whats the plot

continuing the trend from yesterday and posting more about annoying things (tm), my friend pointed out that in the awstats report for one of my sites, i had a very abnormal number of reported bandwidth downloads for one of the days (~3tb, when i usually average under 50gb per day for that particular server). of course this is unrealistic (and, in fact, impossible, because the box is on a 10mbps connection, which would mean no more than ~108gb/day...).

so i did some investigation...

[ahmedre@cafesalam a]$ ls -alh download*21
-rw-r--r-- 1 ahmedre ahmedre 36M Jan 22 11:29 download-access_log.01.06.2008_21

i opened this file and noticed that a particular ip was repeated a huge number of times in this file, mainly with 200 and 206 return codes.

[ahmedre@cafesalam a]$ wc -l download*21
158618 download-access_log.01.06.2008_21
[ahmedre@cafesalam a]$ grep -c 68.173.172.149 download*21
152514
[ahmedre@cafesalam ~]$ echo 152514/158618 | bc -l
.96151760834205449570

amazing... turns out that when i swapped servers, i forgot to re-enable mod_limitipconn in the apache configuration. the thing is, this isn't the primary download server, it's just one of the mirrors that the download rotates to (so it's easy to figure out, but you have to have some computer knowledge to get to it, because the webpage currently doesn't link directly to the files, but instead to a php script that figures out which server to get the file from (and it so happens that both servers usually have all the files, but that's a different story)).

so what i don't understand is, if you have somewhat of an understanding of computers, why would you go about initiating 152,000 requests within one hour (from some place in new york, i should add...)? how can you possibly expect to download that much at a time? i have nothing against people using download managers, i use them all the time, but at least be respectable about it - download no more than a handful of files at once... for what it's worth, the ua string was: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.00; Windows 98)." i tried to see if this was some sort of download manager, but i am not sure... but it sort of has to be either a download manager or a script to hit that many files in an hour...

this really bothers me... not to mention that on the primary site, the error log reaches gbs in size due to all these 403 requests because of people with download managers constantly trying to leach a huge number of files at a time... i need to find lighttpd/apache modules that do progressive blocking to people who hit the site an exorbitant number of times...

i guess this can't be considered backbiting, since i am not going to mention any names here. but today, something happened that really made me upset.

i was working on some sites with someone, and he uses dnsmadeeasy for their dns (an excellent service, btw). as time went on, i made my own sites that were in some way affiliated with this individual. he insisted i use his dns account, gave me the username and password for it. this was more than a year and a half ago.

a year ago, in january 2007, i logged in only to find that the account would expire in a few days. not being sure where this person was, i went ahead and renewed the account for a year. all was good and fine. in december 2007, i emailed this person and asked him if he was going to pay for january 2008 or if i should. he said he would pay.

today, i remembered this, and so i logged in just to check, and found the account had expired on january 9th. i tried to renew the account, and found a ~$8000 charge on the account! normally, the account costs around $60/year for a huge number of domains. the $8000 was for some support package that they wanted to be added to the purchase. i couldn't remove this no matter what i tried, so i called up the company.

i told them that this person was overseas and asked me to renew (he really is overseas), and that i was wondering what the $8000 was there for. they looked into the account, and said, "your friend knows why there is an $8000 charge, that's why he asked you to log in and pay from within the states." -- "huh? i don't understand?" - "i believe your friend was one involved with dos attacks that affected our servers, this happened between him and some other islamic sites..."

i was shocked... i told the representative that i was sharing the account with the person and had some of my own sites on there and asked whether i could move them to another account. he said that they probably would not want to have any sites associated with this guy's account on any account in their system.

they told me they'd investigate and notify him via email of what their investigation leads to. the representative advised me to move my dns before their service cuts off. so i spent the afternoon changing ~7 or so domains to point to dreamhost's dns server until i figure out if there is a better option.

so why am i angry? because if i hadn't, by luck, checked this site today, my sites would have all gone down (some of which are quite high traffic sites) for a few days and i may never have noticed it. this guy knows i use the dns with him, and knows i paid for it the last year, and i just reminded him in december... if he knew there were problems, why didn't he either 1. resolve them, or 2. tell me and give me a heads up so that i can move the sites without losing them?

it just seems like a common courtesy to me, or am i wrong?

plus, what's this about dos attacks that hit their servers if they're just dns servers? i am not quite sure i follow... does that just mean that people just sent an influx of requests to the website at once and that registered as a dos attack on the dns server because the requests were going through them, or what could have happened? and why did the rep say, "your friend knows what he did..." and what is this about these dos wars happening between other "islamic sites" and how does this rep, who just works at dnsmadeeasy, know this?

i am confused and upset... i might try to call dnsmadeeasy again tomorrow and see if i can convince them to let me move the subset of my domains that i use to a different clean account or not, as dnsmadeeasy was an excellent service; that and i am not sure if dreamhost will get upset or not at the influx of requests hitting their dns servers for my more popular sites.

so i went to visit my parents over this past break... while leaving, i had 2 small bottles of cologne and a stick of deodorant in my bag. at the airport, they of course saw these in my bag, and the man took them out. he said, "you can only have these with you if you have them in a transparent ziplock bag." i am like, "uh.. i don't have one." he's like "sorry, then you can't take them unless you check your bag in." so i asked him, "do you have any bags?" - and he replied, "sorry, we don't provide bags." so i lost 2 very nice small bottles of cologne (the alternative was to miss my flight because i was already running late)...

but the thing is - i don't get it... what difference does it make whether they are in a transparent ziplock bag or not? if the fear is the liquid spilling over stuff, can't someone just as easily take them out of the ziplock bag and spill the contents all over their stuff? and, if the case is that they examine these liquids separately anyway (which they do), what does the ziplock bag enable that is not enabled without it? and if its so important, why not provide people with it (some airports do this as i found out while i was coming back at the end of the trip, but that did me no good...) i fail to see the wisdom behind these policies... maybe someone can enlighten me?

i am not one to criticize anyone as i have my own huge list of faults, but some actions of some people really really get on my nerves. i don't understand the following categories of people:

1. the provincial people - those who are so set in their own thoughts and ideas (without any basis) and you can never ever convince them of anything besides what they think is true. the best example of this that i can think of is when people outside of america have this idea that america is "heaven on earth," that life there is really easy, that people have money falling out of their pockets, and so on. they refuse to believe anything else. these people often miss out on seeing a great number of blessings that they have that people living in america lack for example.

2. the assumption makers - very similar to the above category, this set of people assume things based on what is visible without taking anything else into consideration. this is almost always related to money in some way... for example, someone hears that you got a job, and they automatically assume that you are "making the big bucks now." or, someone walks into your apartment and sees almost no furniture there but sees a nice monitor or tv and says, "dang, you must be extremely rich." why do people make these assumptions? if you try to correct these people, they refuse to believe you, even though in most cases, the people who say these things would have several fold more than the person they told the comment to (in terms of both finances and time worked), and so on. reality of the matter is, what is apparent isn't necessarily what is true because people don't know the situations of each other. so why do people say these kinds of things?

3. the nosy people... people who want to ask about everything, especially financial things when they have no business in doing so... "how much do you get paid?" -- what business does anyone have asking that? or, "how much did you buy this or that or the other?" why do people ask these kinds of questions?

i could go on classifying these types of people, but i realized that there really is no need to, since they all share a common thread - a lack of content with their current situation and blessings. this leads many of them to not realize the great blessing they are in, and always try to look at ways in which others are better off than them financially.

i guess as imam siraj wahaj said about a year ago in a speech, that his mother used to always tell him, "people will just be people..." (it might have been, "people will always be people," can't remember anymore). so yeah... people will always be people...

so i saw this article on y! news about muslim feminists in new york wanting to start a quran interpretation council - their goal being to break streotypes involving terrorism and women being oppressed in islam.

i don't know why, but something strikes me as odd about this... "muslim feminists" might be the start of oddity - islam is the first religion that gave women rights and elevated women to a status that is many times higher than that of men. the examples are innumerable, but just one example is that one of the top narrators of ahadeeth who taught the great men of the ummah and whom many of the great scholars took their knowledge directly or indirectly was sayida 3a2isha (ra).

secondly, a "shura council of women to interpret the Quran?" -- i mean what do they think this is, "everyone interpret the Quran the way they wish?" -- its not about men and injustice as they claim it is - the great islamic universities are open to women just as they are for men - no one stopped any woman from studying islam at al Azhar or Madinah Unniversity and publishing great works on Islam if they want to...

so i don't get it, how is a group of random women (which is what i think of when reading this article, of course i could be wrong...) simply going to decide that "men are unjust, we are going to make a council to interpret the Quran?"

i have no problem with women writing tafseer of Quran - as long as they are qualified to do so. however, a group of random women (or men for that matter) writing a tafseer? i think not...

does anyone else see this, or is it that perhaps i am reading too much into this article?

while working on y! answers, i sometimes go to the homepage and have a particular question catch my eye. sometimes, i can't help but wonder, "what are these people thinking..."

here's one recent example:
. can a muslim be a good american? -- totally ridiculous question, read it through and you'll see what i mean. the guy lists a bunch of stereotypes and unresearched ideas to reach a conclusion at the end that:

"Therefore after much study and deliberation....perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be both "good" Muslims and good Americans. Call it what you wish....it's still the truth.."

yeah...

good morning,
sign this petition.

i read the book's review on amazon just to be sure before signing the petition, and all i can say is that i am aghast that such a person can be so blasphemous and say these kind of things. what an ignorant person...

i was going to continue on with this post explaining why the above sentence is true, but i think i can write a long essay defending points about this, and now's not the time...

anyhow, back to work, that's all for now.

greets, peace, etc. today, i decided to upload the nasheeds i have produced over time to this webpage. they're all in the new "audio studio" section on the webpage. and yes, they're not great nor listenable-toable, but they're there to induce (slight) laughter. there are still some other things i want to upload to this page, but it's a matter of time...

it was sooooooo cold today! [i learned that my camera does some cool stuff today when i looked at the book to find out how to get the camera to automatically take this picture after 10 seconds... i want to take some pictures!].

oh yeah, the other day at the masjid... *sighs* (as one could tell from my previous post, i really prefer the environment of the masajid in atlanta...) -- but the other day (friday), i ran into two awkward situations (i got a whole list of these by now hehe).

so they changed the time of 3isha from 8:15 till 8:00 (desi standard time) -- and i had forgotten, and i remembered around 8:05 and so i left late for the masjid. when i got there, it looked as though they hadn't prayed, so i asked someone if they had prayed yet, and i was told that the imam hadn't come yet. so i went up and sat down in the front row. the brother next to me, one of the first people mansoor and i met when we got there, tells me to lead the salat (3isha) because its getting late. so i lead 3isha, and when i had finished, the imam had come back, so he lead tarawee7 as normal.

so after the 20th rak3ah, the imam said, "salat ul witr" (as usual), and was faced towards the qibla, so i glanced at my watch to see what time it was (itching to go home hehe), and suddenly he turns around and looks at me and says, "can i lead witr?" -- and i am like huh!? (and at the same time feeling really embarrassed, thinking to myself, "is he asking me this because he saw me looking at my watch and thinks i am being disrespectful by checking the time?") -- and he said, "can i pray witr, because you lead 3isha," and so i said, "please, please do." (and i was very puzzled at that).

so after finishing tarawee7, a lot of the times i just tend to leave *right* after witr. but due to that situation, i decided that i would stay for the short talk after witr to avoid further awkward situations. so as soon as witr was being completed, before i could even say my second salams, the guy next to me, a really old uncle, touched my hand. i was like, "huh? maybe an accident?" - so anyway, after witr, i sat for the short talk.

and the talk ended, and i was ready to go home. but when i came to leave, the uncle touched my hand again. and i shook hands with him and the other people and began to walk towards the exit, and he followed me, and asked me, "did the imam read only one rak3ah at any point during the tarwee7?" -- and i am like, "yeah, at the very last rak3ah he did." -- and he started going off on this whole spiel about how in pakistan, all the scholars agree that a person must read at least 3 ayahs per rak3ah for the salat to be deemed valid; and how he experienced people reading less in other masajid and his conversations with them and so on. and all this time i am thinking, "why is he telling me this?"

so anyway, not knowing what to say, i say, "jazakAllah khair" and continue walking towards the door, get my shoes and put them on. and as i am about to leave, the uncle starts to talk to me again and says, "you know, if you know quran, you have more right to be leading than him [the imam] because you have (and he touches my "beard") this." and other people start coming towards where we are; and i was taken by shock and had no chance to reply, and he says, "i'll talk to you about this later." -- and he leaves.

two very awkward situations... so on saturday, to resolve the first situation, i went to the imam after salat and i apologized to him for having lead 3isha (thinking that maybe he got offended or something) - but apparently he wasn't upset, he said, "no its a good thing that you listened to them and lead 3isha, because when the salat time comes we should pray at its time."

as for the second situation, i didn't see the old uncle on saturday, and on sunday (today), i saw him but avoided him at all costs. dang, people want to use me to overthrow the current imam.

not to mention that the statement he made is untrue -- because 1. the current imam's memorization is multiple folds better than mine, (and there is NO exaggeration in this statement whatsoever, i am a fake hehe); 2. he has a lot more knowledge than me; 3. he is older than me; and 4. i feel that he is very sincere, to the extent that although he studied deen, he then persued a degree in computer science so that he supports his family from a "non-deen" occupation so that his deen work is totally for the sake of Allah.

so yeah; the current imam is masha'Allah a very sincere and very nice guy -- not to mention his memorization is insanely strong masha'Allah, and the fact that his one way drive to work is ~3 hours (!); and yet he still manages to take time out to lead tarawee7 masha'Allah (whereas during normal non-ramadan times, he would stay at a hotel throughout the week and just come home on the weekends). so sub7anAllah, that takes insane dedication.

but what can i tell you, there are always those people who will complain about a small thing that they see that a person has done that is wrong in their eyes, rather than look at the great amount of effort which a person may exert in the sake of Allah... sub7anAllah.

that's my rant of the day. i got nothing more to say for now. peace out.