Another week gone in an eyeblink…..
77F and humid, with NOAA putting us right on the edge of a storm system.
Changes in the world and politics continue. Real changes or just window dressing, I don’t know, but change is coming.
What did you do to get ready?
n
Now that I’ve had some coffee, here’s a question- when did we start “honoring the victims” with flags at half staff?
We used to honor a life of achievement, sacrifice or valor.
Now we are enshrining victimhood.
Or am I mis-remembering and overly sensitive this am?
n
Nope – I agree. Someone heroic, a national hero, the start or end of a war, notable things for the country. Those are honored by the flag.
72º and sunny this morning. Started out bad and is getting worse. But I leave here at the end of the day to spend time with the kids. Tomorrow morning all 3 will be helping at a race. Good start to the weekend.
Repackaged some rice and worked on my biscuit recipe this morning. Cleaning out old supplies and preparing for new. Sam’s Club run tomorrow to get bulk items, and work on the wife’s car is planned for Saturday afternoon, and landscaping (sidewalk) is for Sunday.
Anthony Bourdain committed suicide. Bummer. 🙁 He was one of the few “reality TV” personalities I liked.
The new NASA Administrator is being very careful about his words with regard to SLS.
I stand by my prediction that SLS will fly once. After that, the full employment program for space geeks will request money to strip the tooling out of the the VAB high bays, making way for SpaceX and Blue Origin.
http://spacenews.com/bridenstine-emphasizes-partnerships-with-industry-to-achieve-nasa-goals/
I miss Dr. Pournelle’s commentary about this subject.
If I use /journal I get the ham on age page. If I go to just .com I can navigate here through links.
I go here via
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/
and it works just fine.
Going to the top webpage
https://www.ttgnet.com/
gets me the Hamconage WordPress webpage.
Weird.
“Merkel Urges Europe to Step Up in Trump’s New World Order”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/2018/06/07/merkel-says-europe-must-step-up-in-world-being-reorganized
Ah, the sign that Trump is a true leader. The other supposed leaders are shooting arrows in his back. Of course, the Trumper does not notice the new arrows because there are so many there from the two halves of the war party (Dumbocrats and Repuglicans). And the media of the USA, the supposedly unbiased media.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
And yes, I stole the “two halves of the war party” statement from OFD. I miss the dude and sent him a Snoopy get well card yesterday.
@all – looks like the root folder got hacked with a rouge WP install. Working on it. I have a backup copy of the domain’s root folder. Will be checking things; more later.
added 10:50am PDT….. root folder basics recovered; infected WP install moved for analysis. Still poking around, but the ttgnet.com pages should be OK.
added 10:55am PDT … if you saw anything strange pop up on your access to this site in the past couple of days, a local virus check might be good; perhaps also a password change of anything. No indication of any damage to visitors, but still checking. Better safe than sorry, and all that…
added 11:05am PDT Looks like Barbara’s site got compromised also. Restoring a basic page.
added 12:00pm PDT Still working on restore of non-WP content – have to unzip the giant backup of RBT’s sites first.
In the meantime, need all admins of this place (you know who you are) to change their passwords. In fact, it will be a forced change; I am going to reset your passwords, so use the ‘lost password’ thing to get back into the admin area.
“Energy trade associations blast ongoing coal, nuclear bailout plans”
https://www.ogj.com/articles/2018/06/energy-trade-associations-blast-ongoing-coal-nuclear-bailout-plans.html
”Officials from the American Petroleum Institute, Natural Gas Supply Association, and eight other national energy business groups strongly criticized ongoing Trump administration plans to keep otherwise failing coal-fired and nuclear power plants open ostensibly to assure electricity service will remain reliable nationwide.”
I was hoping that Trump was going to walk away from the coal power plants. It seems that I was wrong. Fuel diversity is good but we do not need to subsidize any power plants. That includes solar and wind power plants also.
@RickH – you mentioned hacked WP sites, so I went & checked the two that I maintain. Still there & safe, thankfully. Thanks for being on top of it and giving us reason to be secure on our own.
@JimL – if you have FTP access to the sites, look for a file called ‘thnxx.php’; that seems to be an indication of the hack.
And it looks as if that file will also be placed in any subfolder of the WP site. And, perhaps (not sure) in all of the public_html folders. There are indications of that file in many locations on the hosting place here, even those sites that are not WP sites (and not even publicly available).
Also, if you look at the source code (via FTP) for the index.php in the WP site root, you’ll find some extra binary code in it at the top of the file; also an indicator.
Still doing a bit of forensics on the hacked files. Transferring files to my local computer; that takes a while. Don’t have any info on the hack ‘vector’ (how it got here). That will require some looking into the log files.
Luckily, I have some forensic FLASHLIGHTS I can use…
Anyone have a name of a good email hosting service? Not for any huge enterprise level email. Just a personal email address that I’d like secure IMAP access to.
Thanks for keeping these sites up and running Rick!
I have been re-reading “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain. Also am currently reading a great book he published on the resturant reviews of Marilyn Hagerty: “Grand Forks”. I lived there for many years so it is fun for that but also just a great book and something that a snarky / big headed NYC foodie would have never touched. I am very sad that he decided he needed to go out this way. Very sad.
Anyone have a name of a good email hosting service? Not for any huge enterprise level email. Just a personal email address that I’d like secure IMAP access to.
Sure.
http://www.gmail.com
I host my corporate email there also using the MX domain record. They let me do this for free over a decade ago and then grandfathered me in. I would pay if I had to, it is that good.
“Dennis Rodman reveals that he’s on his way to Singapore for Trump-Kim summit”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/8/dennis-rodman-reveals-that-hes-on-his-way-to-singa/
Why not ? The summit looks like a circus and sounds like circus. We need a clown !
Hey Rick, yeoman-like effort! I sent email to you before I got this page to load properly, I was stuck in some weird wp limbo.
I’ll check back in in a bit.
n
Yes, and he had great correspondents too.
Went to Costco. Don’t normally go on Fri, Sat, or Sun. Very crowded. Needed stuff for the pool, and I somehow ran out of trash bags for the kitchen. I thought I had some on the bottom shelf, but I gave a roll to someone and didn’t replace it. Prepper fail!
Littlest one got her cast off today. Hospital in Katy, quiet as a tomb. WAY underutilized. WAY overbuilt. Not sure what that says.
My preps this week were limited to garden and fans. Blueberries on bushes, sweet peppers are producing very slowly, apple trees are finally filling in. Fall squash is still alive, and the zukes are for the moment. New beans are still growing. One grape vine has clusters, the other didn’t fruit. I do have one more green tomato, but I expect that to be the last for the summer given the heat.
Ebay sales are slow and only low dollar items. I picked up a bunch of smalls with the idea that if that’s what’s selling, I need to be listing those. It’s grinding but a trickle of money is still money…..
n
AAAaannnnnddddd ….. it worked.
Password reset.
Holy cow Rick, good job getting that back.
n
for the record, I was logged into the admin acct, but after the password change, I couldn’t post comments. I’d hit submit, the page would reload, with my text still there and no new comments. When I went to the wp dash page, I was asked to log in, failed, but then when I went back live, the new comments loaded and I could add mine. Very weird.
When you get it all sorted, I’m sure people would be interested in the tale….
n
@nick Since you were logged in as an admin (for today’s post) and never logged off, then the name/email for comments was not required.
But since I reset your password, that logged you off as an admin, so the name/email were shown for the comments. Once you log in, the name/email fields are not shown in the new comment box.
Even though you thought you were logged in, you weren’t (because of the password change). So when you typed in a comment, a submit noticed that the name/email were not filled in, so the comment wasn’t posted and you got the name/email fields to fill in.
You didn’t see new comments because the comment form submit hadn’t worked – because you didn’t fill in the name/email fields. So you wouldn’t see any new comments either.
All of that is working as designed.
(/geeky)
I have a lot of grapes this year. It’s been 5 or 6 years. It looks like we’ll be making jelly in a few months. I now know to wear gloves… I had a rash on my hands and arms last time.
The front passenger side door in the truck decided to quit working a few days ago. It worked and an hour later, nothing. Still works from the driver’s door control. It looks like you have to take the door panel off to get to the switch so forget “fixing” it. I ordered two switches on eBay. That will leave a spare for the passenger rear door.
And it’s hot. Just 90F but the humidity is way up. Not complaining, I’ll take hot over cold.
With the site as https I have to click and select to fill in my name, etc. I did exempt the new https cookie. I’ve noticed this of a couple more sites. I looks like Firefox is remembering but “protecting” me. Just a nuisance.
@paul: if you were to look at the cookies in your browser for this page, you will probably see two of each one. There is one for http, and one for https.
Since you never stored the https cookies (or deleted them), you will see the name/email field fields for the comments. As soon as you allow storage of the https version of the cookies (they are called ‘comment_author_’ and ‘coment_author_email_’ (each with a random value at the end of each cookie name), you won’t have to fill in the name/email anymore.
In FF, if you right-click, then Inspect Element, then click on the Storage tab, you will see all the cookies on this page. If you right-click a column heading in that, then click on ‘secure’, you will see the ‘secure’ value for that cookie – whether the cookie is an http or https cookie.
So, FF is working normally with the cookies (for me, YMMV). I don’t delete cookies, so that may be the difference for me. You may need to add this site – the https version – to your ‘allowed cookies’ list, if you are needing to.
(/geeky)
I’ve been following this site regularly (as is the case for many years). But, I have not been posting (I will blame that on too many irons in the fire).
Re: F150 posts by Lynn et. al; I think I posted a bit about this but I purchased a 2018 F150 the last day of 2017. It is my 6th pickup – all Fords (never had a Ford car but never had a pickup that was not a Ford). My first pickumup truck was a 1950 F1 with a flathead V8 and 4 on the floor. Really wish I still had that one. I am not a brand type of guy but I do tend to prefer Fender Strat’s, Gibson Les Paul’s and Ford pickups…
The 2018 replaced a 1999 Superduty 7.3 diesel Lariat that I was worried I would miss. I bought that truck new and had nothing but excellent service from it up to the point I traded it on the 2018. It was a great truck, but it was a truck (not a good commuter – liked to have a job to do besides hauling the groceries) and was getting some Wisconsin rust.
I really like the ride, braking, and handling of the F150 over the 99 F250. I hope it will be as good a truck as that was. The 2018 is very refined and makes a great daily driver (versus the 7.3 which was fun and very capable but sounded like a school bus / garbage truck). Don’t get me wrong, I love diesels but I am currently without a diesel (other than my Kubota). I sold my TDI Passat back to VW recently also. The EPA has really taken the joy out of diesels…
I really can’t justify a Superduty diesel at any rate. Don’t have a heavy trailer anymore and this F150 can tow anything I currently own with plenty of margin. I towed a 4 place snowmobile trailer fully loaded to northern Wisconsin this winter and did not even notice it other than glancing in the mirrors to verify it was still following.
The 2018 is the top package of the XLT with super crew cab and the long bed (long for a crew cab anyway). It has the 3.5 twin turbo, 10 speed, 36 gallon tank, max tow package. I am really liking it. So much that my 2008 Vette is getting jealous…
The only downside of the F150 is that you see them everywhere. No one waves/grins at you like when you are driving a SAAB, Vette, motorcycle or other less common ride. Upside is plenty of service parts, attention by Ford, etc. At any rate, after 5 months of ownership, I am a very satisfied consumer.
I’ll get the cookie thing sorted eventually. For now it’s just a bother…. like typing a password on your phone and seeing nothing but *********. On a screen a foot from my face.
But that’s a setting I don’t get to make. The BoA app on my phone does show the last password letter I typed for a second or so which is good to catch typos.
The truck door window switch? I just gave it a try. After a bit of vigorous working of the switch, it works. Dirty contacts? It /is/ a 2002.
The only downside of the F150 is that you see them everywhere.
Ditto for 2002 and up Dodge trucks. This place is covered. When I had the 1992 Dodge I never noticed the newer trucks. Now that I have one, wow. 🙂
Chad : I used to use Google business for my e-mail but decided I no longer wanted to support a company that thinks that Internet censorship is a good thing.
I switched to FastMail a few months ago and have been really pleased. You can use their web client or access e-mail through the usual interfaces. They also have phone apps so you are covered there too. Pricing starts at $30/yr for 2GB storage, but if you go with the next plan up for $50/yr you get 25GB plus the ability to map to your own domain. That’s the one that I use.
The 2018 is the top package of the XLT with super crew cab and the long bed (long for a crew cab anyway). It has the 3.5 twin turbo, 10 speed, 36 gallon tank, max tow package. I am really liking it. So much that my 2008 Vette is getting jealous…
That is almost what I bought three weeks ago. I still wonder if I made a mistake. The re-manufactured automatic transmission from Ford is doing ok in my 2005 Expy but it has slipped out of gear twice on me. But it did go right back into gear so …
I switched to FastMail a few months ago and have been really pleased. You can use their web client or access e-mail through the usual interfaces. They also have phone apps so you are covered there too. Pricing starts at $30/yr for 2GB storage, but if you go with the next plan up for $50/yr you get 25GB plus the ability to map to your own domain. That’s the one that I use.
Hey, thanks for letting me know that there is an alternative to GMail.
We were having tremendous problems with spam and joejobbing when our email was being hosted by our webserver. No spam protection whatsoever. The final straw came when my office administrator got joejobbed and 10,000 bounced emails came flooding into our webserver over an hour or less. It was so bad that I had to go delete the bad emails manually off the webserver using vi. I moved us to gmail within a week and have been so pleased. Then gmail allowed us to move our domain record to them and that was the cat’s meow.
Lynn, The repair vs. replace can be tough. It is easier up here above the Mason-Dixon line due to salt…
Hopefully the aluminum body will help with corrosion. The steel frame is very nicely powder coated, which they were not doing back in 1999.
I had to tell the salesman that although aluminum can’t “rust”, it can definitely corrode… I trust Ford did their home work on the corrosion issues.
Hopefully the aluminum body will help with corrosion. The steel frame is very nicely powder coated, which they were not doing back in 1999.
I am wondering about the glue holding the aluminum body panels on. Will it last ten years ? Will it last 20 years ? Supposedly the connections of the body panels to the frame are TIG welded, it is just the connections of the body panels to body panels are glued.
https://jalopnik.com/how-a-2015-ford-f-150-aluminum-repair-cost-17-000-and-1719664610
ADD: Nope, it sounds like the body panels are riveted, not TIG welded to the frame. I hope those are good rivets.
Anyone have a name of a good email hosting service? Not for any huge enterprise level email. Just a personal email address that I’d like secure IMAP access to.
I have my own domain on GoDaddy and use their provided email. IIRC, I get 5 email boxes.
My domains are hosted by Site5 (since 2007) and I have absolutely unlimited (accounts and storage) email for each domain. I have one domain that provides email exclusively for my family and relatives. Most of them use Thunderbird but they also have a choice of 3 web-mail services, Horde, RoundCube and Squirrelmail. There is basic spam filtering and I can create (and have created) custom spam filters. I have had no complaints about spam, down-time, or bounced emails.
“Texas Supreme Court rules in favor of San Antonio-area homeowner in short-term rental case”
https://www.mysanantonio.com/business/local/article/Texas-Supreme-Court-rules-in-favor-of-San-12944654.php
I think that this is the first ruling that I have seen against an HOA in Texas. And it is a big ruling.
WRT to email/spam, I’ve had a gmail account for years (decade?), and find the spam filtering works great! Very rarely is a non-spam item found in the spam folder, or a spam item in my in box. Don’t care about any privacy issues related to conspiracy theories about the evil of google, and ignore an ad-related stuff.
Spam filtering on hosting places is not nearly as good. I recently added myself as a forward to Roberts’ email account here (with Barbara’s permission), and my gmail has caught a lot of spam that the hosting place didn’t catch with their free anti-spam.
So, good experiences for me with gmail.
WRT to the ‘attack’ on this site (and Barbara’s), I’ve done all the cleanup, so things should be back to normal here (well, as normal as they get with you folks….). Some things that I have found, in no particular order:
– the main index.php file had some obfusticated code inserted at the very beginning. Not sure yet what that code does; a little rusty on that subject. But it looks like it created files by looking at the sitemap to figure out folder names; it also had some CURL stuff in there that I haven’t decoded yet.
– there was another file that was inserted (by the above) in all site folders. That file created href links that appear to allow the hacker to do further actions (again, not decoded yet)
– it may be that the hack attempts to copy the WP data to an external location. I found credentials that allowed me to get into the external phpMyAdmin, where I found a table that looked sort of like a WP multisite database. I haven’t found this sites WP data in there, though. There appear to be about 20 sites in that database, but none look like this place (or Barbara’s).
I have done my usual cleanup of things (you can see it here if you are interested).
I grabbed the hacked files locally, so I could look at them off-line (away from this place). And I submitted the hacked files (not the database here) to the folks at the “Internet Storm Center”, who have much more expertise in decoding hacks than I do.
Not sure how the hacker got it; things get patched here very fast. I look at this site (and all of the ones I manage) at least twice a day for updates, and they get applied really fast.
I haven’t been able to get into the hosting log files to see the raw access logs yet. Not sure where they (Dreamhost) hides them. May chat with them tomorrow.
But, it looks like all is back to normal here. No indication that the WP database for this place or Barbara’s has been exported off-site. So all of your rants are safe…except to those that visit here.
The radiator support appears to be made of magnesium and caused some worried moments last month for Ford when that tier 2 supplier had a big fire. Back in full production now as far as I know.
The radiator and headlight support is a big five foot wide plastic block in my 2005 Expy. I know this because the 200 lb doe that hit me in January broke it in two places. They put a used plastic block back in my Expy.
You can definitely feel the effects of all these various weight savings in the vehicle dynamics and fuel economy – a good outcome from the corporate fuel economy goals! Although the purchase price is getting ever harder to swallow.
I am thinking about waiting on a new F-150 until they bring out the plug-in hybrid in 2020. Reputedly the cost is going to be a $5K premium over the base engine and the F-150 will be able to travel 50 miles on electric alone. The fuel economy is also reputed to be 30/30 mpg. Who knows what it will really be ?
Lynn, keep in mind that that 17K repair horror story you linked is almost 3 years old. I did not find the insurance on my 2018 to be a big deal. Of course, the goal is to avoid the repair shop…
I am sure they will do more panel replacement with the aluminum bodies (probably not going to be able to hammer out much damage on these bodies) but they have been doing that for years with the ever thinner steel body panels already. It seems the repair costs are not significantly worse than other late model vehicles…
I could be wrong of course, but aluminum body panels are nothing new. Aluminum has been used in heavy trucks for many years for example. Also ships, planes, space craft, trains, and our favorite of course – beer cans.
Interesting trivia: the top of the Washington Monument is aluminum – it was a very precious material back in the late 1800’s.
Napoleon held a dinner where the best guests were given aluminum “silver” ware and the regular guests had to get by with gold!
Re: E-mail providers: I’ve used netaddress.com since 1996, when it was free. Hasn’t been that way for a l-o-n-g time, but the price is nominal. Back then there were many choices for domain name. I picked “@usa.net”. Spam filtering is good enough for me. I delete 20-30 “bargain” messages daily, but I signed up for ’em. (If I read ’em, I might get hooked.)
Used to use Outlook and have some massive .pst archives on non-running machines around here somewhere. Now, pull things into a Thunderbird client every few months and read webmail on the big living room screen or the phone as the spirit moves.
“I am thinking about waiting on a new F-150 until they bring out the plug-in hybrid in 2020. Reputedly the cost is going to be a $5K premium over the base engine and the F-150 will be able to travel 50 miles on electric alone. The fuel economy is also reputed to be 30/30 mpg. Who knows what it will really be ?”
If you don’t have a need now, it definitely seems to make sense to wait a few years. Better batteries and regenerative braking on these larger vehicles will be awesome. How cool would it be to have 30 mpg in a full size truck / suv without the diesel emission headaches? Sign me up.
Full disclosure – I would be even happier with a clean burning diesel that worked correctly and was cost competitive (I also want to live on the Big Rock Candy Mountain).
One other issue for us Yankees is cold weather. It is nice to have a vehicle that makes a lot of waste heat up here a few months of the year. I do not want to drive a plug in hybrid if I have to deal with frostbite. Give me that good old fossil fuel waste heat out of the vents on a cold dark morning!
Busy day. Rolled up on scene of a 2 car crash with one little tiny car in the ditch and parts on the roadway. No injuries, everyone out and moving.
Then at our movie night at the pool we had a drive by shooting. Just got the movie started when the shots rang out, 5 or six small caliber rapid shots, and the truck accelerated away. Couldn’t tell if the shots were aimed at anyone or straight up. Got security video of the vehicle but it was too far away and the cameras too cheap (not my system) to tell much. Full size red pickup. No injuries but a couple of people left the pool.
F#ckers are everywhere. Carry and carry your blowout kit.
Shower and bedtime for me. Non-prepping hobby meeting in the AM. Then trying to export the video of the red truck in the afternoon.
Thanks to Rick for putting everything back together!
nick
Currently on the ICE from Frankfurt to Munich. WiFi on the train is surprisingly good. Difficult to use a touch pad as there is too much movement on the train. As is using the touch screen. So not a real good place to be composing something.
Good trip so far, no issues. Ticket checker is arriving. The first time in three train trips. Finally will get my ticket punched.
Power outlets on the train for each seat so makes using, and charging, the Surface Laptop easy.
Have a couple of FLASHLIGHTS with me on the train, you know, just in case. But not much use during daylight.
ICE 1st Class travel is nice. Beats driving on the Autobahn any day. Less stress, more comfortable, smoother ride, and most assuredly cheaper than renting.
@Ray, sounds very nice!
n
@RickH: If you recall earlier this week in mentioned the duplication of all the posts in ttgnet in my RSS Feed (FeedDemon) going back for more than a week (starting with May 20, 2018 and going to June 5, 2018). Could that have been an indicator of the “break-in”?