Whistling in the Dark

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I'm tired.

There's some rocket science for you, huh? We're all tired. Well, I'm like everyone else, I guess.

This is mostly just a way to test iJournal, since I’m tired of Journalert’s frenetic dock bouncing.

As for me -- well, I’m mostly fine today. Folks who have worried about my health being as poor as it has been recently can take comfort that I’m moderately better. I’m beginning to think I should issue colored alerts. If nothing else, they’d keep people posted. And besides, I’m months late in parodying the Department of Homeland Security.

This is the most annoying of ‘holidays,’ but it seems to be moderately under control this year. I’m thankful for that. The only full on April Fool’s Day jokes I’ve run into in my normal day are either obvious (such as Steve Jackson Games’s yearly ‘joke’) or truly innocuous (like the Diesel Sweeties/Wigu collaboration). No one’s going to get upset about those.

At the same time, most people I know don’t even bother going to Slashdot on April Fool’s Day any more, and I’m one of them. There’s already been some newly released RFCs and press releases. Some of them are silly, some are even funny, lots of them are utterly stupid. And no one I know looks forward to them any more.

Maybe it’s because there were honestly painful ‘jokes’ perpetuated on the Internet community in years past. User Friendly, Slashdot and Freshmeat were the most infamous I remember -- there was a year they made random noises for weeks leading up to April 1 about someone they couldn’t identify making legal threats against them for slander, culminating in all three putting up ‘shutdown’ notices at 11:59 on March 31. People bought it, and Microsoft got slammed with hate mail for hours. On the other side of the emotional coin -- and worse, really -- was the time Wil Wheaton announced he was getting a recurring role on Enterprise. A good number of his fans were thrilled, sending him congratulations and sending kudos and accolades to Paramount. Their faith in their pal was rewarded.

Oops. Just a joke. Hah hah. Get it?

Illiad and Wil both apologized for their jokes. If I recall correctly, Freshmeat and Slashdot didn’t. But in all cases, the long term effect was the same -- credulous fans and supporters felt like idiots, and vowed not to be so credulous the next time. And in many cases, ‘the next time’ didn’t help even if it weren’t April 1.

Anyway. I’m disgruntled today. Big surprise, right?

(Oh, iJournal handles the Friends Page updates much less obtrusively than Journalert did. We have a winnah.)

I got this from edg, who got it from others.

( Taste of the meme. TASTE IT! )

Okay. Bear in mind everything I said about April Fool’s Day.

Then go see Dave Nalle’s excellent Scriptorium font site. The news there is horrifying, but explains so much.

God help us all.

Why am I blogging so much today? Two reasons. First, because I have a new toy (iJournal), and that has my attention. Second, because work is conspiring to drag me down, so I’m using Livejournal as a pressure valve.

Can I just say how much RSS Syndication rocks? I’ve just discovered my friend ardellis not only is currently running a really neat Movable Type based journal site, but that as with many, she has Syndication enabled.

So now her posts are showing up on my Friends page.

That is so cool!

So. Someone started spoofing our IP range and launching a DoS attack against someone else disguised as us. That was the start. Our ISP figured that our pretty quickly, though.

They eliminated our systems as being the problem, and began implementing countermeasures. Apparently our DoS friends got pissed, because they immediately launched a DoS against us.

Script kiddies who do this kind of thing are idiots. Period. This is worse than a waste of time. This is petty. Well, the ISP’s pissed at them now, and it’s a safe bet that they know more about packet traces than the kiddies do.

So sorry, kids. B’bye.

We’re back. Everything’s cool. The ISP has done good things. More I should not say.

I’m going home.