Kindly do the needful

Many years ago, there was something of a “moral panic” that kids were only reading Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine. You know what? Those are good, well written books and entertaining stories that got kids to read.

Kids ate them up, which is wonderful. Sure they’re easy and entertaining, but it just makes reading more facile in general.

Personally, I think Goosebumps books are great. Why should reading be hard or boring, read the fun stuff if you want.

When I was about 12 years old, some very sexy Harlequin romance novels circulated around my friend group. We would highlight the euphemisms for sex.

I once chatted with an adult literacy teacher, he’d give them porn books to read since the basic texts were so boring. Then they had practice with reading since it was interesting for them.

The goal with basic literacy isn’t about expecting most readers to interpret classic literature like an English Major. It’s about being able to read and understand forms and pamphlets to be a citizen. And hopefully read and understand news articles.

I earned an English degree in 1999. I read whatever the hell I want now and don’t have to write papers. I don’t fester with “serious literature” since I mostly find it boring and tiresome nowadays.

I read a lot of books. That’s still my passion since I was a little girl. And now I have the little weight of my University of Alabama English degree.

I love reading Steven King nowadays, he really is the best modern author.

I store a bunch of Linux ISOs on my server to keep handy.

[root@miss ~]# du -sh /home/radioshack/domains/radioshack.tech/public_html/iso/
19G /home/radioshack/domains/radioshack.tech/public_html/iso/

But I don’t want all that included in the backup file. I added this and restarted directadmin:

[root@miss ~]# grep exclude /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf
allow_backup_exclude_path=1

Set up the backup exclude file:

[root@miss ~]# cat /home/radioshack/.backup_exclude_paths
domains/radioshack.tech/public_html/iso

And that worked to exclude all those ISOs from the backup file.

-rw-r----- 1 admin radioshack 179M Oct 2 13:02 user.admin.radioshack.tar.gz

I’ve researched and unfortunately there’s no global exclude file like in cPanel.

I’ve been playing with my new LuxCal calendar and tried to import an ics file that had emoji in it. Oops, the db is utf8, so I needed to convert it to utf8mb4 to support emoji.

I ran this in the SQL box in phpMyAdmin on the db:

SET collation_connection = 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci';
ALTER DATABASE radioshack_luxcal CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE mycal_categories CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE mycal_events CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE mycal_groups CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE mycal_settings CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE mycal_styles CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE mycal_users CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

And then added this to the [mysqld] section in /etc/my.cnf

collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'
character-set-server = utf8mb4

Restarted MySQL and the ics file imported with emojis! And now I can add emoji to calendar events, which is cute.

Started a fake blog about gaming chairs. Just kidding, I recently bought a new (very expensive) COMFY CHAIR.

So I finally decided to treat myself to a quality office chair. Being WFH, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer, working 12 hour shifts “fixing servers” for a web hosting company. I’m not a gamer, but I like some of the gear, mechanical keyboards in particular.

Continue reading “Gaming Chair for the Smol Neckbeard”

I have something to say about inflated college costs, student loans, and state taxes and you’re gonna hear about it.

I have an English degree from the University of Alabama, Class of ’99.

Continue reading “What’s the cost of an English Degree nowadays”

cPanel has a mechanism to completely suspend outgoing email for an account, which is useful when there’s a bunch of spamming going on. Particularly contact form spam when the admin of a site can’t or won’t disable or secure the form.

--
 root@host [~]# whmapi1 suspend_outgoing_email user=spamalot
 metadata:
   command: suspend_outgoing_email
   reason: OK
   result: 1
   version: 1

I have a stupid Joomla site that I keep around mostly to have a “stock” Joomla for comparison purposes. Everyone knows Joomla has a frequently abused contact form, so I don’t want this Direct Admin account to be able to send out email at all.

It’s possible to suspend outgoing email for an entire DA account. Log in as the admin user on the admin level, then go to

Dashboard -> Server Manager -> Adminstrator Settings -> Email Settings (tab)

You’ll see “ADD TO BLACKLIST” at the bottom. Click that, then enter in the DA username. Click “Add”

Save, then you’ll see the DA user has been blacklisted from sending email.

Try to send an email from the Joomla contact form and click the checkbox to send yourself a copy, this is what’ll be in the email log.

2021-02-27 18:19:55 1lG9oR-0003T6-My => blackhole (non-SMTP ACL discarded recipients): User account (crack) is not allowed to send emails.  Script delivery blocked via /etc/virtual/blacklist_usernames

And there’s the user in this blacklist:

[root@miss]# cat /etc/virtual/blacklist_usernames
crack:1614304356

That number string is just the UNIX timestamp.

Since I’ve been working from home, I’ve been using mpsyt as a command line player for music from YouTube. Revived a 2008 HP Mini netbook with Lubuntu as an auxiliary machine and needed something really light as far as resource usage. You can configure mpsyt for audio only and it’s vastly lighter than playing videos in a browser.

After a video finishes playing, it’s automatically logged here:

anna@anna-HP-Mini:~$ tail -2 .config/mps-youtube/play_history.m3u 
#EXTINF:2251,NEON CITY - A Synthwave Mix [Chillwave - Retrowave - Synthwave]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4oeMldaqHk

Wouldn’t it be fun to post that as an embedded YouTube video on a webpage so your fellow techs can see what you’re listening to during the shift!

I made a little script to generate the embed link and update that on my server.

anna@anna-HP-Mini:~$ cat scripts/embed.sh 
#!/bin/bash

ID=`awk -F= 'END{print $2}' /home/anna/.config/mps-youtube/play_history.m3u`
YT=`echo 'src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/'`
CLOSE=`echo '"''>'`
LINK=$YT$ID$CLOSE

ssh radioshack -T "sed -i '85s#.*#$LINK#' /home/radioshack/public_html/index.php"

Then set up incron to watch the log file, running the script when it’s modified.

anna@anna-HP-Mini:~$ incrontab -l
/home/anna/.config/mps-youtube/play_history.m3u IN_MODIFY bash /home/anna/scripts/embed.sh

The script updates line 85 of index.php up on my site, the src line here.

<center><h2>
<?php
echo "server fixing music  ".date("F d Y H:i:s",
                      filemtime("index.php")); 
?>
</h2></center>
<center><iframe width="420" height="315"
src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k4oeMldaqHk">
</iframe></center>

And this is what it looks like on my website.

I don’t know if I could call myself a climate change refugee, but a big part of why I quit my job in Dallas to move back to Birmingham was the intolerably hot summers. I know Birmingham is the Deep South and it’s relatively hot in the summers here. July is typically the hottest month. But more often than not, an afternoon thunderstorm rolls through and cools things down. Birmingham is tolerably hot. Dallas isn’t fit for human habitation.

I took screenshots of the forecasts for the next week or so for comparison.

Birmingham is warm.  OK, hot.  But it’s survivable.  Maybe a bit sweaty.  You’ll live.  I’ve got a couple of window units, I’m all right.  And there are lots of big trees and greenery around here, it softens the atmosphere.

Note the temperature scale on this forecast,  the top is at 90.

Here’s Dallas. 

Goodness gracious, 109 for three days straight and triple digits from then on?  And no rain in the foreseeable future?

Again, note the temperature scale.  It’s at 110.

When I lived in Dallas, I remember looking at these summer forecasts with dread.  Triple digits and no rain.  It was miserably soul deadening.

Of course I’m referring to several libraries.  The paper library in my house and my ebook library on my server.  And the public libraries I’ve always depended on.  When I was a kid, in Sylacauga.  In college, the University of Alabama.  Then Dallas and now here in Birmingham.

Before the internet, when I was unsure of something, needed and wanted more information, I relied on my public library.

I’ve been reading a lot lately.  Reading and rereading William Gibson & Neal Stephenson of course.  Neil Gaiman and Phillip K. Dick are the latest.  Short stories if I don’t feel like getting into a novel.  And a lot of other content by many other authors, I don’t feel like listing everything.  Mostly fiction.  Some non-fiction if the mood strikes.

For my 40th birthday, I bought myself a Kindle Voyage.  I **LOVE** it.   Used a regular Kindle before, but the Voyage is so beyond the regular Kindle as far as features, particularly the backlight.  Never thought I’d be able to transition from paper to an ebook so easily, but once I did, never going back.

If you’re worried about not being able to immerse yourself into a book with a Kindle like how you do on paper, believe me, that’s not a concern.  It’s a bit of an adjustment for a few minutes and then you’ll be kicking yourself for holding out.

I’m reading just for fun nowadays, so maybe it would be different if I were an English major now.   Back then, I made so many margin notes and highlights.

Let me tell you that there are two books I’ll never read again.  “The Scarlet Letter” and “Moby Dick”  I must have read “The Scarlet Letter” about 5 times between high school and college.  THAT’S ENOUGH!  And then “Moby Dick” is way too long, one feels like having been on a 5 year long sea voyage after getting through it.  Took that cruise, not fun, not again.  Don’t make me write another paper about the symbolism.  It’s somehow always about Jesus and phallic symbols.

Somewhat Amusing anecdote

A few years ago before we installed curtains, anyone could see into the front room of my house from the street.  My glorious bookcase with the fruits of my English degree and then *so many hardback classics* I found at the far North Dallas Goodwill (rich people who just tossed out stuff without realizing what it was).

One night, we were watching TV and a Lexus SUV parked in front of the house.  Hmm, are they lost?  No, a man got out and knocked on our door.  “Are those books for sale?”  He sounded embarrassed to ask, his wife put him up to it, she didn’t dare get out of the SUV.

I was a bit flummoxed, I didn’t even ask how much he’d offer.

“Sorry, no, my books are not for sale.”

He was expecting that, then went back down to his vehicle to his disappointed wife.

But I knew that lady just wanted some books to decorate her house, she didn’t care what they were.  She saw a “bohemian looking bookshelf” through my window and wanted that for herself without curating the collection, without reading anything.  And thought I’d part with it for money.

I’ve toted around my books between many apartments and now my house, it’s always the worst part of moving, so many heavy boxes.

Nowadays, I curate my library online, I have an extensive collection there as well.  You can’t see it in my living room, all my lovely ebooks, available to anyone with an ereader.  Lives on my server, doesn’t weigh anything.  And I can share a book with a friend without any worries about getting it back.

But I’ll still never give up my hard won paper collection.  Well, maybe some of the trashy paperbacks, I should post those on Craigslist.

Let John Waters tell you what’s up.