Greetings Professor Falken. Shall, we play, a game? War Games – 1983. Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy.
A Classic movie. Joshua the computer, aka WOPR was going to kill us all, and David & Jennifer were frantically trying to save the U.S. from getting nuked, but everyone thought they were the bad guys! I get goose bumps just thinking about it. Actually I don’t. But remember how hot Ally Sheedy was in that movie? Was I the only who thought that? Ok, that’s a little embarrassing. Whatever.
Anyway, last Friday I had a little War Games of my own. There was no Joshua or Professor Falken this time. This round was The Commish vs Spam Bots around the world. During lunch I added a plugin to the website that would allow me to set up the online store I’ve mentioned in the past. (Plugin’s are like app’s, but they’re for websites.) Seriously, how impressed are you guys with my computer lingo right now. I mean, did you ever imagine that I’d not only be as cool as I am, but also one of the smartest people you know? I digress.
After I activated the mentioned plugin, I started receiving emails from new users on the HBHL website. It was clear they were spam because it would say “New User: 3_ert845ghy has requested permission to register on your website”. I get these about twice a week so there was no cause for alarm, at first. However, by 3pm I’d received about 75 emails. Then by 4pm I’d received another 200. And by 5pm I’d received over 500 emails from new users. So I called Blue Host, and got a techy on the line. “No problem EL Capitan, all you need to do is disable new account registrations from the website. People can still register, but it will be done with your approval” Great! I went home, got on the computer and did what he said. Then I was off to the Merrimack Hockey game with the kids.
Little did I know, the Bots were still attacking the website while I was at the game. By the time I got out of the game, over 4000 “hits” had occurred and the HBHL was down for the count. I called Blue Host again, this time in a complete panic. “Hi, I have this website, and I called earlier, and your guy said do this, and so I did, and he said it would be fixed, but it’s not, and he said it would be, but it’s not, and it’s my first website, and I worked really hard on it, (Inhale)… and I went on for another minute or so. The kid who was helping me was probably hitting mute and laughing at what a tool I was being. But I literally thought the site was down for good and I was going to have to rebuild it from scratch. Not cool.
If you’re having trouble picturing what was going through my mind, watch this video:
Entertaining to all of you I’m sure. And I’m glad that it is.
I’m also glad that Blue Host was able to fix the site. I ended up spending over a half hour on the phone with them (most of it on hold) while they worked feverishly to get the site back up and running. Basically, what happened was these “Bots” used the plugin to access my domain. From there they would link my site to other sites that were totally unrelated, and when someone tried to open the HBHL site, a number of other sites would also try to open and it would basically shut down. It’s kind of like when you guys surf (hockey) porn and window’s keep opening that prevent you from seeing whatever it is that you’re actually trying to see. I don’t surf (hockey) porn so I’ve never experienced this myself, but I’ve heard you talk about it in the locker room. (You guys are sick)
Now, you see how terrible that explanation was? I’m not so smart after all.