8 Ways to Sunday

The site is back in action after two days of down time. According to TextDrive support, someone was hammering my site with bogus traffic. The hits came from six different IP addresses and had no user-agent string (the part of an HTTP header that says what computer program is visiting the site).

I’m not sure who I might’ve pissed off enough to warrant a mini-DDOS attack. So far I’ve only been able to think of one possible culprit — a comment troll who may’ve been annoyed by my response to his claim that I’m a pathetic beggar for raising money for my mother’s health care.

Whoever the culprit, the site is back up for now. I expect to post further updates tomorrow.

I made this:

The cover of Bill’s forthcoming book of short stories (click for a larger version)

Bill’s first book of short stories is coming soon, self-published via Lulu Press. It’ll be available via Lulu’s online store and on Amazon.com for about $10. I did the book and cover design, and it looks pretty damned good if I do say so myself.

The pencil sketches you see on the cover were done by Amber Govert, the sister of one of Bill’s former students. Her drawings also illustrate several of the stories found in the book.

On a side note, I know I’m behind on the promised Tucson trip update. I promise I’ll get something up here about our medical travel adventures by the end of the week!

Updates

• 8/20/2005 @ 12:40 PM — Lulu has been in the news lately. For more info about this new self-publishing company (kind of like CafePress for books, but more professional results) you can read articles in Time magazine, Britain’s Sunday Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald. (Props: Lulu Developer’s Blog)
• 10/16/2005 @ 5:23 PM — I forgot to post this earlier, but the book is now very much available. You can buy it now at Lulu.com. There are still some problems with the Amazon listing for the book, but those should hopefully be fixed sometime this week.

Thanks to the several generous donors who have given so far, the fundraiser for my mom’s health care has gathered almost $860 to date. Unfortunately, this is just a drop in the bucket toward the ultimate goal of $15,000.

To try and publicize my cause, I’m starting a fundraising linkathon. It’s like a telethon for “Jerry’s Kids” or a phonathon for your alma mater, but instead of phones and TVs we’ll be using weblogs and journals. The goal: turn this fundraising campaign into a meme that’s posted on as many blogs as possible.

Here’s how you can join the linkathon:

1. Write a post for your blog or journal that tells the general purpose of the fundraiser and the linkathon. If you don’t already know what this is about, you can read the story here.
2. In your post, include a link to at least one for the following two web pages:
   • http://www.adammessinger.com/donate/ (the short version)
   • http://www.adammessinger.com/2005/08/02/call-for-donations (the whole story)
3. Encourage your readers to get involved and join the linkathon themselves, and include these same instructions in your own post.

That’s all there is to it. Let’s get this meme a rollin’!

I’ve been too busy lately to keep up with the TextDrive forums, but I found out last night that my web host just launched a very cool new service. Strongspace — a new subsidiary of TextDrive — offers highly secure remote file backup, storage, and sharing at very reasonable prices.

Plans start at 1 primary user / unlimited read-only users and 4 GB of storage for $8 per month. The top-tier plan offers 120 GB and 40 users / unlimited read-only users for $225 per month (nice for sharing and backup at small businesses and corporate departments). There are no hard bandwidth limits.

I’ve been a little nervous for awhile that my backups are only stored within my own house — what if there’s a fire or tornado? Something like this might be just the ticket, once money is a little less tight.

Things have been quiet here lately, and friends and regular readers may wonder where I’ve gone. Fact is, I’ve been so mired in the database conversion at work that I scarcely want to touch a computer when I get home. The one exception has been video games; turns out that shooting people and blowing stuff up (virtually, of course) is a great outlet for job-related stress .

The conversion and the inevitable cleanup is likely to be an ongoing thing until August at least, at which point I’m taking two weeks of much-deserved vacation. Things will continue to be slow around here until then. I’ll try to post a bit more often, but will likely stay away from heavy, or even very meaningful, topics. Fluff and minor life updates are the order of the day for a while.