Blog News

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.

I know the blog is showing a sample page. That is because I am rebuilding it. For now, you can still access the blog at sectorocho.com

I will explain the issues in a future post, coming soon.

Because of the new terms from Pay Pal, I have closed my Venmo account.