The OEM head unit in my ’04 Dodge Neon went finally went kaput after years of adequate service, and after many lonely months on the road without a song to sing-along/butcher, I decided it was time to put some serious effort into replacing it. This is the first time I’ve replaced a car stereo, but found that it was very easy as long as you know what parts you need. This article will likely not be useful for an experienced car audio technician, but it might help out some DIY’ers on a budget. Continue reading
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I’ve been seeing this picture crop up on social networking sites every so often. It lists a number of government expenditures relative to the tax on $50,000 worth of income. From the top of the list are itemized selected expenses in the $2-$250 range, most of which have, at one time or another, been the target of debates regarding cuts in government spending. The list finishes with “corporate handouts,” standing out at a whopping $4000. At the bottom, the question is posed: “are you sure you’re pissed off at the right people?” Continue reading
In my ideal world, violence is not used as a way to solve non-violent problems. One is never coerced with violence or the threat thereof* for any consenting and voluntary interaction. Gay marriage, firearm sports, recreational drug use; the particular nature of the activity is irrelevant. So long as one’s interactions are voluntary, and unless one harms someone else’s person or property, others have no right to interfere. There is no such thing as a victimless crime, no debt without agreement, no reparation without culpability. Continue reading
I wanted to purge all of my Fail2Ban bans and jail counters. I couldn’t find any way to do this with F2B’s built-in commands. So I made a BASH script, and I’m sharing. Run the script to clear out all bans, or use ./f2b-purge [IP LIST] to unban one or more specific IP addresses. Use the -f switch to also force the unban via direct iptables command (i.e. for when fail2ban lost its database, and there are orphan bans on iptables) Continue reading
I’ve recently had a flood of botnet-driven brute force attempts against my SMTP server. After struggling with some Fail2ban configuration issues, I’d gotten it working smoothly. However, this was a particularly persistent botnet, and as soon as the ban expired, I’d get more entry attempts. This is a problem; I want hackers to be thwarted, so I can’t set ban times too low; but I do not want to lock out my users if they legitimately forget a password. After putting up with my mailbox being flooded with Fail2ban reports, I decided to look into increasing times for subsequent bans. Fail2ban does not support this natively, so I had to look into other options. Continue reading
In prepper/survivalist circles, is commonly accepted that one should try to store a bit of gold, silver, or other currency-worthy metals to facilitate barter should we ever be faced with an event that renders fiat currency invalid, destroys supply chains, cuts off utilities, and otherwise heralds the end of the world as we know it. I myself once accepted this as a practical, common-sense truism, but over time have changed my position on the matter. Continue reading
I recently noticed a large number of brute-force hack attempts on my SMTP and SSH servers, and I found it cumbersome to type out the iptables commands every time I wanted to single out a certain IP address for banning or unbanning. I made a simple script to help with the task. Continue reading
I order a lot of things based on after-rebate price. I see many complaints from others about rebates that were not honored, but I seem to have pretty good luck. Since I keep track of the rebates I’ve sent and received anyway, I decided to post my records here for others to reference in their own decision-making. It would also help me to stay organized by having this online. So, here it is, and I will add to this as I make other purchases. Continue reading