I Am Off To Toronto!
I’m off to Toronto for a two week business and pleasure tour of the Eastern side of Canada. This is my first time in Toronto and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of food it has to offer. In addition to hitting all the Toronto dining hot spots (Susur is at the top of the list), we plan to do a little side trip to Montreal and Quebec City. I really hope those people speak English.
We’ll be back in Vancouver on the 21st. However, this blog will continue to operate like normal. Mitch Harper will be pitching in with his great advice on generating blog traffic and I’m sure you’ll see a thing or two from Michael Kwan. There maybe another guest blogger helping as well. This doesn’t mean I won’t be doing any updates. Far from it. If you recall the last time I went off on a trip, the blog was updated more than ever.
If any Toronto area readers want to do a meet up, give me an email and we can try to work out a time and place. If you wish to recommend some things to check out while I’m here, that would be great.
See you on the other side of Canada!
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Cant wait to see the pictures!
Serendipity… the chance to meet John Chow in the same week I partied with Darren and the b5 gang.
What are the chances of that?
Good luck on your trip John!
P.S. I could write you a few guest posts
I don’t know if you know this already but your site as not been available to me all day, literally just coming back online a few minutes ago.
I don’t know if other people have had the same experience.
Yeah, I couldn’t access JC the whole day! What happened John?
Early this morning, it looks like he got hacked by ISKORPTIX.
Me, Ramblings from the Marginalized, and The Beginning blogs followed the ordeal and kept track of it. Steve of RFTM found John’s business card and gave him a ring and the site went completely down after that. Most likely to clean up the carnage if iFrames left behind and to track down the source of the problem.
yup he got hacked overnight. At around 6h15AM Eastern time I tried to surf in, but there was only a blank page. after looking at the source it was clean he’d been hacked.
NEWSFLASH: John Chow gets hacked – takes vacation!
The root of all evil is so evil he doesn’t care about the evilness of others!!
Haha…good to see the site back up and running
John, please let us know how you got hacked as many of us have been following this closely all day and definitely would like to avoid this ourselves.
That’d be good – a lot of us are using WordPress and may be vulnerable to the same attacks.
All I got were “problem loading page” messages the whole day. SO relieved the site’s up and running again.
Have fun John
Luck your site’s back up.
EVERYONE ELSE: Let me know what topics you want me to write about when John’s gone. All suggestions welcome.
Let’s hear your experience with selling web sites.
We know of (but not necessarily about) your big one…and I also wonder if you have bought and/or sold any smaller ones, and how those went down.
Yeah maybe an article on how you build a site up and sell if for a 6 figure sum?
Wow site been down all day. Glad to see things are back up. Have a good trip!
Have a nice and pleasant trip!
John, if you are in the Queen West area (first time in Toronto = you must check it), check out the hole-in-the-wall known as New York Subway (Queen St W @ Portland St)…it’s an Indian fusion of some sort I believe, with these great satay burritos! Mmmm…
It’s not the high class dining you’ve been reviewing in Van, but goooood stuff!
Also, some of the best and coolest variety pizza (and great Italian) can be found at Amatto, just down the block a bit (towards Bathurst, on Queen W). Please bring me back a few slices too, mmmm…so good…
Ditto on New York subway. YUM.
A To. meetup would be cool for sure. I went to the Problogger one on Tuesday and it was pretty fun.
Have a great trip, John. Lots of food reviews please. I get hungry often.
Have a good trip John. Mitch and I will try to hold down the fort.
Hope you two have some awesome stuff cooked up
We’re all looking forward to it 
Hey John, why don’t you continue farther east and visit the Maritimes, beautiful scenery and some of the best people in the country. Enjoy your trip in TO.
Yes! To my homeland, the real east coast!
Where are you guys? I’m in Halifax myself. I’m sure John will make his way down here someday in the future. Be sure to drop by Newfoundland too. It’s my second home.
I’m in Vancouver, from Nova Scotia. Been here over three years now, trying to make John Chow money.
I need your help! I’m going to attempt to set a Guinness World Record and I need as much help promoting as possible.
The record I’m going to try and set is the longest blog comment string ever. For more details you can see the post here: World Record Attempt
I saw attempts to make the longest comment string before.. How many comments do you need to set the record?
Posting unrelated comment spam might not help your cause.
Have fun in Toronto & Montreal. Over 10 years now since I’ve been to either
how did you get hacked! visit my site to see how famous johns hacker was.
I went to Toronto a few weeks ago. It was my first trip to Canada and I was impressed. The people were super nice. It was a breath of fresh air compared to St. Louis.
I get to go to Vancouver in a month or so. I’m pretty excited to see the other side of Canada.
If you travel about 25 minutes north of Toronto. Then definately check out The Octagon Restaurant. I even have the info for you here:
7529 Yonge St.
Toronto, Ontario
905-889-8989
Fine dining – Great steaks and prawns the size of your head
in case you guys didn’t notice stephenfung was also hacked his site came up at the same time johns did, coincidence, no. the simple answer johns server was hacked.
doesn’t john have his own servers? him and stephen use the TTZ servers?
Getting a server hacked sucks but time
Hope John’s got some decent sys-admins to get him up and running safely.
maybe it’s not even john…maybe it’s the hacker and he is fooling us all…notice he said nothing about the attempted hack!….
Sorry about waking you up this morning John but I figured is was a phone call you would want to receive.
Some of us were wondering how bad you got hit after you did not come back up after being down for 6+ hours!
Thanks for the call Steve. We had to take the server offline in order to fix it. My admin is still looking into it, but he pretty much had to reinstall all the web services.
then why did your site redirect to http://www.siyamiozkan-mavideniz.org
so someone hacked your server?
I assume your server is running Linux?
If it was running Server 2003, there was a DNS Vulnerability posted tonight for Server 2000 and 2003.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/935964.mspx
Montreal’s hit and miss with English. People who speak it are accommodating, people who don’t are… less accommodating.
Quebec city was great. People have less of a grasp on English but are far more willing to meet you halfway. I found it to be a much friendlier place than Montreal.
Also, please note that Toronto and Montreal are NOT the “Eastern side of Canada”
They are central Canada. You’ll have to put in a lot more hours on the road to reach the East. If you ever make your way down this way, you can crash at my place 
Montreal rules, Quebec City drools!
It was a struggle to find Engling-speaking folks in Quebec City, but I’d go back there any day.
Hey John, hope you have fun in Toronto. If you’re going to plan a Toronto dot com Pho meet count me in!
Who is Toronto?
Has it occured to anyone that this might have been a linkbait tactic? I know… Its a longshot, but the same guy nailed Shoemoney’s blog through a forum vulnerability. I wonder how many back links were generated by people reporting the outage. I know I dropped one on my blog. If this was intentional John, bravo!
have fun!!!, post photos
Hey John, I wouldn’t mind meeting up and chatting about making money online… email me and we’ll set something up I live downtown
was your site hacked yesterday john?
have fun on your trip
enjoy your trip, John. Don’t get fat when you come back.
John got hacked because of a hole on one of the other sites hosted by his server.
Keep that software up to date people!
Good to see your site back up. Maybe the extra publicity of being hacked will more than cover any lost revenue from downtime.
Have a good holiday
Have fun John! Take lots of pretty food pics
John
Give me a shout when you visit Toronto, would love to meet up! I have been to Susur and to Lee, both restaurants run by world renowned chef Susur Lee.
I think you will love Susur… its more expensive then Lee. However, the food (especially the desserts) are to die for!
There are a few other restaurants you should check out… for more check toronto.com
You sure do eat a lot
John, you’re so close to me in Buffalo. If you are looking for some good HIGHLY FATTENING food, you’re more than welcome to make the short trip down here! The home of the “Chicken Wing” has to rank right up there!
He should come to long island the home of the big duck
heres proof that johns site was hacked http://www.leochiang.com/new-airbus-a380/
Toronto represent! Probably one of the greatest cities ever. Make sure you go to Bay Street to see the financial district, hit up the Hockey Hall of Fame, and get a hot dog out front of union station.
After missing Darren’s meet up this week, it would be great to have another. If your planning one count me in as well.
Perhaps hackers heard about John’s Toronto trip, got real envious and plotted to create havoc…nah!
have a fun trip
While your here you should really check out Niagara Falls. If it was warmer weather I would recommend the Maid of the Mist. Cossette Communications group is in Toronto. One of my friends has an internship there. They are the marketing company behind the Molson Canadian “I am Canadian” campaign from my understanding.
i Remember when i was a kid i went to niagra, we rode on the boat that went right by the waterfall and got soaked.
Niagara…you can’t not have the icewine while you’re there, John. You should also go see Niagara-on-the-lake — it’s this really quaint town that’s absolutely endearing. Then maybe drop by Fallsview for some Las Vegas-esque fun. The Fallsview buffet is just to-die-for: shrimps, steaks, Alaskan crabs…mmm. Oh, and if you end up liking Susur, you’ll find Flow on Yorkville and North 44 on Yonge quite appealing, too.
john, did you get hacked?
test
have fun on your trip