exploit in the Bad Behavior plugin, as the only blogs on my site that were running the BB plugin were the only ones that got pwned. There was a time when the BB plugin started acting funky and needed an upgrade, and it BB would be an obvious target for the bad guys. Fortunately I had copious backups. (I find it interesting that the BB website is offline at the moment.)
If y’all see anything out of place, give me a holla. Its possible I missed something.
