Still overloaded

I've had to temporarily disable guest viewing of the Crazy Meds forum and remove more features in order to try to bring CPU usage under control. Expect the forum to give you a busy signal anyway.

I can't afford to get a dedicated server.

The only thing IPB support found out of the ordinary was a version difference in some of the files. I'll be uploading a fresh installation of the latest stable version of the software. I'm planning on doing that tomorrow. Until then we're not accepting new members, as I know people will register to read two things and never return. That sort of overhead defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to accomplish.

If this doesn't get fixed somehow there's not going to be a version 10. I can't deal with it any more.

Interruptions in Forum Availability

I don't know what the hell I did when setting up the forum software, but it had to be something extra special. For an IPB site Crazy Meds Talk is pretty small. It really shouldn't be using the CPU resources that it is. Yet without any bot going out of control, either a malicious spammer or a misguided search engine spider, with no plug-in or any custom code whatsoever, the php script manages to use up to 43% of one of the CPUs on the server where Crazy Meds lives.

That's not very nice in a shared environment.

Those crappy search engine bots that were giving us trouble in our previous installment caused a spike in activity that topped out at 63%. They were still a big part of the problem.

So I've removed several features, put a load limit on the software, and I'm fucking around with caching. Thus things will happen like my breaking the blogs. No postings were lost, it was just access that was temporarily cut off. However the hard & fast load limit means you might get a screen that looks like you've been logged off, the forum's busy, blah, blah, blah. Just scroll down and you'll find a link that reads "Go Back." You may have to click on that a couple of times until things calm down a bit.

It's all helping, but just barely. For a site this size we shouldn't even be a blip on the domain host's statistical radar.

I have a ticket open with Invision regarding this. Even though I RTFM and all there's probably some setting I got dyslexic over.

One thing for sure, in looking at the MySQL stats there are apparently way too many table-based operations happening. Indices and joins aren't quite right. I know what it all means as far as SQL and databases are concerned. I just have no clue as to if, where and how anything in IPB something needs to be changed.

Forum is back up.

It figures that I get an e-mail from the domain host's support people just as I publish the previous post and let the meds knock me out.

So the Crazy Meds Talk forum is up and running again.

For those who care about such things, we got hit by two performance-killing search engine bots, Yahoo Slurp and Yandex.

The Yahoo Slurp bot seems to be causing people problems all over the place. It was doing all sorts of unnecessary stuff to collect data for a search engine. Like getting the last post and the newest post in addition to reading the entire topic. So that was three reads for some topics.

The other was the Yandex bot, and it was even worse when it came to doing unnecessary operations to get data from a topic. It did everything Slurp did, plus reading some topics in multiple views and looking at the user profile of whoever made a post that was new since its last visit. Yandex is supposed to search Russian-language sites. I have a few pages with some Russian on them, but it shouldn't be enough to attract Yandex.

I've updated the robots.txt file to deny those bots access to the entire Crazy Meds site.

Not much else was happening at the time. Google's bot was well-behaved. Actual human users weren't doing much at all.

If one or the other was doing its thing when we had few-to-no actual people on the site it probably wouldn't have been a problem. But when one has two badly-coded bots on at the same time, sometimes reading the same topics simultaneously, hilarity ensues.

The Yanga bot was also doing some stuff that seemed unnecessary, but it wasn't going through every topic like the other two. If I have any more trouble with a search bot I'm just giving in and giving Google exclusive access to Crazy Meds. Google is the Microsoft of the early 21st century as it is, so why fight it.

Waiting

I'm waiting for the domain host's support people to get back to me. I let them know what the problem was (search engine bots gone wild) and how I fixed it (robots.txt and an IP block). That was three hours ago. The meds are putting me to sleep now. The forum might be up before I am.

Crazy Meds Talk Forum Down

Something was causing the forum software to use an excessively high amount of CPU processing time on the domain server I use, so the domain host had to take us off the air until I can figure out what happened and fix it.

We'll be back on the air whenever that happens. Keep watching this space.

"From Administrator" PM Spam

The Crazy Meds Talk forum was hit by a spam bot that sent out a shitload of PMs with the title "From Administrator." The bot's name was nothing close to an admin or moderator's name, yet many people still clicked on the link that promised information regarding changes to the forum. A link to something like a porn site in the .ru domain or a disreputable 'pharmacy.'

Information regarding the spam, what we've done to prevent a repeat and how the spam-naive can repair any damage done by visiting said links is being discussed in this topic.

Broken Dream Home Depot

Involuntary masturbation as a manifestation of stroke-related alien hand syndrome.

This sign of the times is brought to you by:


Whale Shit on the Bottom of the Ocean shirts.

When life totally sucks and you're feeling as low as you can be let meds on a shirt spell it out so you don't have to.








Photograph by Jerod Poore, Copyright 2009. Taken 10 April, 2009, Big Box Land, Missoula, MT.

Caption: Title of a case study by Drs. BG Ong Hai & IR Odderson in American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Marco Polo died for your gourmet treats

Man beaten to death in Chinese prison "hide-and-seek" game

This tasty tidbit of nostalgia for 1990s food porn is brought to you by:

The Zyprexa Made Me Eat It shirts.






Image by Lovely Package® via ffffound.com
Caption from People's Daily

Crazy Meds Site Updates

04/01/2009 -

* Everything is completely updated with a new design and content...Who am I kidding. I thought I had fooled myself when I woke up at a decent hour and felt like fixing shit today.


* I know about that bug with the PayPal donation button on all of the non-forum pages. The reason PayPal hates me this time is they don't like to be framed. I'll be changing all the pages so they get their very own extra-special window to allow anyone who is sure they're still going to have a job over the course of this year (e.g. those who work for the unemployment office or in the foreclosure industry) to make a donation. See the page on how to support Crazy Meds for details on mailing cash, checks, etc. or helping in ways that don't involve filthy lucre.


* As part of my program of giving in to giving up I'll no be teasing you with promises about the income and expenses of this site, like I used to be so good about up through much of 2005. My life is such a complicated disaster that I haven't been able to download my own financial information into Quicken since some time in 2007. All I know is I owe a shitload of money to banks who are in deep shit themselves. I'm part of the problem! YAY FO' ME!!!


* As usual I'm saving the best for last. I've had to update the privacy policies, because Google will be offering anyone who visits this site a tasty cookie. One of those cookies that leaves a trail of cookie crumbs. So read up on it.



Hey, this blog has AdSense ads. I wouldn't be surprised if Google offered you a cookie when you came here.

Hottest actors born with unique SAG names

Miracle Laurie,Tahmoh Penikett, Enver Gjokaj, Eliza Dushku, Dichen Lachman, Fran Kranz, Liza Lapira

This quasi-libelous piece of satire is brought to you by:

The new and improved line of Fuck Bipolar!! shirts.

Picture: Recollections in America X by David LaChapelle, from artnet Magazine

Caption: Cast members of the Fox TV series Dollhouse.

The world is neither surreal nor postmodern enough for me

I picked up a call that was on hold and the LA talent agent that was on the other end was muttering "with your dentures and your eyeliner, you dirty old bitch".













This conflation of posts from other blogs is sponsored by:




I Used To Like Sex, Now I Take Lexapro t-shirts






Picture from: Picture is Unrelated Feb 10, 2007

Caption from: Overheard in the Office, Feb 25, 2005

I guess she didn't love his nuts.

She chopped. He slapped.

ShamWow Guy In Slap, Chop Bust

Perhaps someone was a bit too enthusiastic, or there are some rather imaginative uses for a ShamWow.
Then again, either or both of them could be medication crazy, in which case they could use a
You're Gonna Love My Nuts! shirt.

What do you think?

You bet the Internet is just like high school

I finally had my yearbook picture taken. I.e. I now have a Facebook page. Why? Someone invited me. I'm socially indifferent, it's all the same to me.

It's probably set up incorrectly. That would just figure.

As if anyone were reading this, one might have noticed the ever-expanding list of sites that are far better to read. It's just a reflection on how I'm avoiding my life. I'm coming to terms with giving up.

Too in tune with the zeitgeist

It's like this, I know that people can't afford overpriced shirts now. There's no orgy of spending like there was during the five years I had the concept and letters and everything, but was too caught up in everything else in my life. I know it's a futile endeavor. It can fail any number of ways or make just enough to keep the shop open. There's no disappointment this way. I've had enough failure and disappointment of late. So I'm beyond caring, as with so many other things.

It's hard enough for me to care enough to barely keep my life together on a daily basis. Rather on those days when I'm not too depressed or sick with something (like today) to try to catch up with everything piled up around me. I'm far too ready to put up a dowry of $1,000 per cat and let someone else take care of the mess.

In any event I've currently got over 40 designs up at Straight Jacket t-shirts. The site has been reorganized a bit to make it easier, I hope, to browse through several hundred shitty shirts. More designs are planned.

New layout and shirts at Straight Jacket T-Shirts

Bad timing has been such a large part my life's narrative for these past four years, so why should I stop now. When do I finally get it together to crank out designs for shirts? When no one has the money for $25 t-shirts, that's when. Would working on the Crazy Meds site be more productive? Of course it would. Which do you think helps me more to deal with the near-crippling depression I've been experiencing with for coming up on two years now? Hey, you got it in one.

I've added new & improved versions of the Depression Sucks, Fuck Depression, Bipolar Sucks and Fuck Bipolar lines of shirts, including the addition of plus size shirts. There's also an OCD variant. I've added the plus sizes to the Lab Rat series and I'll be adding plus sizes to other designs.

Some of the new designs include:

Batshit Crazy
Extra Medication For All!
I Love My Meds
I'm So Happy I Could Kill Myself
You're Gonna Love My Nuts

and more.

I've also divided the virtual store into different sections, so the annoyance factor of trying to find a shirt you like should be somewhere between an urban Goodwill and Hot Topic.

It doesn't cost anything to browse at Straight Jacket T-Shirts. The Fail Blog-worthy product names (e.g. You're Gonna Love My Nuts Women +Size ScoopShirt)are worth the price of admission.

Valentine's day is fast approaching. Instead of saying it with flowers and/or chocolate, why not say it with pills?

You or someone in your life might be just crazy enough to want their medication do their talking. I have more designs in the works. Getting said designs off of paper and onto teh Interwebs is all a matter of where in the depressed part of the bipolar spectrum I am and how much of a disaster my life is at the time.

We're back on the air!

The Crazy Meds Talk forum is back on the air.

We have a good idea as to what happened, and are working on ways of preventing it. If all else fails I can restrict the forum so that only members can read it. I'd rather not have it like that, but at least I have a fallback position.

Still down

Still down. I'm working with Invision and the domain host. Turns out I had flood control on after all. Some idiot found a new and improved way to fuck things up or a spammer was trying to circumvent flood control.

Invision support just got back to me. There's no official way to prevent that sort of thing. I'm going to have to look through third party modifications. What fun.

Sorry the Crazy Meds Talk Forum is Still Down

There was a massive spambot attack around 4:00 a.m. Pacific time. I thought I had disabled the ability for someone to post more than once in X seconds, but I guess not. In any event the spambot had a shitload of topics open at the same time, posting all at once and that was using up more bandwidth and CPU processing than I pay for, so the domain host disabled the forum script.

After I figured out what happened and the vendor recommending making the change through the software, I explained everything in my ticket with the domain host, so I'm waiting for them host to re-enable the software so I can make the necessary changes. I already put the dick's IP address in the domain-level ban they have available. That was 2.5 hours ago, so I don't know what's taking so long.

Getting Out The Vote, Getting Rid of Spam

I've added a few things to the Obama Prayer Cards site.

There are now two cards for each selection. Why waste the paper? Keep one and give one away. There's a little mixing and matching.

I've also added a prayer for getting out the vote. It's not all that original, as I just kludged together three existing prayers, including one for community organizing. There was no saint acting as an intermediary for that one, even if it is a Catholic prayer.

Plus I've made a crappy banner for the get out the vote drive using my pill font:



Click on the above thumbnail for a full size .jpg There's also a version with a transparent background and .png (for printing) versions at the Obama Prayer Cards site.

As for the spam, we had a problem with that earlier this month at Crazy Meds. Someone developed a spambot that could get past the Captcha portion of registration. Fortunately an upgrade with the latest version of Captcha put an end to that.

Forum is back up

We're on the air again. With any luck something like this won't happen again.

HAH!

Back to my life sucking same amount of ass it was two days ago.

Sorry the Crazy Meds Talk Forum is Down

There was a hiccup in getting the regular upgrades from IPB paid for. As that slipped past me there was something in the older version that caused way too much processing time to get used on the domain host. Something along the lines of 32-33% of the CPU at one point. So they had to disable the forum software and I can't blame them. They even gave me a daily heads-up about something like that being possible starting a few days ago, but it took that long to straighten out the issue with IPB.

IPB has since been updated to the latest version and the forum should be available again soon.

As if my life didn't suck enough ass as it does already...

Saint Obama de Mo'Crats - Take 2

I've set up a website just for the Saint Obama prayer cards:

ObamaPrayerCards.com

They depict Senator Barack Obama as St. Martin de Porres and are part of my small effort to raise money for the Obama | Biden campaign. It's a fine Catholic tradition from the late Middle Ages & early Rennaissance to use political figures as the models for religious paintings. Venice and Florence are full of paintings, stained glass, sculptures, etc. of saints, angels, etc. with the faces of Borgias (and not just St. Francis Borgia), de'Medicis, etc.

It should be easier now to print & laminate / tape together the prayer cards.

Still More T-Shirts

It's the only thing I can get motivated to do lately. I'm going through a nasty period of demotivation. It's hard to give a rat's ass about doing much of anything.

I've been messing around with things, so perhaps they don't look as crappy as they did before. The original "fuck bipolar" and "bipolar sucks" etc. still look rather craptastic, but the more recent shirts should look better. I did enhance the Lab Rat shirt, as that is popular (i.e. some people have actually purchased that one). There's a new picture as well, although the old one is still available in all it's craptastic glory.

They are also available in different colors and shirt styles. Because freedom of choice is what we're all about, right?

Additionally there are new designs:

Crazy Meds: The Good, The Bad And The Funny (for those who have requested a shirt advertising the site)

Contents Under Pressure

Take As Directed

Another Lab Rat Taking Crazymeds

Feeling Like A Lab Rat Taking Crazymeds

Plus I've expanded the types of shirts and colors available. So in all there are 10 designs (in addition to the originals) available in 8 shirt styles with varying color options per style.

Choices, it's all about choices.

Straight Jacket T-Shirts. Tell the group how you really feel using real pills.

Who knows, maybe I'll be able to start working on Crazy Meds again.