Tag: LiveJournal

Little rant for the evening…

Good evening readers. (In this case “readers” is the term I casually use to act like I actually have “readers” when in fact…I am simply writing to myself a bit to vent.)

so.

It is absolutely amazing how loopy you can get when you’re tired, sick, and have taken a sizable shot of Nyquil to have an easier evening.

Well…when I say “you” I obviously mean “me”…unless…umm…nevermind.

So…in case you didn’t see my tweet, you should all google “askew” so you can see what its like for me every day.

Not the “askew” part per se, just the googling. I am asked to “google” things on a professional level so often that you might honestly wonder how I actually got into all this. Which was simple. A decade or so ago, I use to keep a journal. Shortly after a violent break up with the restaurant industry I started keeping my journals in electronic format. LiveJournal, then C2…at one time I was even using phpbb. Until finally after a gazillion hosts and many many blog platforms later…Wordpress won me over. Of course I am a great big dork. Mainly because every one in a while I have to say ‘Tony is a dork’ in my posts so that I come up on the search engines properly…that is…by searching for ‘Tony is a Dork’ you might still find me.

I did mention I am a little loopy. Mainly sleep deprivation of the “under-a-day” kind. We used to call that “wedging” – if you were awake for so long that you started feeling drunk…yeah thats wedging.

Luke the Cat - TonyTown.comAnyhow. I should probably introduce you to my assistant blogger, Luke.

Luke the cat is a little bundle of insane cat whoopass that you all know kittens to be.

He is lovable all the time. He plays with absolutely everything. His favorite toy is a straw, which you can use to make him climb up anything, including innocent roomies that dont realize that a spastic kitten is about to climb them like their life depended on it. He also feels my sandals are mice in disguise and attacks them regularly. And when he gets tired he gets absolutely adorable by climbing up my back without notice so he can curl up on my shoulder while I am typing. (Not joking…he really doesnt care what I am doing, when he wants to sleep he meows twice and if I havent picked him up he climbs on his own.

So yeah. I am really tired now, even the cat is passed out, and I just realized I wrote about nothing on my blog, so I’m fired and tired for the evening. You guys have a great one and hopefully my next post will have something remotely umm…relevant…in it eh?

Night!

-Tony (and his assistant Luke)




Using a nuclear bomb to swat a fly…

So the word is out.

Twitter, FaceBook, and LiveJournal were collateral damage in a hugely overkill bot-net attack many of us felt directly. I originally mentioned the media’s ineptitude in accuracy and profound expertise in unnecessary speculation was comic HERE.

Some script-kiddies with political motive and a little access to a botnet were after one guy.

…yes…the target was ONE GUY.

This time however…the news has decided to restrain themselves on the crazy speculation and started listening to the real pros…

A professor in Georgia apparently was doing something in the way of building a documentary of personal views of events preceding the current tension/issues prevalent between Georgia and Russia. Someone obviously didnt like it…since they fubarified Google’s Blogspot, Facebook. Twitter, and LiveJournal. According to the articles…they are still actually under an attack.

Now here’s where the LameSauce comes into play.
*To all the “businesses” that are 100% dependent or based on Twitter’s communication framework. You’re idiots. You get no sympathy from the IT world. This is like taking money from people to show them how to get a GMail account. If I had any brain cells I’d propose that Twitter directly enter competition with these businesses or bill them for use and get some of the money 😉
*To the script kiddies that did this. Coming from the same side of the fence…I can sincerely say this was serious overkill and completely unnecessary. I can only guess that someone was actually being paid to do this…because despite the “to see if it can be done” factor, you’ve now given four of the largest social networks in the world live data with which to further strengthen themselves from attacks of this nature…in addition, at least in the Twitter venue…attention is now on them…and groups that wreak this level of havoc are rarely prepared for the level of attention that comes when the non-evil corps will pay big $$$ for the head of kids responsible for this. Just my opinion here mates, but you might’ve just set some crosshairs swiveling in your direction that have the facilities to go toe-to-toe with you.

Anyhow, here are some updates…enjoy!

-Tony

NEW YORK TIMES
Just found out that at least 8 different news sites are regurgitating this story verbatim…save yourself some time, use this article first…more coming from different sources.

PC WORLD
Not as good, but references to the myriad of business models 100% dependent on Twitter stability is a hint of things to be careful of…you know…like using someone else’s free service to make money 😉

WASHINGTON POST
Paraphrased NY Times article? can’t tell because the WP doesnt time-stamp their articles. (That means the WP gets lame-sauce points)