Google is taking over my website

Logged on the other night and saw a notice that I could upgrade my Blog to a newer version. It also linked up to my gmail account. Just like all of the other stuff that links up to my g-mail account. I'm up to 12 services linked to my account.

On the new Blogger, I still don't see the drag an drop template controls. Guess I might have to start from scratch with a new template. I've played around with this base one. Not too much, just enough to learn how some things work.

How is Google taking over my website? Well the services that they offer for 'Free'. All of these services are really not free, someone else is paying for them. (All of the advertisers pay Google for me to use these services).

The first service that I really like is the Analytics . When I first setup the website, I thought wouldn't it be cool to track all of the pages, who viewed what, where, when. Second thought after that was: Someone has bound to have already written this and it is open sourced. I looked around and a few things, found commercial packages as well. While looking at these tools I noticed entries into the access and error logs on the web server. Googleing the error messages revealed that some of these were exploits of the web site analysis tools I was looking at.

Then, I found the analytics service. Google made it real easy to place into the page. It gathers all of the information I need or want. I could want more, like the actual data instead of the summarized data. Did I mention it was easy. It's seems more secure to me. I'm not installing code on my site. Plus it's free. As long as I stay below 5 million page views per month. I'd love to have 5 million page views.

The second Service that has insinuated itself into the website is the Adsense ads. With Google buying Blogger, Adsense was integrated into Blogger. They made it so easy to add their adds into the blog, so why not sign up. It's free right? Since I had signed up I decided to try an adsense section on another page. The referrals for other Google stuff seems very tempting to add to the site. I just might try integrating some more of their stuff. If I like it.

So, since your here reading this, go ahead and click an ad. Help divert some of that Google ad money my way. :)

Why Negative Blogs do well

I read this article the other day in the WSJ. It takes about week after print for it to become available on the web for free.

 

Career Journal Article

 

Who hasn't run into this situation at work, or any other group setting where you need to work together to get things done?

 

There is a paragraph in the article about a study that was performed on how people perceive negative and positive reviews and what people implicitly think about the reviewer. I think this applies very well to today's blog'o'sphere.

 

Hack attacks

Since creating the web site, I've been learning a lot about the role of a Linux admin. One thing I knew was that I needed to do was scan my logs. Since I have a small site that should have little activity it shouldn't too much of an issue. Prior to going to a static IP and hosting I had learned that even dynamic IP's are not immune to the bot search. With a static IP it seems to be worse.

I use ARIN a lot to see where the origination of the attack is coming from. Most of these probes come from APNIC. Most of the attacks are simple Exploit Attacks. Basic simple password attacks, and then my web server logs show a lot of MS web server attacks.

This first pass of security is just blocking certain services on certain ranges. If a probe comes from a certain network range the entire network range will be blocked. I'm not going to block the web server ports, just block a lot of the other services that I have running.

Now I can add something else to program up. A Perl script that scans the secure log. Gets the info from ARIN. Then disables the range.

RSS update

Seemed to be a simple fix. I guess it is assumed that you store the atom.xml file at the root level. I had it stored off someplace else. Correct me if I'm wrong. Well here is the link for the RSS feed.

 

http://www.4rca.com/atom.xml

RSS feed

I've seen some recent errors relating to the rss feed in the web log. This is an update posting so that the changes I made can take effect.

Hard coding and EDI

Hard coding on my inherited EDI process is killing me. Found yet another piece of hard coding that is throwing up another road block for adding another vendor to the process. We are under a development freeze that just got extended for anther 30 days so no quick changes can be made. Not that I want to hard code the hard code. It also means that it will be another 30 days beyond the original estimate before a solution can be implemented.

 

Now, to be invoiced through EDI you have to do business only on a Monday and only at low tide and under a full moon.

Oracle Check Printing and Evergreen

Finally got sign off from the bank on the checks. Well sign off on 1 of 3. What a long drawn out process. The 2 that failed are related the MICR toner not baking onto the check paper properly. Hardware issues not software or output since one batch passed.

A warning to the wise. Don't ever, ever change the default check printing report for Evergreen that Oracle provides. On the flip side. I've learned a lot about HP printer escape values. How to manipulate the report and get the results that were requested by the business.

The evergreen print driver has two sections. Each section has a set of codes. once section contains codes between 100 and 199 the other section 200 and 299. The codes control most of the formatting of the report. Where to place the signatures, MICR numbers, address info, and what font to use.

The report when it hits certain sections it will trigger a code that the print driver will interpret and return the proper esc characters.

Changing the format of the report is not fun. There are basically 3 sections each with multiple overlaid fields depending on whether you are using a check at the top, check at the bottom of an overflow page. Don't try formatting any of the fields in the report. The esc codes will override them.

updated 01/29/2209 Still want to customize, here are some customizations that I did.