It’s December 1 and I’m building software (again).

Do the words “Jack” and “PulseAudio” send shivers up your spine?

They should.

A software patch bay for connecting different audio sources to different devices and an audio server/client so complex that even the developers can’t sort it out sufficiently to produce usable documentation.

Yeah, that’s it, and I’m trying to get these things working across a 1gb network connection.

Well, I finally got Jack to build, install and execute without puking out a ton of warnings and errors. Now, PulseAudio3 is compiling behind this window.

I had it working a little bit but it was using the wrong interfaces and gobbling up all the bandwidth on the 100mb network; the network that everyone uses to access the Internet.

It’s installing now.

Will it work? I don’t know. If it does, I’ll post what I did to make it happen. If it doesn’t? Well, we’ll see.

And Now, A Message From The President

A warning from the President. — A Warning out of the past by our first President

Today, our First President has a message, from out of the past, for us today. We would do well to listen to him and act accordingly. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about our current president, who lies about his lying and then apologizes to We the People because too many of us have discovered that the current crisis is not an accident, but rather, the result of a carefully scripted and orchestrated plan; or, some jackwagon with a computer and way too much time on his hands generating DNS DDoS protocol attacks to disrupt the Internet who, just like our current president, seek to remove our freedom and liberty, and replace them with some Utopian, Fabian Socialist pipe dream of pretended perfection.

Anarchists or control freaks. Both have one goal: to make themselves the Master and the rest of us their slaves.

Don’t let them win.

Fiddling around with Facebook

I’ve been, as the title says, fiddling around with Facebook again. I edited a profile picture that looks a lot better than the previous one and,

I also added a cover photo of a truck coming through a short mountain pass.

It was a welcome distraction from two days of doing battle with the DDoS attacks again. I don’t know if I’m a target or just some poor sap stuck in the middle of some giant botnet run by the Red Chinese or Anonymous, determined to clog-up what of the Internet that hasn’t been clogged-up by people watching full-length, HD movies with full stereo sound.

I figured-out how to stop it, for awhile at least, with only two lines in IPTABLES, as opposed to individual lines for each IP address participating in the attack. No, I won’t mention how I did it because that’ll just cause the originator(s) of the attack to change the way their packets are constructed and then I’ll just have to start all over looking for the commonality to detect them by.

One thing I did on Facebook was to post a collection of “keywords” I came across that are along the lines of the old Newsgroup signature block called the “Echelon Cycle-Stealer”.

If you want to see what I’ve been doing in Facebook, without actually having to join the thing, you can take a peek here:

http://facebook.com/PalaceGallifrey

I called my site “PalaceGallifrey” in honor of the Palace graphical chat server I operate, although these days, it gets little use, which is a bit sad. Palace was the ideal chatroom environment.

I also added some work and employment history which pertains to the trucking industry. I really do love driving big trucks, but I hate breaking laws, getting tickets, and being treated like a criminal by law enforcement. Other drivers have told me over the years that all that crap just went with the job and I should just get used to it.

Well, I never did. I got jobs. Worked for a few months and quit them when they broke their promise to never try and make me drive illegal. I guess they didn’t believe me. Then I went out and got another job and the whole cycle started again.

Then, after a few decades, I bought Serenity and told all of them to get stuffed. I still work in Transportation, but I have much more latitude to call the shots where driving is concerned as that’s not my primary duty. When I really get the itch to drive, I just warm-up Serenity and take a weekend and go somewhere.

If you were offended …

… by my previous post, well, too bad. That’s just the way it goes when you step on my tail. Get used to it or get a life.

Who cares what games we choose? Little to win, but nothing to lose.

If you don’t like me pouring tomato juice all over you when you come to visit, don’t come dressed as a skunk.

Yeah, I don’t like Emos. I don’t like tattoos, body piercing or gobs of ear rings either.

But, on the other hand, I do like this sort of thing.

Beautiful, bright, full of life and colors. Compare that to the previous one. Dark, glum, sad, distorted perspective. Really; What would you prefer seeing every day? I’ll take the Hippy chick. You can keep your Emo.

Ma belle amie. You were a child of the sun, and the sky, and the deep blue sea.

Ma belle amie. Apres tous les beaux jours je te merci, merci.

Now, that’s better.

Got an Emo?

If you’ve got one of these at home …

then it probably sucks being you.

I got one and it sucks being me.

“Don’t judge me.” The Emo mantra.

Spokane’s Proposition 1 (Prop 1)

Well, here we go again. The Alliance for a Competitive Economy of Greater Spokane Incorporated, A.K.A.: Greater Spokane Incorporated, (GSI), the same people who, a few years back, advocated, on their web site, that local businesses should engage in business with Red China, are trying to whip-up the panic-susceptible electorate into a frenzy over an imagined residential encroachment on the “end” of Fairchild Air Force Base’s runway. If, they say, this “encroachment” doesn’t end, the Base will be closed, thousands of people will leave the area, the local economy (and government) will collapse; In other words, Spokane will become a ghost town.

First: Which runway? Five or twenty-three? They don’t say. Is the “encroachment” the industrial area a couple miles off runway 5, to the north-east? Is it Medical Lake to the south? Espanola to the east? Airway Heights? I’ve not been able to find any maps on their web site. I suspect it’s because they don’t want people to actually understand what they are voting on and there’s an agenda at work.

Personally, I think they’ve fixed their attention on the area east and west between Craig Road and Hayford Road, north and south between Highway 2 and McFarlane Road. Somewhere in there, I think, is their evil “encroachment” which is all part of Airway Heights.

You’re reading this entry on a computer, I presume. So, open-up Google Earth and look at the area around FAFB. What are these fascists, (look the word up and compare it to the relational behavior between GSI and the City/County government), talking about?

There’s more going on here than meets the eye, I think. Personally, I think this is a MANUFACTURED crisis. GSI isn’t interested in constructing parks. GSI is about acquiring power and money for their members.

If there really is an “encroachment” somewhere out there, the solution is to zone the area industrial or not issue any residential building permits. If GSI was really concerned, they should encourage their real estate developer members to develop their residential areas elsewhere. There are a lot of solutions which do not increase taxes and add to the inventory of government-owned land.

GSI supported the whipping-up of opposition the the Indians and their casino on the other side of Highway 2 and now they are doing the same thing here. Since they advocated local businesses get together with the Red Chinese economically, I’ve lost all trust and respect for this organization. So, I have to ask: Why do they want this land? What is their agenda? Is their another behind-the-scenes “deal” going on between government and this business organization that nobody’s talking about? How does government acquisition of this land make money for GSI members? Follow the money/power trail. That’s where the answer is to be found. Don’t be a Lemming or a mind-numbed robot. Just because this is a local issue does not insulate it, or the people involved, from the effects of greed-driven corruption. Demand answers before you pull the lever (or fill-in the ellipse) for GSI’s Proposition 1, on election day, November 5th.

Man alive. That was weird, really weird.

The above picture I found illustrates how some network engineers view Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This is the sort of thing that we’ve been contending with the past couple of weeks. Thankfully, since reconfiguring the DNS servers to be non-recursive (they should come that way by default Centos folks) it seems to be mostly over. I guess it’s not much fun to watch your malicious packets being ignored. These DDoS attacks are yet another reason for O’bummer to be impeached. I suppose my tendency to make remarks like that is one of the things that makes me a target for the DDoS crowd (they are all friends of O’bummer, you know). That’s okay. I’ve been targeted in the past by far better people and survived.

And now for something completely different, how about taking in a concert with me?

Let’s hop in the TARDIS, speed through time & space and catch the Byrds at the Fillmore once again!

DDoS Attack

Wow! I must be really important to some loser with no life out there. My little domain has been the subject of and/or unwitting participant in a Distributed Denial of Service (DoS), using bogus DNS requests started by some jerk using hundreds of computers with broken (at least, mis-configured) DNS servers.

I’ve made sure that my DNS servers are configured to be non-recursive and, while I’m waiting for the dust to settle, I’ll be constructing rules for my firewall which should mitigate the effects of the DDoS attack until the source is eliminated.

What follows is a list of the IP-addresses currently participating in the DDoS. Sadly, even while I write this, the following have appeared:

66.55.154.195
188.126.64.19
83.21.181.135
91.227.123.234
80.131.189.199
38.84.132.130

62.4.17.128
76.22.156.11
184.41.30.228
94.23.61.124

If you are running Linux and IPtables, put all of these addresses in a file, called “blocklist” and stick it on your firewall server somewhere and add a couple of rules like this to your IPtables:

I use Firewall Builder 5 to maintain my firewall and the above is the code it produces for IPtables using a blocklist file.

217.144.193.22
54.235.90.139
67.212.179.67
128.65.210.7
82.211.0.50
2.229.104.67
2 …

This goes on and on and on. No point in wasting bandwidth displaying it all. You get the idea. I want a piece of this clown when he’s caught and he will be caught too. It’s just a matter of time.

See idiot. You are not winning, in real life, or anywhere else either.

Denied, denied, denied. #fail (read as “pound-fail”) #POS (read as pound-, nah; It’s too messy).

Internet Movie Watchers

Just sending out a great big “Thank-You” to all those people out there clogging up the Internet with their movie watching.

How about taking in a concert, eh? How about this one:

What? Whaddya mean you missed that one?

Well, that’s too bad ’cause it was a lot better than watching movies on the Internet.

Serenity – My Big Rig

I want to show-off my big truck. Her name is Serenity and she’s a 1978 Kenworth K100. She’s one of the few things remaining to me that puts a big smile across my face. I do love driving her.

She sure fills my driveway. Doesn’t she?

Here she is shortly before I bought her. Now, why can’t I have a parking spot like that?

Serenity used to work in Yreka, California. Here she is hooked to a furniture van.

Looks good. Doesn’t she?

My plans for her include exchanging the little flatbed for a large, 80-inch or so, sleeper box that will be fitted nicely to the existing cab. The front tandem axle will be removed and a long, two-piece drive shaft will connect the transmission to the big Eaton rear axle. 1:3.55 gears will replace the 1:4.11s, a fixed 5th wheel will replace the existing slider, and eventually, an old single axle double-drop deck moving van trailer, 35-48-foot RV conversion, will be her recreation-load (as opposed to “pay-load”). She’ll carry a fully-equipped ham radio station in the sleeper, or maybe in the trailer, with just a mobile rig in the cab. At this stage, it’s all pretty much up in the air, so far as the radios are concerned.

In a nutshell, I intend to be able to live, fully self-contained, in either the truck, the trailer, and/or both.

It’s an ambitious project, to be sure. However, I think it’ll be fun watching it all come together.

WA7QZR

The Most Ignored and Melancholy Blog on the Internet