- 2024
- Jul
- 29
A recruiter once told me that a company was a poor choice. They were right.
A recruiter once told me that a company (that I had asked about) was generally known in the local industry for wanting to pay substantially under market - trying to be as cagey about it as they could. His comments about the place were substantially more colorful, but that was the gist of the statements, along with a “probably not going to be worth your time.”
The person telling me this had no connection to the company, so I put the info in my files, and thought that maybe they just had a bad experience with the place.
No, they were correct - I had a few offers to interview with this place over the years, and the pay for skills desired was very poor - probably about 1/2 to 2/3 of what others were paying. I turned down the few contacts I had with a “Thank you, but there’s nothing about your offer that makes me want to pick up and move across the state.
The last contact I had with this company, the person contacting me became somewhat (not really) angry that I refused to even consider the position. To be fair, I did have an online profile that stated a range of pay I was interested in, but this also was posted with the caveat of being for local positions only. Any movement would require reassessment of those rates. When I pointed this out, the person passive-aggressive told me “Oh, ok.” That was the last time I heard from them. I’ve since taken a look at reviews on job sites, and those suggest that things have not changed - or even increased a whole lot, if at all. There’s a lot of talk on these reviews about the complete lack of awareness and organization within the company.
I appreciate that information to this day. When I’m told there’s something not right about what I’m looking at, I make a point to at least investigate the complaint on my own. Even if the complaint seems to be unfounded, I still keep that in my back pocket.
- 2024
- Jul
- 26
Creating a useful 404 page for this blog (and flatpress in general?)
When I was setting up redirects and closing pygg.xyz for the last time, I toyed with a bunch of ideas about how to properly tell the viewer that they had either reached their destination, or that the link they had was no longer valid. If someone had a link that wasn’t valid, I could simply let it go to the host’s 404 page - that’s not useful to the viewer, however.
The first option I tried was creating a simple 404 page with some information and links. That’s fine, but it’s just not the best looking thing in the world. I quickly abandoned that for a page at the end of the blog, “posted” long before any of the real posts were made. This worked, but…
Anyone that has a website of any sort knows that you’re going to get slammed by bad actors looking for entry points. In this case, those bad actors assume that since it’s a “blog,” you’re running WordPress. According to the site logs, I was getting slammed by requests for things in associated directories. There were quite a few other things as well. SQL, Oracle, SAP…all of those were common things being probed. There were even a lot of things I didn’t know what they were until I looked them up.
I set up the page at the end of the blog and checked back the next day. Exactly what you’d think happened, did. Hundreds of “views” in 24 hours, and I can guarantee you that none of those were actual people looking at that page. The view counter slowly went up with each refresh, indicating that the attacks were continuous.
This isn’t necessarily a problem, but it is in a way. If I were to let that page sit there, the site statistics would eventually show that page as being the most popular one on the blog - it would literally dwarf all other posts because it was getting hundreds of “views” a day. I didn’t want that, I want to give you things you’re interested in seeing. An error page isn’t interesting when you’re browsing the popular posts page.
I settled on a compromise. I took a static snapshot of the 404 page from “View Source,” cleaned it up to remove anything that’s not going to update, and made it the “Not Found” page. It looks almost like a blog page and has all of the sidebar widgets for navigation. This gives the viewer plenty of explanation as to why they are there, and what is available to them if they want to continue. This seems like the best choice - I’m not polluting the site with fake views, and a viewer who arrives there by accident has plenty of ways to find other content while landing on a familiar looking page.
Of course, as I read that page, it will change. Some of the things I write just don’t make any sense, and as I run across other situations those need to be addressed. In all, I think it’s a good place to land if someone does happen to find a broken link.
Maybe I’ll sit down sometime and analyze the WordPress script kiddies’ requests and create a special page for them that sends them to some weird government org. Probably not, they can sit on the 404 page just like everyone else.
- 2024
- Jul
- 26
Fun with Chrome?
I’ve been messing with various ideas for where pygg.xyz should go after it’s hosting plan expired. I finally settled on just having it redirect to the top level of Projects, with any errors going to the 404 page at the very end of this blog. This was done with redirects set in the domain registrar’s control panel.
The 404 page will get it’s own post. Stay tuned
DNS takes a while to propagate through the system, so I waited a while. Flushed the DNS resolver cache. Firefox and other browsers said no problem, here’s your site!
Chrome? Doesn’t work.
Did you know chrome has it’s own resolver cache, and even clearing that seems to have issues? I didn’t either.
You can’t get to that resolver cache unless you know the magic words. Put chrome://net-internals/#dns into the URL bar of Chrome and you’ll get to a simple text page where you can look up a named site and see it’s address, and/or clear the cache. Chromium browsers should follow this convention, but YMMV.
I cleared this cache on one machine, and my site started resolving. Another machine, and no luck. There seems to be differences between Chrome versions. That issue may cause some problems for people who have some very old links to this blog, but most of those should be gone by this point.
The moral of the story? There are more things to clear than you think there are, and even that may not work.
There was also some general crap going on with the redirects on the host. I cleaned those up and standardized them with my other domains, you shouldn’t have any issues getting here from there - but Chrome is still Chrome, and Chrome does what it wants.
- 2024
- Jun
- 25
Remember Geocities?
If you don’t, geocities was an early “personal web space” host that allowed you to create a simple page. They ranged from fan sites to personal ramblings, with some information and everything else in-between. I collected a lot of useful things off those pages, including stuff like pre-made plugins for software, links to companies of interest, and images of otherwise unobtainable things.
These sites were more often than not characterized by garish backgrounds, flashy things, more fonts than you knew existed, sound and music blaring out of your speakers, and all of the Under Construction GIFs that your machine could possibly handle without melting your video card.
I used mine as a holder for links that I could hit with my BlackBerry, among other things.
But, in 2009, Yahoo! decided they wanted to discontinue the service - 10s of thousands of web pages, full of information from the old internet, would suddenly vanish - and it would have if not for the efforts of companies like geocities.ws, among others. There were many projects to collect as much of this data as possible. Personally, I think Yahoo! really did a big F*** YOU to the internet by not handing over the archives - or at least keeping it static. It’s not like their draconian TOS didn’t give them the right to do whatever they wanted with your data.
Regardless, I found my site in the .ws archives and claimed it by having them send email to the (at the time) existing yahoo address of the same name. It’s been a few things over the years, but right now it’s a quick-link to this place, with a few preview images.
While there’s nothing on that site you haven’t seen before if you’ve been browsing the wereboar pages, it’s still there just in case. Why not, it’s a small free space to host something. If you had a geocities webpage at some point, there’s a chance it in the geocities.ws archive. If you have some way of claiming it, like the yahoo address associated with it, you may as well do so. Time to relive the old internet, party like it’s 1999, and use at much comic sans as you can!
My current geocities page
The Projects From the Bottom Drawer preview page.
(no epilepsy inducing flashing images or synth-pop that blows your speakers out, I promise - and I won’t even open your CD tray.)
I wonder if I should put a hit counter on it?
If you’d like a copy of the entire archive as retrieved by ArchiveTeam as the place was shutting down, you can find it on that site by the bay…the one where the skull and crossbones fly. Search for “Geocities” and select the one that claims it’s patched - the other one has issues and won’t complete. The files are fairly well looked after, so you shouldn’t have any issues retrieving it. It’s almost 700GB, so make sure you have room for it, and the 1TB of uncompressed data.
- 2024
- Jun
- 12
pygg.xyz, the former home for this blog, is nearing it’s end.
Hosting for pygg.xyz, as well as email and SSL services, have expired. I’ve set permanent redirects so that any pygg.xyz link should send you to the wereboar.com page of the same name if it exists, or the top level of Projects if you’ve not asked for anything special. There may be a couple of (very old) broken links, but those will take you to the blog’s 404 page with information on how to find what you want to see.
Those redirects may not always work, I’m investigating that but I don’t see any immediate resolution.
You can go to the top level of Projects to see the newest stuff, or you can go to the popular posts page to see everything on Projects from the Bottom Drawer.
I used to host this blog on pygg.xyz, but rapidly found out that .xyz domains have little trust in the Internet world. This affected both my ability to present things to you, and send email reliably using that domain.
Last year, I decided to see what was available - and for some reason, wereboar.com - a very old domain - was available. The former owners, a web design shop and later, some sort of graphics design shop, had let it go. I picked it up and moved everything here, because who doesn’t like lycanthropes? It’s been much easier to get email through secured systems with a .com domain, so here I stay.
My original domain, pygg.xyz, has been live all this time, but was a simple redirect to here. However, the end is nigh and the hosting for the domain ends on July 4th, 2024. The domain is still there and good for another 7 or so years, but the hosting will be gone.
Right now, there’s a parking page indicating that it’s 410, and to come here instead.
If you have any pygg.xyz bookmarks, now is the time to move them. Most should still work if you change pygg.xyz to wereboar.com, but if you can’t find what you need then check the popular posts or sitemap, available from the main blog page.
It will probably redirect here again, but I’m not sure what I want to do with it. It’s for sale, if you are interested, and it’s pretty cheap. Contact me with the LinkedIn links on the main wereboar landing page.
Until then, it will at least resolve to something. Where does the future lie? Who knows, but I’m sure it’s full of strange electronics and oddball projects.
I hope you’ll come along for the journey.
- 2024
- Jun
- 6
Don’t stay at toxic workplaces.
A recent LinkedIn post talked about a manager style the author calls the “Up your own butt” boss. You can read that post here: https://www.linkedin … edium=member_desktop. You may need to log in to see it.
A position I held several years ago had a direct manager that fit this bill. Everything good was “We,” everything bad was “you.” Blame would be shifted, even if he was at fault.
Shortly before I left, he stormed into a shared technician office and started berating us about someone charging time - in this case, weeks - to overhead. (Overhead at this company was a charge number that you could use when you were just doing general tasks that had no direct charge. Things like setting up new equipment, cleaning an area, etc.) He was going to find out who did this, they were going to be disciplined. Possibly even fired.
He knew very well it was him doing it. He was having a house built at the time, and would go spend hours on site harassing the builders.
He should have been fired for that, as this was weeks of time he did nothing and lied about it. There were other incidents that he should have been fired for, including destroying expensive equipment from negligence.
Unfortunately, it was endemic to the entire company. His manager - the chief engineer - had a severe god complex. He was incapable of looking at something and going “Good work men, you did a great job!” Instead, he would go “I’m a great man, look at what I did.”
I learned very quickly not to go to this man with ideas, he would discount them immediately, and then implement them under his own name.
It was a terribly toxic place and almost drove me to alcoholism. I’m not proud of that, but I got out with the help of a good friend. Bless you Lance, I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.
- 2024
- May
- 22
Finding old wereboar posts in search engines?
While I’ve submitted the site indexes to both Bing and Google, you probably have a better chance of finding something here using Bing, or those sites that use it like DuckDuckGo. For all the grief Microsoft gives us, their indexing system is quite friendly. Submit pages via their console and it goes “Sure thing! Let me index that for you.” and a few days later - there it is.
Google, on the other hand, complains. “You have a redirect! I can’t index that!” Where? It’s a static page with a link on it. There are lots of things in the index queue that were rejected and I’m not even sure where it’s getting them - it looks like it’s own temporary files are being indexed and then tossed out because they’re not there anymore. it complains about invalid pages but give no reason as to why, just that they aren’t.
Regardless, for all the crap - Bing works best if you’d like to find an old post from a search engine. Use https://www.bing.com … =site%3awereboar.com and you’ll get a pretty good list of things here on wereboar. Bing feeds other sites like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo!, so you can use those sites if Bing isn’t to your liking.
If you’d like to stay on wereboar, you can use the built-in popular post page to see an index of all the pages, and how many times they’ve been viewed. Check that out right here: https://wereboar.com … projects/popular.php
And finally, the third way you can “search” the site is to use the sitemap. This one is just a text file with all of the important URLs on wereboar. There are no titles, so this is probably not an ideal thing to use - it’s primarily so search engines can find the URLs. However, if you’d like to see it, it’s here: https://wereboar.com/about/sitemap.txt - and the auto-gen’d XML version lives here: https://wereboar.com/about/sitemap.xml.
While I can’t take suggestions here due to the large amount of spammers, please feel free to connect with and talk to me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin … an-walker-525b41223/ - I’d love to know what you think, and would like to know if there’s something you’d like to see more (or less!) of here on wereboar.
Thanks for checking out my place. See you soon with more goodies from shows and junk I’m working with.
- 2024
- May
- 19
I’ve had a few questions about the images here.
If you’d like to save a picture, use “open link in new tab” on a picture to get the full size image, otherwise you’ll save the preview. Once the image opens, you can save it from the new tab. You can do the same thing in a gallery. Just as a note, the gallery will cycle into the next post if you keep going forwards (or back, depending on where you are.)
If you’d like to use any of the images or text, they are licensed CC BY-NC-SA. You’re free to copy them, use them, display them, remix them, etc. - as long as you give attribution, it’s not for a commercial work, and your work is licensed the same way. This is barring any images I give to places for use, I follow their license and only ask for attribution.
Attribution is “Courtesy of https://wereboar.com/projects/”
I try to reciprocate on that when I can. I have many things saved, and if I can’t remember where I got it I will say so.
That’s all! Thank you to everyone reading this little pig’s works, and I hope you enjoy what I find.
- 2024
- Apr
- 30
MFJ has announced they are closing their doors.
For anyone that’s been in amatuer radio for more than a few years, the name MFJ is probably one that is quite familiar to you. From being the current owner of venerable names like Hy-Gain, to producing a wide range of custom electronics geared towards the radio operator, MFJ has showed up in every facet of ham radio.
On April 25th 2024, Martin Jue - the owner and founder - announced his retirement. The manufacturing portion of the business will close, removing their reasonably priced antenna, tuner, and other options from the market. From reports I’ve seen, certain imported products already sold by the company will continue forward.
This is quite a loss for the community. While MFJ has gathered nicknames over the years - Mighty Fine Junk being one of the more ‘polite’ ones, their products are cheap enough for the amateur amateur, but useful enough for the pro.
There have been reports that MFJ turned down some offers to buy the company, with other more hushed reports stating that it was because the business needs to stay where it is, physically. That may not be possible as other companies are going to want to consolidate to reduce costs - and as one QRZ commenter said “Don’t rule from the grave.” There’s still a chance someone could pick it up and continue operations, but that remains to be seen. All of that is just forum say-so, take it with a lot of salt. It’s possible that rising costs and other unknown factors make acquisition impossible.
Regardless, MFJ’s departure will be felt by many, even though the familiar red logo will continue to be at sales and fests for the rest of our lives.
Martin’s letter to the community: https://mailchi.mp/6 … 99/a-heavy-sad-heart
The QRZ thread: https://forums.qrz.c … ay-17th-2024.911452/
- 2024
- Apr
- 29
A new LinkedIn scam.
For a while, I was getting these odd connection requests where it was a strange picture and a bunch of unrelated jobs and universities all around the world. The person would always have a job of “shareholder” or somesuch nonsense, and they were always an entrepreneur, and they were a jet-setting, globe-trotting executive that had time to take a wedding dress photo on the beach for their profile. They were also Chinese, even if their photo wasn’t. You could usually reverse search the image and find it on the page the person lifted it from. Nope, right in the bin.
The new one seems to be people who have no profile picture, no jobs listed even though their headline may clearly state multiple job titles that kind of but don’t really relate, and one entry in their history - usually a university from 10 years ago. It’s always “I am very interested in your career and would like to work with you” in the introduction in-mail. Sometimes they have a job, but it’s vague or “self-employed.”
Mark, why are you a Chinese woman?
Report them as not a real person, and they’re usually gone in a day or two.
It’s nothing but a scam, and you have to be on the lookout for these bad actors. If you’re in a job that may have access to sensitive corporate or government info, it’s even more prudent that you refuse anything that even smells just slightly off. It’s not going to cost you anything to hit the block button, but could cost you a lot if you take the request and start talking.