As of 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time

I'm trying again to import the forum MySQL database. The phpMyAdmin balked the first time. I'm just going to let it run and check it again later.

Somehow in getting all of the Plesk stuff set up I managed to clobber HTML access to the IP address. It's not an Apache thing because it didn't even get to Apache. I think it's some nameserver funkiness or something, because sometimes when referencing specific pages via the IP address I would hit the existing crazymeds.us domain.

So I'm trying to update the DNS entries with the new nameserver information. The new IP address is all set up, but the old domain refuses to let go of the existing nameservers. I opened a ticket.

The meds have told me I've had enough for today. Although it seems like nothing has happened, a lot has. I'll pick this up tomorrow.

Let the Migration Begin!

I'm starting the migration to the new server now.

What that means is the Crazy Meds Talk forum won't be available until whenever I'm done.

The static pages on medications, etc. will be available until I update the DNS entry with the new IP address. Then they'll be back up after what is I hope will be the brief time it takes to propagate said change. How much longer after that until the forum is ready is anyone's guess.

I'll post any updates as required.

Let's make it the weekend.

I asked the IPB tech people about what it takes to move from one server to another. After reviewing the instructions it doesn't look too difficult. Not easy, just not impossible.

So here's the current plan: I'll take the forum offline sometime the evening of 3 July and run a bunch of housekeeping. I'll give myself the entire weekend to get things up and running. Whenever it's done, it's done. Check here for progress reports.

If we're not up and running by a decent hour on 5 July, I'm throwing in the towel, buying the graphic control panel and paying someone at IPB to do the install. If they can't do the install before 10 July I just hope I'll have managed to save all of the data that make up the forum because I really, really don't want a version 10.

Still working on the upgrade

Apache is happy. But there are still some things I need to do.

This would have been a one day install if I were willing to pay a couple hundred more dollars for a control panel with a graphic interface. Then everything is, for the most part, completely installed. As it is I'm having to do the work myself. And I really didn't want to spring for a graphic interface that I'd rarely use.

It didn't help that I had a major panic attack yesterday and couldn't see my shrink. I spent the entire day sleeping or just dozing in a lorazepam haze.

I'm hoping I'll have it done by this weekend. If not, then I'll probably need to have the graphic interface installed. Nothing like getting to pay for all that frustration.

Probably not today

It's unlikely we'll be changing servers today. Apache isn't being my friend.

Anyone who knows their stuff about Apache 2.0 & Linux, especially the CentOS flavor of Linux, I have my plea for help posted here.

Server Upgrade

I'm moving Crazy Meds to a new server. The forum performance sucks too much ass crippled as it is, and I'm tired of the version with its limited capabilities.

If all goes as planned (HAH!) the move will happen tomorrow, sometime in the morning (Mountain Time, GMT -6). I don't yet know how long it will take. I hope to have a better idea later today as I'll attempt to move the forum files today as a dry run for testing purposes. I'll update this post later once I know either how long it will take or if I'll have to move the IPB files when no one is on the forum.

Update 13:35 Mountain Time: Some obscure Apache setting, or something along those lines, is preventing the site introduction from being seen when the IP address is used as an URL. I put up four files as a small test of various things.

The domain host's tech support people are looking into it. I'll be getting an e-mail when that is dealt with.

Update 17:17 Mountain Time: An e-mail from the domain host shows up, but it's a reply about something else. Grrr. Thanks to the meds I'm too tired to do anything else today. The move to the new server may or may not happen tomorrow.

R.I.P. JG Ballard

Key Words: Epilepsy-Sleep-Orgasm. Epilepsy and sexual activity may be related in the following ways:

1) hyperventilation provoking seizures during sexual intercourse; 2) reflex epilepsy provoked by orgasm or other sexual stimuli; 3) tactile genital sensations as part of the epileptic aura; 4) orgasm and sexual hallucinations as part of the epileptic aura; 5) sexual automatisms during or after a seizure; 6) abnormal interictal sexual behaviour; 7) ictal somatosensory sensations in the genitalia.

Normal marital sexual behaviour was reported. At age 38 she developed frequent, brief, nocturnal somatosensory seizures. The episodes usually awakened the patient after falling asleep and consisted of a sudden sensation of electrical discharge in the neck, which spread to the right leg and lasted a few seconds. The right leg jerked at the end of each seizure, with paresthesia in the right lateral abdominal and pubic regions and about her genitalia. A sensation of vaginal dilatation ensued immediately afterward, which inevitably brought about either a pleasant or a painful orgasm. During these episodes there was no confusion or memory loss; she was bewildered; in fact, because of her religious beliefs, such orgasms were hard for her to accept.


Crescendo of sharp waves and spike discharges. The sensory representation of the genitalia lies in the paracentral lobule. The epileptic symptoms of the patient correlate well with epileptiform activity recorded on the central-parietal region in the waking EEG and during
sleep. The spreading of paresthesia from the abdominogenital area to ipsilateral nipple did not occur. Orgasms in our patient ensued immediately after the genital sensations, as if they were a step in the sensory march. Although she did not exhibit apparent consciousness alteration, the
ictal polygraphic recording showed generalization of focal paroxysmal activity accompanied by autonomic changes. These findings suggest that the orgasms might be the result of the spread of focal epileptic activity into the hypothalamus but without disruption of amnesic mechanisms.




The pathogenesis of orgasm. Cases of ictal orgasm:

1) a 55-year-old woman with a right parasagittal meningioma who began to manifest paroxysmal nymphomania at age 43. The initial paroxysms awakened the patient with a feeling "of being hot all over as if she were having coitus." Afterwards she also had left somatomotor seizures and developed left hemiplegia. 2) a patient who described "unusual sensations about her genitalia that were similar to those of a sexual orgasm"; the EEG revealed diffuse abnormalities. 3) a 43-year-old woman with a right parietal glioma, developed paroxysmal, painful, and frightening orgasm on two occasions with left leg jerking. 4) a 36-year-old man with a right parasagittal parietal meningioma, developed painful and anxiety-provoking paroxysmal orgasm, accompanied by left leg jerking. 5) a 55-year-old man with a right parasagittal meningioma who had seizures that began with aching pain in the left leg. This was followed by spasms of the left leg and then ejaculation without erection or other genital sensations.




This long-overdue tribute to J.G. Ballard is brought to you by



I Used To Like Sex, Now I Take Paxil t-shirts.








Pictures from Jon Haddock's project ISPs (Internet Sex Photos) -- Pr0nography, digitally edited to remove the figures.

Text is excerpted, edited and rearranged from the paper Orgasmic Epilepsy Jesús Calleja, Rosario Carpizo, Jose Berciano Epilepsia Volume 29 Issue 5, October 1988

I have previously written original fiction in the style of Ballard from his 'Concrete / High Rise' period (The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, The Concrete Island, High Rise) to go along with some of Haddock's ISPs. Today I came across the paper on orgasmic epilepsy and thought the late Mr. Ballard would have appreciated said paper. The lists, the descriptions, all of the nervous system pr0n. Three of the four stories omitted from the original version of The Atrocity Exhibition, but included in the expanded, annotated and illustrated edition published by RE/Search, are taken almost verbatim from plastic surgery journals. They are 'Princess Margaret's Facelift,' 'Mae West's Reduction Mammoplasty,' and 'Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty.'

I'm currently reading the RE/Search edition, and have a few other Ballard books I haven't yet read all queued up. Once I heard the news of his death it was all a matter of when I have the cognitive capacity to appreciate them.

Tipping Point

I think someone brought in a mail-order nanny on penis cake day.

This interlude of warmth and fuzziness is brought to you by:

My Doctor Can Beat Up Your Doctor shirts










Image from Dark Roasted Blend: Lovely Ladies of Yesteryear (in B&W) via FFFFOUND!
Caption from Overhead in the Office.

Ironic forum status change

It's the ultimate irony. I'm always getting on everyone's ass about the search function being everyone's friend and other snarky ways of telling people to search for stuff first before posting a question about a side effect they mention on the TV ads. Now I have to go and disable the IPB search function.

There really shouldn't be a board busy signal when only two people are on the forum.

The IPB search function is superior to the Google search for a number of reasons, especially the part about finding something posted a couple minutes prior to your search. Unfortunately our already stretched-too-thin resources are taking a hit from it. The Google search is done by Google. Life sucks then you die.

I'm finally getting over what I've had for the last 2-3 weeks, so I'm back to looking into a VPS.

What could possibly go wrong? Daikaiju will kill us all!

As has been pointed out by Jon Stewart et al., in all of those movies where the world is going to be blown up by terrorist asteroids or everything is going to freeze due to global warming if that mutated virus doesn't kill everyone except Charlton Heston and Will Smith, the President of the United States of America is black.

I grew up on a diet of daikaiju eiga. Gojira was first awakened/created by an atomic bomb being tested. Various meddlings deep below the floor of the northwest Pacific Ocean were responsible for his return or the appearance of of other giant monsters. Earthquakes and/or typhoons were often involved. So what's been happening lately?

North Korea launched a 'satellite' that crashed into the ocean. And they detonated an actual atomic bomb, instead of a fake one like the last time.

If that weren't bad enough, the Japanese government has funded an earthquake prediction program that involves drilling four miles into a trench in the Pacific Ocean. Work has been interrupted the past few days due to one hell of a storm.

What could possibly go wrong?

Atomic tests and nuclear-ready rockets launched into the NW Pacific while they're drilling holes into a bigass trench to predict earthquakes! Each of those events alone account for the first 15 minutes of half the Japanese giant monster movies I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. Together it's like every metalhead on the planet got together on the Pope's birthday to sacrifice goats while playing Black Sabbath records backwards. In front of Jack Chick's house.

Seriously, what could possibly go wrong in either of those scenarios?

I'm glad I moved far away from the coast and now live half a mile above sea level, because those things aren't limited to attacking Japan any more. Gojira, Radon, Varan, even freaking Mosura and Gamera might show up just about anywhere. They've been known to get pissed off about climate change and crap like that as well.

Although either the kaiju or the humans shred the mountain forests in The War of the Gargantuas and Gamera vs. Gaos. I'm probably safe from the genetic engineering that spawned the former, but there are plenty of precocious brats around here already doing time or community service for burning the scenery as the annoying brat wanted to do in Gamera vs. Gaos.

Safety in Stupidity

First an update on Crazy Meds: Kit noticed an error with the drug-drug interaction checker that's all over the place. For some idiotic reason I coded the link as a secure (https) connection instead of vanilla http. Maybe it was because you could create an account with your cocktail and check impending changes. As if anyone using Crazy Meds actually does that. It's difficult enough as it is to get 90% of the people on the forum to use that tool at all.

In any event the secure connection works only if you're willing to permanently add an exception regarding POZ's expired SSL certificate. They're the same people. Really. I'll be changing everything to http soon enough. Although I may have to deal with something else first...

Topamax has gone generic, which means I'm on generic topiramate now. Has that been a lot of fun. The switch to generic lamotrigine was simple. Teva good, Dr. Reddy bad. Topiramate isn't so simple. I'm getting aurae some days, other days I'm knocked out as if I've taken too much, and other days are just right. This inconsistency in the bioequivalence between each tablet of the generic and brand Topamax is really fucking with me. Should I ask my pharmacist if they can get the generic from another manufacturer? I can try another if available, but I've heard that this problem is widespread. I just wish I could find some documentation.

The aurae have a common trigger: crossword puzzles. Or anything else that requires logical or any other type of thinking. Woo-hoo, the thinking (noogenic) reflex seizures are back! Trileptal gave me reading seizures, where my left arm would violently straighten out whlist I was reading, usually online. Apparently I had short absence seizures most of my life when working on complex arithmetic and/or logic problems.

I asked the Google and PubMed if there were anything in the literature about crossword puzzle-induced seizures. Google pointed me to an exerpt from The neurological side of neuropsychology - by Richard E. Cytowic - that cited Reflex seizures induced by calculation, card or board games, and spatial tasks: a review of 25 patients and delineation of the epileptic syndrome as including crossword puzzles in the list of seizurogenic activities. Google also found Seizures induced by thinking where crossword puzzles are mentioned in the article but not the abstract.

As for PubMed itself, Reflex epilepsy evoked by decision making: report of a case states that crossword puzzles were used as one of many potential ways to induce seizures. The abstract doesn't make it clear if crossword puzzles did anything. In any event the article is in Italian.

This sucks. Not because I'm a big crossword puzzle fan. I just started doing them as a form of mental calisthenics. I was doing the cryptoquote, as pitifully easy as single-letter substitution codes are, for the same reason. That just isn't going to happen until my doctors and I figure out this mess. Protriptyline lowers one's seizure threshold, and at 50mg a day I'm getting close to the maximum dosage. Like most almost all TCAs protriptyline is metabolized by CYP2D6, and my liver probably squeezes out a drop or two of that stuff every other day. Protriptyline has a 74-hour half-life, yet has to be taken three or four times a day to work. Now I understand why Dr. Stahl paraphrased the Merck Manual regarding Vivactil (protriptyline) and how its complicated pharmacokinetics result in its being rarely prescribed. Anything else with a half-life of three days I poor metabolizer like me could get away with taking every other day.

Add to that I'm taking methylphenidate, which lowers the seizure threshold. Allegedly methylphenidate inhibits the metabolism of TCAs, but that's based on nothing but case reports. Of people taking imipramine who were also taking more than their prescribed amount of Ritalin on a daily basis. The effect has never been reproduced in the lab. Hmmmm...

But I never had a problem prior to switching to generic topiramate. And the combination of methylphenidate and protriptyline is used for all sorts of wacky and/or refractory conditions. That has my name written all over it. Yet with Topamax as a third-tier drug the fight with the insurance company might be too much. An increase in the dosage of topiramate and/or lamotrigine would be easier.

Until then I'm going to have to stay stupid. I tried to pick up on a puzzle I left off and started to get a headache and tingling. It went away after I stopped. Until I started looking up stuff for this post. Again I have an aura with the headache, tingly hands and feet, and my vision is getting a bit funny. Perhaps it's to the point of no return (writing-induced seizure, they're all related), but I think I need to explain my limited presence with periods of total absence for however long it takes to fix. This is may yet be another day I'll to have to write off with lorazepam and too much sleep. I can't remember most of Sunday and on Monday I was so groggy from the extra-strength medication I needed on Sunday I thought it was Friday for most of the day.

For your edification and amusement, some articles on the subject of seizures induced by thinking:

Higher brain function as precipitant of seizure

Self induced noogenic seizures in a photosensitive patient

Reflex writing seizures in two siblings with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.

Mah-jong epilepsy: a new reflex epilepsy.

Mah-Jong-induced epilepsy: a special reflex epilepsy in Chinese society.

Two examples of Epilepsy Engrish:

Toothbrush-thinking seizures.

Reflex epilepsy evoked by specific psychic activity. A case report.

Crazy Meds Talk Forum Status

What we have as of right now is what we're going to have until further notice. That means no guest viewing, no site stats, no calendar and there's going to be only a limited amount of activity allowed at any one time.

So I'll probably have to upgrade to a VPS.

Please, no more suggestions regarding domain hosts and/or forum software. Changing either is too much trouble. Free isn't worth it.

The Map is the Territory

The new political reality of Europe, as seen by Yanko Tsvetkov. A.k.a. ArtWerk.

Best viewed at ArtWerk's Flickr stream, as there are all sorts of notes as well.

Franklin Veaux's map of the countries, provinces and various territories in the Lands of Human Sexuality:

At the website the map is about three times the size you see here, although clicking on the picture one or more times (depending on browser, setting, etc) should get you the full-size version. Better yet you can place pins into the different territories regarding stuff you've tried and liked, didn't like, haven't yet tried. Your own map can be saved and embedded in your own pervilicious blog.

We're Admitting New Inmates, for now.

I'm allowing new registrations again, although guest viewing is still turned off. I've also turned some of the features back on. Either what Jason H. at IPB did worked or it didn't. He wasn't all that optimistic. We're in a gray area when it comes to size. Although the forum is not that busy on a daily basis when it comes to users, the number and size of the posts makes it a moderately-sized IPB site.

I'll be checking the stats. Guest viewing might be part of the problem due to bots of one form or another. Although the forum isn't being spammed, the bots are still trying. Jason thinks that might be a big part of the problem, and it agrees with data I saw on previous occasions when activity spiked.

That got me thinking. People who do search engine spamming are always slurping up chunks of my medication pages. They used to use the same couple of bots, because my name, "Crazy Meds" and the same chunks of text, usually from the disclaimer, would show up on hundreds of sites promoting dubious 'pharmacies.' Bots are now cheaper and more sophisticated, so "Crazy Meds" and many different chunks of text show up for each 'medication' the spammers are trying to sell. Thus you can't see the extent of the problem like you used to. Plus the fragments show up only on Google. You usually don't see the text if you go to the blog / domain / whatever, as it's usually an automatic redirect to another page or site.

While that has nothing at do directly with the problem of the forum, those bots probably ignore robots.txt, which means they'll hit the forum and cause trouble. Because they may or may not be identified as bots they'll be doing all sorts of shit at once, making the forum work as if there were fifty or sixty people on at once, not ten.

The blog spammers' bots are more sophisticated as well, albeit still nonsensical. They'll post things like "Crazy Meds Lexapro Side Effects" on a blog with a link to a third-level domain or page with a name that is the same as the phrase, instead of burning an entire domain with a name like crazymedqzs.com

That search engine and blog spamming, combined with the usual e-mail spamming and the very domain name is why e-mail from me and the forum is blocked by most spam filters.

In any event, if I can't get the amount of CPU time used to no more than 1.00% on an average over a 24 hour period either the forum goes away or I need cash to move over to a virtual private server. Once a sales rep gets back to me I'll know how much cash I'll need.

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.