Letting Sleeping Pinup Girls Lie
My Web site was about to implode. I had over 300,000 Blacklisted pieces of spam piled up like turds in the background of my site, and I was 15 megs over the limit allowed by my server company. While Gregg got to work researching a solution, and ultimately upgrading me to Movable Type 3.2, Lucy did her bit, laying in bed and doing her best to channel Scarlett Johansson.
I did send one last nasty note to an Atlanta real estate chick whose site name appeared repeatedly in my spam (and called her, too, leaving her an angry message on her work number when I was up at 3am deleting spam):
I'm a syndicated columnist, and either you or somebody you paid just left a bunch of spam turds on my site. That's vandalism and theft, and if I were in the Atlanta area, I'd come there and sue you in small claims court. I pay for my site, and I don't do it to run free ads from the likes of you. How disgusting. We're having problems with my site now, because we can disappear the spam from the visible site (and make it ineligible for Google rankings), but I'm carrying all the spam on my site in the background - it never goes away - which means I may have to pay for a dedicated server, and that my Movable Type software isn't working.What I want to know, as a price of carrying your spam turds around forever, is who you paid -- which spammer -- to get you Google rankings. I also want you to know how sleazy and creepy this is. By the way, your spammer is working very hard, doing stuff like "Valencia..." in their listings, to screw with the software of the unsuspecting. FYI, your name has been added to the master Movable Type blacklist, so sites subscribing to it will automatically not let you post. Creepy. You tell me what I want to know. It's the least you can do, with all the time I've taken to delete all your spam turds, and with the fact that I'm still carrying around your crap on my server. -Amy Alkon
She didn't write back (there's a surprise!), but I feel better not having sucked down her spam in silence.
If deleted spam "never goes away" you've got a serious problem. There has to be a simple solution -- talk to your sysadmin.
Stu "El Ingles" Harris at March 2, 2006 7:03 AM
It was a feature of the old MT. MT 3.2 changes that, but we may move server companies anyway, because we still get "500 errors" with 1and1.com. That's still a hellish prospect, so I'd rather not, but one hellish prospect at a time!
Amy Alkon at March 2, 2006 7:12 AM
You can't see it in the photo, but Lucy has a very cute butthole (I should know. She sticks it in my face every time I see her.)
Lena at March 2, 2006 9:18 AM
500 error test
gpsutter at March 2, 2006 10:05 AM
prostate-specific antigen test
Lena at March 2, 2006 11:40 AM
I'm pretty sure I'll fail that one.
Amy Alkon at March 2, 2006 4:24 PM
Stu:
It wasn't really spam that was removed, it was log entries of spam attempts that were either blocked or moderated. Spam does not make it's way into the mysql database. The database table for the blacklist log was tumorous: 100 megs. We removed it and upgraded to 3.2. Her ISP still shorts her on child processes which time out her Perl scripts. Thus the 500s. We're working on it.
gregg Sutter at March 2, 2006 7:56 PM
100 meg of *attempted* spam logs? Excellent word, "tumorous."
Crid at March 2, 2006 11:17 PM
I like "child processes." I picture a bunch of bratty children being forced to push some big wheel until they learn manners. No, scratch that. It's not their fault. Let's have their parents push the wheel, and send their kids to Cathy Seipp's backyard and have them manicure the lawn blade by blade with nail scissors until they become civilized.
Amy Alkon at March 3, 2006 12:22 AM
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