GerritsenBeach.net

I can’t believe it but GerritsenBeach.net has turned two today. Its been two full years since GerritsenBeach.net has been launched. Happy Birthday to Us!

It all started with a knocked down bus shelter, a camera phone and some spare time.

I think the photos have improved. :) First Post

Thanks to everyone who reads this site!

Now for some Technical Info and Stats!

Unique Visits for August 2008 (200% increase from last year. Thanks!)

• 428 Daily Average
• 13,254 Monthly Average
• 37,068 Page Views

Unique Visits Last Year August 2007

• 143 Daily Average
• 4,432 Monthly Average
• 12,511 Page Views

Looks like this “small blog” made the paper.

BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, July 24th 2008, 5:35 PM

Nobody beats the Wiz - not even a blogger.

The feisty founder of electronics behemoth The Wiz is threatening to sue a Brooklyn blogger who published jabs against the businessman on his small Web site.

Read more here

On July 18th 2008, my website came under attack from a now known source, which I believe, based on information received, the attacker is CLOSELY CONNECTED to Mr. Stephen Jemal of SSJ Development. Let’s recap.

I posted a story about Mr. Jemal being sued for an alleged non-payment of a loan connected to his real estate projects in our area. I later posted a story about a “DoS Attack” on GerritsenBeach.net after it was contained, informing everyone of the resulting down time. I reported the incident to Verizon, the attacking IP’s owner.

Later that night after the attack, I received a letter via email from Stephen Jemal’s attorneys, demanding that I take down my post, citing defamation. Here is that demand letter.

I believe that the demand letter makes completely ridiculous and unreasonable demands of me and the website, including:

1. Removing the entire publication about Mr. Jemal
2. Removing any reference of the publication from Google, all other search engines, and other blogs (like I run Google and control their root user name and passwords!),
3. Publish a retraction / clarification approved by Mr. Jemal and distribute that throughout the internet,
4. signing a “non-disparagement” agreement, and… oh yeah
5. Sign an immediate settlement of TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for legal fees, and additional consideration to induce Mr. Jemal not to file a lawsuit.

Whew! Mr. Jemal’s representation conveyed that the article “painted” him badly. (This Article)

Here is the problem with all of this: What statement did I make that was false? What statement did I make that was defamatory? Oh, that’s right… NOTHING. Needless to say, that demand was flatly rejected.

This is where things take a very interesting turn.

After posting about the DoS attack, I received multiple emails from ####@SSJDevelopment.com stating that he knows that someone VERY CLOSELY connected to Mr. Jemal, used a “bash script” that he had taught this person.

Upon reviewing the website logs, the script described was indeed the script used to attack this website. Based on the connection between the two pieces of information, I have reason to believe the author of the email.

Mr. Jemal’s attorneys have since told me that the attack on the site was the work of a “renegade employee” who acted without knowledge or authorization of Mr. Jemal. They also told me that Mr. Jemal fired this employee.

While I am not in total agreement with this statement (the offensive IP originated from the Jersey Shore where the alleged offender claims to live, not in Brooklyn where this “renegade employee” worked), I accepted their statement. I was also accused of using this information in an attempt to extort a settlement, which I was not doing at all – I was simply adding information to the negotiations, attempting to give all a fuller view of the circumstances surrounding the blog entry, and released the information with no thought to how it would “be painted” or inferred.

Stay Tuned! We remain on Red Alert (but will take off the annoying red color)and anticipate negotiations ending shortly.

“Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.”
-Sir Winston Churchill

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
-Albert Einstein

“All wars are fought for money.”
-Socrates

Please Standby

Other than the people who declared war on me because of this site. No one, who knew how, has ever attempted a Denial of Service attack(DoS).

If you were on the site at all today you might of noticed that the site was either not working or it was very slow. This was the result of the DoS.

The the Denial of Service attack was targeting “Developer Stephen S. Jemal in $5.5 Million Dollar Contract Dispute with His Investment Companies“and the PDF in the post.

That post has a PDF document of complaint regarding the Stephen Jemal court case.

A specific IP has been making up to 50 requests a second for the PDF that I am hosting of the court complaint regarding the case.

The attack brought down my server, which hosts over 120 domains, for a few hours.

It was brought back up by denying access to that IP.

Now my server is just responding to the requests with a “403″ forbidden error. Serving up the 403 error will use practically no bandwidth and will be a lot less stressful for the server compared to a successful command, which brought down the server in the first place.

I will be monitoring the activity on my site.

I have also reported the attack to the Verizon security team, the IP’s owner, of the Denial of Service attack.

I would hate to actually find out if this attack was ordered by the Jemal’s.

If you don’t already know on every story you can add your two cents.

1. Type your well-crafted comment in the comment box at the bottom of the story
2. Enter your name. (Optional)
3. You can enter your email address. (Optional)

Photo by JKim1

Thanks to Brandi and everyone that has been emailing me and posting events on the message board!

We all have a great place to go to for local events. So keep it up!

http://www.gerritsenbeach.net/community-calendar/

I killed the old message board.

Long live the new message board!

SO? What are you waiting for?!?  Sign up!

Its been one full year since GerritsenBeach.net has been launched. Happy Birthday to Us!

It all started with a knocked down bus shelter, a camera phone and some spare time.

I think the photos have improved. :)First Post

Thanks to everyone who reads this site!

Now for some Technical Info and Stats!

• As of this week 9/09/07 there has been 1,337 Unique Visitors out there! 967 new, 370 returning and 2,745 pages views.
• As of the first week online 9/20/06 there was 30 Unique Visitors, 13 New, 17 returning, and 104 page views. All of that might of been me at different computers
• As of August 2007 the site is using 3.8 GB Monthly bandwidth

Traffic

• 32% of the traffic is “Direct Visit”. Meaning you either have it bookmarked or are typing GerritsenBeach.net in directly.
• 46% of traffic is searches. Top Searches include:
  • gerritsen beach
  • gerritsen beach net
  • great irish fair
  • roll n roaster
• 21% of traffic is Referring Sites
  • images.google.com
  • gowanuslounge.blogspot.com
  • gothamist.com

Most Popular Pages

1. GerritsenBeach.net » Roll N Roaster keeps change from gift … (1,097 Views) Sorry RnR, you did that to yourself
2. GerritsenBeach.net » Frank Solivan Accident (827 Views) Not sure why this is popular
   
3. GerritsenBeach.net » The Great Irish Fair Is Back! (822 Views) no other site has this covered online
4. GerritsenBeach.net » Gerritsen Menus (771 Views) I use this all the time
5. GerritsenBeach.net » Message Board (674 Views) Alot of people read this. My counter doesn’t count message board views but my server does. It amazing that this isnt the most popular section of the site.