I’d like to reiterate my comments from the following post:

The storm literally killed him.

Alright, so I was just listening to the radio a moment ago, and the news guy reading his northeast-centric news is talking about the snowstorm that just yesterday hit all the suckers who have chosen to live in a frozen tundra for a third of the year. The news idiot says, “The storm is responsible for ten traffic related fatalaties.”

WHAT?

The storm did it?

How exactly does a storm kill someone? I have been thinking about this for a few minutes now, and I am very hard pressed to come up with many types of weather events that can actually kill someone, particularly if they have the standard in modern technology– a car, shelter, heat, a radio, a tv, etc.

The easiest way to avoid killing yourself in a traffic accident during a snow storm?

STAY HOME.

Idiots.

If you are in an area that is expecting a major snowstorm or icestorm, you are warned well in advance of the arrival of the storm.

I suggest that you prepare appropriately– run your errands before the storm, plan to take a day or two off of work (even if you lose pay as a result), stock up on a few days worth of food, and make sure you have plenty of blankets and other required supplies in the event of an extended power outage.

Either that, or allow your own stupidity to kill you.

Self-preservation, folks. What is more important, a job or your life? What is more important, Christmas shopping or your life?

I have very little pity for those who decide to brave the storm. They don’t call it braving the storm for nothing– you have to be brave to risk your life and go out during a storm. If your bravery takes a negative turn, you have only yourself to blame.

By the way, it’s going to be 82 degrees here today. We’ve had our windows open for three days. Move south. Thank me later.

You know what makes me mad?

Littering, that’s what. I hate people that litter. Whether it’s throwing trash out your car window, or setting a coffee cup on the ground and walking away.

Earlier today, I was in Johnson Square, parked behind a news car from WTOC TV. There was a protest by some pro-union activists going on about a block away, and the news crew was there to cover the events.

As I sat in my car, I watched a female reporter for WTOC smoke a cigarette next to the car as the cameraman gathered equipment in preparation of covering the demonstration.

As soon as the cameraman was done gathering equipment, the reporter threw her lit cigarette on Congress Street, and she and the cameraman headed to the demonstration.

Come on now! If you work for a media outlet in a city as beautiful as Savannah, you should not litter. I repeat, you should not litter.

I emailed the reporter as well as her boss, and suggested that she be assigned to a community interest story involving pickup up trash on Congress Street and in Johnson Square. She can point out the no-less-than two trash cans that are in Johnson Square, funded and maintained by property tax payers like me. She can point out that disposing of trash on the street makes the street look trashy. And she can get dirty picking up cigarette butts thrown on the street by her fellow litterers.

In summary, don’t litter. And especially don’t litter if you are at work, standing next to a car that has a big logo of your employer on the back.

You can tell it’s winter in New York just by watching the 9 o’clock hour on MSNBC.

In an effort to keep that summer look, the female anchors have more and more fake tan and bronzing makeup plastered upon their faces, almost to the point that they look like reverse clowns.

As it gets colder and as the sun makes less-frequent appearances, the faces of anchors like Contessa Brewer and Mika Brzezinski grow more and more orangey, while their eyes seem, in contrast, to glow whiter and whiter.

Certainly I’m not the only one who notices this.

Time for another entry in my “Companies: Good & Bad” category.

Today’s Good Companies are Broadcast Supply Worldwide and Symetrix.

First, the setup. A couple of weeks ago, I purchased a Symetrix 302 used off of Ebay. I got a heck of a deal– about $75 delivered for a $280 Made in America microphone preamp. I’ll be using it for America’s Debate Radio for Jaime’s and my microphones.

The unit I purchased is in good shape overall, but it was missing something called “Euroblock connectors.” They’re not essential for the unit’s operation, but I can definitely envision a time when I will be using them. I searched high and low for a company that carried the connectors, and couldn’t find them anywhere. As a last resort, I emailed Symetrix.

About four and a half hours later, I received an email back from someone at Symetrix named Mark. He gave me the part number for the connectors, and referred me to three different online merchants that would be able to special order the parts for drop shipment directly from Symetrix. Now that was nice– a same-day response on a request from a gear manufacturer, and it wasn’t even a form letter. Few and far between are companies that personally respond to email.

So, of the three recommended companies, I chose to contact BSW for the parts for two reasons: 1. They had the other items that I needed, a rack-mount tray for my 302, and a blank filler panel to make the rack -mounted 302 look complete, and they had them at a great price. And 2., I have been on the BSWUSA mailing list for some time, and have never ordered from them.

I sent an email to BSW on Tuesday night, and received an email back on Wednesday morning from Jamie at BSW indicating that he would be happy to put together a quote for me. I contacted him back the same day with the information that he requested from me.

Jamie contacted Symetrix about getting the Euroblock connectors, and sent me an email back on Thursday. Symetrix offered, if I ordered the rack and the panel, that they would throw in the Euroblock connectors free of charge. Yes, that’s right– free of charge. He sent me a PDF quote a couple of hours later, and told me that I could call him and place my order.

Jamie went above and beyond what is expected by contacting the Symetrix and getting them to throw the connectors in for free, and was refreshingly prompt in his responses to my requests. He even gave me a discount off of the regular listed prices on the rack and the panel, which is very much appreciated for a website/radio show that has an extremely limited budget.

I called Jamie, and he answered his phone right away– no “push 1 for this, push 2 for that” as one would expect for most companies. I gave him my credit card information, and the order placement was completed within minutes of my calling. From the time I hung up the phone and walked back upstairs to my computer, I had received an email confirmation for my order.

Service like this from Jamie at BSW is surprising. I’ve looked at BSW’s radio catalog. They sell items that cost more than my car, such as broadcast consoles about which I can only dream, or drool. But my order– my measly little order– was for less than $50, not a significant amount for a company that sells individual items that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. I can only imagine the service that would be offered if I were ordering a full studio!

So to summarize for those who are considering ordering from BSW, or purchasing Symetrix products– do it. You won’t regret it. You’ll get top-notch service, prompt responses, and have an amazingly pleasant experience.

Bravo BSW and Symetrix!

As some of you are surely aware, Michael Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback, has made a plea deal related to charges stemming from a dogfighting investigation.

Yesterday, Vick checked himself into jail to start serving his sentence, even though he will not be officially sentenced until December 6.

I have a hunch as to why:

Michael Vick’s mom: Michael, you better be here for Thanksgiving.
Michael Vick: I’ll be there, Mom.
Michael Vick’s mom: …and you better bring a dessert.
Michael Vick: Mom, I’m not bringing a dessert.
Michael Vick’s mom: You better bring one. You never bring anyth…
Michael Vick: OK Mom, that’s it. I’m not coming.
Michael Vick’s mom: You’re not coming? You better be here or I’ll…
Michael Vick: I’m going to jail.
Michael Vick’s mom: Yeah, I know you’re going to jail. That’s why you need to spend Thanksgiving with us.
Michael Vick: I don’t think you understand. I’m going to jail now. I’d rather have Thanksgiving dinner in jail than spend another holiday with this dysfunctional family.

…or something like that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Thoughts on Thanksgiving Travel Delays:

If you are taking a commercial flight in the several days before or after Thanksgiving, then you have forfeited your right to complain about travel delays.

We go through this every year. I’m sick of seeing the same story every year.

There is one positive, though, about all of the lame coverage that these flight delays attract: It makes me feel smart. Every single person I see on TV complaining about flight delays must be stupid if they didn’t know delays were to be expected. And since those who complain as they wait for their flight are stupid, I must, by default, be very, very smart, since I am not waiting for a flight during one of the best known periods of the worst flight delays all year.

It feels so good to be right. There is nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?

I watch MSNBC not because I like it, but I see it as the presidential-election equivalent of news networks: The lesser of the evils. I can’t stand Fox news– too much opinion for me. And I can’t stand CNN– no in-depth coverage. So I watch MSNBC

This week, MSNBC has been running a “Green is Universal” week, where they are trying to convince us of the position that they have taken: we need to be more environmental conservation.

Besides the fact that they have taken a clear position on what is currently a heavily-disputed and loosely-proven political issue, here’s what annoys me: They are not practicing what they are preaching.

Today as I watched, they did their stories about being “green.” In the background of the shot, there are no less than nine large-screen televisions up on the wall. OK, fine, they need to monitor the news. If that is the case, why mount the televisions way above their employee’s heads? Oh yeah, because those televisions are decorations, meant to be part of the set, and serving no legitimate purpose besides eye candy.

They are not practicing what they are preaching.

During an interview with a correspondent, Contessa Brewer and the correspondent were talking about how the network was “paperless” for a day. Pan out leading to break, and what do you see? Yeah, that’s right, multiple stacks of paper on Contessa Brewer’s desk.

The other thing that is driving me nuts: Fact checking has taken a break this week. Reporting quality is also way, way down.

Earlier today, one of their Weather Channel correspondents, in reference to junk mail, said that 100,000,000 trees– yes, one hundred million trees– are used to make the junk mail that we all receive in our mailboxes.

First, according to whom?

Second, what is the frequency? Is it 100 million trees per femtosecond, or since the advent of junk mail?

Those are two key pieces of information that should have been included in a story that is being used to try to influence social change upon the masses.

All in all, MSNBC has failed.

Yes, this actually appeared as one of their on screen graphics:

BREAKING NEWS

Even celebrities aren’t immune from mother nature’s fury

If you want to see what I consider to be reporting at its worse, tune in to MSNBC to watch the coverage of these fires.

It’s quite hilarious.

Some of you may have read my previous entry on VadixBot called VadixBot - Look out!.

Here’s an update.

Apparently VadixBot is still at it. They still don’t have a website, and there is still very little information about them online.

The update is that they are now using different IP addresses. I suggest you block the following from accessing your resources:

67.78.34.166
67.78.34.170
67.78.34.174

To whoever owns VadixBot– please stop being such a bad Internet neighbor. You are very annoying.

I have a little overdue update on my Stratocaster rebuild (see Part I and Part II).

The guitar is now fully assembled and fully functional. I’ll be posting some sound samples soon enough. But first some more details, and then the reason I’m waiting to post sound samples.

Everything went back together pretty easily. I shielded the body cavity with the copper foil one evening while babysitting my nieces and nephew. That went pretty smooth, although it took some creative placement to make the copper kit I bought work with a guitar with the “swimming pool” route like mine.

The next step was doing the actual wiring. I bought two Fender No Load potentiometers for the guitar, which work like normal tone knobs from 1-9, but remove themselves completely from the circuit at 10. Because of that, I had to use two separate capacitors– one for each tone pot. A custom wiring diagram was in order.

I did tons of research and looked at tons of schematic and theory-type papers before I drew up my custom wiring diagram. I ended up with a configuration that I’m pretty happy with. The normal Stratocaster wiring, besides all of the nasty ground loops, has one glaring fault: it provides no options for adjusting the tone of the bridge pickup. In a normal setup, the top tone knob effects the neck (front) pickup, and the bottom tone knob effects the middle pickup. I set mine up so that the top tone knob effects the neck pickup, and the bottom tone knob effects both the middle and bridge (back) pickup. I rarely use the bridge pickup alone, I never use the middle pickup alone, and I occasionally use the middle and bridge pickup in combination. This seems like a good balance. I get full control of the neck pickup, I get control of both the neck and middle pickup on separate knobs when using that common combination, and I get some control of both the bridge and middle pickup. It works good for my uses.

I originally wanted to order some Sprague Orange Drop capacitors for the guitar, and I still do, but I haven’t ordered them yet. I used the film capacitors that came with the No Load pots because, well, they were there. I still plan on ordering the other capacitors (and a new output jack), but that will have to wait until I need to order more than just a few parts. I can’t stand paying $6 to ship such a small amount of materials.

So I wired it up fairly easily. I used a vintage-type cloth-covered wire that made the whole process very easy. Instead of having to strip the insulation ends off each wire, I simply slid back the cloth covering, made my solder joint, and slid the cloth covering back in place. Very easy, and highly recommended.

So, I wired everything up, slapped it into the guitar, and finished putting it together. I plugged the guitar in to a practice amp with eager anticipation. I turned the volume up, fingered a chord, and gave it a strum.

Nothing.

Well, not really nothing, but instead of a beautiful note, I heard a faint buzz.

Great, I made a mistake. I grab my multimeter, and start reading impedance values using an instrument cable. The values were waaaaay out of whack, nowhere close the the 5 to 6 K-ohms I expected.

I carefully remove the bridge and strings, open up the guitar, and start examining my wiring. I trace signal path, checking for continuity for about an hour. I was totally stumped. But then, I had an idea.

Instead of looking at my wiring diagram, I decided to look at a different, more traditional wiring diagram. And then, it hit me– I forgot to put a wire on. It wasn’t just any wire, though. It was the signal wire from the main switch to the volume knob. All together now: DUH. I soldered up the wire, reassembled, and then, with the same eager anticipation still present over the frustration, I strummed a chord.

It worked! That beautiful Strat tone that I hadn’t heard from my guitar for over 6 years came through loud and clear. My rewire was a success.

So, the guitar is now fully functional. And now you want to know why I haven’t posted any sound clips yet. Well, there’s a reason.

Guitars need to be setup. This involves a lengthy process of finite measurements followed by an extensive period of trial-and-error. Hold down this fret on this string, measure how many thousandths of an inch are at this other fret. Adjust. Hold down the last fret on this string, and measure the distance between the string and the top of the pickup. Adjust. Measure the frequency of each string at the twelfth fret, and compare it to the harmonic of that string. Adjust. Measure the height of the bridge. Adjust. And on and on.

So, why haven’t I done that yet? Well, wood is a slow-moving, imprecise material. The neck of my guitar has had no tension on it for over 6 years. Before I go through the process of doing a full setup, I’m going to give it a few weeks (or months) to assume its final position.

Yeah, I know, you want to hear it. I want you to hear it. But, patience will be rewarded. Give me a bit of time, and you’ll be able to hear it. And if I can manage to postpone it until the end of October, you can even hear it with the new tubes I plan on getting for my amp with any money I get for my birthday.

But let me tell you– it sounds good. Really, really good. You’re going to love it.

Until then…

If you read my last post, Stratocaster Rebuild, Part I, you know that I’m’ rebuilding my 1993 American Standard Stratocaster that has been disassembled for at least 6 years. Here’s the latest update.

Today, most of the parts for the rebuild arrived. I’m only missing a couple of parts now, and only one is essential. For the electronics, I’m missing a few capacitors (I have some I can use, but they’re not the ones I want to use), a resistor (not essential), an input jack (also not essential, but I would prefer a new one). I’m also missing the pickups (more on those in a second).

Here is what I’m working with (click to enlarge):

So for the pickups. I was never really satisfied with the pickups that came with the guitar, even though a lot of people with the same pickups seem to enjoy them. I think a large part of my dislike of the original pickups is that I had only ever used this guitar with solid state amps. Solid state amps, while working well for certain specific situations, sound sterile and cold, and don’t have the same dynamics of a tube amplifier. Unfortunately, I got this guitar and the amp sometime around my freshman year in high school, and I bought into the “need more watts” philosophy instead of the “need better tone” philosophy. I wanted to play loud, so I got a loud amp.

Well now that I have a better sense for amplification technology, and am in general a much better player with much more selective tonal preferences, I use a tube amp. It’s not an all-tube amplifier (Peavey Delta Blues– solid state rectifier), but it sounds pretty good to my ear. It gets me much closer to the tone I seek, which is close to Buddy Guy’s strat tone (the one that SRV emulated as well).

Choosing pickups is a mind-numbing and excruciatingly boring task, considering they’re just some magnets and some wire. There are so many options available from so many manufacturers, and prices vary from $20 to $500 for a set. The decision process is even tougher here in Savannah since the guitar shops don’t have a large enough selection for you to try a wide range of pickups. Likewise, you can’t just order a set, test them, and send them back if you don’t like them. Pickups need to be soldered in, and are generally not returnable.

I went with a set from a company called GFS. They make their pickups in Korea (South, I assume) using the same materials as the big manufacturers and the boutique manufacturers. The main difference is that the pickups are wound by machine instead of being wound by hand, which believe it or not does make a tonal difference. But for the price, GFS was the way to go for me.

Here is the set I chose: ‘64 Stagger Vintage Grey-Bottom boutique Strat Set.

They’re wound a bit hotter than standard vintage pickups, coming in at 6.5K for the bridge, 6.3K for the middle, and 5.8K for the neck. The neck pickup is, in fact, a bit colder than the pickups that originally came in my guitar, which all came in around 5.98K. I’m hoping these will provide a good amount of “quack” and some nice “bell” tones in the appropriate switch position, and I think they’ll work out just fine.

The pickups are set to arrive next week, so hopefully by next weekend I’ll be able to get the guitar assembled and setup. Audio files will follow shortly after that.

Stay tuned for more!

Back sometime around 1993, my dad bought me a really nice guitar– a Fender American Standard Stratocaster. It’s a beautiful American-made instrument in a color called “Caribbean Mist,” which is really a metallic teal. It’s got an alder body, maple neck, and rosewood fretboard. I still remember the price– $450.

Over the years I have played the heck out of it. One problem though– I haven’t played it for at least the past six years. At some point before we moved to Savannah in 2001, my bridge pickup broke. It’s amazing it lasted that long, really. This guitar has been put through enough torture to make the CIA jealous.

So before we moved, I disassembled the guitar, and when we arrived in Savannah I stuck it in the closet, where it has pretty much sat since. Well, I’m finally getting it back together, and boy is it a good feeling. While it seems simple enough to buy a set of pickups, stick them in the guitar, and get playing, in reality it is far from simple.

Shortly after we moved, I met a guy through a family member who is a master craftsman, and he has access to some beautiful exotic woods. I decided to strike a deal with him. I would provide a simple website for him, and he would provide a book-matched, flamed maple pickguard based precisely on the pickguard off my Strat. I gave him the pickguard about five years ago I’d say, and at this point I am really not expecting to get it back.

So, that puts me down one pickguard, and one pickup. Obviously those require replacement. I’m not just stopping at those two items and calling it a day.

My plan is to replace all of the plastic on the guitar– the pickguard, pickup cover, knobs (originals lost, current ones mismatched), switch knob, tremolo arm knob, and backplate (lost in the years). I’m also replacing every single electrical component on the guitar– the potentiometers, the 5-way switch, the input jack, the pickups of course, the actual wire inside the guitar, and the capacitors, since Fender included cheap capacitors, and since capacitors lose their effectiveness over time.

The first step is to order the parts. So far, I’ve ordered all of the plastic parts, including a white pearloid pickguard, and an aged white Fender Stratocaster accessory kit. I’ve also ordered all of the electronics but the pickups and the capacitors. I’ve ordered a new audio-taper CTS potentiometer for the volume control, two Fender No-Load potentiometers for the tone controls, and American-made 5-way switch, and some vintage-style cloth-covered wire. I’ll be ordering the pickups, capacitors, resistor, and a Switchcraft jack this week.

Before I can do any actual assembly, I will be shielding the cavity of the guitar. I’ll be using copper tape with conductive adhesive to shield the entire body cavity, whereas I used aluminum tape last time. The idea is to encase all of the electrical components in a grounded shield to aid in rejection of interference and noise. It’s a pain in the butt, but the results are amazing.

After that, I’ll be installing the tone and volume potentiometers, the switch, the output jack, and the pickups, and soldering it all together. I plan on using a “star ground,” which means that the typical ground loops that are present in most Stratocasters will be eliminated, and the guitar will have a lot less undesirable noise.

I’ll post my progress here as I go, and when all is said and done, I’ll post some audio clips.

Stay tuned…

We’ve harvested our first peppers of the year.

Well, actually, that’s not true. We have been harvesting peppers for some time now, but this is the first substantial harvest.

Here’s the bounty:

On the plate, you’ll see (clockwise from the top): Red Chili, Anaheim Chilis, Serrano, Jalapeño, Thai, Cayenne, Cowhorn, and the ones in the middle are Habaneros.

So what did we do with them? We made hot sauce, of course. We made three varieties– mild, medium, and HOT. Here’s the basic recipe.

Mike’s Basic Hotsauce Recipe

- Shred 2 carrots with a fine grater. Microwave about 1 minute to soften.
- Put shredded carrots and 2/3 cup white vinegar in blender. Blend until smooth.
- Drain liquid using cheesecloth, squeezing to get as much liquid out as possible.
- Combine in blender: Carrot vinegar, juice of one Persian lime, 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 4 to 8 ounces hot peppers (split and seeded).
- Blend until completely smooth.
- Pour into glass bottle. Chill. Enjoy.

Since the beginning of the year, a Logitech S510 wireless keyboard and mouse combo has been my main input device for my computer. I am almost entirely happy with the setup, except for one thing…

The low battery indicator.

Last Wednesday, the Logitech SetPoint application started telling me that my mouse’s “batteries are critical,” and that I should change them. To me, “critical” means that the batteries are going to fail any minute now, leaving me with the inconvenience of having a dead mouse until I pop in new batteries.

It is currently Sunday night, and my batteries are still working just fine. There is no sign of failure, no loss in functionality, and not even a hint at lowered performance. And believe me, the mouse has not sat unused– I have used the hell out of it since Wednesday.

While I appreciate Logitech’s desire to keep me updated of the state of my battery, I don’t appreciate the annoyances of constantly being told to replace my fully-functioning batteries. I also don’t appreciate that their application has people changing the batteries of their mouse well before they are truly dead.

Hey Logitech, how about this: You tell me when the batteries are getting low, and give me an opportunity to dismiss the notice. That way, when the mouse dies, I already have new batteries, and I can replace them immediately.

It’s driving me nuts.

So a suggestion I made over at the Yahoo suggestions board seems to be growing legs, so I figured I would post it here.

The long and short of it is that Yahoo has changed the way they crawl websites. Instead of a nice, slow meandering pace from limited originating IPs, Yahoo is now using a different IP for nearly every page request when crawling websites.

This is leading to increased and overly-inflated guest counts on nearly all scripts that utilize guest-visitor totals, or guest visitor tracking. It is also causing undue load upon many servers.

Here is my Yahoo suggestion: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=SiteExplorer&fid=31431

Here is the Digg: http://www.digg.com/software/Yahoo_Spider_wrecking_havoc_on_website_guest_tracking

How have I not heard of this site before now?

WillItBlend.com

My Internet friends have let me down…

I submitted the America’s Debate Radio Podcast to Digg Podcasts on June 21, 2007.

It is now June 26, 2007, and they are yet to approve our podcast.

What specifically takes the folks at Digg so long? It should be simple– click the link, look if the podcast is legit, and hit approve.

Sure, I could understand a delay like this if our podcast only had one or two episodes released at irregular intervals. But, we’ve been around for 72 weeks. Our new episodes come out every Wednesday evening / Thursday morning (depending on where you live). They are well-produced using better equipment than most podcasts out there.

I just don’t see any reason for this long of a delay.

Is there a trick to submitting a podcast to Digg to get it pushed through faster?

I’d really like to know.

So, there is an article linked off of Drudge about the proposed legislation requiring all pet cats and dogs to be spayed or neutered. Here is the article:

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_6218465?source=rss

My personal thoughts on the issue aside, I noticed a very flawed statistic offered by someone who is in favor of the bill:

“We kill a half-million animals every year and spend a quarter-billion dollars doing it,” said Sarah Eryavec, adoption supervisor at the Santa Cruz County SPCA shelter, referring to statewide estimates.

OK, so doing the math: $250,000,000 divided by 500,000 animals = $500 per animal.

Doesn’t that seem high? It sure does to me.

1. Euthanizing a cat costs about 85 cents (Source). Let’s say that a cat weighs about 10lbs. Let’s also say that, using proportional math, it would cost $8.50 to euthanize a 100lb dog. Hell, let’s round up– $10 per animal, regardless of weight or species.

2. Euthanizing a cat or a dog will consume about five minutes of a vet’s time or less, and five minutes of a veterinary assistant (see article linked above in point 1). Let’s say, just for easy math, that both earn a full veterinarian’s wage. The average veterinarian earns $39.18 per hour (Source). $39.18 per hour divided by 12 euthanizations per hour equals $3.27 cents. Multiply that by two for the veterinarian and the assistant, and we’re up to $6.54 per animal. Let’s round it up to $10 as well.

3. Cremating your pet will run about $143.75. I came to this figure by averaging the costs for all animals from kitten to 120+ lb dog as quoted on this page. Let’s round up to $150, even though that is likely for a private cremation, and non-owned pets would be just as cremated in a group cremation, which costs about half.

So, $10 plus $10 + $150 = $170.

How exactly is the State of California paying 194% more to euthanize and cremate a stray animal than than a super-high average cost to bulk euthanize and cremate a stray animal?

It just doesn’t add up.

That $250,000,000 figure seems more like it should be $85,000,000, and more likely around $45,000,000.

Yeah, morbid subject I know. But still, I hate bad math.

It seems that lately we’re paying a hosting bill for America’s Debate so that companies can spider our content. I’m really getting sick of it.

I took a look at our last 300 visitors to the site.

Of course, we have some spiders that I don’t mind: Google, who spidered 102 pages all from the same IP. MSNBot, who spidered 2 pages from the same IP.

But, there are some spiders that are just driving me nuts:

• SBIder/SBIder-0.8dev (http://www.sitesell.com/sbider.html) - I have no idea who these people are. They seem shady if you ask me. I almost think that they are spidering so that attentive site administrators visit their seemingly lame site. They’re more of a nuisance, spidering 3 pages from the same IP.
• Speedy Spider (http://www.entireweb.com/about/search_tech/speedyspider/) - Not a big deal here. They seem like a new search engine. Two pages spidered from the same IP. No big deal, spider away.
• ArabyBot (cble; Mozilla/5.0; GoogleBot; FAST Crawler 6.4; http://www.araby.com;) - An Arabic search engine. Not a big problem, spidering only 7 pages, all from the same IP. The part that I hate is that they seem to be quite unethical, listing GoogleBot and FAST Crawler in their user agent string, with which they are almost certainly not related.
• ConveraCrawler/0.9e (+http://www.authoritativeweb.com/crawl) - These people seem shady. Their spider page is pretty vague, and they’re taking a lot of my pages– 190 pages from the same IP. Not a big deal, but still– give me a good explanation of what you’re doing with my pages.
• Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp) - Yahoo, the worst offender. Normally I don’t mind Yahoo spidering my site, but in this instance, I’m getting quite irritated. Yahoo has only taken 167 pages, which is not a lot if it means good inclusion in their engine. But the part that is driving me nuts is that they have used 146 unique IP addresses to get these pages. 146! That means that the guest count at the bottom of my forum is highly exaggerated, showing 146 more guests than it should. Shame on you, Yahoo! You need to use ONE IP for spidering, and only one IP. I’ll be emailing them.

Tips to spider owners: If you are spidering content, use only one IP. If you are spidering, use an honest user agent string. And lastly, if you are spidering, DO NOT request more than one page every 15-60 seconds. Why put unnecessary load on websites that are most likely running on shared hosting?

That is all.

Jaime noticed heavy traffic on America’s Debate tonight, so I did some digging. It turns out we were being spidered by a bot called “vladixbot.”

Who the hell are these Vadixbot people?

In just under 7 minutes, these jerks grabbed precisely 845 of our pages, averaging about two pages per second and wasting around 10 megabytes. As far as I can tell, they had been at it for several hours, if not more.

Here’s a sample of the latest visitor entry:

Host: 70.112.211.26

* /forums/index.php?s=9feb85cf271657f5d2d05b1d8f3f71bb&showuser=386
Http Code: 200 - Date: Jun 06 08:26:09 - Http Version: HTTP/1.1 - Size in Bytes: 12474
Referer: -
Agent: VadixBot

Here’s the WhoIs record on the IP:

Whois Record
IP Information 70.112.211.26
Record Type: IP Address
IP Location: United States United States - Texas - Austin - Road Runner Holdco Llc
Reverse DNS: cpe-70-112-211-26.austin.res.rr.com
Blacklist Status: Currently Listed (history)
Whois Record

OrgName: Road Runner HoldCo LLC
OrgID: RRSW
Address: 13241 Woodland Park Road
City: Herndon
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 20171
Country: US

ReferralServer: rwhois://ipmt.rr.com:4321

NetRange: 70.112.0.0 - 70.127.255.255
CIDR: 70.112.0.0/12
NetName: RRSW
NetHandle: NET-70-112-0-0-1
Parent: NET-70-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: DNS1.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS2.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS3.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS5.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS6.RR.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2004-09-17
Updated: 2006-06-06

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE10-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-703-345-3416
OrgAbuseEmail: Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com

OrgTechHandle: IPTEC-ARIN
OrgTechName: IP Tech
OrgTechPhone: +1-703-345-3416
OrgTechEmail: Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com

Yeah, I know it says Virginia, but the IP is most likely out of Texas:

IP address: 70.112.211.26
Reverse DNS: cpe-70-112-211-26.austin.res.rr.com.
Reverse DNS authenticity: [Verified]
ASN: 11427
ASN Name: SCRR-11427
IP range connectivity: 1
Registrar (per ASN): ARIN
Country (per IP registrar): US [United States]
Country Currency: USD [United States Dollars]
Country IP Range: 70.96.0.0 to 70.127.255.255
Country fraud profile: Normal
City (per outside source): Austin, Texas
Country (per outside source): US [United States]
Private (internal) IP? No
IP address registrar: whois.arin.net
Known Proxy? No
Link for WHOIS: 70.112.211.26

My recommendation? Block them. These jerks didn’t read my robots.txt, and were hammering my site. They aren’t welcome back as a result.