Date: 30 September 2008
From: Random Internet User
Subject: I Clicked Your Dippy Imagemap, Whee

Uhhh… Sorry if I’m being rude or anything like that, but why is your site’s name ziggurat.org and it has nothing to do with ziggurats? Just a question.

it’s been twelve years since i first registered ziggurat.org, in October, 1996, when i was working for InterAccess, and domain registration cost $100 for the first two years and $50 each year thereafter, from the one place you could register a domain at, Internic (they were really Network Solutions, but no one called them that) — you had to FTP a form down, and then submit it back to them, and if you ever wanted to update your domain registration information, the change was authorized either by originating from one of the authorized domain contacts, by their alphanumeric nic handles, or, if you were very badass, signed with a PGP key. if, god help you, you ever had to call the internic for anything, you could write off the entire day because you were going to be on hold a while.

if i recall correctly, my nic handle was SD1439. a friend of mine was simply SN, which i thought was super elite.

Date: 1 October 2008
From: sabrina downard
Subject: Re: I Clicked Your Dippy Imagemap, Whee

A long time ago, I bought a computer and it had a chess game on it. When I’d play the game, the computer would call itself Ziggurat. Not long after, I installed Linux on that computer, and it asked me for a name for the computer, so I gave it the name from the chess game. A year or so on, I needed a domain name, so I stuck with it. That’s why.

cheers,
–sabrina

“This is 109% MORE than other websites who took this test.”

HOORAY!!!

excerpted from my webalizer stats for the past few days, since i remembered to fix my access logs the other day to actually report on referrers:

Top 20 of 74 Total Search Strings

1. (56 hits, 20.66%) sex
2. (50 hits, 18.45%) doll
3. (19 hits, 7.01%) ziggurat
4. (16 hits, 5.90%) ex girlfriend
5. (15 hits, 5.54%) scared
6. (7 hits, 2.58%) girlfriend
7. (6 hits, 2.21%) psycho
8. (6 hits, 2.21%) sex doll
9. (4 hits, 1.48%) 1973 mach 1 mustang
10. (3 hits, 1.11%) Ziggurat
11. (2 hits, 0.74%) 1973 mach 1
12. (2 hits, 0.74%) EX%20SEX%20SEX%20SEX
13. (2 hits, 0.74%) EX-GIRLFRIEND
14. (2 hits, 0.74%) Matthew%2BShepard
15. (2 hits, 0.74%) SEX
16. (2 hits, 0.74%) car emblem
17. (2 hits, 0.74%) crock pot soap
18. (2 hits, 0.74%) doll pictures
19. (2 hits, 0.74%) doll sex
20. (2 hits, 0.74%) free ex girlfriend pics

all of this really makes me want to ask: is there seriously that much of an audience for free ex girlfriend pics? i mean. it isn’t very descriptive, is it? it seems to me that more specificity is recommended in googling for free porn. at least, if more specific terms were being provided, they wouldn’t end up at what is clearly the most popular thing i have ever posted.

or, hey, maybe they would’ve. this is a universe of infinite possibilities, after all.

]]> http://ziggurat.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1059 0 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1055 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1055#comments Sat, 09 Dec 2006 22:10:27 +0000 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1055 with the insertion of many redirects, puttering around with stupid twiddly details, and the successful appearance of only one 404 in my error log over the past half hour — which was caused by me trying to retrieve a document at http://ziggurat.org/blog/i/just/made/this/up to test my errordocument redirect — i hereby declare the blog officially moved to WordPress. alas, poor blosxom; i loved it well (but, in the end, i wanted multiple categories more than i wanted the ability to vi my entries).

hooray for done!

(and just in time, too, since now i’ve gotta go get dressed for the office holiday party. you know, it’s a sad statement on your social life when you sit down at a computer and think to yourself, “don’t get too involved in, like, reprogramming something that was perfectly fine to begin with that you forget you have to go drink for free at 6PM.” or maybe that’s just a sad statement on my social life… ummm…. HEY LOOK OVER THERE, IT’S A PIE!

]]> http://ziggurat.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1055 0 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1050 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1050#comments Sat, 02 Dec 2006 02:03:54 +0000 http://ziggurat.org/wordpress/?p=1050 i am going to try really, really hard to make the switch from blosxom to wordpress this weekend. so, all you out there in RSS-land, you may notice posts disappearing, reappearing as new, reappearing slightly changed, etc. apologies in advance for the annoyingness!

but you should totally check out the new shiny, once it is all done…

]]> http://ziggurat.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1050 0 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1035 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1035#comments Sun, 26 Nov 2006 19:34:51 +0000 http://ziggurat.org/wordpress/?p=1035 so, i have done most of the heavy lifting for porting the blog from blosxom over to wordpress. a few things remain. sadly, they are mostly the annoying and hard-to-accomplish things.

• set up apache, mysql, php
• set up wordpress
• import blosxom entries
• modify comments in templates to point at haloscan instead of wordpress
• customize wordpress theme
• go through and properly categorize imported posts (about 200 of ~980 done)
• either fix the formatting that broke in the import, or decide i don’t care about ugly formatting on imported posts
• (showstopper) make sidebar less ugly
• figure out how to rename existing haloscan threads to re-align them with their proper posts
• do the legwork on renaming existing haloscan threads
• (showstopper) figure out why WP’s rss feed isn’t escaping &s in blog subtitle fields correctly, and is therefore too wonky to use
• (showstopper) set up apache redirect for existing rss uri to new rss uri
• (showstopper) decide how to implement redirects for old blosxom permalinks (and then actually implement them)

you can view the new blog now here, though that link will only be valid as long as blosxom is still the “production” blog. there are a couple of entries up there that aren’t in blosxom, but they’re mostly along the lines of “play with the pretty shiny new toy” stuff. whee!

The import script relies on the RSS feed, and something in between the RSS feed and the import scripts is breaking all my links very obnoxiously, and adding in explicit paragraph breaks where all there was before was a non-HTML-encoded linefeed. And let’s not get into what it does to my Amazon Associates links. blah.
I fixed about five posts by hand. I only have about 980 posts in blosxom in total….
Turns out, you know… I know perl.  You know, what blosxom is written in?  And I know how to get rid of extra linebreaks.  Because chomp() is, um, hard  You know what, just forget I wrote the whole bit above about linebreaks.  Let’s pretend this never happened.  Oh, and, um, apologies to anyone who was reading the extremely repetitive blosxom RSS feed (Hi, Livejournal!) while this was being fixed…

So really, all I have to actually do by hand is to go through and add extra categories to things that need more than one category.  Which is, I swear to God, my main reason for switching.  And then I have to figure out how to make it link in my haloscan comments.  And then fix the layout.  And I honestly think the layout may be the worst part.  Your pal niqui is not a web designer.

FROM: [Fred the Support Guy]. From CHIhost.com
TO: me

Hi,

You have WAY too much perl usage, the cpu and ram this site uses is not appropriate for the plan you are on.

root@server132 [~]# cat file| grep zig
32572 zig 18 0 7940 5928 1444 D 6 0.3 0:01.22 /usr/local/bin/perl
32303 zig 18 0 7956 5580 1444 D 4 0.3 0:01.56 /usr/local/bin/perl
32376 zig 18 0 8188 5756 1588 D 3 0.3 0:01.57 /usr/local/bin/perl
31195 zig 18 0 8276 5580 1448 D 1 0.3 0:01.29 /usr/local/bin/perl
392 zig 18 0 7356 5544 1444 D 1 0.3 0:01.18 /usr/local/bin/perl
31012 zig 18 0 7052 5576 1444 R 1 0.3 0:01.46 /usr/local/bin/perl
32585 zig 18 0 8252 5576 1444 D 1 0.3 0:01.33 /usr/local/bin/perl
32174 zig 18 0 8564 5748 1588 R 1 0.3 0:01.37 /usr/local/bin/perl
1038 root 15 0 8560 2256 1804 S 0 0.1 0:00.02 sshd: zig [priv]
1061 zig 16 0 8560 1700 1252 S 0 0.1 0:04.70 sshd: zig@pts/1
1090 zig 16 0 3080 1376 1088 S 0 0.1 0:00.09 -jailshell
11552 root 17 0 8736 2216 1776 S 0 0.1 0:00.03 sshd: zig [priv]
13375 zig 15 0 8736 1664 1212 S 0 0.1 0:00.00 sshd: zig@notty
13483 zig 16 0 5024 952 716 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 /usr/libexec/openss
Please switch to a plan appropriate for that usage such as our
dedicated server $179.95/mo + $99 Setup
or
Semi-dedicated server $39.95/mo + Free Setup

Failure to switch to plan appropriate for your usage may result in your site being shut off without further notice. Which plan did you want to go with?

Thanks,
[Fred]

some days i am better at hiding my contempt than others.

FROM: sabrina downard
TO: [Fred the Support Guy]

> Failure to switch to plan appropriate for your usage may result in your site
> being shut off without further notice.
>
>  Which plan did you want to go with?

Hah! That’s fantastic. Every time I have tried to email chihost support I get utterly blown off and never hear back at all — such as my most recent email after someone messed up my chroot jail, wherein I actually pleaded for just an acknowledgement of the email — but you find a problem and suddenly you guys remember I’m here.

Also, I really like the emailing threatening cutoff on the day before Thanksgiving. That’s awesome.

Tell you what, I’ll do us both a favor. Let me know what the date through which I’m currently paid up through is, and we can shake hands and go our separate ways at that time.

—
sabrina downard

i really, really, *really* wanted to ask for exactly how much “perl” i am allowed to use, or remark on his super-scary “cat file| grep zig” “of course the puny user will be frightened by my PS OUTPUT” attempt to techno-frighten me into submission, or hell, even just say “boy, are you guys dumb,” but i couldn’t bring myself to be mean. well. meaner than i was.

i do really like the threatened cutoff on thanksgiving eve. ‘cos that shit is TOTALLY what i was going to be doing tomorrow, baby!

well, you know — anything broken that used to not be broken. … there seems to have been some issue related to my hotlinking-prevention rewrites. let me know if you are not able to see images from someplace you used to be able to see them from (unless, of course, that is a forum in while someone posted one of my more popular hotlink targets, because i actively enjoy thwarting that sort of thing, and you wouldn’t want to rob me of my joy, would you?).

also: this october will mark ten years of me polluting teh intarwebs with ziggurat.org. ziggurat.org has been hosted by four now-defunct (via acquisition) internet service providers (three of which were former employers), one site that i used because the hosting company was owned by a guy who wrote a software package i liked and rather than charging for it he suggested that if people liked the software they should use his web hosting service, one randomly-chosen web hosting provider, and one friend who let me mooch off his colo. here’s to ten more years of pollution!