Posts Tagged ‘Administrative’

Pre-Halloween Weekend Open Thread

Friday, October 29th, 2021

I have to run around a bunch this morning, so I think it’s going to end up being another Saturday LinkSwarm.

I won’t say that Halloween has snuck up on me this year, but I haven’t done as much Halloween-themed stuff as I would like this year. I did buy these “flickering flame” bulbs for my outdoor lights. They seem to work fine.

You can find all my Halloween posts on my non-political blog here.

Anyone doing anything interesting for Halloween this year?

Technical Difficulties

Tuesday, September 7th, 2021

My blogs were down this morning (both BattleSwarm and https://www.lawrenceperson.com/), and some features (like tag auto-population) still don’t seem to be working. No explanation from BlueHost for the outage except “There are too many process, I killed all the process but it keeps re-generating,” which is a symptom of the issue, not the issue itself.

Anyway, the upshot is no real blog post this morning, so instead enjoy a compilation of random Golden Retriever videos.

Ten Years of Blogging

Tuesday, October 15th, 2019

My first post here on BattleSwarm was October 14, 2009, following Dwight’s lead, and only a day after my non-political blog. (Funny how Dwight and I and Borepatch all started blogging within a year of each other. Almost as if something happened around that time that compelled us to jump in…)

Here’s a quick Whitman sampler/greatest hits list from those halcyon days of yore:

  1. How Many People Did Communism Kill?
  2. WisCon’s Feminist Failfandom Brigade Gets My Locus April Fool’s Piece Taken Down (an early brush with what would come to be known as Social Justice Warriors)
  3. BattleSwarm Blog Endorses Ted Cruz for United States Senator
  4. Assault Weapons Vital Topic Among America’s 23 Million Unemployed.
  5. Someone in the Travis County Sheriff’s Office Must Really Hate Rosemary Lehmberg. (Featuring the Democratic Travis County’s DWI arrest video, now with old dead video replaced.) “CALL GREG!”
  6. The Decline and Fall of the Austin-American Statesman. I’m sure their circulation has fallen even further…
  7. Sad Puppies, If I Must.
  8. Raqqa Liberated. One from a long series of widely ignored posts on the war against the Islamic State…
  9. Clinton Corruption Update: The Converging (the most popular entry in a long-running series)
  10. It’s the Smug.
  11. Turmoil in the NRA.
  12. The very first post of what would become the Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. Some day, I might even move off the default WordPress theme!

Now if I could only make the blogroll for Instapundit or Ace of Spades…

battleswarmblog.com: Now With Added https

Wednesday, December 20th, 2017

I finally got off my lazy butt and got an SSL certificate for this blog.

So the official address is now https://www.battleswarmblog.com (note the new all important “s” after “http”).

FYI, my SSL certificate was free through WordPress and the Bluehost folks made the change for me.

Update your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly, since Google and Firefox are starting to get all pissy about http connections (not that I really blame them).

Another Bluehost Phishing Email

Saturday, September 2nd, 2017

Remember the previous Bluehost phishing attack I mentioned?

Today I got another one.

Here’s the raw source (with a few inserted line breaks to keep it from running into the righthand column).

Headers:

Message ID
Created at: Sat, Sep 2, 2017 at 12:50 AM (Delivered after 3 seconds)
From: Bluehost
To: lawrencepersonXXXXX@gmail.com
Subject: Request to reset your domain associated with this e-mail address
SPF: PASS with IP 74.220.222.232 Learn more

(XXXXX added to email address here and below to defeat spambot scrappers.)

Payload

Delivered-To: lawrencepersonXXXXX@gmail.com
Received: by 10.129.53.151 with SMTP id c145csp343693ywa;
Fri, 1 Sep 2017 22:54:47 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.99.120.71 with SMTP id t68mr4941018pgc.177.1504331447706;
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 22:50:47 -0700 (PDT)
X-Google-Smtp-Source: ADKCNb5s73v956ds860PK1kR3YVGj/j+bLV2uYQNDDlbJ/kZIPjlLkqlSdvnwz3d/dZQs6C8Ug2m
X-Received: by 10.99.120.71 with SMTP id t68mr4941001pgc.177.1504331446972;
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 22:50:46 -0700 (PDT)
ARC-Seal: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; t=1504331446; cv=none;
d=google.com; s=arc-20160816;
b=QOjWmOjsvjB9+8HswySoFQOQ4lsCvpPME27NN9zJfx8
gZofrql3IwevgfSp0e1Btxg
aIL8DmnXCGllyd8AvPrBrN/Ly3+iKtBxdbk3oua+d9vYBYOgYWcLW
+kMvQAcV81hB1El
PXLWVLUV78BXenGJMUIs0voePL345QIlDhjigRRvOYs4/cOFXhr/
0nE0A+F45lneFaUx
oG7oYSk3QBVJtvwWUd2z1ksn24R8kTgwWfFZGqVEUm6fji4tA6J1Qv
1IwL7GWDtmI/ab
pdU/Dh9cvT3lR2bDOFQaSje0NQuibGyFY3ouNGDdRygJIJKjldi
EoUsqxE1zCoCrfZU1
l+Dw==
ARC-Message-Signature: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=google.com; s=arc-20160816;
h=date:message-id:cc:from:content-transfer-encoding:mime-version
:subject:to:arc-authentication-results;
bh=pAtFnsm7hK/sCRTeHL/WZ2Afvt74elEbNil2YQ/rHSk=;
b=t9vALxsoLpH2sKGGjbqvx/KAJOGJQaT/2qVFWCaNXJOybuHwoMGmaRh1
eP62jnkD5s
nQXOsgK3wQfj/l2Nq1tuA05l+FfQgRlLFSFs/4YKSjcrIveLp/ht/ergUZGv1ydawsDk
PdNYonJnmlykTW7HQxAhtRbbFP5dohfLGcGcdUmOsV6XjUZQK+
9agN78MxBBfFj33V7j
aUCkZ/BINSFb2Jt4IzOaQdnnVzoBwY8R1aLg0+GdVf26wZuYLBiN
hAXOJY1SVCjGrrwd
GiGw2eMbMyG5V1VjGlhJPx8Wan7eA/lXr+hrwnuEalFaGk66Ni8lV7
nADN9StIh7AyMp
aY7Q==
ARC-Authentication-Results: i=1; mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of doorsofv@box1175.bluehost.com designates 74.220.222.232 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=doorsofv@box1175.bluehost.com
Return-Path:
Received: from outbound-ss-1849.hostmonster.com ([74.220.222.232])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id a2si1461087pll.210.2017.09.01.22.50.46
for
(version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 22:50:46 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of doorsofv@box1175.bluehost.com designates 74.220.222.232 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.220.222.232;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of doorsofv@box1175.bluehost.com designates 74.220.222.232 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=doorsofv@box1175.bluehost.com
Received: from cmgw2 (cmgw2.unifiedlayer.com [67.20.127.202]) by soproxy7.mail.unifiedlayer.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 84A09215C39 for ; Fri,
1 Sep 2017 23:50:46 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from box1175.bluehost.com ([50.87.248.175]) by cmgw2 with id 4Vqj1w00l3no00q01Vqmx1; Fri, 01 Sep 2017 23:50:46 -0600
X-Authority-Analysis: v=2.2 cv=IspuSP3g c=1 sm=1 tr=0 a=ZGpYF3R9av1KVggUQYjyig==:117 a=ZGpYF3R9av1KVggUQYjyig==:17 a=IkcTkHD0fZMA:10 a=2JCJgTwv5E4A:10 a=eLEXLPMnAAAA:8 a=cNaOj0WVAAAA:8 a=3gznCMWBZ5u3K-Cr9X4A:9 a=8jPl8b1L-dkswZAf:21 a=7g7r5GJnjx26k2DO:21 a=L4Rp5h-_gRjJhvEI:21 a=QEXdDO2ut3YA:10 a=TnA9z4vs7e96t_Vj_DNd:22
Received: from doorsofv by box1175.bluehost.com with local (Exim 4.87) (envelope-from ) id 1do1KN-003TIa-D2 for lawrencepersonXXXXX@gmail.com; Fri, 01 Sep 2017 23:50:43 -0600
To: lawrencepersonXXXXX@gmail.com
Subject: Request to reset your domain associated with this e-mail address
X-PHP-Originating-Script: 1982:mail.php
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
From: Bluehost
Cc:
Message-Id:
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2017 23:50:43 -0600
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - box1175.bluehost.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - gmail.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [1982 1982] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - box1175.bluehost.com
X-BWhitelist: no
X-Source-IP:
X-Exim-ID: 1do1KN-003TIa-D2
X-Source:
X-Source-Args:
X-Source-Dir:
X-Source-Sender:
X-Source-Auth: doorsofv
X-Email-Count: 38
X-Source-Cap: ZG9vcnNvZnY7ZG9vcnNvZnY7Ym94MTE3NS5ibHVlaG9zdC5jb20=
X-Local-Domain: yes


=09

=09=09

=09=09=09

=09=09

=09=09

=09=09=09

=09=09

=09

3D'Bluehost'
=09=09=20
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09We received a request to reset your domain associated with this=
e-mail address.

=09=09=09=09This request was generated by a user clicking the 'Domain Reset=
' link. If you want it to be reset, then you can safely ignore this message=
.
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09If you did not request to have your domain reset, or do not wan=
t it to be reset, please protect your domain. You can refuse this request a=
nd securely reset your password by clicking the link below:=20
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09=20
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09https://my.bluehost.com/web-hosting/password/
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09=20
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09Alternatively, you can copy and paste the link into your browse=
r's address window, or retype it there.
=09=09=09=09

=09=09=09=09=20
=09=09=09=09Thank you,
=09=09=09=09Bluehost Support
=09=09=09=09http://w=
ww.bluehost.com/

=09=09=09=09For support go to http://bluehost.com/help
=09=09=09


Interestingly, even though all of that is in a code tag, part of it (including the link) is still rendered. (I don’t need to tell you not to click that, do I?) I wonder if the 3D class stuff bypasses standard rendering layers.

Here’s the important segment (opening and closing greater than and less than signs omitted):

a href=3D'http://my.bluehost.pazencore.com/web-hosting/?q=3DbG=
F3cmVuY2VwZXJzb25AZ21haWwuY29tDQ=3D=3D' target=3D'_blank'>https://my.bluehost.com/web-hosting/password/

Here’s the whois registrant and admin contact for pazencore.com domain:

Name: EDOUARD VAN DE VELDE
Organization: EDOUARDVDV
Mailing Address: BAKKUMMERSTRAAT 37, CASTRICUM 1901 HJ NL
Phone: +31.0615954306
Ext:
Fax:
Fax Ext:
Email:EDOUARDVDV@HOTMAIL.COM

More interestingly, here’s the tech contact:

Tech Contact
Name: BLUEHOST INC
Organization: BLUEHOST.COM
Mailing Address: 550 E TIMPANOGOS PKWY, OREM UTAH 84097 US
Phone: +1.8017659400
Ext:
Fax: +1.8017651992
Fax Ext:
Email:WHOIS@BLUEHOST.COM

So here we have a Bluehost phishing scam being run from a Bluehost domain.

I think it’s time to have an interesting discussion with BlueHost support…

Weird WordPress/Firefox Cache Issue

Monday, May 15th, 2017

So I just published scenes from the liberal freakout, but it’s not showing up on the main blog page, nor in a next link from the previous page, nor linked from any of the Index topics. Visibility is on and the publication date is today.

Edited to add: This isn’t showing up either. Something screwy is going on…

Edited to add 2: This appears to be fixed in most browsers…except my own Firefox browser, which stubbornly insists on not showing the new content despite a restart and cache clearing.

Next step: Restart the Mac.

Edited to add 3: Restarting the Mac finally fixed the problem on Firefox…but that second note above still isn’t showing up in Safari on my iPhone. I’m starting to think something screwy is going on with Blue Hosts’s caching system…

Edited to add 4: Firefox now shows this post, but not the third note added above. Safari iPhone shows only the first note, Safari Mac shows only the first two notes. All the notes are visible when you click on the post itself, but not on the main blog page. This makes me think it’s a Blue Host caching issue (though they deny it via Twitter).

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Sunday, January 1st, 2017

I’m proud to announce that BattleSwarm Blog has been named to The Fabulous 50 Blog List by Director Blue.

Quote:

Best Grassroots Blog
Lawrence Person’s BattleSwarm: Person’s LinkSwarms extract pure wheat from chaff.”

Thanks! And there are a lot of other great blogs in the fab 50 list worth checking out.

Welcome Cal Watchdog to the Blogroll

Tuesday, September 1st, 2015

Keeping with with California’s ongoing descent into a failed state is a never-ending task. That’s why I’m adding Cal Watchdog to the blogroll, a long overdue move.

Do check them out if you like the Texas vs> California roundup…

Instead of Actual Content: Story Pipeline Deadlock Edition

Tuesday, April 7th, 2015

Right now in the Pipeline of Half-Completed Blog Posts, I have:

  • A post on the “Sad Puppies” Hugo Awards controversy
  • Another update on Greece (which supposedly runs out of money on Thursday)
  • Analysis of the Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal
  • Another Texas vs. California update
  • Unfortunately, today is going to be unusually busy, so instead of finishing those and offering up actual content, here are some Golden Retriever videos:

    Having An Intermittant Database Connection Problem

    Monday, December 29th, 2014

    I seem to be having an intermittent database connection problem for old posts. Not seeing it right now, but if you see it crop up again, let me know.