The site has been slow this morning because of a harvester operating out of an IP address in Bratislava, Slovakia. Moreover, I took the server and website down three times while reconfiguring things to block this creep.

I'm kind of easy going but this sort of thing makes me mad. I don't know if someone was deliberately trying to download every single story, category and link on the site or whether they had just turned their robot loose on the web generally. Either way, it's a lot like turning your cat-killing dog loose in a neighborhood full of little old ladies -- it's antisocial and criminal behavior.

Unfortunately, I've done all that is practical since there is no point reporting this person to an ISP in Slovakia -- he may have been using a proxy from Ulan Bator for all I know -- but the point is there is no enforcement outside of a handful of situations. It's just a danger of the internet like scorpions in your boots in the Old West.

Thanks Bob for showing me how to patch the firewall against this kind of thing.

Hugs to all you good and kind readers and my backside to all you fucking harvesters,
- Erin