Misc

It’s Still the Wrong Train, but it’s Back on Track

My website, RobDarnell.com, is back up and running, with higher security and on a better server.

A couple weeks ago my site and its email accounts went down. I contacted my host and they said tens of thousands of spam emails were being sent from my account. At first, they were accusing me of sending spam, they even threatened me with a fee of 50 cents per spam message.

That pissed me off. I’d been with that host for years. I thought they were a great webhost. Before them, I’d been through a few other hosts that I was not happy with. They charged too much and they had shitty customer support.

But the last host, their prices were comfortable, and whenever I had a problem they were very helpful. So, them accusing me of sending spam and threatening me with a fee was a slap in the face. They even said, “We won’t charge you this time, because it was your first offense.”

After a couple of back and forth exchanges with them, I got them to stop accusing me of sending spam. It was assumed that I had been hacked and they were blaming me for getting hacked. They said I should have managed my site better. But then, as we continued discussing it, they said the spam was sent from webmail.

I can’t manage the webmail platform that the host had in place. I don’t have access to their webmail platform. I can’t install security features or anything to their webmail platform. Unless a hacker had my password, it would not have been my fault if webmail was hacked,

It started to dawn on me that I hadn’t seen any signs of spam being sent from either of my email accounts. I checked those accounts a lot. If tens of thousands of spam emails were being sent from my email accounts, I think I would have seen some sign of that.

At some point, they started saying it was six thousand spam emails that were sent, when they had previously said tens of thousands. The more they said, the more I felt that they were full of shit.

I don’t think I was hacked. I’m aware that one of my email addresses and my website was targeted in a spam attack. I think my host shut me down because my email account and website was targeted by Russian spambots, not because spam was being sent from my email accounts.

When these bots attack, they cause an overload on the server and that gets problematic for the host. I did have a security feature on my website to deflect spam comments, but it broke down the day before the host shut my site down, so the spambots got through. The spam folder in the email account was often filling up.

My old host said they couldn’t host my site anymore and I really didn’t want to stay with them after all this. My brother helped me get my site back up. He’s good at this stuff. He designs and manages several websites.

When my brother was going through my database, he found thousands of spam comments that he had to clean out before transferring the site to the new server.

Things seem much better on this new server. For one thing, on this server, I’m able to use some security features that I couldn’t use on the old server. WordPress works better on the new server than it did on the old server. I like the email platform that we have here much better than the one that the old host had. And so on..

Misc, On Writing, Religion, Writing

Lord, Have Mercy

Today was productive. I finished editing a novella and submitted it. I wrote ten new pages into the novel. The novel is now 351 pages and 71,595 words. I have three more chapters for Part Two to write, but then I’ll have a whole third part to write and that’ll be another fifteen to twenty chapters before I’m done with this draft.

I also read three chapters of the Bible today. I just finished Judges. Tomorrow I’ll start on Ruth. There is still a lot in the Bible that bothers me. I just finished a chapter where a man throws his woman out to the mob so they can rape her all night long. When the woman dies on the doorstep, the man wants revenge on the men who raped her, and God is on his side.

I’m still hoping the New Testament will turn all this craziness around like some people have been telling me. But I cannot believe that so many Christians preach portions of the Old Testament. So far, the Old Testament promotes genocide, slavery, rape, kidnapping and forced marriage, and a number of other things that make me very angry.

Yes, there are some things in there that make sense to me and sound good, but a lot of it is disturbing.

Misc

And Another

I dreamt that I confronted a woman who stole my dog. She refused to give my dog back. I went home and soon received a text from the woman. She told me I needed to go to the police station and talk to Officer Oak Lancher.

I realize now that Oak Lancher is a minor character in one of my novels. He is a law enforcement figure, but in a medieval setting. He’s not a good guy, he’s dangerous.

So, I went into the police station and talked to the officer at the front desk. I explained why I was there. She led me through the station. I noticed that there were a lot of computers. Halfway along, the lights went off and then came back on.

The desk officer led me to an empty cubicle office , where I would wait for Oak Lancher. She signed something to me that didn’t make sense. See the video.

So, her signs were K. O. R., but what was that last thing? “Watch”? “K. O. R. watch”? I was confused in the dream and I’m confused now. I wanna know what the hell she was telling me. I guess it’s another one of those unsolvable puzzles that dreams throw at us.

Well, I woke up before I got to meet Oak Lancher. In the dream, I wasn’t aware that he was one of my characters, but now I know and I wonder if he would have been like he is in the novel.

Misc

Shit!

So there I was, sitting at my desk, trying to get the wrapping off my block of pepper jack cheese. Suddenly the plastic bulged, sent my hand to the left, knocking into my glass of pop and sending that flying over the edge of the desk. The glass smashed on my file cabinet, and then fell to the hardwood floor. Glass and pop spewed in all directions.

Misc

Another Dream

I had a dream that I was walking around town and I passed a guy who had a gun in his hand. I was going to keep walking and hope he wouldn’t bother me. I hadn’t gone more than a few steps when he shot me in the back.

You know how you can sometimes feel pain in your dreams? I felt that and it hurt like a motherfucker. But he missed my spine. The shot hit low and to the right, passing through my stomach.

I turned around and he’s coming up close. He fired and the shot went through my stomach again. It hurt, but it didn’t take me down. He fired again and grazed my left arm.

When he was right in front of me, I ripped the gun out of his hand and pointed it at him. I said, “Now it’s your turn.” I shot him three times in the chest and he went down.

I don’t remember what happened after that, but I hope an ambulance was on the way or I would have bled to death. The gun was a 1911 and probably a .45. .45s make big holes.

Misc

Cookies & Beer

I had a real craving for cookies and beer, so I had a Shipt shopper make it happen.

My brother is over. He seemed to really like the stuffed chicken breast. We’re having beer and cookies now.

I didn’t see any games on tonight, so that was disappointing.

Hockey, Misc, NHL, Sports

Did it Again

I cooked the stuffed chicken breast again. This time I did a better job cutting in the pocket and stuffing it. It was my last piece of chicken and smaller. Within the next few days, my brother is going to pick up my next order from the Brower Farms and bring it to me, and I’m going to try this recipe on him.

Red Wings at 7.

Misc

Dreamt of Home

I had a dream that I was looking over the house I currently own and have lived in for eight years. I was trying to figure out how I might be able to fix the sloping floor in the kitchen. It’s not bad, but I would like to get it leveled out at some point.

In the dream, I was down in the basement studying the boards that hold the floor up. I went back upstairs and I wasn’t in my current house anymore. I was in the house I lived in before this one.

It was a little house with a huge lawn, on South Elba Road. I was with a woman who I really loved when I moved in there, so I would say some of my best memories happened there. But I lived there for eight and a half years and that was too long. After about two years there, I was really disliking the place.

The biggest problem for me was the house was too small. It felt cramped. The ceiling was only about a foot above my head and I had no trouble reaching it. The Livingroom was small, the bedroom was small. I often felt like I was being crushed.

Other problems were the furnace, water pump, water softener and water heater would sometimes breakdown or blow the circuit breaker.

I guess the kitchen was a little bigger than my current kitchen, but not much. The bathroom was much bigger than my current bathroom. All I really miss about that house was the long kitchen counter and the long bathroom counter. I like having counter space. Also, the kitchen had more cabinets than my current kitchen does.

And it was nice having a back sliding door, even though it often went off its tracks.

The house I live in now, that I bought from my landlords last year, it is so much nicer and roomier than the previous house. When I moved in here, I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I’m very happy here. It’s not cramped at all and I cannot reach the ceiling unless I’m standing on something.

About six months after I moved out of the house on Elba Road, there was an electrical fire that destroyed the place and it was soon torn down.