Ad astra per alia porci

I really despise the idiots who write little perl scripts to crawl the living *beep*beep*beep* out of search.cpan.org as they completely ignore the robots.txt and bring the server to its knees forcing me to put explicit 'deny' directives in the httpd.conf. I don't understand why people do this and find it especially irritating when they keep on hammering the website even after all they receive is a 403. I've found 5 in the last few days doing this so if this shoe fits, please find another hobby...soon. I think I'm going to have to create a rather explicit 403 page so maybe they'll get the hint. Sometimes, it takes a hammer and a blowtorch.

The book of the day is Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. Charley is a poodle who accompanies Steinbeck on a road trip around the US in 1961. Even if you hated the Grapes of Wrath you'll likely enjoy this travelogue which has been republished by Penguin in honor of the Centennial of Steinbeck's birth.