Driving Miss Daisy

More pictures here

We met Daisy during her trip from Texas to West Virginia. She’d been pulled from a kill shelter in Louisiana, fostered for about a month in Texas, and by now is settled in with her new permanent family. We don’t know anything more about her history, but we do know she is relaxed with everyone she meets, calmly watches scenery from the car window, and isn’t camera-shy.

Stopping some of the evil in the world

Learning to read access logs can be a blessing and a curse. It’s good to know exactly who to blame for sudden surges in bandwidth, but getting rid of it can turn into an obsession. I’m now looking at logs far too many times every day, knowing I’ll find referers for poker and drugs. There are no redeeming qualities to any of this — their ever-shifting tactics, their use of other people’s resources, and the products they’re pushing. If only they were trying to get hits on sites for feeding the poor or saving puppies. But no. It’s porn and drugs and poker.

I’ve been using a couple of solutions with great success. But since I’m becoming obsessed with stopping these guys — if only there were a way to keep them from even making it into the logs — I’ve added another layer of protection: Bad Behavior. All the configuration was done automatically; just upload and activate. The spammers are already getting consistently 412ed.