MT.Net

There are 150 posts filed in MT.Net (this is page 12 of 15).

Rankcrawler bot update

Sheesh. Just after I finished blocking Rankcrawler from accessing my site, I found yet another connection attempt from them – this time from a totally new IP address:

94.23.51.159 – – [31/May/2009:07:14:02 -0400] “GET /2009/05/30/conn-clusion/ HTTP/1.1” 200 5574 “http://real-url.org” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;MSIE 5.01; Windows -NT 5.0 – real-url.org)”
94.23.51.159 – – [31/May/2009:07:15:25 -0400] “GET /2009/05/30/conn-clusion/ HTTP/1.0” 200 5574 “-” “-”
94.23.51.159 – – [31/May/2009:07:15:25 -0400] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 200 473 “-” “XML-RPC for PHP 2.2.2”

This IP resolves to rps6637.ovh.net. OVH.Net is the same ISP that Rankcrawler uses. They just can’t take no for an answer.

[Update: 1 June 2009] Rankcrawler says this isn’t them. Duly noted.

Bad bot alert: Rankcrawler

Looks like a bot has been scouring my website without properly identifying itself. I noticed that my older posts were getting a lot of unexplained hits. I checked the logs, looked up the IPs, and discovered the visitors were bots from the rankcrawler.com domain. The bots don’t properly identify themselves in their user agent field, as good bots should do:

Some of the bots came from these IPs (though there may be others):
87.98.249.75
87.98.133.249
91.121.26.45
94.23.152.34
94.23.153.8

As you can see, Rankcrawler prefers to disguise itself as a regular browser. This is a no-no.

87.98.249.75 – – [29/May/2009:23:56:09 -0400] “GET /page/2/ HTTP/1.0” 200 34160 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6”
87.98.249.75 – – [30/May/2009:00:11:16 -0400] “GET /2006/07/ HTTP/1.0” 200 41171 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6”

91.121.26.45 – – [29/May/2009:20:47:22 -0400] “GET / HTTP/1.0” 200 34467 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)”
91.121.26.45 – – [30/May/2009:00:01:23 -0400] “GET /2008/05/ HTTP/1.0” 200 27858 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)”

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MT.Net recovers from another hack

MT.Net has been down for about 28 hours due to my WordPress installation being hacked. Fortunately, I had a copy of the database from the day before (yay, backups!). I am still not sure how it happened as my code was all up-to-date but the WordPress folks are now checking into it. I suspect an xmlrpc.php attack but do not know for sure.

Yesterday morning, my friend Scott reported that my comments links were simply refreshing the main page rather than taking him to the comments. I studied the links my WP site was now spitting out:

http://www.markturner.net/2009/05/?y%/credit-cards/#more-6422
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4,000+ posts

This post makes the 4,008th post to MT.Net. I had hoped to mark the 4,000th post but it came and went without me realizing.

Thanks for reading!

MT.Net restored?

Well, the MT.Net maintenance didn’t go as smoothly as I planned. It was a busy weekend without geeking out, but I managed to do some of both. I should’ve kept the geeking part until a time when I could’ve really focused. Instead, I wound up having to painstakingly recreate all my posts for the whole week: a much bigger task than I’d hoped to do.

Moral: measure twice, cut once. Learn it, live it, love it.

MT.Net maintenance this weekend

This weekend MT.Net will be undergoing maintenance. Don’t be surprised if your favorite source of blather can’t be reached for a time.

MT.Net management hopes to have service restored for good Sunday evening.

Job Postings

I’ve had it in my head for a while that I should write about the jobs I’ve had. My career is full of interesting lessons learned and a bit of humor as well.

Look for the first posting soon.

Highlights of 2008: Our move to downtown

Finally I present the biggest highlight of 2008: our move to downtown. This one event was the most profound change for us in 2008.

Over the past few years, I’d been pondering what life in Raleigh would be after cheap gas was gone, or after I had become too old to drive. I wanted to live someplace where amenities were close by, and by that I don’t mean a faceless strip mall. I wanted to find a place where we could retire, knowing that if we needed to we could get around without driving.
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Highlights of 2008: Rocket

I ended last year on a sad note when we said goodbye to my longtime feline companion, Smitty. Then in the following months we moved into a new home (and judged the kids ready for a pet), so we decided it was time to get a dog.

We met Rocket through a Lab rescue organization, and decided to “test-drive” him for an hour one evening. It wasn’t long after then that Rocket joined our family for good.

He’s led us on romps through the neighborhood, kept good company, become a great car traveler, learned a few tricks, and pretty much been everything we could’ve hoped for in a dog.