Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

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What a waste of a weekend..

Well now it is time for me to get back into some regular blog writing, now that my blogs are working properly again.  It has been a while since all of my sites have been actually loading and working correctly.  Apparently there were some problems that have been brewing for a while that I didn’t realize were problems.  I have all of my sites hosted through Hostgator (no I am not posting a link here, for reasons that will become clear) and they sent me a message about high server use last year.  I thought it was all taken care of after I killed a bad plugin on one of my WordPress sites.  

Apparently, it was not fixed.  Earlier this year I found that my .htaccess file had been held for ransom  modified by hostgator so that I could not write or edit the thing.  This wouldn’t let me install or run any security plugins or caching plugins that THEY RECOMMENDED I INSTALL!  I found this out but the sites were still working for the most part so I ignored it.  Sites would load slowly and I would get 504 (Gateway Timeout) errors more and more often.  I finally decided to start blogging regularly again and I had a hard time getting to this site to do it.

It was last Tuesday, now a week ago, that all 13 of my sites would not load and were constantly getting the 504 errors.  I contacted Hostgator and after about an hour on chat, I was directed to an open ticket from a year ago that I had thought was closed.  Well, after some back and forth and me reporting 2 different times about not being able to get into my sites, they finally ran a scan on my account. To my surprise, the scan covered 130,872 files and 13,936 of them were infected with malware.

Well that set up an exciting weekend at the computer for me, and not writing.  The malware was in the main wordpress .php files, plugin files, theme files, pretty much most of the .php files in my account.  After all of the fun, I had found 3 different forms of the malware, all of which were designed to create backdoors to my sites.  A fat lot of good it would do for anyone to break into my sites, with all of the state secrets and tubs of money that go through them.  Oh that’s right, THEY ARE ALL FREAKING BLOGS OR INFORMATIONAL SITES!

Ok, deep breath.  That rant will be over at CantankerousOldCoots.com later today.

Back to the fun, I found that reinstalling the .php files was the best way to get rid of the virus.  WordPress wasn’t a problem, and some of the plugins were easy to install.  Other plugins were not available, but replacements were, so they got installed.  Some of my theme files and plugins however, were no longer available.  You may  say, “Just find something else then.”  But here is the rub, over the years I have done extensive modifications on most of those themes and some of the plugins, so it wasn’t easy to replace them.  So I didn’t.  I ended up going through what seemed like 10000 files (I know it was less but I wasn’t counting) and manually deleting the malicious code from each one.  

It was a huge deal and took me most of the weekend to do.  Finally, on Sunday night, I finished and all of my sites loaded like they should have.  I spent Monday updating and working on plugins, some of which still had issues, but finally got all of them finished and working like they should.  And I got my .htaccess file back.  And finally the security plugins that I needed.

Hopefully, and I really hope so, all of this is finished and I can get on with my sites working and doing what they are supposed to do.  There are some very painful and creative things that I would like to do to these people that created this malware and got it all over my account.  I should write a book about that, it would rival a Stephen King.  But I digress, I will probably just leave it be and write more posts.

Relativistic Physics for 7 year olds

This morning was interesting.  I poured my 7 1/2 year old son a bowl of cereal for breakfast while I was finishing making lunches.  He sat and ate for a few minutes and then he asked, “Dad, if someone from the future takes someone from the past on a time machine to the future, are they the same age or is one really old?”  Yea, ponder that for a minute.

English: Relativistic formula

English: Relativistic formula (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I sat there for a minute or two and finally said “Yes, to both questions.”  Needless to say he was confused.  So here I am trying to figure out how to explain relativity and time travel to a 7 year old so he can understand it.  Yea, his brain is unique.

I started with a bit of relativity, glossing over the theoretical science and math and got to “If you are on an airplane you don’t notice you are moving unless to look out at the ground, but if you are standing on the corner watching the plane it is going fast.  It is all how you are looking at the same thing.”  Confused look for a minute and then, “Oh, so it is like watching a car go by on the road.”  Bah, bested by a 7 year old.

“Yes,” I said, “it is like that.”  And then we get into what happens with time travel and people.  I hold 2 fingers up, one on each hand.  “OK, these are people and they are both 10 years old and they were born 100 years apart.  In normal time they would move at the same rate.”  As i move my fingers at the same time, “each gets older the same but they will never meet.  When the guy in the future goes to the past, he is getting older to himself, but hasn’t even been born yet to the past guy!”  Eyes began to glaze a bit but he stuck with it.

“Ok, if they both jump back to the future, the future guy is still 10 to himself and 10 in his world.  the past guy is 10 in his body, but 110 by his birthday?  Make sense?”  He looked for a minute and said, “So if they guy from the past goes to the future he is still 10.  Got it.”

Yea sure Tristan, you got it.  I am still waiting for a call from the school, either from his teacher, “What are you teaching this kid?”  or from the principal, “Your son got in a fight about time travel and how old he will be in 103 years.”  We will see what happens.

-Justin

Oh the woes of winter.

Hello all.  Well here we are mid February.  Winter is waning here in Utah, with temperatures are climbing into the 50’s and all of the snow almost gone.  Here is where I have issues with winter.

Dogs in Grange Park, Toronto, Canada.

Dogs in Grange Park, Toronto, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now, I don’t mind the cold, or the snow, what I mind is the pending spring, and all of the mud and gunk that goes with it.  Continue reading

And again we Start…

Hello all.  Well here we are again.  A new start.  It seems like that I am always trying to get to that new start again and again.  I haven’t posted anything new for quite a while on here, why?  I dunno.  Laziness, apathy, too much of life getting in the way.  I have a bag of excuses that I could use, let me rummage around in here and get tot he best one.  I think laziness is probably the best one.

Tapping a Pencil

Tapping a Pencil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started this blog quite a while ago, just to get writing and put some things out there.  I had some moderate success, people were coming by and reading, and then I just kind of faded into the wastelands of the blogosphere.  That is what much of my life has seemed like lately, just fading into the wasteland.  I haven’t cared.  About much of anything.

Finally, now, there has to be a point of that old adage to either $#!^ or get off the pot.  Well, I think (read hope) that it is time to start grunting with wild abandon.  I figure a few posts and some interaction and maybe I can rely on some good folks to help me figure out what this book I am working on should do, and where it should go.

Continue reading

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