I can’t emphasize just how much I hate spammers.  It’s come to the point where I regard their activities as theft of service. 

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I got a warning from my webhosting company that I was using too many resources on the shared server.  A quick check of logs showed that the majority of my traffic was driven by referral spammers.  Their requests were hitting Expression Engine and the database, but nothing was being displayed.  Using the EE Blacklist module I had it write an .htaccess file that returned a 403 error (Access Forbidden) to any request that met the blacklist criteria (such as having “viagra” in the referral URL). 

Until checking the stats, though, I didn’t really have a handle on the real size of the problem.  Here is the request status report for this domain for just yesterday:

That tells me that 46772 spam referral requests were rejected before they had a chance to hit the database.  This definitely reduced the load on the DB, as shown in the table in the extended text.

The data for 10/13 is incomplete, as that’s today.  But the difference between 10/11 and 10/12 is quite large, going from 995,418 to 243,434 queries.

Details for ExpEngine from 2005-10-03 to 2005-11-02

Day Disk Usage Connects Queries (Conueries) (Ratio) 2005-10-03 52.996 MB 50953 1101616 2.375 MCn 0.865 2005-10-04 54.277 MB 31219 623202 1.404 MCn 0.798 2005-10-05 55.949 MB 38577 872707 1.837 MCn 0.905 2005-10-06 59.941 MB 26323 595988 1.254 MCn 0.906 2005-10-07 61.781 MB 32295 653220 1.461 MCn 0.809 2005-10-08 62.094 MB 34573 636960 1.501 MCn 0.737 2005-10-09 62.426 MB 49681 973017 2.215 MCn 0.783 2005-10-10 63.047 MB 54033 1115019 2.466 MCn 0.825 2005-10-11 63.867 MB 49832 995418 2.241 MCn 0.799 2005-10-12 64.250 MB 12745 243434 0.562 MCn 0.764 2005-10-13 64.406 MB 2183 41183 0.096 MCn 0.755 Totals: 60.458 MB 382414 7851764 17.412 MCn 0.821

Whatever is stomping my wireless network kicked back in this morning with a vengence.  For now I’ve given up and strung a 50-ft Cat-5 cable between the router and the switch in my office.  I just have to remember not to trip over the damn thing.

I now see that Buy.com has shipped my wireless signal sniffer.  I hope it comes soon.  I really want to track down the offender and put an end to this once and for all.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been experiencing intermittent failure on my wireless network.  The first thing I noticed is that a site survey showed that someone else had put up a network on the same channel as me.  Since I had used the Linksys default of 6, I decided to go ahead and move to 11 so as to avoid interference from the other network.  That worked for a few days, but then I started experiencing it again.  Only it was worse in that not only did the bridge go down, but all the other wireless clients would lose connection (including a laptop that’s only about 12-ft away from the router/AP). 

I switched to channel 9 after being down for a while this morning and I was OK until a few minutes ago.  I changed to 7 for now and got it working.  But I noticed that when the network went down that the wireless utility on the laptop showed that the noise levels went through the roof.  I am now starting to suspect that someone nearby has a FHSS 2.4 GHz cordless phone.  These phones hop frequencies across the 2.4 GHz spectrum, which causes symptoms similar to the ones I’m seeing now.  When I first installed my Wi-Fi network a couple of years ago I ran into this same problem.  I ended up throwing out my Panasonic 2.4 GHz cordless and getting a Uniden 5.8 GHz system, which cured the problem.

Coincidentally (and I don’t believe much in coincidences) my new next-door neighbor moved in about two weeks ago.  I guess I’ll need to inquire with him as to what kind of phone he has.  But to definitively pin-point the source of the interference I’ve ordered a Wi-Fi signal finder that also helps find signals from phones, microwaves, and surveillance cameras.  Since it is my understanding that there is no FCC rule about which takes precedence, if it turns out that it is his phone, I may just go ahead and offer to buy him a new phone.  It’s either that or wire the whole house and give up on Wi-Fi.  I rely on my network to be up all the time, since I work from home.  I can’t afford to have my network taken down at random times by an errant wireless phone.

I saw a TV commercial today that struck me as very odd.  It was supposedly for a service that would send you a brochure on how to choose a satellite provider.  Given that DirecTV and Dish Network wouldn’t be likely to get together for a commercial that would make satellite sound complicated, I was immediately suspicious.  At the end they give the number 1-888-DISH-HELP.  So I decided to hit Google to see what turned up. 

There were two relevant entries.  The first was a blog posting from Krazy Dad.  He had seen the commercial a couple of weeks ago and transcribed it.  Follow the link to read the whole thing.

The second entry was more sinister.  As Krazy Dad discovered, this number is a service of “Independent Brokerage, Inc” provided on behalf of the cable company.  If you call the number they take your contact information and give you a survey.  They will then send your information to the cable company so their “retention” specialists can go to work on you.

Quoting from their own information:

DISH HELP addresses a concern of many cable television operators. Many subscribers are being lured away from traditional cable by satellite dish systems. By the time a cable operator learns of a subscriber’s interest in purchasing a satellite system, it’s too late. This program was created to identify each subscriber before they purchase a dish and disconnect their cable service. DISH HELP begins an active process for retention of cable television subscribers.

This comes at an interesting time for me, as I have been weighing my options now that Verizon’s Fios TV is available in Keller.  I’ve been with Charter for a long time, since the only other option was satellite.  As part of the comparison of my options, I also looked into satellite.  Given that I abhor Dish Network because of their sleazy marketing tactics (especially the anonymous automated phone spam), my only option for satellite is DirecTV. 

I’ve got a lot of experience with DirecTV, since my mother has had it for quite a few years.  The picture quality is good, and if you’re willing to make a commitment, you can get a good deal on a DirecTV DVR (Tivo) and their Total Choice package.  It would be slightly less expensive than my current Charter costs.  The downside of satellite is that you often lose signal during heavy storms.

I suppose Charter has improved their customer service over time, but only because they have been forced to do so via competition.  I have many unhappy memories of having to deal with them during their monopoly days.  They were arrogant, slow to respond, and inconsiderate of your time.  Back then you pretty much had to give up a whole day to get an installation done.  My chief gripe now is that you can’t individually select HBO, Cinemax, or Showtime.  I used to be on a package where I could do that, but they discontinued it and forced me to take Showtime to get HBO.  Between that and the billing hassles I’ve had with them, I’d just as soon dump them.  Both FiosTV and DirecTV allow you to select HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime individually.  To be honest, I’m actually considering dropping the premium channels altogether.  Since Dead Like Me was cancelled I don’t have any reason to have Showtime, and the only thing I watch on HBO is the Sopranos.  At this point I could just wait for the final season to come out on DVD and get it from Netflix. 

I’m leaning towards FiosTV because I can get a two-tuner HD DVR and a pretty good expanded basic package for about the same as I’m paying Charter now.  It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, since I’m not getting HD right now.  However, I couldn’t get any information on Charter’s rates for HD, since their website is broken (it said that digital cable is not available in my area, so I couldn’t get any rate information; which is funny since I have digital cable right now). 

Anyhow, I think this sleazy fishing operation is the last straw for Charter.  Any company that would use this sort of sneaky backdoor to try to stop a customer from switching doesn’t deserve my business.  I know it’s a novel idea, but Charter might want to consider competing with satellite, instead of trying to fool customers into identifying themselves as potential switchers.  Instead of taking the high road (i.e. running a proactive above-board retention program), they chose the low, sneaky road, and thereby frittered away what little good will they’d been building over the past few years.

On Tuesday I mentioned the LA power outage.  It turns out that it adversely affected my hosting company and they’ve only gotten things squared away this morning.  The full details can be found on the Dreamhost blog, but the short answer is that the building has a UPS system and five generators.  The system requires four of those five generators to function.  Unfortunately, two of them failed, causing a full shutdown of the datacenter.  When they finally got power back, a number of services had to be restored, and then their main router lost its primary supervisor card and had to switch to the backup (the supervisor card is the router’s CPU). 

One of the side-effects of the network problems they had was that database connections were running very slow.  The slow connections caused this site to respond slowly and it caused problems adding comments on The Bitch Girls, which is hosted on my account.  In the last hour it appears that the network issue has been fixed and the sites are responding as usual.

I’ve noticed that companies have a nasty tendency to try to deflect blame to other parties for any of their potential shortcomings.  A good example of this is the message you get when you try to login to your account on the Cingular website.

Of course, someone with a slow Internet connection would see slow response times, but I noticed that the page is polling while it waits for some backend system to respond.  On my fast Internet connection the page refreshes occur pretty quickly, so it becomes obvious to me that the real issue is their slow backend.  But rather than just acknowledge this, they have to try to blame the Internet connection.  If they’d just leave off the last part of the message it would be accurate and much less annoying.

The second instance of this was with the Verizon online account management system (hmm…. two phone companies… I wonder if there’s anything to be inferred from this?).  I had used the system to add Caller ID to my second phone line.  The system gave me confirmation that the change had been made (and it explicitly specified that the changes were for the second line; this would be important later).  The change should have only taken a day to make, so after a week I called Encore to enquire as to what happened.  The support rep discovered that Caller ID had been added to my primary line instead of the second line.  Rather than just fix the problem he had to try to blame it on me (!) by suggesting that I had selected the wrong thing on the website.  Given that the system makes you select the line at the start, and that I had printed confirmation, I was a bit miffed to be accused of incompetence.

I suppose it’s also interesting that I’ve never had a successful change go through on either the Cingular or Verizon account management website.  Every time I’ve tried to add or change features I’ve ended up having to call them in order to get the change to go through, regardless of what the website says.  You’d think I’d learn by now.  But I keep hoping that they’ll get it right so I can handle things without having to sit in a phone queue (or talking to a stupid robot) to get things done.

This little gadget is ingeniously evil.

The Mind Molester is an instrument of creative electronic harassment. It is an electronic device that can drive your victims a little crazy trying to figure out what it is and where it’s located. Your friends/enemies will become obsessed, awaiting the next chirp trying to determine its location, completely disrupting their normal activities.

Just connect this device to a 9-volt battery and plant it in an appropriate location. It produces a one-second electronic chirp about once every 3 minutes. Due to the chirp’s duration, frequency, and sound characteristics, it’s a very difficult, time-consuming, frustrating and maddening task to locate the unit. And even if they find it, they’ll have no idea what it is. The number of effective locations to plant the Mind Molester is limited only by your imagination. Of course, this device is for use on deserving subjects only.

Guaranteed to drive someone nuts, yet not physically harmful.

I am presently waiting for the person who scheduled this conference call to come on the line.  At the time I joined I was told by the perky machine to say my name at the tone, followed by the pound sign.  I can sometimes understand the need for having a record of who attended a conference call, but for small groups the need to say your name when joining the call is annoying at best.

I kind of doubt anyone actually does anything with the name recording, since we’re always asked who’s on the line when the moderator joins.  I’m sorely tempted to respond with “Annoyed” as my name next time to see if anything happens.

It appears that online retailers are learning some interesting things through all the user tracking garbage they’ve added to their sites.

The Internet might be turning into the ultimate window shopping experience for online shoppers. Greater sophistication with browsing is making consumers more prone to comparison shop online before actually buying.

Internet shoppers are more prone to visiting 10 or more Web sites before returning to a favored location hours or days later to make a purchase. This new trend of leaving a Web site before completing a sale suggests that Internet merchants need to rethink their marketing strategy and Web site design, says the author of an exhaustive study.

According to the report on Internet shopping habits, online merchants need to shift their focus from why shoppers abort shopping carts to why they leave Web sites without buying.

…

Online consumers are no longer rushing to click the shopping cart button on Web sites. Instead, they spend days digitally window-shopping before buying, abandoning shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers.

“The shopping cart abandonment issue is the most important thing that we uncovered,” Ken Leonard, CEO of ScanAlert, told the E-Commerce Times. “Most merchants think that shopping cart abandonment is just part of the online shopping process.”

His study showed the average time delay between a consumer’s first visit to a Web site and the first purchase was just over 19 hours. About 35 percent of all tracked shoppers took more than 12 hours to make a buy decision, while 21 percent took more than three days, with 14 percent taking more than one week to decide where to buy.

According to Leonard, the abandonment issue and the delay in completing the shopping cart purchase shows behavior that is radically different from two years ago.

This mirrors the experience I had while searching for an HT after I got my amateur technician license.  I scoured the net, looking at manufacturer websites, searching Usenet for opinions, checking reviews, and finally comparison shopping between various online retailers.  I eventually settled on a Yaesu FT-60R, although there were a lot of good radios out there.  It got to the point where I printed out spec sheets for each one and put them all on a table, then went back and forth over them for a few days.

One reason people abandon carts, though, is because retailers often require you to put the item into your cart to see the price or to compute shipping and handling.  That doesn’t bother me too much, though.  It’s the ones who don’t show you any information on taxes or shipping until after entering credit card data that don’t usually get a sale from me. 

As an example, while their site is a bit “old school*” in terms of look-and-feel, Austin Amateur Radio Supply does some good things in their cart.  Here’s an image of their cart after adding an item:

Note that it gives the shipping and handling amount and also tells you very specifically what the taxes will be if they apply to you (and they only apply to Texas residents).  It also tells you that “nothing is final” at this point.  It doesn’t require you to give up any personal information until you decide to complete the sale.  I also like the fact that it will take you back to the page you started with if you hit “Continue to Shop” (some online retailers send you back to the home page, which is bad if you were thinking of ordering some accessories that were also listed on the original item’s page).

The only thing I’d add would be an indicator about the free shipping “clip level.”  If you order over $200 from them they give free shipping.  I only discovered this when I added some accessory items to the order.

Via Slashdot.

*As for the “old school” comment above, I’ve noticed that most ham radio retailers are a bit behind the times (to be polite) when it comes to web design.

I’ve had a Series 2 Tivo for nearly three years now.  I’ve been fairly happy with it, at least until recently.

Tivo recently released version 7 of the Tivo software.  Unfortunately, the user has no control over whether the update is installed or not, except for ripping the network connection out.  The problem is that this has the undesirable side-effect of preventing the download of the program guide, which is necessary to do Season Passes and searches.  The new update made my older model Series 2 almost unusable.  It would easily take five seconds between screen updates.  That is when it properly recognized the button I pressed on the remote.  The update also introduced a bug where the Tivo sees a double-press of the button.  Some people reported accidentally deleting shows due to this bug.  I haven’t had the problem, but it’s been damn annoying.

So, what do I discover last night?  A damn ad that pops up on the screen for some damn movie (“The Interpreter”) that I’m not going to see because they annoyed me with the damn ad.  It seems I must be one of their guinea pigs for this new “feature.”

TiVo began testing interactive advertising tools during the weekend as it looks to appease companies wary of users’ ability to skip over ads.

The company confirmed late Monday that it released the first in a series of advertising features to a random and limited number of subscribers to the digital-video recorder service. The first test feature—a tag—pops up on the screen when a viewer is fast-forwarding through an advertisement.

If viewers press the thumbs-up or select button during the half second the tag is displayed, they will be redirected to a menu that leads to more information about the advertised product. The tag takes up about 25 percent of the screen, according to the company. TiVo said it is working with only one advertiser, a movie studio, on the trial balloon
…
The tools will be tested only on Series2 TiVo owners, but once completed could be applied to Series 1 and DirecTiVo customers. Subscribers can’t opt out of the feature, but they can ignore the tags.

“Our goal is in no way to interfere with the TiVo experience,” TiVo spokesman David Shane said.

I call bullshit on two things above.  First, the damn pop-up was way bigger than “25%” of the screen.  I sits right smack in the middle of the screen and you can only see the background image around the edges.  Second, it interferes badly with the “TiVo experience.” 

The whole damn Tivo experience was supposed to be about taking control of TV viewing.  This “feature” is all about removing control from the user.  Yes, you can still fast forward, but it’s disruptive and you have no control over how or where it appears.

I guess I find this irritating because it came right after the piss-poor experience of having my Tivo made nearly useless by their damn update.  It’s unexecusable that they would release an update without doing proper testing to determine that it was OK.  It’s painfully obvious that they didn’t test the new software on the Series 2 machine, or it wouldn’t have been released.  And what did this update include?  The media sharing stuff, which I don’t give a rat’s ass about (I can share pictures and music with my PC’s more easily than I can with the Tivo), and this damn pop-up crap.  They didn’t even have the decency to fix their damn performance bugs before springing this on us.

Anyhow, here’s a fact I bet they didn’t really consider before they sold out to the advertisers:  I watch the ads as I fast forward them.  If I see something that looks interesting I’ll stop and watch a little more of it.  This damn pop-up makes it nearly impossible for me to see what’s going on behind it. 

What really burns my ass about this is that I paid a lot of money for the “Tivo experience.”  I bought the Series 2 back when it was still new, so it was about $400 and then I paid for the lifetime subscription (another $250).  If Tivo wants me to see ads, they can refund my subscription fees and make the service free.  But for paid members, this is simply unacceptable.

I used to be one of those annoying people who advocated Tivo whenever possible.  Not anymore.  When this unit dies I’ll either get a DVR from my cable company (even though their interface sucks) or roll my own using my “entertainment” PC.

Update.  I just remembered something that should be noted here.  The pop-up appears regardless of what you’re fast forwarding through.  In my case I was fast forwarding through part of the show.  I was watching a show “live” and had to leave the room for a bit.  When I came back I used the triple rewind feature to go back, but I went too far.  As I was fast forwarding back to the point where I left, the pop-up appeared over the show, not just the ads.