Author: TechyDad

The Mother’s Day/Birthday Double-Post

Birthday, Holidays, JSL, Mother's Day, Parenting

Yesterday was Mother’s Day.  As such, we attempted to give B a day free from bickering, complaining, and the other pleasantries that come from raising two boys.  B would have to weigh in, but I think we were mostly successful.

The boys snuck into our room at about 6:20am to wake B up and wish her a happy Mother’s Day.  Had I been awake at the time, I would have headed them off and let B sleep in.  Instead, we gave B her mother’s day present, I made everyone breakfast (including breakfast in bed for B), and then kept them as quiet as I could while B got back to sleep.  (NOTE: Next time I let B go back to sleep, I’m confiscating her smartphone so she can’t check Twitter/e-mail/etc when she should be sleeping.)

Eventually, I got the boys dressed and took them to the park and then the grocery store so B could get some true quiet time.  After picking B up, we all went out to eat an ice cream lunch (mine was blueberry flavor which makes it healthy, right?).  We did some shopping and stopped by Mimi’s house to visit and drop off her Mother’s Day present.  Then, we quickly picked up some dinner and had a nice cookie cake for dessert.

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Fast forward to today.  Today is a different kind of celebration.  While yesterday was a celebration of B being a mother, today is a celebration of the event that made B a mother for a second time.  Yes, today is JSL’s birthday.

It’s hard to believe that JSL is five already.  It seems like just yesterday that we were welcoming him into our family.  It’s been amazing seeing him grow and learn about the world around him.  He is creative (often performing shows with songs that he makes up on the spot), loving (he adores his big brother and loves cuddling), and surprisingly bright (just when we forget how old he is and think of him as a baby, he shows us just how much he understands).  Oh and he’s quite the little geek-in-training with a special love for Transformers and superheroes.

It’s a weird mixture of pride and sadness to see your little baby grow up.  On one hand, I love the kid he is becoming.  On the other and, I want him to be my baby for as long as possible. (He’ll be my baby for his entire life, but he likely will resent me calling him that when he’s 18.)

Happy birthday to JSL.  Mommy, Daddy, and NHL love you very much and are so proud of you.

JSL-Birthday

Aloha Friday: Solo Movie Night

Aloha Friday, Movies, Superheroes

My boys love comic book superheroes.  We watch Ultimate Spider-Man, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and other shows featuring super-powered individuals fighting evil.  With the Avengers movie in theatres, you’d think I’d be dragging them to see it.  Unfortunately, the live action Avengers movie (like the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America movies before them) are a bit too much for an 8 year old and a 4 year old.

Meanwhile, B isn’t a very big superhero fan so she has no interest in seeing this movie.  I had pretty much resigned myself to catching it on DVD, but then I got to thinking.  I’m a man in his mid-thirties, not some teenager without a date on Saturday night.  I don’t need someone with me to prove anything to anyone.  Why can’t I go see the movie alone?  (Of course, finding the time to get out to actually see the movie is another story.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever gone to see a movie all by yourself?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #138

DDOS Suspension

Blogging, Internet

I’m going to take a break from Disney posts to make note of something that happened early last week.  On Monday night, April 30th, I opened up Windows Live Writer to quickly post from Disney.  As I hit Publish, Live Writer told me that there was a problem publishing my post.  At first, I figured I did something wrong.  I loaded up my website and saw a terrifying message: Account Suspended.

My mind began to race.  My sites were down.  All of them.  TechyDad.com, TheAngelForever.com, FollowerHQ.com.  All down.  And not just down, but proclaiming to the world that we were suspended.  A quick call to my host later and our accounts were restored to full access with the explanation that a page on our sites had caused undue strain on the server.

Let’s put aside for a moment the suspension reaction… I’m dealing with them on how better to react.  In fact, a similar problem a couple of days ago resulted in my sites being taken down with an error message for a few minutes – a much better solution.

Back to the strain, though.  When I got back home, I loaded up the log files.  Now, a typical log file, for a single view of one page, will contain multiple entries.  After all, as you’re reading this, you’re likely seeing images, there are colors and text styling via CSS files, JavaScript files and more.  This is part of what I saw in B’s log file:

46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/a-floral-splash-of-color/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.71.213 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/dole-whip-cravings/ HTTP/1.1"
79.125.64.99 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/the-cupcake-club-book-giveaway/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:05 -0400] "GET /2012/02/falling-in-love-with-disney/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/selecting-phone-sounds/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.131.104 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:04 -0400] "GET /2012/04/views-from-a-friends-birthday-party/ HTTP/1.1"
79.125.88.69 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:06 -0400] "GET /2012/04/time-for-ubp-2012/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:06 -0400] "GET /2012/04/photo-gifts-for-mothers-day/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.131.104 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:05 -0400] "GET /2012/04/disney-natures-chimpanzee/ HTTP/1.1"

As you can see, these were requests for only the HTML code of the pages. No CSS, images, or JavaScript downloaded. Just repeated calls to pages on TheAngelForever.com.  Different IP addresses were used, but they all seemed to originate from Amazon Web Services in Dublin, Ireland.

So what happened?  I have two theories.  The first is that a content scraper was trying to pull all of B’s content via an Amazon Web Services hosted script.  Something went wrong and it made so many requests so quickly that it bombed the site out.  The second is that the person behind the script didn’t care about content and the rapid requests/site bombing was by design.  In this scenario, our mystery script runner isn’t a scraper, but instead launched a DDOS attack on TheAngelForever.com.

(Quick explanation for those who don’t know what a DDOS attack is.  A DDOS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack is when a group of computers request so many services from a server that valid visitors can’t get through.  To use an analogy, imagine a restaurant that thrives on delivery orders.  Now suppose a group of people (thus "distributed") repeatedly call the restaurant’s phone and hang up.  If they do this often enough, valid would-be customers can’t get through (i.e. "denial of service").

Stopping a DDOS attack is tricky.  We can’t block the attacker because they are coming from so many IP addresses.  You can block a group of IP addresses (e.g. 46.137.*), but then you might be blocking a lot of valid users.

So how can we keep this from happening again?  There are some network tools that our hosting provider can employ, but not much B and I can do.  It might happen again tomorrow or it might never happen again at all.  So if you ever see that message again, just be patient (and perhaps tweet me) because the site will be back soon.

The #DisneySMMoms Report: Epcot and Introductions

Disney, DisneySMMoms, DisneySMMoms2012

Note: To see all of my posts on DisneySMMoms 2012, go here.

After we checked in for Disney Social Media Moms, we had some time.  Given that the Yacht Club resort is so close to Epcot, we walked on over.  We had two goals in mind: Playtime and Lunch.  Actually, lunch was at the top of the grown-ups’ list, but the kids just wanted to play in the UK.

Lunch took priority, though, and I knew a nice little spot in France.  Thanks to the magic of Disney, France is but a short walk away within Epcot.  We went into Boulangerie Patisserie and got some food:  Vegetable Quiches for B and me, pizzas for the boys… Ok, we were in France so they called them cheese tartines, not pizzas.  Still, it’s bread with sauce and cheese.  (Plus, the boys do better when you use familiar terms.)

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Next, we walked from France to the UK.

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Here, B and her parents went shopping while I supervised the boys as they ran through a small hedge maze.

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We also saw some topiaries, sand art, and Duffy.  (More on these later.)

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Some more shopping and walking later and it was back to the hotel for us.  After all, B and I had to head over to a introductory reception.

I’ll admit, this is precisely the kind of thing that I was dreading.  A social function where you don’t sit quietly listening, but rather talk to various people… people you may have met online, people you may have met in person, or people you may not have met at all.

All in all, I think I did pretty good.  I almost went up to someone I didn’t know, mistaking them for someone I knew and I introduced myself to one person whom I had met before, but by and large I survived unscathed.

The reception included some nice features like a guy playing the ukulele, some nice food to eat, and a few speakers talking about Adventures By Disney.

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Adventures By Disney, by the way, is a Disney-fied tour of far away lands.  You get to see the sights without such mundane worries as how you will carry your luggage.  Trust me, once you’ve tried Disney’s Magical Express for your Disney World luggage versus dragging it all around yourself, you’ll appreciate "magical luggage transportation.

Before we knew it, it was time to leave for the Swashbuckler Soiree.  As we headed out, we each got a PhotoPass+ card and disc.  These would come in very handy later on.

One last photo before I close out this post.  Can you guess whose nails these are?

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Those would be the nails of Jackie Gailey (aka @jjzmgailey aka Jackie’s Magical Moments).  Very impressive!

Disclaimer: We paid for our own trip to Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Though we were given an incredible deal from Disney, they never asked us to blog about this event. All opinions expressed above are my own.

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