Blog News

I grow so weary of going to websites where the host allows comments to degenerate into name calling and team politics. I also hate when people post spam to the comments, talking about how they make $5,000 a minute from home. I do my best to moderate that, but understand that I can’t let this blog become too much of a time waster for me, because I have a life and it is a busy one. Even writing posts takes anywhere from one to three hours a day, counting research, writing, and editing. This blog gets between 2,000 and 10,000 hits a day. It gets between 20 and 100 comments a day. So keep that in mind when you see how I moderate the comments:

I don’t mind disagreement. I encourage it. It is through disagreement and debate that we grow and modify our stand on controversial subjects. With that being said, there are a few basic things that keep this place running smoothly:

I don’t allow personal attacks. I do this because I want comments to stay on topic and not degenerate into the name calling mess that the comment sections of so many other websites. I will let some minor transgressions slide, but I do my best to keep things from becoming too heated. Attack ideas all you want, but don’t let it get personal.

I don’t allow comments that are advertisements. Note that I don’t advertise products or services here at all. Not even my own. When I do articles about products, I don’t do them because I stand to make money. I am even careful to include disclaimers. At my discretion, I will edit your comment to remove advertisements or simply not allow the comment. How that goes depends on a few things: Are you a long time commenter? If your first comment is an advertisement, it likely goes in the trash heap. In the nearly 16 years of this blog, I have made only three exceptions to this rule that I can remember. In each of them, the post and/or comment was because of injuries or danger to a child, and were directing people to a donation site so people could donate to help the child’s family. In each of those cases, I was contacted by email and asked to post the information.

The only other ask is those few occasions that I ask for donations to cover the costs of running the site.

I close posts for comments after 21 days. No use beating a dead horse.

One other rule- at the end of the day, this is my blog. I pay for everything here from the server space to the software that runs it. Since it’s my property, I can modify the rules here anytime that I want to. There have been commenters who have come here and demanded that I allow them to say what they want under the guise of “free speech.” I’m not preventing you from starting your own blog at your own expense, but people comment here on my dime, and that means I get to set the rules.

Violate the rules, and I may give you a warning, I may edit out offensive words, advertising links, or I may just toss your comment in the trash. I won’t ever change your comment to make it something that you didn’t say. ( I did it once to a supposed self described “hacker” who was trying to be very personal and publish threats against me. I changed his comment to make it seem like he wanted to perform a certain homosexual act on me. Childish, but funny. I deleted it once he saw it.)

If the violations are bad enough, I will ban you, or your entire IP address. I moderate all comments, thanks to the aforementioned hacker who wouldn’t take “go away” for an answer. That particular person was making death threats as well as posting my address.

Anyhow, comments have been relatively calm for several months, except for a few spammers. I just wanted to remind everyone of the rules.

Due to a large amount of SPAM comments (well over 200 in the last week) trying to sell discount drugs:

• I had to disable comments on the “Training Manuals” page.
• I also had to add IPs addresses in Cambodia and Turkey to the IPs that are not permitted to post comments. Comments from those IP addresses will go to the trash. I won’t even see them in the moderation queue.

So any of you who have VPNs, don’t use those countries to comment.

The Biden administration is openly talking about making people who believe in free speech into enemies of the state by declaring them to be a threat to US security. Jonathan expressed concern that this blog could be shut down by simply revoking my domain name. I have taken steps to make this site more resistant to being cancelled.

• This blog has multiple domain names that are all registered with different registrars. The different registrars are either known to be friendly to the right, dedicated to free speech, or are located in other countries. The sites are: areaocho.com, sectorocho.com, and divemedic.xyz Each of those web addresses lead to this blog.
• This site is hosted on servers in Europe and Asia. The servers are owned by overseas companies that are known to be defenders of free speech and in countries that do not support censorship, especially by US authorities.
• If THOSE fail, I have access to an emergency server that I can point any of those addresses to. If I need that one, we have real issues.

As a SCUBA diver, you learn from the early days of your training that your gear is your life support system. You wear backup gear. You dive with a buddy, who is also a source of backup gear. As I became more experienced, I began to push the limits. As with any dangerous activity that relies on mechanical devices, I experienced equipment failures. I learned to make my gear more robust, less prone to single point failure, and more redundant.

As a firefighter, I saw and did similar things. I saw the people who suffered as a result of Katrina. I know how to make things robust. This blog and site are as robust as I can make them. If I have overlooked anything and we wind up being taken down, that is a message in itself. The message is that the time for talking is over.

The most obvious single failure point is to haul me into jail or put a bullet in me to silence me. As the Soviets used to say, VZYALI. I am a small fish. There are others who are far more visible and more likely to be disappeared than I. For that reason, I watch some of them. If they disappear or are silenced without warning, it will be time to not be where I can be found. Sound paranoid? Maybe not. Five years ago, would you have dreamed that a sitting president would call someone a threat to national security for the crime of owning a social media site?

I know that many of you have seen blogs being nuked. That is why I set up this website on its own server. The idea here is that I setup and maintain the server for my use. That server has a lot more capacity than my blog is using, but costs a good chunk more than I can justify spending on a blog. So I came up with the idea of sharing that server. I initially was sharing it for $25 a month.

This is what I did:

• I set up a server in a country that won’t submit to US takedown requests. Being across the pond makes the websites run a tad slower, but they are more resistant to being shut down.
• The server is backed up nightly.
• There is a mirror server in a second country.
• The entire thing is owned by a corporation.

The Pitch:

Recently, I moved to this new server and became my own IT guy. Because of this, I was able to realize significant cost savings that I am passing on. The new cost is $15 per month. Those who are already being hosted by me have gotten an email detailing the new rate. If you haven’t seen that email, contact me. For that rate, this is what you get:

• You get your own blog, run on the widely available and customizable WordPress software.
• You get one email address with up to 1gb of storage. More options and storage are available for a nominal fee. The email address is attached to your blog, for example: You@yourblog.com
• I will migrate your blogger or WordPress blog to this server.
• You can use your own wed address if you have one, or we can find one. There may or may not be an extra charge for that, depends on what you want to use. Some cost more than others.

What you don’t get:

I am not a web designer, graphic artist, computer expert, or any sort of artist. So I can’t offer custom websites, web design, or any of that. I recommend that you use any of the available WordPress custom themes that are widely available online, or that you go with one of the stock themes that comes with the software.

The only catch or rule here is that you can’t run a porn site. The risk for underage porn and the large amount of resources that they use just make that too much of a hassle. I just don’t want to be in the porn business. Other than that, I am hands off. Free speech and all of that.

How to sign up:

Email me to make the arrangements. Divemedic (at) areaocho (dot) com.

The old server will be shut down within the next 30 days. Anyone who has not spoken with me about moving your files to the new server has until that time to backup their files and blogs. Once the old server has been shut down, all of your files will be lost forever unless you or I have moved them to the new server, or have otherwise saved them.

That applies to two people. Plan accordingly.

Still making changes to the site. I managed to get the white background on the frontpage changed. You will note that the color scheme of the blog is coming together into some coherence, and even matches the old color scheme. I am now going to work on the individual post issues, look into “previous” and “next” buttons, changing the text color of embedded links, and some other changes.

I know the blog has been looking like it was nuked. It wasn’t. What happened was that I got screwed by the IT guy that was my partner in the server venture.

Back when Biden first took office and the left was cancelling voices on the right, I was approached by an Internet guy with a business proposition. His proposal was that I rent some space on a server that he had in Europe, and share the cost with other like minded bloggers. He offered to run the entire thing for me, where I would pay him and then share the costs with those other bloggers. I went with his plan, and have been paying him ever since. For now, we will call him IT guy.

There are people who have shared my server with me. Some, like BCE, since the beginning of the new server, while others have done so at various points since then.

All went well until about two months ago, when another blogger wanted to move his blog to my server. He paid me for a year in advance. I contacted the IT guy and asked him to set up the migration. A month went by. No action.

Eventually, IT guy stopped responding to emails, so I tried calling his cell phone. He told me how busy he was, and said he would get to the migration that afternoon. It still didn’t get done.

Then BCE’s blog got nuked, so he asked me to bring his backup site from its slumber and reset the password. You guessed it, no response from my emails to IT guy, and IT guy is no longer answering my calls, nor is he returning voicemail messages or emails.

At first I thought he was ill. Nope. Not to busy to cash checks or post to his blog. I paid him on a quarterly basis, and he cashed the last check on October 3 without a word about why he wasn’t doing what he was charging me for.

So I began looking to migrate my blog over to a new server. I had to learn how to run the server and do all of the Internet geeky stuff myself, all while my grandson was in the hospital and a lot of other stuff that had higher priorities. Something had to give, and that was sleep. I’ve been getting less than four of hours a night of sleep as I rented some server space in Europe, set up a multi-site server, along with a private email service, SSL certificates, and all of the rest. I am determined that no one will shut down my voice until I feel that there is nothing left to say.

There were some technical hiccups. That’s why the blog looked like it had been nuked. I contacted the other bloggers who were sharing the server, and all but two of them have been migrated to the new server. The other two have yet to answer my attempts to get ahold of them. I don’t know how long the old server will continue to be functional. Once it gets shut down, their content will be lost forever.

The new server is actually better than the old one. More memory, more processing power, more storage space and a lot more bandwidth. This situation won’t happen again because this time I am in control of the entire thing.

I’m not posting IT guy’s identity just yet, because I am giving him a bit of the benefit of the doubt. I am not going to accuse someone of taking my money and ripping me off, mostly because I don’t know for sure what is going on. I wish him well with his own blog and his endeavors.

With the new server comes some style changes. I am tweaking the look of the blog. Please bear with me, and let me know of any problems. I am working on readability and appearance. You will note that the text/background contrast has improved. I will continue to work on things.

I am trying to make the website look a bit less plain. Let me know what all of you think.