The one about Viruses and hijacking

 Posted by at 15:15  Down with, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, principles, Problems and solutions, rants, Technology
Mar 272018
 

A long, long time ago, right here on our own little ball joy that we call Earth there were some really smart guys who invented computers.  Days went by and years passed and those computers went from room sized behemoths to little buggers you can hold in your hand and have room left over for a cheeseburger.  Holes in paper cards were replaced with typed commands and now you can use your finger to do things.  Who would have thunk it?

Rembrandt - The Flayed Ox - WGA19252

Rembrandt – The Flayed Ox – WGA19252 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During all of this time, when programs were developed for these computers that did more than say yes or no or calculate what 7 X 4 is (28 for you kids who didn’t bother to memorize times tables), people wanted to get into other people’s stuff.  Thus, the hacker was born.  Basically a modern day pirate that probably deserves to be castrated and flayed alive.  For you young’uns out there, being flayed alive is where they basically take the skin from your body while you are wearing it.  I can only hope that the saltwater bath afterwards keeps the germs out.

This week I found out that all of my websites have been infected with malware.  Some sack of *ok, this part you will have to imagine, this blog is only PG-13 rated* infected my sites with some stupid program that tries to make a backdoor into them.  Because they can get so much from my blogs and info sites.  One of the myriad of things that bothers me is that some of these have been going on for a few years, and I had no idea.  I went into the other details over on CatharsisOfBogue.com if you care.  The short of it, I spent the weekend getting rid of some little piece of *again imagine*’s code that was trying to hijack me.

I can only hope that it was a *you know by now* that was at least over 18 doing it.  I am not sure if my brain can handle a 14 year old doing this.  So now, I finally have my sites back, and they work, and I have got the security plugins working correctly.  I am almost sure that it is illegal to hunt these hackers down and make them look like the picture over there, but if I have a chance…things happen, I’m just saying.

Anyone have experience with crap like this?  Let’s rant together down in the comments.

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Getting Traffic to your Blog.

 Posted by at 11:02  Plain 'ol Cantankerous, Technology
Feb 232015
 
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Image by v o 1 d via Flickr

Hello again folks.  I was thinking for today about how this blog gets traffic.  I see the stats in 3 different stat counters every day and they are all different.  Different, but similar enough in trends to be useful.

Now you may have clicked into this post just to see what sage wisdom I have to offer when it comes to getting traffic to your blog.  I have a short answer: Beats me.  Now before you click off (literally, if you don’t like something on this blog just CLICK OFF!)  at least read the rest of what I have to say.

Some people look into a business degree online when
they want to learn more about marketing to get the desired effects of blog traffic.

The trafffic here on the Coots is fairly constant.  We get between 80 and 100 or so visitors per day.  Sometimes there are more.  Like Yesterday, with Ralphs post.  There were 131 visitors at 1140 mountain time when I checked.  Why so popular?  I dunno, I can only hope people are linking to older posts, as I can see Ralph’s Current post has only garnered 10 visitors.  Of course that was last week.  This week has been no different though.

It doesn’t seem to matter too much how we promote each post.  Twitter, linked In, Facebook, Digg, we advertise on each of these plus stumble upon and traffic is the same.  People come to read about Cantankerousness and to have a good time.  I would like to see more.  So what do we do?  I could ask each person who reads this post to tweet it to 10 others and ask them to do the same, but I am almost positive that somewhere that is illegal.

If not illegal then too much like a pyramid scheme.  So don’t do that.  If you have any ideas, please let me know!  I would like to hear how you each get traffic, besides the “go out and comment” answer.  This post will be linked on Twitter and all of the other sites, so we have that.  Just, how do you each get traffic?  And, do you have any blockbuster ideas for a cantankerous post that will go viral and make us all famous?

I can’t wait to hear from you all!

PS. go back and check out Ralph’s post from Wednesday.  We would like to have some more answers to our poll!

-Justin

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Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Come to me and be Cantankerified.

 Posted by at 11:02  principles, Technology
Feb 232015
 

Yesterday on Twitter I sent out an advertisement for this blog.  I said, “Cantankerify Yourself.”  I am now making up words ala our last president, George W. Bush.  But, just because it is not in the dictionary now, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be there.

Definition in the Coots dictionary:  Cantakerify: V.  1. The act of becoming Cantankerous.  2. V. To educate yourself on the finer points of becoming Cantankerous.  3. V. To be transformed from mild mannered sheep to a Cantankerous Old Coot.  4. To hell with it it means what it means.  If you can’t figure it out Einstein, go somewhere else.

Part of becoming a coot is being able to make stuff up and have the younger generation nod their little sheep heads and agree with your words of wisdom, just because you are older.  I am reminded of Jeff Foxworthy and his bit about his dad being older and yelling at the dog to “gitonouttahere”.  Sounds like a word.  Who is going to argue with the old guy?  He may give you the business end of his walker.

So I am making up words that will become part of the Cantankerous Old Coot subculture.  Some will call it slang, some will embrace it fully.  Some Cantankerous buggers may just ridicule me and beg for the business end of my walker.  Or cane.  Or Baseball Bat…..

This is the site of the Coots.  We exist to rail against the wrongs that society has launched upon us.  We will educate.  We will entertain.  We will Cantankerify.

Are there any words that you feel belong on here?  Let us know in the comments.  I think I may have a dictionary page.  I think I will give a free month subscription to the site to whoever sends in the best word.  You can sign up for our mailing list too and keep up with the Coots.  We won’t bombard you with crap that you don’t want, that is a rant in itself.   The Cantankerous Old Coots are coming and we can’t be stopped!

-Justin

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Down with Google

 Posted by at 01:38  Down with, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants, Technology
Dec 232014
 

I don’t know about you but I’m fed up with Search Engine Optimization, Page Rank and kowtowing to the great god Google. What do they want from me? What do they want from the world and can anything stop them?

Google says their mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ Did you ever hear anything more like big brother in your life? Even Obama hasn’t suggested doing this as he eliminates the private sector economy. And these clever people at Google have figured out how to make us pay for it without thinking unlike those clumsy and ineffective taxes the government uses to get our money.

But back to the SEO. Have you read the helpful instructions you can find everywhere on the web about how to make Google happy?  Even if you read them, do you have a clue about what Google really wants? You hear all the time that if you create high quality content, the web is a piece of cake but when you begin to study SEO you learn that it is bull crap because Google can’t read and wouldn’t know good writing from from the typing of 10,000 monkeys. If you write good copy but fail to appease the god Google, nobody will ever find you, read you and appreciate your effort. Why bother?

To make Google happy, don’t waste your time refining your prose because writing is old fashioned and irrelevant. Nobody cares because thanks to Google, nobody will know that it even exists. If you want to be successful you have to pack your collection of words (why even call it writing?) with a  word or phrase that somebody might search for. Salt enough of those keywords throughout your word aggregation and Google will send you readers. No muss, no fuss and best of all, no tedious writing effort. Anything will do.

Google has spawned a whole new industry of products and services to help witless people with more money than they can spend to propagate their word aggregations around the web to provide ‘credibility’ (in the form of back links) to your aggregations. Put those mutated word aggregations in enough places and rearrange their words in enough ways and Google will reward you with a higher page rank. Just like the annoying TV ads that finally get etched into your brain and make you mindlessly grab the products when you shop, if you saturate the web with your word aggregations, you overwhelm the competition and achieve value to Google.  After all nothing else matters any more.  And all it took was a few hundred dollars and some software.

So today I say to Google, ‘Do no harm’. If Google can’t read and won’t even try to learn, then stop pretending that Google knows how to find value and content. Call a spade a spade. Google isn’t about writing or content – unless you value keywords. I can’t get too excited about them but then, I’m a Coot. They are probably all that Tweet- addled Gens X and Y can handle. Google doesn’t care a rat’s ass for writing. What Google loves is picture frames for keywords.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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For Today, a Contest!

 Posted by at 18:09  Coot Law, Coots Lessons, Technology
Jul 292014
 

*** since this post was first published there have been 233270 visitors to it.  There have been a total of ZERO submissions.  c’mon people get on the ball…send us your face!***

Now hear this Current and aspiring Coots!  Very shortly we are going to be putting out our first product.  I know that is exciting enough to make you all pee yourselves with excitement.  You may want to get a doctor to look at that though.  Don’t worry in any case because that’s why they make Depends.

So far we haven’t got a lot of participation  here at COC.  So since you refuse to respond to the sticks we throw, we are going to break out the carrots just this once.  We want your face!  And we are offering a prize for the best face.  There!  That is as nice as we get.

What does your best Cantankerous Coot face look like?

By now you should have mastered the basics for Cantankerosity or maybe you were a natural and had what it takes all along.  It doesn’t matter because we want to see the results.  Show us your best Coot face.  Take a picture and if it doesn’t break the camera send it to us.  We want to see the Cantankerosity that we have inspired.  We want to use your faces in out upcoming E-Book and at the blog. You could be famous.

So scrunch up your face and practice your cantankerousness.  Little children should either laugh or weep at the face you finish with.  Preferably both.  Then take the best picture you can and send it to us.  This contest will end at midnight on July 10th MDT when we get enough submissions to actually have a contest.  Right now, there is all the time in the world You have until next Saturday night to get us a picture.

There will be a prize for the best picture.  That prize will remain a mystery until the contest ends.

Send entries to    contests@cantankerousoldcoots.com Please include your name, address, credit card numbers, pin numbers, measurements,….errrr….Just your name and the picture will be fine.

Now for some fine print.  Any image submitted must be your own image.  We don’t want copyrighted images from other websites that will get us in trouble with the copyright lawyers when we start to sell our own stuff.  Besides we want to see you, our readers.

Second, by submitting an image for the contest you agree that we can do what we want with it.  This includes the website, CantankerousOldCoots.com, and any e-book or print book that we may publish in the future.  Your only compensation for the picture will be a credit to you and probably a link to your own site.

Third, By submitting a picture, you agree that, to the best of your knowledge, this picture does not have any previous copyrights that are being infringed.  If you take the pic yourself, it shouldn’t have any copyright issues at all.

Fourth, unless you tell me not to add you to the list, by submitting a picture you will be automatically added to our email list and be among the first to receive the new e-book when it comes out, and if you are the winner, it will have your picture on it.  You will not be getting a double opt-in confirmation email from us, but unless it says somewhere in your picture email that you don’t want to be on the list, you will be, and this constitutes permission to do so.

Sorry for all of the legal mumbo jumbo but I really can’t afford to get sued by anyone for a silly website contest.

So go out right now and take a picture, preferably in focus, and send it to

contests@cantankerousoldcoots.com

Remember, you have until the sands run out on July 10th to submit!  I hope we can get 1000 entries.  Tell your friends too!

Please retweet, digg, stumble upon, comment, carrier pigeon, morse code or otherwise let people know about this contest!

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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