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Posted on

wha happen?


So, pharaohweb.com went dark for a day – offline, account suspended by my host for “abuse.” What happened, you ask? I’ll tell you.

For months now, I’ve been frustrated with the spotty MySQL performance I get with my hosting package. Sometimes it slows to a crawl, sometimes it shuts down my connections to the databases throwing a “max queries exceeded” error, leaving my database-reliant pages dead in the water until the ban resets. I’ve sent numerous mails to my host’s technical support about these recurring issues, and things always seem to return to normal before too long. Recently, however, my databases were down again after nearly a 24hr period of extreme slowness and delayed reaction. So, I sent the following mail to technical support on March 8th:

Hi there,

The databases on my site have been down (not working) a lot over the past three days, and when they are up and running they seem very slow and unresponsive. Can you help explain what the issue is? I’m pretty sure I’m not overusing the max connections, but the performance is bad and the fact that I can’t get to any of my database-reliant pages is unacceptable. I chatted w/an online rep, and they advised I mail support.

Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks.

I got no reply for days.

Then, on the morning of the 13th, a friend IM’d me to say that, while trying to leave a comment on my blog, the site slowed to a crawl and began tossing “zero size reply” errors (timeouts). I pulled up the site to check, and sure enough I also got a timeout error. I immediately intiated an online chat with the technical support from the hosting company, and decided to check for a reply to my original issue while waiting in the queue for an online agent. Turns out, there was a reply to my original issue above, which had come in around 11am that morning (the exact time my buddy IM’d me to tell me the site was dying):

Dear Client

Thank you for contacting technical support.

The mysql server was running slow as a few users on the server were using more than their fair share of database resources. The issue has been resolved and the database should now be accessible. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank You.

Hmmm… that’s interesting. But, I’m sure glad they got those nasty bandwidth hogs taken care of.

In the meantime, I have to leave for lunch, so I put on my bluetooth headset and dial up technical support, leaving the still-waiting online chat to rot. Fifteen minutes later I’m at home, still on hold. I decide to check my gmail again, and lo and behold I have an e-mail from abuse@myhost.com a subject of “Account Suspended for pharaohweb.com,” it reads:

This email is regarding your account for the domain pharaohweb.com. The account was temporarily suspended because of a violation.

The service team understands the impact that a suspension can have and does not take it lightly. For a suspension to occur there has to be a clear indication of intentional abuse or a direct and immediate threat to the overall performance, stability, or security of the host server.

The following reason has been given for the suspension: Your account has been suspended for causing a high load to the mysql server which caused many customers to be unable to access their websites. Please contact abuse@myhost.com for information on reinstating the account.

The service department can inform you of what needs to be done to unsuspend the account.

Guess who the nasty bandwidth hog was? Uh-huh, it was me. Guess who was one of the “many customers” who were “unable to access their websites?” Uh-huh, also me. As I’m reading the mail, I’m finally connected to a technical support rep. I give him the rundown, and he says he can’t help, that the only way to deal with a suspended account is via e-mail to the abuse department. Grand. What’s worse, the abuse department can take anywhere from 24-48hrs to respond. Basically, I’m out of luck for up to 48hrs. Even worse, my site wasn’t simply taken offline, my account was de-activated. I couldn’t FTP, couldn’t login to my control panel, couldn’t access any of my data. Nothing to do but sit and wait.

Turns out they graciously turned my account back on about 24hrs later, with a warning that I had been banned for excessive traffic and a snippet of the MySQL logs showing an inordinate amount of activity from a WordPress plugin called BAStats. They advised me to review my code to ensure such activity wouldn’t happen again. I addressed this in part by disabling the BAStats plugin (which looked to be the major offender), and also by making the database user a random choice between of the five users I have defined for the WordPress database. By randomly choosing which user accesses the database, I hope to cut down on the too-many-connections-per-user issue. So, here’s hoping things around here will be a little faster for the trouble, and that I won’t get banned again for being so awesomely popular.

Anyway, nerd-stuff over… and aren’t you glad I’m back on the air?

Stumbled on a website called IUsedToBelieve.com today, where people post things they once took for truth when they were kids. I got a kick reading some of these things, and really enjoyed the “most common” beliefs feature, as I, too, thought some of the things on that page were reality. For instance, the childhood belief that factories make clouds – I was all over that one. Some other good ones I read included these:

I used to think that vanilla was the absence of chocolate, not its own flavor.

As a child I was totally floored by the fact that my dad owned a monkey wrench. We had never had any monkeys that needed to be taken apart and I could never figure out which part of a monkey it would fit on even if we had.

I wanted to grow up and become a marine biologist, which seemed to me the perfect combination of studying nature and shooting people.

And, although I searched and searched, I couldn’t find a single sole on the site willing to admit that they had the same childhood understanding/belief about dying as me: I used to believe that I had actually probably died several times, but that “Heaven” was just an extension of your current life. I.e., you really do “die” in your old life, but you pick up seamlessly in your new life and every single aspect is the same. It’s a sort of parallel universe thing. I used to imagine that the the people in my old life (where I was now dead and gone) were grieving me terribly. I figured I had likely died many times, and began thinking about mundane things like a spill on my bicycle or a near-accident when riding with dad as times when I’d died in my old life, and began a new one. This didn’t bother me, as I figured everyone and everything in my new life was an exact copy of things in my old life – so I wasn’t “losing” anything by dying. I just felt sad for the people in my old life who had to deal with me dying.

Goodnight.

Posted on

sweat, death, & fervor


Tuesday night and I had a great time finishing up yesterday’s mowing. It was the backyard this time, and I purposely kept finding little things to do to stay out in the weather and sweat a little longer. It was so perfect, warm and green and the iPod was on-point, I enjoyed stooping and kneeling and the sheen of sweat on my face. The drip, drip, drip of sweat off the long tangle of my beard made me even more happy. I mowed, edged, pulled weeds, sprayed weeds, fertilized, and fixed four sprinklers – it was a banner day for yardwork. In conclusion, I’d like to thank Congress for pulling-in daylight savings time and making all this after-work earth-time possible. I love 8pm sunsets.

I’ve written before about how I have a slight obsession with “true crime” stories. No, not like the cheap novels or anything, more like those “forensic” shows, and anything to do with serial killers. In fact, it’s a small theme on this site, bucketed under the “darkside” tag moniker. To me, serial killers are somewhat fascinating – not because they are awesome, but because it often boggles me to try and wrap my mind around what they do. Don’t worry, I’m not thinking about serial killing anyone.

Anyway, I’ve always been interested in the history around the Zodiac killer, especially since finding an obsessively detailed website based on the still-anonymous killer and his crimes a few years ago. It was with zeal, then, that I read the recent news that, with everything being stirred up again because of the new Zodiac movie, police in San Francisco had “discovered” a lost card from 1990 that may, in fact, be from the Zodiac killer. Well, of course the zodiackiller.com guy posted the high-res scans today, and the message boards are lighting-up with couch-based detectives trying to puzzle out meaning from the cryptic missive. Interesting, and will be fun to watch develop. Wouldn’t it be cool if, by getting his wish and making it big in public eye, he ends up hanging himself?

Today, in the middle of a meeting we were both in at work, Pat IM’d me this link. For those of you who managed to resist the urge to click the aforelinked link, I’ll pass along the title here before I go on to make my point – the article is called: The Great Rock Hope, Arcade Fire grabs the baton from Bruce Springsteen and U2, and it begins with the auspicious sentence, “For those who haven’t been following along, rock critics have crowned a new World’s Greatest Band.”

Well damn, if that ain’t coming right out and saying it.

Should Slate be afraid? Afraid to call the Arcade Fire the new “world’s greatest band?” I mean, that’s pretty presumptuous, right? So many people are thinking it, though, I guarantee. The band, having blown away the music press with their debut, have come-correct again this year with an incredibly solid sophomore effort (and now, for your benefit, I won’t keep summing up things which are much better written in the Slate article). I do have to say, however, that I feel entirely vindicated in comparing the ‘Fire to the same bands Slate does in my many lusty rants about their awesomeness.

The Slate article goes on to say that the Arcade Fire are “…a gale-force live band,” and damn if I can’t do anything but nod my head in agreement after seeing them only once prior in a tiiiiny little club in San Francisco. In fact, hoping for a repeat of that history, I recently spearheaded an e-mail campaign to try and recruit some friends to go see the ‘Fire live when they’re out this way later this summer, and my mail went something like this:

Folks,

Tickets for the Arcade Fire’s two shows in Berkley (at the Greek Theater) go on sale this Sunday via Ticketmaster, but tomorrow through some backdoor pre-sale website. Either way, I’m buying some – and hope to get them during tomorrow’s pre-sale. There are two shows, June 1st and 2nd, which is a Friday and Saturday. I’m leaning towards the June 2 Saturday show, as the post-work Friday afternoon drive to Berkley sounds like crap. Tickets are $31.50ea (plus some fees I bet), and the entire venue is general admission.

Reply and lemme know if you’re interested, and how many tickets I should get if you are down.

Even if you don’t know the ‘Fire’s work, the show should rock (plus you can tell your kids you saw them and they’ll marvel at your role as a piece of rock-‘n’-roll history). If you want to get an idea what the band is like live, check out their SNL performances last week on YouTube here.

Love you.

And hey, if the Slate (and many other) hype is to be believed… maybe my “piece of rock-‘n’-roll history” statement ain’t that far off.

Goodnight.

Posted on

anthematic?


Mowed the lawn today, and the iPod’s shuffle function was feeling anthemic. Now, when I wrote that sentence in my head as I mowed, the word “anthemic” sounded awesome. In fact, the word “anthemic” was the entire reason I wanted to write the sentence, I wanted so badly to use it – as it just sounded great in my head, and I figured it would look so sexy on the screen (sans serif, of course). How crushed do you think I was when I banged it out at the keyboard and the little red dots popped up underneath it when I hit the space bar to move onto the next word. “What, ‘anthemic’ isn’t a word?” I thought. Bollocks. A quick Google search to vindicate me – no definition quicklink in the upper right for “anthemic.” Dang, what’s going on here. Maybe it’s “anthematic?” Little red dots again. Well, that was such a bust – and I was so geared up, a shame. I’m gonna use it anyway, ’cause it makes you just want to drop your pants: anthemic. What I meant to say was, the iPod played long greats like Weezer’s “Only In Dreams,” and Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism.” I mowed with a grin; the weather was perfect.

I think it should be illegal to sell dishtowels that don’t actually absorb water. I hate this. Hate it with a passion. We must have twenty dishtowels at home, all of which aren’t worth their weave but for the microfiber ones. Those microfiber ones are like those super-mashed up t-shirts you get at trade shows, you know the ones that are unbelievably compressed into shapes like little rocketships or wrenches or tennis shoes (depending on the trade show, of course). Everything else is jack. Don’t be fooled, my painstaking research has proven that about 90% of dishtowels just push water around and don’t absorb a drop. If you want a towel that will actually dry your dishes, get the microfiber ones… they are the jonk.

Wow folks, a few months ago, I was busy ripping through my entire CD collection, turning them into MP3s. And, since I’m anal and I like all my audio files to be tagged correctly (i.e. contain the right artist, album, track, etc. data embedded into the file), I oft-lamented on the difficulty of getting my treasured Beatles bootlegs (or bootlegs in general, for that matter) to properly tag-up. The lack of a centralized CDDB-style database for bootlegs was the main problem. Back then, I decided to do something about it and I wrote a script for the great freeware tagging app, the Godfather, that would go out and “scrape” the then-incomparable bootlegzone.com website for tag data. The script was complex, full-featured, and worked like a charm. With its help, I automatically tagged up hundreds of Beatlegs… all with the press of a button. That whole time, I kept thinking, “What if bootlegzone went offline tomorrow?” Me, with hundreds of untagged bootlegs still to go and so much invested in my script… I’d’ve been heartbroken. Well, fate, this time, it seems, spared me. As of sometime late last month, bootlegzone went dark for good. Sad to see it go, but glad I got to exploit its labors before it died. Believe me though, in the Beatleg world, it’s a big deal.

In Keaton news, she’s begun to stand unassisted at every chance she gets. Sharaun or I will say, “No hands!” and she’ll throw her hands in the air and squeal like she’s riding an imaginary roller coaster. So far, she seems more interested in perfecting her standing technique than she does taking any real steps – but we have been able to get her to take a single step by moving away from her and holding her hand. She can push into a standing position from sitting, so I’m assuming walking isn’t far off. Things move fast. Speaking of Keaton, I managed to get up a new series of images to her gallery – check ’em out here.

Thanks.

Posted on

never a good idea


Sunday afternoon and I’ve eschewed a hundred things so I can sit on the couch in the sunshine. I’m not feeling quite 100%, my sinuses really acting up – so badly that I’m thinking my sinus infection of a few weeks back may not have been completely quelled by my round of antibiotics. All through my open windows I hear the sound of a neighborhood mowing, that doppler-effect sound of each pass up and down their lawns as they make something of their Sunday time and I nothing of mine.

The multiple mowers, and high-seventies temperatures, though, make it a done-deal, summertime is on its way… slowly but surely we’ll get there again. Had a good weekend though, despite the congestion. Spent all Saturday with Keaton while Sharaun went snowboarding, it was really nice. We walked down to a local park, met up with some friends, ate fried chicken, tossed the frisbee, and played around in the grass (pictures coming soon). That evening we headed out to Ben’s birthday party, where I drank some beer and smoked some Djarums. Man those Djarums are just never a good idea.

We ate dinner with friends Sunday night, one of my favorite things we do regularly. Even with Keaton, we swap dinners with friends on average three times I week, I’d guess. Most of our friends on this rotation are the kind of friends whose places I feel completely comfortable at. The kind of friends where, if I fall asleep on their sofa and snore while taking an unplanned nap, it’d be nothing out of the ordinary. We’re lucky to have friends like that, I think… We’ve been able to cultivate a nice little network of good peoples. OK, enough of the sappy shit.

The news said the temperatures this weekend reached eighty degrees. I’m not sure about that, but I am sure that we had some amazing weather. It’s the kind of weather that makes me think about camping. In fact, this weekend would have been prime for it, if the weather up in the hills was anywhere near as warm as it was here (which I’m sure it wasn’t).

Thing is, I’m looking at needing some kind of family getaway vacation thing sometime soon here… as work has really been weighing on me the past couple weeks. Problem is, I don’t think anything is going to change in the next few weeks. Not even the prospect of making my more-than-a-year since return to China and Taiwan seems like a decent break. But I need one, oh I need one.

I hesitate to publish this, but there’s nothing else and it’s words. Goodnight.

Posted on

weekend minus one


Friday tomorrow, and we have an “off-site” event at work, which means it’s gonna be just a little more than a half day and then an afternoon of early beers and some snooker. I think it’ll be a nice way to ease into the weekend. As for the weekend, I don’t have many plans. Sharaun is leaving me with Keaton all day Saturday while she goes snowboarding. I’m thinking we’ll maybe walk to the park or something. At some point I have big plans to mow and fertilize the lawn, and maybe install a screen door.

My website was down most of the day today, some database issues on the host side which I hope they’ve now worked through. Not that I’m losing millions in trade for every minute of downtime, but I’m sure Sharaun’s grandmother in Florida thinks her computer is broken when she goes to look at Keaton’s new pictures and gets a 404. I really think that blog comment spam is what may be causing my somewhat frequent database issues, as my host limits the number of database “connects” I can have in any given time-chunk. Every time a spam comment gets written to the database (which still happens, even though Akismet catches them and relegates them to an unpublished “spam” queue for later review), it counts against my “max connections” ceiling. Honestly, that’s the only thing I can see pushing me over the limit. Also, though, I think my host has weak database support on my current plan (where I share a single server with hundreds of other users’ websites, and we’re all getting a slice of the same MySQL pipe on the backend). I could upgrade to a virtualized dedicated server – but that costs dough. Anyway, sorry for the nerd-talk.

My beard is progressing nicely and is now rather fuzzy and voluminous, little hairs jutting this way and that in a nice thick tangle. Whenever I’m in the car, I strain my neck to admire it in the rearview. I love watching the water drip off it in streams during my morning shower, and the fact that the fuzz of it obscures the bottom lobe of my ear in the mirror. I have these visions of the pictures from this summer’s future camping trips, where I have this massive jumble of beard hanging off my chops, like the mountain man I always dream about but will never be. Sometimes I wonder if, come the day I decide I want to shave it all off (never?), Keaton will recognize me the same. I know she’ll know who I am, but I can’t help but think she’s gotten used to unshaven daddy as the one true daddy – any other daddy might just be an impostor.

I’m all pumped because Sharaun and I and a bunch of friends all got tickets to see the Arcade Fire play at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley in June. There are still tickets left, so get ’em and join us there – the whole venue is general admission so it should be blissful anarchy trying to jockey for the good seats. Yay! Arcade Fire in an outdoor venue on a nice June night… I can’t wait.

Goodnight.

Posted on

lock my tear-drenched heart away inside a steel box


A hodge-podge of stuff today. I almost didn’t write, started falling asleep watching that Discovery channel “The Tomb of Jesus” documentary (not because it was boring, but because I was all alone and reclined on the couch). But, then Sharaun got back from the gym and I got up and forced myself to do the dishes and I got a second wind. So here I am then, let’s go. Oh, before we start, I updated Keaton’s gallery – check it out.

My throat is sore and raw, and I have a raspy cough. I know that it’s not sick though, it’s allergies, and it sucks. When I was a kid, I had asthma and allergies. Asthma bad enough that I remember gaspingly wheezing for air in the back seat as my parents drove me to the emergency room, and allerigies bad enough that my parents had to take me in each week to get a shot in the arm.

As I got older, both the asthma and allergies waned in strength, and by the time I was a teenager in Florida – I was pretty much allergy-free. At the time, I thought it was just the natural “growing out of it” that many allergists will advise you is probable as you age. Now, however, after my return to California, and my allergies’ return to me – I’m beginning to think it’s more likely I “geographied” out of my allergies than I did grew out of them. For now, friends, they are back with a vengeance. A mere seven years back in California and they plague me come Springtime. What do you know, another tick in the “pro” column for the good ol’ South.

Straightening the other day after bending down to retrieve a little toy monkey for Keaton, I smacked the top of my head on the underside of the little niche where our TV lives. Man it hurt. I immediately put Keaton down and grabbed my poor skull, considering, as all men do when in severe pain, what the best curses would be to communicate my feelings, and in which direction and how hard to throw the little plastic monkey that was responsible. In the end, I just groaned and squeezed the monkey tight – not wanting to go all Hulk out-of-control with Keaton watching. My head was bruised, and my teeth hurt from clacking together, but I lived. I did, however, somehow end up with a smallish pimple-like thing right where I bumped my noggin. I find this painful, disgusting, and embarrassing. Who gets a zit on the very crown of their dome? Right there where I’m my baldest, right there in plain view, dead-smack on the perihelion of my melon.

I think I need to change my strategy at work a bit, need to add a little more “dick” to how I manage. I say this because I think it’s a semi-fault of mine to be a little too friendly and kind, and I’ve found that lately those traits have been getting in the way (somewhat) of the “hardness” with which I want to communicate some things. I don’t want to be a jerk boss, no, I’d always like to be the nice boss – but I think I need to flex some muscle, bring some thunder, in order to shed that schoolboy image of someone who can’t get all iron-fisted when the need arises. Yes, I think this is something I’ll have to do. Learn to be brusque, learn to be curt, firm, and more unwavering in the face of strong emotion. What I’m saying is, I have to learn to lock my tear-drenched heart away inside a steel box when necessary. Come then, the new age of me – the dick.

Goodnight.

Posted on

springtime


It’s after dinner and I’m sitting here drawing my too-long index fingernail across my front bottom teeth, scraping the film of a good meal into little curls which I’ll then think about, and eventually just decide it’s easier to swallow. Sharaun went easy tonight and let me have chilidogs for dinner, although I did have to eat a salad to “balance” it. I just put Keaton down to bed. Speaking of Keaton and sleeping, we lost her morning nap about a week back – she just refused to go down. So, she’s a one-nap baby now, although it’s a nice long one around 1pm so it’s not so bad. I’ve hit a serious stall on my reading, last time I checked in with Sal Paradise he was on his way back to New York after an amazing-sounding shack-up with a Mexican farmgirl. I want to get back to it, but I’ve been otherwise occupied. Tonight’s the night though, I think.

Spring is coming. My lawn is starting to get green and the trees on the block are starting to sport buds on their winter-grey limbs. I’m excited for the day when the weatherman says that the rains are over and I can pull the the hammock and patio chair cushions out of the garage. I’m ready for the not-so-hot precursor to summer months, when we can start earting dinners outside again, music drifting through the screen door, Keaton crawling around in the grass. I’ve decided I’m going to put a screen door on our front door as well, so we can have the house “open” and get a nice breeze running through. This is typical in Florida, but I don’t see it much here in California, maybe I’ll start a trend. Anyway, the coming of spring and summer have my mind turning to camping again, and thinking about how much fun we’ll be able to have (and how much extra work it’ll be) now that Keaton’s a little more mobile and a little more cognizant of her surroundings. Yeah, springtime… bring it.

Goodnight.