Stripped Bikes

I created a Tumblr account today to post a photo essay I've been working on. It's a series of pictures of dismantled, forgotten, rotting bikes that I see every day in Philly. I'll post a new picture each day until I run out. I have enough to keep things fresh for a few weeks. Check it out if you feel like it.

Stripped Bikes

What not to do during a job interview

You already know you need a good education, some decent work experience and a little charisma. But when you show up to an interview, you should really consider these small mistakes that could make all the difference.

1. Don't wear cologne/perfume. Just take a shower and show up clean. You never know when you'll meet an interviewer who is allergic to cologne or has an overall aversion to strong smells.
2. Don't discuss religion or politics. Interviewers don't need to know that you've accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.
3. Don't mispronounce common words. "May I ax you a question?" "Sure, I'd like a glass of wudder please."
4. Don't talk shit about previous employers. When they ask you why you're leaving your current position, just say you've learned a great deal in your time there but you don't think it's a great fit for you. They don't want to hear negativity.
5. Don't use curse words. You might think it sounds charming to say "shit" in an interview. Trust me - it's not. Save that kind of language for the blogosphere.

And above all else, act like you're happy to be there. And tell them you want the job.

What else?

Search Strings – Porn that will make you sick

I stopped paying attention to stats a couple years ago. But on a whim today, I took a peek. And I see that The Churning has had 1,771,694 unique visitors in its lifetime. That's a lot, right? Should I be making money off this shit?

Anyway, the stat tracker I use also shows keyword activity. And it's always kind of fun to see what you sick fucks are looking for when you land on my site. Here are a few examples from the last hour:

1. Porn that will make you sick - I don't have that here unfortunately. But I HAVE thought about it. In fact, I once had the genius idea of creating a porn site called OpenSorePorn.com. There's got to be a market for that, right? But getting into that business is a whole mess of shit. In corporate buzzwords, that's just not in my wheelhouse.
2. Best place to pee in a urinal - Now THIS is the kind of topic I can help with. I brought it up once before - and even included illustrations! I think the ricochet is the best bet. Just don't put too much force behind it or you'll find yourself the victim of a piss boomerang.
3. Porn really disgusting that it will make you vomit - Jesus, people give me a break here. The closest thing I can do for you is to show you the infamous Opie and Anthony Baby Bird video where a grown man vomited gallons and gallons of egg nog into another grown man's mouth. It's not porn, but it might make you puke. Good luck.
4. Open a bottle with vagina - YES! I saw this feat in person. But I don't have video or pictures. It was in a Thailand strip club where you could literally be beaten to death for whipping out a camera. But I can share a few details.
5. My bf masturbates daily in shower - Ladies, please stop focusing so much on what your guy does when he's alone. People are so concerned with the "normal" amount of masturbation - it's easily the #1 most common search term for my site. Long story short - if you're not hurting yourself, you're probably okay. And if you think your spouse is jerking off too often, ask them to do it when you're not around.

THIS is what you people are looking for? And The Churning is where you ended up?!? Shit. This site really is a piece of garbage littering the Internet.

Twitter Phishing and the Pharma Hack

Hey nerds, this one's for you!

Hackers are all up in my shit. First, it started with a Twitter spambot that direct messaged me from a friend's account. The message read, "You seen what this person is saying about you? terrible things.." and it was followed by a link to what looked like Twitter's login page but it was hosted at this URL: tivvitter.com. (Don't go there.)

I'm not sure what the scammer's endgame was, but clearly the first step was to get users' Twitter login info. And I'd love to say that I was too smart to fall for their shenanigans, but in reality I was simply too lazy. I clicked the link, but when I saw the login, I didn't feel like typing in my username and password from my iPhone. It wasn't until later that I realized it was a dummy login page with a non-Twitter URL.

Spammers - 0
JJ - 1

Then in a completely separate incident, I got a very helpful comment from xensen, one of The Churning's recent visitors (Thanks!). They let me know that my site was hit by the Pharma Hack. As instructed, I Googled it to learn more.

Basically, hackers get into WordPress sites through the weak security of certain plugins. Askimet is a common entry point. In my case, I think they got in through a plugin called WPRef. I don't remember what I thought the plugin was supposed to do, but when I opened it up to look at the php content, the file was almost entirely script instructions for opening up my WordPress security to outside code.

After that, the hackers were able to re-write the meta for my highest ranking pages. They added various drug brand name, which only really revealed themselves via Google. If you were to view the pages themselves as a typical user, they looked perfectly fine. Check out this Google search which still shows the offending meta entries (as of Jan 16).

So I followed the Pharma Hack removal instructions from Pearsonified: I cleaned up my plugins directory, deleting all files for all currently unused plugins. I installed the latest version of WP. And I omitted all of the lines of hacked code from my active database.

Only time will tell if I did it all correctly. Google's spiders will reindex my site in a matter of days or weeks. And hopefully all the meta will look like it's back to normal. If not, I'll do a deeper dive into my currently active plugins. Wish me luck.

Spammers - 0
JJ - 2

Oh my god, I am the winner!