Dr. X's Free Associations

What happened at typepad last week...

The people at Typepad understood that many of us really wanted a report or more explanation for what happened last week when service collapsed for several days. They've offered that explanation here. It strikes me as an honest account that is more than thorough enough. They covered both the technical side of the attacks and their ultimately successful efforts to thwart the evil-doers.

They indicated that the authorities are involved, so they're limited on some things they can say, but that's entirely understandable. They didn't mention anything about extortion, but given that this has been an m.o. in recent, aggressive denial of service attacks, it seems a reasonable assumption of motive for the sophisticated, sustained attacks that took Typepad down.

Spring

This is a reader shot from Retriever. She captured this image with a Nokia 1020. That's a phone with a really nice camera. Just look at the focus and the shallow depth of field... with a phone. I'm impressed.

Hakn A Tshaynik

Thinking I should change the name of the blog to that, but it's probably already taken.

More on Yahoo Mail

So, today, I signed into yahoo mail and before I could look at anything, a message appeared asking me to verify that I was the sender of a particular email. The email had been held in an Outbox that I'd never noticed before, but there it was, in the sidebar, with the Inbox, Sent Mail, Drafts and Trash.

Thing is, the email was sent at least a week ago. My communication with the intended recipient was concluded over the course of several emails and it would make no sense if it was sent now. I was able to delete it from the Outbox and the Outbox is now gone.

I was a bit suspicious of the whole thing, but I didn't follow the procedure to verify and send, and wouldn't have done so, even if I wanted the email sent. Who knows what kinds of tricks the scammers have devised. I simply deleted the email from the Outbox. I have never had that happen before.

Update:

So like I said, I didn't verify that I'd sent the email. I just deleted it from the magically appearing and disappearing Outbox. Yet, as it turns out, the unverified email that I deleted was sent.

I don't know what they're doing over at Yahoo, but it seems that the system is irreparably overwhelmed with kludges.

Fine Lines of the Week

Shamelessly lifted fine lines of the week from Eric Zorn, who culled them from twitter and his daily reads. He has 18 of them. Here are my three favorites:

1. Due to a tragic "iTunes on shuffle" incident, I have had to convince the guys at work that I have a 12-year-old daughter they have never met... Fred A.

2.. My girlfriend thinks I'm creepy. Well, she's not my girlfriend yet...Chris Coyier

3. When God closes a Fred Phelps, he opens a Cliven Bundy....Lizz Winstead

The rest are here.

Sketchy or Down

Throughout yesterday morning and afternoon, Yahoo mail was quite inconveniently sketchy or down altogether. Last night, we settled in to watch the latest episode of Mad Men and Amazon video was down. This morning, Typepad and this blog have been sketchy or down.

Are you thinking: "What? You still use Yahoo mail?"

I have several email accounts, the Yahoo account being the oldest, probably dating from the late 1990s. I've switched most of my correspondence to other accounts based on type of correspondence, but I still check the Yahoo account, because I still use it for a couple of things, and yesterday, I needed it.

I really dislike Yahoo Mail. It seems to get ever more bloated and unstable as they try to "improve" it. Yesterday's problems did lead me to shift more of my remaining Yahoo correspondents over to one of my Gmail accounts, but I'll still keep more than one email platform. It's always handy to have an alternative, though I can't recall ever having a problem with Gmail.

I bet this man didn't know he could run so fast

Riders

Windows

Pops for Champagne

Weber Grill

Doughnuts Again