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Belch.Com
Stuff about Belch.Com and General Admin stuff
Mile Zero
Feb 21st

Mile Zero, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
Route 1 runs from here all the way up the east coast thru Maine to the Canadian border. It even runs through Richmond, VA and past Washington DC not far from my home. And there is a Wikipedia article on Route 1 here featuring more useless information about the street you’ll ever need.
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New Butterflies
Feb 21st

New Butterflies, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
Its been a fantastic day down in Sunny Key West. We got to visit the butterfly museum which is where I snapped this shot showing two brand new butterflies emerging from their chrysalides. (yeah, I just looked up the plural of chrysalis)
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Key West Biatches
Feb 21st

Key West Biatches, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
We are spending a week in Key West Florida. So if blogs are sporadic you’ll know why.
This photo is of my boy in front of the fish tank at the Conch Republic restaurant on the waterfront.
Fantastic food, by the way. And Stone Crabs are in season!!
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Disaster is Imminent
Feb 18th

Disaster is Imminent, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
A Lazy Saturday Night. The boy and I are building towers of terror for unsuspecting Lego employees while I rebuild a laptop I had lying around with Ubuntu.
My son is telling me about the casualties of his tower of terror. Seems that the bodies get dragged to the cemetery by an ambulance where they turn into skeletons and then dirt.
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Enterprise Maintenance
Feb 18th

Enterprise Maintenance, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
I got a chance to visit the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum this afternoon. The scaffolds around the Enterprise Space Shuttle are so workers can do something with the rear of the fusalage. Workers were busy either reattaching it or separating it for some reason.
I was disappointed too because they had the rear doors open and stairs leading up and into the orbiter. I first thought they were letting museum visitors aboard but it was only to give workers internal access to do their jobs.
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Cryptome.Org Hacked- Hosted Scripts for Drive-By Malware UPDATE! Javascript Captured
Feb 14th
Cryptome.Org was compromised by some type of PHP vulnerability, adding a download script to each of its pages on the webserver. The compromised pages produced the following AV alerts to visitors- click the photo to embiggen:
Cryptome confirmed each page had been modified here:
(13 Feb 2012) 5,000 more files found infected, still checking, but it looks as though every HTML file on Cryptome was infected. Sneaky: files inside directories and sub-directories were changed to add the SCRIPT with date of change but without changing the directory date. Not clear how access was gained through our ISP. Access logs do not show the infection activity. Any ideas how that was done and how to prevent recurrence: cryptome[at]earthlink.net
ArsTechnica goes on to report that Cryptome seems to think they were breached via the PHPmyadmin configuration page on their server.
A breach that caused Cryptome.org to infect visitors with virulent malware was one of at least six attacks reported to hit high-profile sites or services in the past few days. Others affected included Ticketmaster, websites for Mexico and the state of Alabama, Dutch ISP KPN, and the Microsoft store in India.
Cryptome, a repository of leaked documents and other information concerning free speech, privacy and cryptography, was attacked by hackers who left code on its servers that attempted to infect visitors using Windows PCs with a trojan spawned by the Blackhole Toolkit, the website reported on Sunday.
Cryptome founder John Young said in an e-mail that he believes the attackers were able to infect his website with a poisoned PHP file by exploiting a weakness in security or server software provided by Network Solutions, which hosts the Cryptome website.
If Cryptome was running a standard type of PHP enabled blog, such an attack would be a bit easier- a PHP based attack can compromise the mysql database and the malcode could be easily injected onto each page. But Cryptome doesn’t use PHP. Perhaps they actually do have PHP, but only as an addon available via their webserver administration console software.
The last time Cryptome was hacked, the name of Justin Perras came up- he was jailed for the Lexis Nexis hack back in the day.
Thanks to @AoSHQ Doom.
UPDATE!!
Coincidentally enough, I began to receive AV popups of my own related to the Blackhole malware. My AV of choice is the excellent Microsoft Security Essentials.
I examined the details and found out that one of my RSS feeds that I track was prepending a malicious script to RSS feed page that is served by Internet Explorer. I carved out the script and submitted it to Jsunpack. As is often the case, jsunpack didn’t detect the decoded javascript as malicious, but reading through the eval commands, it is clear that the software attempts to insert an iframe and create a drive-by download. Below is the decoded javascript. Click the image to embiggen.
It is also worthy to note that this threat employs dynamic DNS to prevent anyone from simply blackholing the IP address. And if the threat is widespread enough to begin to infect the RSS feeds of popular blogs, this one is going to be a big deal in the security sector in the next several weeks.
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Tweaking WordPress and Optimizing Databases
Feb 12th
Ever since my migration to the new hosting provider, I’ve had a few problems creating new posts on the blog. I would use PHPmyadmin to repair tables that had overhead, and sometimes that would fix the problem. At other times the webserver would even lose connectivity to the SQL backend completely for about 5 minutes. And this was beginning to happen more and more frequently.

One of the tables that seemed to have chronic overhead issues was the wp-options table. This is the table most often used by plugins and theme templates. I had browsed the table contents and knew that there were quite a few rows that I didn’t need anymore, but was reluctant to drop them without knowing if it would have adverse impact on the site’s functionality.
Then I found this page over at WPMU that recommended three fantastic plugins.
WP-Optimize: This is a database cleanup and optimization tool. It allows you to remove post revisions, comments in the spam queue, un-approved comments within few clicks.
WP Database Optimizer: This plugin allows you to optimize your WordPress tables on a schedule. It uses the WordPress Database Class to do the work, and you can set the number of days in between optimizations.
Clean Options: This plugin finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table.
The orphaned options cleaner worked fantastic, and it located scores of old useless rows in my options table that were leftover from old themes, plugins, and outdated content collected on the site over the past 5 years. And the database optimizer found all kinds of auto-saved files, spam comments and draft posts that were taking up a lot of DB space. And best of all, I didn’t have to use the kludgy PHPmyadmin to fix these DB errors.
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Monster Jam
Jan 28th

Monster Jam, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
I took the boy to see Monster Trucks up close and personal at the Verizon Center in DC. It was all fine and fun until the trucks really started revving their engines. The noise was too much and too scary for the lad and we had to leave early without seeing what we actually paid to go see. **SIGH** maybe in a couple of more years….
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Spirit of Detroit Statue
Jan 19th

Spirit of Detroit, a photo by kaszeta on Flickr.
This statue is one of the few cool things to look at in Detroit in addition to some fantastic gothic architecture. The statue is supposed to symbolize a relationship with God, but it looks like a huge blue guy is going to crush a tiny family with a painful spikey ball.
Leave it to Detroit to evoke images of being all stabby.
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N00b Intertubes Manual
Jan 18th

N00b Intertubes Manual, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
If you are new to the Interwebs, Welcome! I think I have found just the merchandise for you!
First is this handy handbook that you can use to write down all of your usernames and passwords for your favorite online locations, and you can carry it everywhere with you!
Also, you can get the NEW EDITION of the Texting Dictionary of Acronyms so you can finally decipher what all those cool kids are writing in the chatrooms. Nice, right?
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Detroit River and Belle Island
Jan 17th

Detroit River and Belle Island, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
It seems like the prettiest thing in Detroit is looking across the river at Canada.
This was taken from an observation deck at the Detroit Renaissance Center. The day was mostly overcast and often you couldn’t see below the cloudline, but the river was a deep aqua color despite the cruddy weather.
And back during prohibition, bootleggers would drive across the frozen lake to deliver hooch!
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MotorCity Downtown
Jan 15th

MotorCity Downtown, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
Looks like I will be freezing my butt off most of this week in Detroit. Here is a shot from the downtown area. Blogging may be sporadic this week, so feel free to peruse the volumes of archives on the site.
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Cracker Barrel Worried About an All-White Image?
Jan 10th
I like Cracker Barrel. The food isn’t always the best, but if you travel often on the road, you can always count on consistent, home-cooking style of food, and the place is a great restaurant to bring a large family. Our family sometimes goes out of our way to eat at a Cracker Barrel, and the nearest one to us is in Manassas. We even have a Cracker Barrel Christmas Tree Ornament, and we get stocking stuffers, candy, and other goodies from the Country Store. Hell, if I had room for a good rocking chair, I’d get one from them. But I think the food chain worries that they don’t seem to appeal so much to minorities. I tweeted this morning:
The sign I spoke of is this one below:
You know, some stores have had quite a few problems with the way they handle minorities- Denny’s for instance, who have paid class action lawsuits because they treated blacks disrespectfully. Now blacks throw chairs at their restaurants, so I guess they fixed whatever problem they had, but that’s a different story in a post here. But I could see a sign like that at a Denny’s, and in fact, I think they have something similar on their menu in fine print.
So why would Cracker Barrel need a sign like this? Perhaps it is because they hang signs of Octoroon women who weren’t allowed to vote?
This is a photo I took in a Williamsburg Cracker Barrel of a popular tobacco label, but an Octoroon is a one-eighth black person. So why couldn’t this woman vote? Because she’s a woman and it is the year 1890, and she’s stuck on a tobacco label, that’s why.
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Bizarre Changes in My Hometown
Jan 8th
I moved away from Hampton Roads years ago and only visit occasionally to see family. Parts of Hampton are still quite charming, and even an improvement over what I left behind when I moved away- The new Peninsula Town Center, for instance, is a wonderful replacement for the decrepit Coliseum Mall, and revitalized downtown Hampton and the Queen Street strip is a welcome new addition, and the Saturday Night street parties in the summer are a big incentive to get me to come home to visit. Yet for every improvement, there are also bizarre declinations as well. Take the case of the old Ryan’s Grill and Buffet on Todd’s Lane.
Now this former restaurant has closed. Out of business. But they are still cooking stuff in this building, because now its called the Berceuse Funeral & Cremation center. A “berceuse” is a type of music in 6/8 time similar to a lullaby, and while I suppose that is a fine name for someone taking an eternal dirtnap, it is still shocking to see a corner lot former restaurant that is now a crematorium. And this is a residential neighborhood too; a bit on the low-income urban side (black), but a residential neighborhood nonetheless.
I have seen many funeral homes, and they come in all shapes and sizes. I’ve seen converted Victorian mansions as a funeral home, solemn brickfront buildings, and even a converted schoolhouse- but I have yet to see a funeral home that uses a cruddy buffet-style restaurant until now. And being Hampton, it is both saddening and unsurprising.
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1940′s HorseManing
Jan 7th

Billy and Graham Green from the Salvation Army Camp practise a little deceit, Collaroy Beach, ca. 1940 / photographer unknown, a photo by State Library of New South Wales collection on Flickr.
Horsemaning is one of those Internet memes from last year- a photo that looks like someone took off their head- ala Headless Horseman.
The meme ranked right up there with planking, owling, and other silly photographic stunts. While playing around on Flickr, I saw this Horsemaning from the 40′s.
Its not as new as people believe is it?
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Catch Up on Reading
Jan 6th
I’ve got some reading I need to catch up on. Thinking about hitting the Stephenson’s Readme first.
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BelchSpeak’s Best of 2011
Dec 31st
Another year winds to a close, and its time for the best of 2011. First up are statistics from visitors to the site and the top posts that draw visits.

Top stories of 2011
Best of the best:
Best weekend! Why we eat turkey.
Mobs and Protests:
2011 is the Year of the Mob, both Online and off. Egypt takes itself offline. Mob Mentality. London aflame. OccupyWallStreet.
Travel:
I went to Chatanooga. And Pensacola. Hotlanta. Hartford. London. Disney World. Australian Wine Region. Fitzroy Falls National Park in Australia. The Pacific Coast and Wine Region. Palo Alto. Midland, Michigan. Key West and South Florida. Tennessee, ya’ll. Wichita. Jamestown Settlement. And more London. New York and New Jersey. Earthquake in San Francisco.
Justice Files:
Kristen Petersen, Byron Sonne’s ex-wife has charges dropped. Byron Sonne catches new charges. The Duke Lacrosse bitch kills someone. Bin Laden gunned down. James Ray convicted of manslaughter. Rodney King can’t stay sober. Casey Anthony walks free. Byron Sonne trial gets underway. Ray gets a 2-year sentence.
I get threats:
Internet LOLsuit over an Oktoberfest pic. And don’t forget some clown tried to sue me too. Some RIAA/MPAA lawyers in India threaten me with a LOlsuit.
Worst Way to Die:
Hit by a train. Tiger food. Chopped up for magic potions. Getting drunk at the W and plummeting to your death. Alcohol Poisoning and being Amy Winehouse. Falling into a hotdog grinder! Being a cat owned by a stoner hippie. Murdered by a fat vampire. Death by Cantaloupe! iCancer.
Moonbats on Parade:
Jared Lee Loughner gunned down a Congresswoman. John Edwards gets engaged after wife’s burial. Earth Day Hippies in Santa Cruz. Porn Star and her baby. ATTACKWatch!
Really Stupid People:
Congressman Lee and his Craigslist photo shoot. Charlie Sheen. Schwarzenegger Screwed his maid. Anthony Weiner quits after twitter photos to girls. Crazy art attacker!
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Ice at the Gaylord
Dec 30th
The family took a few hours to remember why the National Harbor is always a disappointment by plunking down a hundred bucks to go see some ice carved by Chicoms and setup in a frigid tent outside the Gaylord hotel.
The line was long, the attraction was poorly managed and ultimately really not worth the price of admission.
Next we tried to have lunch at a Mexican restaurant which also winded up being a letdown. At least we got to enjoy some time with our friends.
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Needles
Dec 29th
We DeChristmasfied the house today and we were left with this huge pile of needles from one Epic-sized Xmas tree.
I remarked to Jess that this is one silly tradition, and she told me that we have the Pagans to thank for this.
We spent a fair amount of time running the vacuum and now the whole house is infused with the aroma of fresh pine, so I guess we have Oreck to thank for that nice fresh smell.
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Family Night Fun
Dec 19th
We got to eat out at Cheeburger Cheeburger, pick up our “Roast Beast,” a gorgeous boneless ribeye roast for Christmas Dinner, and then we went exploring for Christmas Lights of Tacky Houses in Fairfax County, as outlined on a website Jess found here. And that’s how we stumbled on this house, which has a coordinated lightshow broadcast over an unused band of FM radio.
The narrow lane was packed for the Rocky Run Christmas Lights Show, so we only stayed for about 5 minutes, but we intend to go back for an extended viewing. And I’ll be packing egg nog.
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