Category Archives: Blog Stuff

Changes to or problems with the use of this blog.

Quote of the day—Defens

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ubu would enter a museum of Nazi artifacts and comment on the delicacy with which the lampshades had been stitched.

Defens
December 24, 2014
Comment to Their humor is very telling
[I have long been pleased to have ubu52 comment on my blog and have invited her to attend Boomershoot to meet friends and others in the gun culture. I always viewed her as mildly anti-gun but with good intentions. My model for her was that she understood the facts and the logic of the gun rights movement but had trouble getting over some emotional hurdles into real acceptance. I appreciated her “keeping us honest” when we would get a little carried away with conclusions not fully supported by the evidence. It was “fear” of her calling me on something that would cause me to do a little more research before stating something I wasn’t totally sure of.

My model of her totally changed last night after I read a comment from her about a fiction, extremely graphic, story about someone engaging in degrading, casual sex with Ann Coulter. Her comment was:

The writing is brilliant, creative and professional. No editing required. No surprise, it was written by someone in LA because there are so many professional “creatives” here.

You may not like it because it doesn’t match your core beliefs, but the writing is brilliant.

This blew apart my previous model for her. I’m not sure what to think now but whatever model Defens is using is consistent with the known data.—Joe]

Redirected

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A few minutes ago I discovered you would be redirected from my blog to a URL that looked like this:

http://x.vindicosuite.com/imp/?l=169943&t=h&u=&r=&rnd=75008735

Where the query string item ‘rnd’ had a different value each time you tried to visit my page. It appears to have been some sort of malware associated with Sitemeter. I remove Sitemeter and the problem went away.

Sorry about that.

But this may explain the complaints I have occasionally received from readers about popup ads here. There should not be any here. But if someone was able to infect Sitemeter’s scripts then such a thing is possible.

The domain registration info is as follows:

Registrant Name: Lee Sautia
Registrant Organization: Vindico LLC
Registrant Street: 245 5th Ave., 21st Floor
Registrant City: New York
Registrant State/Province: New York
Registrant Postal Code: 10016
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.6468332940
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: domains@vindicogroup.com

Using vindicogroup.com as an URL redirects to http://vindico.com/. This website claims they do behavior based video advertising. I would like to inform them that it is not surprising to me that such slimy behavior as theirs originated from someone in New York City and my behavior is to have nothing to do with them.

Moving

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Update 8/25/2014 @1:32 PM: After much anguish, many partial restores, lost DNS records, out of RAM issues, orphaned databases, corrupted files, and I’ve lost count of things, I think the blog is working again with only two minor comments lost.

Update 8/25/2014 @3:52 AM: The move is back on.

Update: The move has been postponed due to technical difficulties in the exporting of the content. You may comment and post as desired until further notice.

Commenters: I’m moving my blog to another hosting provider. Any comments you make while this post is visible will be lost.

Co-bloggers: Any posts you make while this post is visible will be lost.

503 errors fixed?

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For months people have been getting 503 errors from my websites including this blog. They would all go bad at the same time and come back at the same time. My hosting provider was of almost no help. Ry suggested I try something and it sounded better than anything anyone else suggested so I have implemented it on the more important domains.

It may take an hour or so for the changes to drift your way over the “intertubes” but should you see strange behavior or errors on my websites after about 2:15 PDT today please let me know.

Update: I’m still getting the errors. Don’t bother to tell me about them.

Misattributed quotes

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As pointed out in a comment by Greg “Blotto” Garrett on Larry Correia’s blog the famous quote supposedly by George Orwell:

People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

It isn’t quite true.

The closest people have been able to find in his writings is:

Those who “abjure” violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

And:

Orwell also wrote of Kipling: “He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.”

I am guilty of using the inaccurate quote.

Also pointed out by Garrett is that the most famous quote of Edmund Burke isn’t really true either:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

I am sort of guilty of using that one.

Don’t repeat my mistakes.

503

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Yes. My blog, and all my websites, have been delivering a lot of 503 error codes recently. When the error appears on my blog it also means that boomershoot.org, modernballistics.org, xeniajoy.com, scottfamilyplace.org and others are all doing the same.

When I last talked to tech support about this they said it was because I am getting more than 500 simultaneous connections. My logs from just the first four days of May show over 3000 “GET” requests for “wp-login.php” from nearly 1000 IP addresses. I read this as my blog is under attack.

I’m not convinced my logs are showing me everything.

I’ll investigate more this week.

Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

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A human right is a bit like the sun. The sun is essential to life. You can bask in it, or hide from it. You may be able to change people’s attitudes toward it, or even start a religion around it. You may hate it or love it, or be largely indifferent to it, or think anything you want to think about it. If you fail to deal with it properly it can burn or even kill you, but without it you are dead. You could get a group of sun haters together in the street and carry picket signs denouncing the sun, and you might even be able to lobby enough idiots and criminals in Congress to get laws passed denouncing the sun.

But two things will remain true no matter what you think or do. A) your life depends on the sun, and B) neither you, nor any group of people, any committee or government body, no force on Earth, has the power to alter it in any way. You did not create it and you cannot alter or destroy it.

Similarly, human rights can be respected and honored, or they might be despised and violated, but they cannot be created, granted, altered, revoked or destroyed by any force on Earth no matter how popular or powerful that force may be. That’s where we get the term “unalienable” as applied to human rights in the Declaration of Independence.

This in partially in response to McThags post here;

http://mcthag.blogspot.com/2013/12/better.html

“He’s head and shoulders above A&E who may be in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for suspending him. Oh yeah, everyone who’s been saying that A&E had every right to fire him over his remarks forgot the religion clause of that law, didn’t they?”

But it apples to all such discussions. I’d comment over there, but commenting seems to require a google account and I’m not starting a google account.

The “Civil Rights Act” does not create, enhance, or modify any right, any more than a law can create, enhance or otherwise modify a star in some other galaxy or a physical law of the universe, though it certainly may be used as a tool or an excuse to violate some rights. Mostly it’s just some words written by people who don’t understand the meaning of rights, or hope that the rest of us don’t understand.

Guns safes

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I’ve added a new “partner” to The View From North Central Idaho: GunSafes.com. They offer free shipping on a large line of gun (and other) safes. They are almost a neighbor being physically located in North Idaho.

I’m not so sure about the Mesa Hitch Hiker Vehicle Safe even if it is kinda cool. I wish they had a console vault for one of my vehicles.

You can’t make this stuff up

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All I know for certain about this person is they are ignorant, an Android user, and Sitemeter captured their visit to my blog. My hope is that those vectors are orthogonal. Their entry page to my blog is here.

Check out the search phrase, “what is the red spot indicates whether a man is virgin r not”:

Domain Name   (Unknown) 
IP Address   101.223.172.# (Unknown Organization)
ISP   Unknown ISP
Location  
Continent  : Unknown
Country  : Unknown
Lat/Long  : unknown
Language   English en
Operating System   Linux Unknown
Browser   Safari 1.3 Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.6; en-gb; GT-S5360 Build/GINGERBREAD) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
Javascript   version 1.5
Monitor  
Resolution  :  320 x 401
Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit   Aug 6 2013 7:48:46 am
Last Page View   Aug 6 2013 7:48:46 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL   http://www.google.co…in r not&v=133247963
Search Engine   google.co.in
Search Words   what is the red spot indicates whether a man is virgin r not
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffm…ased-virginity-test/
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…ased-virginity-test/
Out Click    
Time Zone   UTC-1:00
Visitor’s Time   Aug 6 2013 2:48:46 pm
Visit Number   1,738,272

Watching the stars

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I have just laid down in my sleeping bag near Boomershoot Mecca. No tent. Just the sleeping bag, pads, pillow, and a blanket.

I was going to fire up my computer and make a quote of the day post to go live at 6:00 AM but it is totally quiet except for an occasional dog barking a half mile or more away and the sky is moonless and clear. I can easily see the Milky Way. The QOTD blog post can wait. Tonight I’m going to watch the stars instead.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

Service disruption

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I’m upgrading my web hosting and the change involves a change in the IP address. If you try to access this blog or any of my websites and you get a “Not Found” or something similar error wait an hour or so and try again. Or if you know how to flush the DNS cache* on your computer you could try that as well.

Do not assume the canary in the coal mine has been silenced.

The change over could happen anytime in the next 72 hours.

*On a Windows machine open a DOS prompt and type “ipconfig /flushdns” followed by the “Enter” key.

Quote of the day—Robert Slaughter

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Robert Slaughter (@bobslaughter)
Tweeted on March 12, 2013 in response to More stalker activity.
[If he only knew the total sum of crazy people in my life he would think I have a herd of recruiters out looking for crazy people and sending them my way.

I actually asked my counselor why there were so many crazy people attracted to me and why I was, in many cases, attracted to crazy women. With her help I think I have solved the later problem. I suspect there is no practical, moral, and legal solution to the first problem.—Joe]

More stalker activity

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If you have been following along I have a “stalker” of sorts.

Background:

At 3:31 this afternoon I got a call from 630-489-9064. I didn’t recognized the number and didn’t catch the name they gave me. He ignored my attempts to repeat himself.

The bottom line was they claimed to be representing someone who was going to sue me for “information on your blog” and that I would be required to show up in California for the lawsuit.

I question the validity of this. I find it difficult to imagine a lawyer would take the case since no false statement of fact was made. Further confirmation of this hypothesis is that the number is not that of a law office. It is the same number that was used to deliver the threat on February 26th.

At 3:50 I received two more text messages from 619-646-7526 (this is the same phone number he used to call and sent me the text messages on February 18th):

I am suing you for internet defamation for eleven million dollars. Your site unlawfully placed information about myself that led to me being fired

And:

See you in court really soon buddy

I suppose it is possible the blog post contributed to him losing a job but I am of the opinion, if in fact he did lose a job, that the main factor is that he has way too many screws loose.

Header photos

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I’m somewhat proud of the photos used for the header on this blog. Taking an idea from Alan I created a page for the photos and added short descriptions.

The pictures are from where I consider home. All were taken either on or no more than a few steps off of land my family owns.

When I get around to taking some pictures in the spring I’ll take down the winter pictures and add those from spring and probably Boomershoot.

Incident number 2013-8424

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Remember the guy that threatened me with, “If you know whats good you will keep your fucking mouth shut about Obama or you will come up missing on the news.”?

Yeah. Real piece of work. He called me. I was on the phone with daughter Kim at the time but I got a garbled voice mail and I called him back a couple minutes later.

After talking about a minute I hung up on him. It was difficult to even figure out what he was talking about and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He called again, and again, and again…

He left a second voice mail which was as follows (reading my blog post for the first part):

  • Any place that I frequent should be considered a known distance gun range.
  • If I can see you then you are within range.
  • My eyesight is quite good.
  • Don’t mess with me.

Yeah. I’m pretty sure those are threats. You looking at some jail time buddy. Have a good day.

He also sent me text messages. Actual time of calls (PST) and text messages were as follows. After the first two calls I did not respond to anything. Typos, punctuation, and grammar errors in the text messages are his:

  • 12:49 (missed call)
  • 12:51 (my outgoing call)
  • 12:55 (ignored call)
  • 12:56 (ignored call)
  • 12:56 (ignored call. Yes, every few seconds)
  • 13:02 (ignored call)
  • 13:02 (ignored call)
  • 13:07 (Text: 206-622-0460 seattle FBI’s number and I also logged a restraining order through the San Diego office next call is to my lawyer to file a suit)
  • 13:11 (Text: I tried to be nice and let you delete it yourself now Im leaving it to the courts. You breaking federal laws Joe not just state.)
  • 13:14 (ignored call)
  • 13:18 (ignored call)
  • 13:18 (ignored call)
  • 13:23 (ignored call)
  • 13:23 (ignored call)
  • 13:23 (Text: and if anything should happen you are held directly responsible. Enjoy the next 4 years of Obama you nazi republican jackoff)
  • 13:25 (ignored call)
  • 13:26 (ignored call)
  • 13:29 (ignored call)
  • 13:29 (ignored call)
  • 13:30 (ignored call)
  • 13:30 (ignored call)
  • 13:31 (ignored call)
  • 13:33 (Text: Thought so you fucking pussy republican asshole. . I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE NOW MOTHER FUCKER!! Thanks)
  • 15:26 (Text: I dont even own a single weapon. I dont hide behind a gun or computer screen like some conservative pussy from seattle washington. Sleep tight.)

After the message at 13:33 I went to the Bellevue, Washington Police station. I talked to Officer Dill who gave me the incident number 2013-8424 and gave my new “friend” a call. I only heard one side of the conversation but it sounded a lot like my conversation. Officer Dill couldn’t complete a sentence and sometimes even a word without being interrupted. At the end, after maybe a couple minutes, Officer Dill was almost yelling at him in a vain attempt to get him to call the Bellevue police department with the incident number. But he was unsuccessful and my “friend” hung up on the officer.

Officer Dill told me (paraphrasing some), “Yeah. Same as what you described. He is clearly irrational.”

[Stuff deleted on the advice of a psychologist.]

About 15 minutes after I left the police station the 15:26 text message came in.

Liberals are violent. We are better than this.

Update 2/19/2013: I don’t know that either is related but I received a call from a Brooklyn, NY number at 12:52 AM this morning and one from an Illinois exchange at 8:26 AM. Both calls hung up when I answered.

I would like to add, up front, that I cannot recall saying anything more offensive about Obama than I wasn’t going to vote for him and that I believe he was anti-gun. And furthermore I don’t even consider myself a Republican. This guy threatening me is nuts.

Possible blog outages

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I’m in the final stages of testing the import of old blog posts into the current blogging software. It’s looking really good but you never know what might happen.

Last night I accidently restored a backup copy of the database for my real blog when I intended to do that for my test blog. I lost a blog post and few comments. I recreated them but there is a little weirdness with the restored comments.

If all goes well the blog posts will be fully restored by tonight. Please be patient if you experience some outages or a comment gets lost or something. Let me know if you think a comment was lost and I’ll see if I can find it and restore it.

Update (1524 PST): All the old blog posts have been imported. There are a few broken links to fix but things are looking good at this time.

Update (1728 PST): I found a serious bug. 1828 comments were lost in the translation. Probably all of them were my comments. I think I am going to restore to a saved database and start over in the morning. Please don’t leave any comments. I probably will just end up deleting them.