Rainy Manchester
Today we’ll spend some time at the coast, checking out Kittery, Maine and the area around it. We spent a night at a Kittery bed and breakfast early in our marriage and are looking forward to seeing the town again.
We’ve had a fun day in New Hampshire! Our flights went off without a hitch and we landed at about 10:30 AM in Manchester. The temperature in Manchester was reported to be 50 degrees but by the time we left the terminal it was noticeably warmer than that. Still it was cool enough for me to switch my shorts for jeans. Getting our car from Enterprise proved a long wait, as there were many in line in front of us who didn’t have a prepaid rental as we did. Eventually, though, we were on our way, destination: Lincoln.
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Kelly and I are on our way to New Hampshire for a three-day anniversary trip. We’ll try to do as much as we can during that time, though the weather won’t be cooperating. Rain is forecast for all day Sunday, which is a wicked pissah.
We’ll check in when we can along the way.
It’s definitely a botnet I’m seeing. Since it has a common HTTP_USER_AGENT I have banned that agent. If you’re a human and you’re still using IE6, you’re out of luck, dude.
This morning I was looking through the webserver logs for MT.Net when I noticed the following three successive hits from yesterday:
91.120.21.161 – – [24/Sep/2009:07:34:15 -0400] “GET /category/Checking%20In/ HTTP/1.1” 404 11629 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
24.77.243.153 – – [24/Sep/2009:07:34:17 -0400] “GET /category/Checking%20In/ HTTP/1.0” 404 11629 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
200.43.232.165 – – [24/Sep/2009:07:34:22 -0400] “GET /category/Checking%20In/ HTTP/1.0” 404 11629 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
Highly suspicious, right? Three different IPs hit the same obscure link at the same time, all with identical browser strings?
Then there were these hits from this morning:
77.94.32.33 – – [25/Sep/2009:06:42:14 -0400] “GET /2009/09/22/ HTTP/1.0” 200 15894 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
77.94.32.33 – – [25/Sep/2009:06:42:27 -0400] “GET /2009/09/23/ HTTP/1.0” 200 17625 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
77.94.32.33 – – [25/Sep/2009:06:42:34 -0400] “GET /wp-login.php?action=register HTTP/1.0” 200 4141 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
190.175.0.151 – – [25/Sep/2009:06:43:09 -0400] “GET /wp-login.php?action=register HTTP/1.1” 200 4141 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
I think I solved the mystery I was seeing on MT.Net, so now I can tell you what happened.
I’m using the SABRE WordPress plugin to block bot users from wreaking havoc on the MT.Net blogosphere. Earlier this week, a supposed bot passed the SABRE math test, so I decided to crank up the CAPTCHA feature of SABRE to further weed out bots. (Now, I don’t know if it actually was a bot that registered or simply some bored Russian, but I wanted to see what the CAPTCHA did anyway.)
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I found an “unexpected inconsistency” with MT.Net today. Can’t go into details yet but I’ve been pondering it this afternoon and can’t think of any reason it should be occurring.
MT.Net may go dark briefly while I try a few things to fix it. Stay tuned.
I got this car warranty call yesterday from a unknown Caller ID. My efforts to reach a live human being were unsuccessful as I got disconnected when I pressed “0.”
Here’s a recording of the call in case others were interested to hear what these calls sound like. When I get time I’ll add the others I collect.
Guitar legend Roger McGuinn is also an accomplished techie, and maintains a blog devoted solely to his various gadgets. Last month, Roger shared his journey into solar power.
What started with the purchase of a small solar panel to charge his cell phone led to him to fully convert his home to solar power. In doing so, he didn’t give up anything but a power bill: he’s got enough juice to power his two refrigerators and 5-ton air conditioner.
An amazing set of alternative-energy rebates and deals are being offered this fall to North Carolina residents. I’ll post about these soon but the deals have me seriously considering following Roger’s lead and putting panels on our roof.
You know the scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life where Mr. Creosote bursts at the seams when offered a “wafer-thin mint?” That’s kind of what it’s like to serve as a baking contest judge: after a while you think the next “wafer-thin mint” might be the one that does you in!
I wasn’t sure what I was getting into when I volunteered to act as a judge for the first-annual Mordecai Historic Park baking contest. I was told there would be forty cakes and cookies to judge. I figured that wouldn’t be too bad – until the day arrived and the number of entries had jumped to 62!
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