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NEVER Pay to be “On The News”!

October 17, 2011 By 2 Comments

Today I got this random call from God-knows-who claiming to be a PR agent looking for “people in my industry”. Here is Google Voice’s translation of the message:

Steve. Hello. Just give me this is Riley (815) 633-3375 and I’m calling it’s fox news and ABC News are looking to do an interview and I need someone in your industry and I did happen to come across your name and number, see if you’d be interested in being in on Fox News at ABC, but we don’t work for the of the stations. But we are, P R firm and we charge $900. If you choose to do the story in at a it doesn’t hear that you don’t pay. Please call me today (815) 633-3375.

The translation is terrible, but the point is that this was a random cold call from someone who clearly didn’t even know who I was offering to get me on TV news. And if you ever, ever get a call like this you should NOT do it. Let’s talk about why…
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Filed Under: Thoughts Tagged With: , , ,

Video RANT: Taking the (Sharp) Edge off the MacBook Pro

March 11, 2010 By 71 Comments

Filing the Edge off a MacBook ProGod only knows how many times I’ve whined on Twitter about the sharp edge on my MacBook Pro right where your wrists rest while working on it. I swear to Buddha that after 15 minutes of working on this thing I have lines deep enough imprinted in my forearms to make people think I’m trying to slash my wrists! Furthermore, this laptop nearly makes me want to!!!

But tonight I’d had enough. After a marathon session of pain, I finally got off my lazy butt and did something about it. So, here is a video of me taking a file to my MacBook Pro and doing what Apple should have done long, long ago!
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Filed Under: Computing, The Man's Videos, Tutorials Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Protect WordPress from Hackers – Secure that Beeotch!

December 3, 2009 By 16 Comments

Atom BombDammit!!!! I HATE SPAMMERS MORE THAN ANYONE ON EARTH! I honestly, 100% mean it when I say that I want to KILL spammers. You guys are laughing right now… “hehehe. Here goes that crazy John P. with another rant about spammers. Aww, he’s just kidding!” No! I am an ex-Marine, I own guns and knives, and I’m begging a spammer to show up at my house so I can do horrible things to him!!!! GRRRRR!!!!!

Today I got an email from Google as follows:

Dear site owner or webmaster of onemansblog.com,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

The following is some example hidden text we found at http://onemansblog.com/:

calendar acrobat download wcc adobe’s click. create watermark in adobe acrobat ea adobe acrobat professional Software Planetadobe creative suite 2 rumors adobe acrobat not finding scanner . adobe acrobat 8.01 professional software adobe acrobat 5.0. activate adobe acrobat 8 adobe acrobat contact sheet Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended | Software Planetadobe acrobat 6 professional serial numbers c adobe acrobat fields sql . download adobe acrobat reader full version could not find adobe acrobat plugin

In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from onemansblog.com are scheduled to be removed temporarily from our search results for at least 30 days.

Why, pray tell, would Google ban OneMansBlog from the index? Well, because some sneaky bastard somehow added a bunch of spam to the footer of my blog! HOW? My directory permissions are correct, I have all the latest versions of plugins installed and WordPress is up to date. So, let’s run down a checklist of things you should do so as not to fall victim to the spammers too:
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Filed Under: Security, Wordpress Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Dear FTC, You Can Kiss My Blogging Ass!

December 2, 2009 By 6 Comments

Kiss My ButtAt least three people have asked me what I think about the new FTC guidelines dealing with Bloggers who accept freebies. For those of you who didn’t know it, the rules went into effect on December 1, 2009 in the US, so if you have a blog you better be aware of what we’re talking about.

Here is the video summary, straight from the horse’s mouth:

Now, let me be as clear as I can possibly be: the people behind these “updates to the guidelines” are 100% dead wrong, exhibit a complete and total lack of understanding of the Blogosphere, and have just wasted a whole lot of time and taxpayer money focusing attention on an issue that they neither can, nor should, enforce.
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Filed Under: Philosophy, Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Hey, How About NOT Being an A-Hole?

November 19, 2009 By 14 Comments

Gorilla with an AttitudeHave you ever been to the zoo? I was at the Dallas Zoo the other day, staring at the primates. Don’t worry, they were staring right back. Anyway, this big male gorilla, who had been sitting quietly with a couple of females laying around nearby, suddenly just got up and freaked out.

Now, I should emphasize, nothing caused this. Seriously. He’s a gorilla. There is nothing to piss him off. But all of a sudden, he got in a bad mood and started taking it out on all the other gorillas nearby. They are all running in fear, the people staring at them are freaking out, and I’m just thinking… you big, dumb ape.

Well, I expect that creatures who lack the ability to use a spoon might be wild and unpredictable. But you know what drives me crazy? Humans who do the same damn thing!
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Filed Under: Philosophy, Thoughts Tagged With: , , , ,

Bob Donovan, You Sir (and all the Other Spammers), May Kiss My Ass!

July 15, 2009 By 16 Comments

Twitter-SPAMLook, there is no delicate way to put this. Bob Donovan, I hereby formally invite you to participate with me in a no-holds-barred MMA style cage match to be broadcast on live television. I’m 100% serious. Because I want to kick your ass, and I’m quite sure I can do it too.

Wait! What’s Going On Here?

My other dear readers may be asking themselves, who is this Bob Donovan, and what exactly has he done to John P.? Well, I’ve got no idea who Bob Donovan is, but what he did to me was send me an annoying Twitter spam with a link to nothing other than an affiliate site (belonging to 10 Best Hosting 2009).

Bob-Donovan-Twitter-Spam

Oh, and that link does nothing other than direct traffic to the Web site link http://www.10besthosting2009.com/#1492937361/. You see that number at the end? I’m sure that is an affiliate tracking link, and 10 Best Hosting is paying this spammer to fish people in to their Web site. That is assuming they are not directly behind it!
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Filed Under: Computing, Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , ,