Fixed Some Bugs
There were some bugs and foolish mistakes left unseen by me on the site and I went ahead and fixed them. Comments should be working properly. So should the wall ('cept it still brings you to a separate page with weird formatting after posting a comment). The links page should be fixed.
In my attempts to secure the website further, I accidentally introduced some bugs. Now, my site should be secure against the typical script-kiddies, noob hackers, and typical bots. I obviously won't say what I did.
It's funny how many people land on my site looking for the "Andrew Chow" they know. Or those looking for random song lyrics.
I don't know how serious I want to take this site but if traffic keeps growing, it might just be worthwhile to put some Adsense or what-not to make some money on the side. Pfft. 
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Blue Jays continue to disappoint (see today's game as an example). J.P. says he's open to taking offers for Halladay though it doesn't mean he'll accept any. If J.P. wants to keep his job, he'll do his best to keep Halladay or the trade for him better be damn good for the team. Wells' overvalued contract is already his fault.
But Halladay says he wants to win and play in the World Series (duh) and come 2010, if the Blue Jays don't turn around that season, he'll leave no matter what the Jays organization offers him. He'll most likely will go to the Yankees or BoSox or whoever can afford his current market value.
MLB needs a salary cap. Not only because the same teams are reaching the playoffs (though some argue there's been enough variation) but because the richer teams are essentially using the poorer teams as "farms". The poor teams develop the players to stardom and they leave for bigger paychecks while the poor teams are compensated with lame 1st-round draft picks.
Meh, the players' union will fight tooth and nail to prevent such a cap from happening. And I guess one could argue that teams are "poor" because of the fans (and lack thereof). It's hard not to see the contrast between sellout crowds in New York and Boston vs. Toronto.
Chinese Hackers
I commend the relentlessness of my fellow "brothers" and their technological prowess. However, I wish they'd give it a rest on my site. I'm not THAT important to advertise garbage "medicinal" products (though at the rate the numbers I'm seeing, it might be possible in the future). Nonetheless, there's nothing I can say or do since it's mostly automated and by banning one group of IPs, another takes its place within days.
They certainly kept me on my toes but I turned my back on the computer software path of life long ago when certain individuals failed to instil interest in the field. And along came biology and the wonders of medicine...
I can tell The Time Traveler's Wife is going to be a popular movie cause many people are Googling lyrics for the song used in the trailer and landing on that post that mentions both the song and the movie. I would provide the MP3 but then that'd get me in some trouble.
Back Online
After getting my DNS listing hijacked and redirecting to an annoying "Power Acai Berry" scam, I'm finally back online and running after a quick back-and-forth with tech support. Turns out they were running outdated DNS servers leaving my site vulnerable to such an attack. Though, none of my files were harmed or touched at all rather, the attack basically changed what IP address "andrewchow.com" redirected to.
Good thing I have my entire blog posts backed up. Woot woot.
For those who are computer illiterate, I'll draw a parallel: Just as viruses and bacteria evolve to adapt against our anti-biotics, vaccines, and treatments; computer hackers work ever so diligently in finding new security holes while the developers work quickly to patch those security holes up. Thus, it is important in both cases to be at the cutting edge and up-to-date to stay ahead of the game.
To prevent this from happening again, I've blocked probably 95% of IPs from China from accessing this site. It's unfortunate but necessary since China is one of the cyber-crime safe havens in the world at the moment (many spammers/hackers/etc. come from there and waste bandwidth). The recent influx of Chinese visitors according to my site logs and subsequent DNS hijack is no coincidence. The list of IPs I have used were obtained from countryipblocks.net and if you run your own site and wish to do the same, the list is there.
"China is currently leading the world in malicious activity and botnets, followed by Brazil, Russia, India, Korea, Viet Nam [sic], Ukraine, Turkey, Italy and Argentina." -countryipblocks.net
I don't know see how andrewchow.com is worth the effort in terms of size and traffic when there's juicier targets for hackers to attack. Though, most of these are automated bots.
