This morning, just before I left for work, I noticed that I had received 45 emails alerting me to new comments that needed to be approved/deleted in the moderation queue over at Sea Slugs! Anime Blog. Seeing as the moderation queue is mostly set up to filter out shady comments, I immediately knew what this meant: the anime blog was under attack!
Fortunately, the preliminary spam-fighting precautions I had taken managed to catch every single spam comment before any could reach the blog. So those of you who check out Sea Slugs! probably never noticed anything wrong. On the back end, however, this deeply disturbed me. The comment attack was a fairly weak one: It contained more than 4 links in the comment code, and some of the links contained words that were clearly spamtastic. Every single spam comment, however, came from a unique IP (or at least spoofed a unique IP). Also, the volume of the spam comment wave was light. I have heard tales on the WordPress support boards of spam waves that hit every single post, and even post comments to posts that have yet to be written (so that as soon as you make the post, there is a spam comment waiting for you). I’m planning on checking out some of the solutions to the spam comment problem, and possibly implementing additional defenses.
Sea Slugs! gets a fair amount of traffic, and updates quite regularly, so I am not surprised that it finally got hit with an attack. However, I want to make sure that the spam defenses don’t end up making things really annoying for real visitors. I know for a fact that IP banning is largely useless (it probably works better on annoying visitors who are real people than it does on spambots), and I also know that there are weaknesses in my current configuration. So it will be a tough balancing act between keeping spambots out and letting real visitors in. Here’s to hoping for a quick, quiet, and successful victory over the forces of spam.
Also, Sea Slugs! spam alert level has been raised to a pastel yellow-orange.
Yesterday we took Sydney to get his booster shots at a new vet clinic. The vet we took him to last time really didn’t give us a very good feeling; he barely looked at Sydney and kept doing this kooky thing with rolling his eyes up at the ceiling and craning his neck every time he was thinking. Everything also seemed kinda disorganized and haphazard. So this time we brought Sydney to Godspeed Animal Care, which isn’t as close, but isn’t that much farther from our house. The place looked clean and organized (it kinda looked like a normal doctor’s office), and the vet was much much nicer to work with. She spent a lot of time examining and getting to know Sydney, and the cat was just purring up a storm. We also got the Feline Leukemia test for half the price of what kooky-vet quoted to us (originally Bunky didn’t want to get the test done because the disease is uncureable and the price was so high). Fortunately, Sydney tested negative for that and Animal HIV. He’s doubled in size to over 4 pounds since we got him, and the vet said he’s going to be a gigantic cat. She also gave us the green light to feed him all he wants until he stops growing, since Sydney is still a kitten and isn’t really fat (he does have a little potbelly, though). I wanted to ask her about cats being on leashes, but Bunky wouldn’t let me. I liked the new vet way better, and so I guess it pays to shop around for pet care.
If you haven’t heard, Ashlee Simpson got caught in a bit of an embarassing snafu as her lip-synch track got mixed up on SNL. I watched it myself, and I agree that it was pretty bad. I can understand lip-synching being ok when you are doing a complicated dance routine (as some pop stars are wont to do), but Ashlee didn’t really seem to be doing much aside from a goofy jig. It’s pretty amusing how if you visit Ashlee’s official site, the forums topics range from Happy Birthday! and I love you! to Wow you suck and you are such a fake!
Personally I don’t know very much about her, and I don’t really listen to her music, but I still found this pretty amusing. I also thought it was rotten of her to blame it on her band, since they got it right and took the heat by staying on stage and continuing (and they sounded decent). Does this mean she only gets 13 minutes of fame? Check it all out and decide for yourself (it even launched its own domain)!
So at long last, after numerous delays, the dealership finally called me to tell me that my new car was in. I’m going to pick up tonight after work, and of course I’m pretty excited. It will be nice to be able to travel places without worrying about breaking down or becoming physically ill from the fumes seeping into the cabin. In fact, this is only one of (albeit the most expensive of) the packages that will be arriving at the cottage this week. Additionally, I am finally getting a DVD burner; I had $75 off in Amazon certificates (I earn them on my credit card) and decided to buy myself a birthday gift. All the loads of anime that I have on my hard drive is killing my space (now I know how Ender feels), and I was tired of using 9-10 CDs just to copy off one regular season. I think now a season should fit on 2 DVDs, which will make finding and actually rewatching series much easier. Plus, I’ll be able to watch DVDs on my computer. Another computer purchase that’ll be coming, is Bunky’s new laptop. Her old one has a loud screeching problem and so can’t really be used in class; hence she was forced to get a new Dell laptop. Fortunately, Kungfucius came through and eased the pain by finding a coupon that saved like $700 off the listed price of the laptop and brought the cost under $1,000. Woot!
Since my birthday falls on a Saturday this year, I get to take Friday off this week and I’m really looking forward to it! I think Bunky has decided that we are going to Howl-O-Scream or whatever, which should be interesting as well.
I’m hoping to scam someone into getting me a new watch, since my current one is close to being busted, and I am low on funds T_T.
Old Blogger | Kabitzin 10/29/2004 | 
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