Those who know me are aware that I’m not exactly the world’s biggest animal lover. That said, I’d like some time alone with a blunt/spiky implement and the raging nitwits who broke into a Seattle-area pet shelter and beat the hell out of a bunch of helpless animals.
Words fail me. Others have some eloquence handy, though.
I’ve known about this site for a month or two now, and it finally occurred to me that:
a) making use of the site for my journal’s decoration (as part of the thematic overhaul; look over to the right) might be a good idea, and…
b) linking to it for posterity could be useful, since I’m prone to forgetting and losing things.
So: Go forth and Steal These Buttons!
Via collision detection, I bring you the results of my recent fiddling about with the Official Seal Generator:
I made two, and the second one is shown above. I’m not as happy with the first, though I held onto it anyway out of some bizarre notion of posterity.
I don’t know how I’ve managed to spend so many years puttering around online without, until today, bumping into Paul Brians’ “Common Errors in English” website. If you’re like me in that respect, and if you’re interested in language usage at all, you should definitely go check it out. Oh, and be sure to take a gander at the “non-errors” page; it’s both enlightening and entertaining.
(EDIT, 19 May 2018 – Nearly a dozen years later, someone emails me out of the blue to apprise me of the link having moved. Helpful!)
It started with an email. Lil’ asked,
When I went to my blog login, there was a big blurb in red that says:
“MAJOR SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT
“Affecting all WP users (this is not specifically a Spam Karma problem). Please immediately disable ‘guest user registration’ on your blog if it’s enabled and advise all your friends to do so (details here). I cannot give too much technical details as it would further endanger vulnerable WordPress users, but trust me this is not a joke.”I have no idea what this means….can you provide me with a clue?
So I went forth and researched. And researched. And researched. Apparently this is the second security flaw of its kind in WordPress, and it affects 1.5 series releases as much as it does the newer 2.0 series. Did I mention that all of us on this server are running 1.5.2?
The new 2.0.4 version is available as of… tomorrow? (This is July 28, and the date stamp on the official announcement is July 29. Does this guy have a TARDIS or something?) Problem is… there’s no fix for 1.5.2. Nor will there ever be a fix, I’m willing to bet. Sure, I’ve disabled ‘guest user registration’, which is actually something I do on every new WordPress install I create so I was ahead of the curve on this by a long ways, but still… if I want security fixes, I have to upgrade.
And upgrade. And upgrade. And upgrade. (Okay, I’ll wait on hers until after she’s finished with her Blogathon. I’m not that stupid.) And… well, you get the idea.
This is not how I wanted to spend my weekend, people. Truly.
UPDATE, Five Minutes Later: Duh. I can’t upgrade anything until after the Blogathon, or I’ll risk overloading my poor underpowered webserver. Well, guess what I’m doing over the course of next week?
I can’t participate this year, unfortunately. I just came off of nearly four solid months of stress and panic and am now adjusting to a whole new kind of job and the new sleep schedule that comes with it. So. Who’s going to take my place, eh?
Do it for me. Do it for Cat. Do it for whatever charity you see fit. Just, do it!
