Monthly Archives: October 2020

A New Web Home

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I really don’t like writing things that make others look bad and no one likes writing things that make themselves look foolish. Today I’m doing both.

For over six years, my website has been hosted by an outfit called Arvixe. It has served me well, and even today is mostly satisfactory. I moved the site this week for just one reason and my decision had much more to do with their handling of the problem than the problem itself. That’s where the anger comes from. The embarrassment comes from the fact that I put up with the problem for more than a year.

There are email lists associated with both this blog and the trip journal part of the website. In July of 2019, I noticed that some messages were bouncing. I believe the bouncing must have started sometime in June. Of course, there’s some embarrassment in the fact that I wasn’t paying closer attention and didn’t spot it sooner, but I do have an excuse. I was in the middle of a road trip which means I was often running out of time to maintain the journal let alone keep an eye on things that are supposed to just work. When the trip ended and I was back home, I looked into it a bit more and submitted a support ticket on July 10, 2019.

I’d encountered similar problems in the past and wasn’t overly concerned. This whole web thing is a hobby for me and I use what is called Shared Hosting to keep costs to a tolerable level. Dedicated servers and dedicated IP addresses offer increased control and performance but they are much more costly. Almost all hobbyists and many small businesses use Shared Hosting where many different websites share a server and an IP address. An obvious risk in this sort of arrangement is that bad guys might be among those sharing your server. Individual subscribers can’t do much about bad guys. Hosting companies try to keep bad guys out but screening can’t be perfect. So my problem started with some bad guys, spammers to be specific, moving into my cyber neighborhood.

Sadly, that is all too common. Sometimes the hosting company recognizes the problem quickly and boots the bad guys before they cause too much trouble. Sometimes they don’t, and people on the receiving end take action to protect themselves or their subscribers. This typically consists of putting the offending IP on a blacklist and rejecting all messages coming from there. I have had that happen multiple times with multiple hosting companies.

It’s terribly inconvenient, of course, but is usually solvable in a reasonable amount of time. Many blacklists are public with established procedures for getting off of them after proving the bad guy is gone. That’s not the case with Yahoo. Nor is it now the case with AOL and Verizon since, through purchases and mergers, they’re all one happy and secretive family. Their lists are essentially private and getting removed from them (i.e., restoring your reputation) is not very easy. I’m sure that knowing that made me more tolerant as weeks then months slid by with no resolution.

My tolerance for a lack of action was due partly to a lack of travel. The blog’s email list runs at least once a week but currently contains just two Yahoo addresses and one AOL address. The travel journal’s list runs daily but only when I’m on the road. It contains nearly twenty of the at-risk addresses. After that July trip, an August trip was pushed into September then canceled. With a maximum of three messages getting bounced (and very occasionally none), I convinced myself I could wait. When short trips in October and December brought a rash of rejection notices, I convinced myself I didn’t have time to undertake moving the site right then. My dumbest move in this whole fiasco came at the end of the year when, stuck on the idea that I had no time to move the site, I renewed my agreement with Arvixe and actually gave them more money! Then came COVID. Trips that were planned for April, June, July, and August were canceled. That should have left me with time to move the site, but now I had another stupid excuse. I’d just renewed my hosting plan and had to protect my investment.

The summer passed with varying amounts of bouncing each week. I entertained myself by reporting the continuing lack of progress on the support ticket with increasing levels of sarcasm. I made a point of noting the problem’s one year anniversary. For their part, the Arvixe support techs repeatedly explained how tough the problem was, avowed it was a high priority involving the most senior admins, told me about their complex email system (CloudMark), and reassured me that they understood how important the issue was to me and that my patience was sincerely appreciated. They also frequently asked me to supply headers from the reject notices although I’m reasonably certain that was purely to give the impression of something being done. It became apparent that the CloudMark system, which sounded like something that should avoid unreliable IPs, either didn’t work or was administered improperly. In fact, rather than being used to solve the problem, its complexity was used as an excuse for the lack of progress. It was also obvious that either those senior admins were incapable of having an IP removed from a blacklist despite months of effort or they had succeeded in getting IPs removed but that bad guys kept being allowed on the server and causing the IPs to be placed right back on the blacklist. Neither described a company deserving of my business.

I eventually managed a short trip in September and the resulting rash of rejection messages from the journal’s email list finally convinced me I had to do something. Two days after that trip ended, I arranged for hosting at another provider. I let Arvixe know, in my next ticket update, that I intended to move around the middle of the next month, but no one there acknowledged it. And nothing improved.

Over the next couple of weeks, I moved things to Bluehost, my new hosting provider. Last Monday, I activated access to the new location (i.e., switched name servers) but encountered some problems and backtracked. On Tuesday, with help, via chat, from Bluehost technicians, the switch was made successfully. This is my first blog post since the move, and I’m really looking forward to it reaching all subscribers. I’m also looking forward to all subscribers to the trip journal list receiving mailings from an outing beginning early next month, and I sincerely apologize for taking so long to acknowledge and correct an intolerable situation. Email subscribers, this move’s for you. I very much appreciate each of you.

ADDENDUM 25-Oct-2020 09:45: At the time this was published, a problem existed which reported proper email addresses as invalid when attempting to subscribe. That has now been corrected. 

Fall Fun Drive

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With Wednesday predicted to be clear, dry, and warm, it seemed like a good day to check out some of the area’s foliage which has become increasingly colorful in recent days. The fact that both rain and temperatures were predicted to fall on Thursday made it seem even better. Although trees were not at peak color on Wednesday, rain did appear on Thursday and did knock a lot of leaves to the ground, so I think I made an OK choice. Temperatures that allowed dropping the top around noon made it more than OK since that really has not been the case since.

As I often do, I targeted the area north of the Ohio River where wiggly tree-lined roads connect small towns like Mount Orab, Georgetown, and Ripley. Within the area, my driving wasn’t very targeted at all.

Here and there manmade structures caught my eye. Barns filled with drying tobacco were once quite common in this area, but not anymore. The weathered house looked to be abandoned but it also looked like it enjoyed watching that tree grow from a sapling to towering over its roof.

Actually, my camera recorded considerable evidence of human activity even when I was half trying to avoid it.

My driving wasn’t 100% aimless. For whatever reason, I remembered a couple of previously visited items in the area and made a point of reaching them again. The first is the North Pole Road Covered Bridge that I first visited in 2005 as part of the Five Bridges Road day trip. Fifteen years ago the bridge was somewhat hidden by trees but the road passed right through it.

Not so today. The trees have been replaced by a new bridge and the covered bridge restricted to pedestrian traffic only. The concrete bridge does provide a convenient platform for photographing the newly exposed wooden bridge in its entirety.

I’m not sure when I made my first visit to the Red Oak Presbyterian Church Cemetery but I do know why it was on my mind Wednesday. Rosa Riles, whose likeness appeared on Aunt Jemima packaging from sometime in the 1930s until 1948, is buried there and Aunt Jemima has been in the news recently. The reason is parent company PepsiCo’s decision to change the name and packaging as part of what they are calling a “journey toward racial equality”. A Wikipedia article explains that dozens of women played the character over the years and lists nine of them. Riles is identified as the third to appear on product packages.

  

I Care Less About How You Vote Than If. (2020)

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I confess to seriously considering making major changes to this article this year. The easily guessable reason is that, while I still care less about how than if, I care a whole lot about how. However, I published the first version of this article because of the abysmally low rate of election participation in the United States, and I still see that as a central issue. The article mentions several major step inputs to potential voter numbers including the largest of them all when non-males were permitted to vote exactly 100 years ago.

So I’ve made no changes in what this post says, but I have changed when it says it. This post normally appears on the Sunday immediately preceding election day. Early voting, both by mail and in person, was already on the rise but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic jump to be predicted this year. In many states, including Ohio, voting has already begun and the observed numbers reinforce that prediction greatly. An increase in the rate of participation is also predicted, with some saying that the percentage of eligible voters casting ballots this year could be the highest since 1908. I doubt my little post has anything to do with that, but, just in case, I’m doing my nudging a little earlier this year.

yvyvWe fought a war to get this country going then gave every land-owning white male above the age of twenty-one the right to vote. A little more than fourscore years later, we fought a war with ourselves that cleared the way for non-whites to vote. Several decades of loud, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous behavior brought the granting of that same right to non-males a half-century later, and another half-century saw the voting age lowered to eighteen after a decade or so of protests and demonstrations.

dftv1Of course, putting something in a constitution does not automatically make it a practice throughout the land and I am painfully aware that resistance followed each of those changes and that efforts to make voting extremely difficult for “the other side” are ongoing today. I don’t want to ignore partisan obstructions and system flaws but neither do I want to get hung up on them. I meant my first paragraph to be a reminder that a hell of a lot of effort, property, and lives have gone into providing an opportunity to vote to a hell of a lot of people. Far too many of those opportunities go unused.

A Wikipedia article I have referenced in years past has been updated and a table showing voter turnout in a number of countries for the period 1960-1995 has been removed. Sadly, the point being made by the inclusion of that table, that the United States trails most of the world’s democracies in voter turnout, continues to be supported by more recent statistics such as those cited in a Pew Research article. We may be getting slightly better, however. 2018 turnout set a record for midterm elections as reported in this Vox article. Let us hope that continues. I noticed something in the Pew Research article that I simply hadn’t realized previously. The United States has the greatest difference between the percentage of voting-age population (VAP) actually voting and registered voters actually voting. In many countries, there is no difference at all since to be a citizen is to be allowed to vote. In other countries, the difference is trivial. In the U.S. presidential election of 2016, it was a whopping 31.1% (86.8-55.7). I found that startling. I think that means only 64.1% of the VAP is registered which rather clearly shows the importance of voter registration efforts.

dftv2I first posted the core of this article in 2014. In the original title, I claimed to not care how anyone votes. That was never entirely true, of course. I have my favorite candidates and issues. I’ll be disappointed in anyone who votes differently than I do but not nearly as disappointed as I’ll be in anyone who doesn’t vote at all. I’m reminded of parents working on getting their kids to clean their plates with lines like, “There are hungry children in China who would love to have your green beans.” I’m not sure what the demand for leftover beans is in Beijing these days but I’m pretty sure some folks there would like to have our access to ballots and voting booths.

Minor Ado About Nothing

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Today is the final day of 2020’s Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week. In normal times, I would have visited at least one or two of the participants, but, to restate the obvious, these are not normal times. I scanned the restaurant list looking for places that I’d not tried but wanted to, that offered something appealing to me, and that had outdoor seating. I came up empty and had accepted the fact that there would be no new restaurant experience for me this year. Then a friend posted something about a pop-up at a restaurant I’d never tried but wanted to. The restaurant was not a GCRW participant and the dates of their pop-up (9/25-10/2) didn’t align with Restaurant Week (9/29-10/4) but the two did overlap. There was outdoor seating and the food offering did appeal to me. As I learned the story behind it, it became more than appealing; It became an all-consuming but short-lived obsession that I satisfied the very next day.

Northside Yacht Club is the place. It has a pretty nice front door but during the pandemic that is used only for picking up carry-out orders. These days, the main entrance is on the side next to the tastefully decorated utility poles. It has been there since 2015, normally has a variety of live music, even now has cool drinks and food, and has done a couple of pop-ups in the past.

Building on an old false rumor, NSYC wore an Applebee’s costume for Halloween in 2017. Last year it combined two Cincinnati favorites, Skyline chili and LaRosa’s pizza, to become SkyRosa’s. It was Ronny Salerno’s tongue in cheese-filled cheek report on the faux Applebee’s that first brought the Yacht Club to my attention. This year, they put on their disguise a little earlier, possibly because the end of September in Ohio usually offers a better outside dining experience than does the end of October. The pop-up that just ended involved Arby’s, but there was more to it than that. NSYC’s menu temporarily mimics that of the roast beef chain but the inspiration came from a punk rocker’s Twitter account. That both the rocker (Brendan Kelly) and the account (@Nihilist_Arbys) are well known is evidence of just how uninformed I am. You’re better off checking out the Twitter feed and this Arby’s-meets-nihilist story than having me try to explain things. There’s a good CityBeat story here.

Each sandwich comes with a nihilist_arbys’ Tweet. Mine was originally published on Valentine’s Day. I chose the beef and cheddar and it was excellent. The Sixteen Bricks bun makes it look like the Arby’s version but believe me it was many steps up in quality. The curly fries, on the other hand, were a near-perfect match for Arby’s in all regards. The beer may look like a Bud Light but it’s Riegele Privat lager. Neither, of course, are available at a real Arby’s.

Before leaving, I checked out the upper deck which offers plenty of additional seating and overlooks a Northside style split-the-yacht wall decoration.