Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Because I’ve got nothing.
|
You Are 52% Cynical |
 Yes, you are cynical, but more than anything, you’re a realist. You see what’s screwed up in the world, but you also take time to remember what’s right. |
Now That’s A Cool Memorial
Dale Amon reports that bits of aluminum from the World Trade Center have been roving Mars for two years.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Valerie Gallery
Milestone
Valerie just rolled over for the first time by herself! From back to tummy, that is. And boy was she pissed. Much as she is right now since I put her down to type this.
Geek Bleg
I should write about my technical problems here, rather than letting it languish, or at the new blog that is pending, but I get more readers here. Who knows, someone might have an idea. Thus the “bleg” in the subject. Help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope…
Once upon a time, the client had a Windows NT4 standalone server acting as proxy and internet gateway, and an NT4 BDC (backup domain controller) acting as mail server, with Exchange 5.5 on it.
When their ancient document server died, with some trepidation I moved the several gigabytes of documents to the proxy server because that had the space for them, and never did get around to buying a new server dedicated to the purpose.
When one of the drives in the SCSI RAID 5 array failed on their mail server, and it was not practical to find a matching drive to replace it, with Exchange starting to crowd the available space anyway, we bought a new server. It was about $900 cheaper to buy it with SATA (serial ATA) drives in a RAID 5 array, so we got that rather than SCSI. Then it turned out NT can’t be installed on it, so we got Windows 2000 Server and more than nullified the savings. Not to mention that I think SATA really must stand for Slow And Troublesome Always. At least in an array, which I noticed Dell no longer offered last time I priced servers there. The three whitebox workstations we recently got that have single SATA drives seem fine.
I migrated Exchange to the new server. As importantly, I migrated the documents to the same machine, which did speed up access to those, no matter how I might insult the server in question.
Since migrating Exchange there has been nothing but trouble. It killed OWA (Outlook Web Access) until I upped the timeout to three minutes; it takes that long to authenticate and connect to the new server. Which by its very nature cannot be a BDC, but I am assured ought to play on the NT network just fine. I blamed the OWA problem on authentication at first.
The meat of the problem centers on spam filtering. We use Sybari Antigen with Spam Manager. It is the most amazing thing, all but eliminating spam, as well as catching e-mail viruses and such reliably.
It installs on the mail server, where the Antigen part of it scans for viruses and forbidden attachments.
It also installs on the proxy server, where Spam Manager does the “internet scan” to filter out spam before e-mails are even sent over to the mail server via Exchange’s Internet Mail Connector.
When both servers were NT, it was almost flawless. There were some eventual problems with logs getting out of hand and needing to be purged, but basically it Just Worked.
At that time, mail from the proxy to go over to the mail server went into the IMCDATA filder under “in” and when it got transferred it moved to the archive folder. Mail coming over from the Exchange server to the proxy went into the IMCDATA folder under “out” and then moved to archive as it sent. IMCDATA meaning, of course, Internet Mail Connector Data, as it is the “connector” for internet mail that Exchange uses for this. As opposed to, say, a connector for working with cc:Mail (to name a thoroughly obsolete example) or whatever.
Each e-mail goes into those folders as a discrete extensionless text file with a crazy looking, programatically generated name. It works great. I would periodically have to purge the archives and the log files, as they would run the old server low on disk space after a while.
After the switch, it spontaneously gave up on transferring e-mails via the IMCDATA folder set. I freaked and poked around when I noticed this, finding that instead it was generating stuff in the MTADATA filder. Basically instead of using IMC it was using MTA, Mail Transfer Agent or Microsoft Transfer Agent or whatever it stands for. Well, fine, if it works. But maybe that’s what causes regular RPC (remote procedure call) errors to appear in the event log.
So. Since the switch, since the MTA thing started - with once in a while a blip of mail appearing in the IMC folders, but weirdly not archiving, just disappearing after it’s processed - Sybari Spam Manager has not been reliable.
First, it lets a large proportion of spam through, as if it never even sees those e-mails. We are talking that even as you can watch it trap thousands of spams, it is letting several hundred to thousands through as if they route right past Sybari. And since Sybari basically replaces the mail store with itself, that’s pretty wild. But it seems to be everything to do with the MTA versus IMC thing, as far as I can tell.
Second, it regularly stops all mail completely. The solution when this happens is to remove Sybari Antigen and Spam Manager from the proxy server and reinstall it. This appears to be necessary at not greater than two month intervals.
The last install I did was after renewing the license another two years, in late March. It had broken down entirely before then. The trajectory after that fresh install was that it worked well, then gradually less well, to the point it let in most spam. I removed and wiped it out and reinstalled it Saturday. The next morning I checked and my inbox had an unusually high amount of spam, so instead of e-mail everyone at the client a “hooray, it’s fixed” message, I e-mailed them “it should be fixed but it’s looking grim so see what you receive for spam after Saturday and whether it seems to be lower.
It’s not.
And yet the program showed that it started capturing spams in large numbers as soon as it was installed and activated; dozens in a matter of a few minutes. Indeed, the ones I saw looked like an exploratory addressing attack of spam. They looked something like:
aaaaaaaa@ourdomain.com
aaaaaaab@ourdomain.com
aaaaaabb@ourdomain.com
And so forth. Those wouldn’t even get to anyone except me.
So what’s the problem? Is it communications between the two servers? I’ve told them they need a new server for Exchange that will double as the internet gateway and be the Windows 2003 boss server in an overall upgrade that includes also a new SQL Server, which they will be constrained into getting in 2 - 4 months. I’ve told them I am at least 99% certain this will solve the e-mail and spam problems as much as that is ever possible. Is it the proxy server having issues? It does, after all. My only hope right now other than a new mail server (which will give the server that also handles documents and legal research and backups mercifully less to do) that doubles as the internet gateway and has a newer version of Exchange is to replace the proxy server with a different old server, freshly installed, in the same role, but lacking the battle scars of the existing one.
Oh well. Guess I’ll be working on the spam problem today. One secretary let me know she got 90 spams over the weekend. That’s just absurd.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Speaking of That Cookout…
My brother lives right near the original Peaceful Meadows Ice Cream. Ginger is one of their flavors of the month for May, and they are more likely to have the half gallons than the branch locations. After the cookout, we swung by. Sadly, they had no half gallons of ginger ice cream. If they did, and had enough, I was going to get one each for me, my grandmother, and my father.
I settled for a single hand-packed quart, just I could have a taste and Sadie could try it. I haven’t had it in years.
Naturally we had some as soon as we got home. It’s stronger than I remember, but still amazing. Deb, no fan of ginger in general, had a tiny taste and thought it was quite different and pretty good.
Sadie thought ginger was Best Flavor Ever for ice cream! She’s an odd child. But hey, good taste.
American Idol: Gone But Not Forgotten
Sadie and I went to a cookout at my youngest brother’s house today. My older brother and sister were there.
Out of the blue my older brother said that he didn’t follow American Idol, but saw a little bit of the results finale. He thought Taylor Hicks was the worst singer on the stage, and is completely baffled that he was the winner.
I thought that was intriguing; sort of like an unclothed emperor moment. All the more so because Taylor has at times reminded me a little of the brother in question. Go figure.
My sister-in-law’s mother and her boyfriend, a blues guitarist whose accent sounds like he could be from Jamaica or elsewhere in the Carribean, were nearby and while they never claimed to like Taylor, were surprised at my vehemence. They were avid American Idol watchers and kept being disappointed that “the good singers” got voted off early. They loved Elliot. They seemed to like Mandisa, and she particularly liked Paris. What I found interesting was that the talk of Taylor made him remark how bad Bruce Springsteen sounds to him; that his guitar playing always sounds “off.” I think that was part of the observation that you don’t have to be great to sell and get rich. They also thought it was a mistake for someone like Katharine to try to cover someone like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston on AI without the chops for it.
And so the water cooler effect continues, despite Idol being done for the season. It’ll be cool knowing there’s another pair of Idol watchers in the extended family next season. Give us something to talk about if we end up at family events together.
“Prison Stripe” Jammies
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Quarter Million In Sight
As I start to write this, we are 3,381 hits away from a quarter million here at AV. Woohoo! At the rate we’ve been going, if there were strictly weekdays involved, we could expect that in about seven days or so. Given the slowness probable today and tomorrow, and assuming we don’t get a bonanza of “Erica Durance nude” or “Todd Gross fired” type of search hits, it’s likely to be an extra day or so. Maybe Monday the 5th or so; an auspicious day, when my father turns 39 for the umpteenth time.
That 250,000 doesn’t count the 131,000 and counting at my old blog, some of which came from sharing Site Meter with the original info pages for Carnival of the Capitalists. Which has its own now, almost 10,000 and counting. It also doesn’t count Deb’s old blog traffic.
Speaking of my old blog and searches, it is amazing the search traffic I get over there. Unless I start posting there again, which is never outside the realm of possibility, the traffic is all residual from unupdated links and searchs. One of my favorites is for naked vulvas, and other terms in combination with vulvas.
All on account of this post on shaving down there, and the confusion in terms between vulva and vagina, and lingual shifts.
I’ve probably never mentioned vulvas and vaginas here. Just celebrity (mostly) female names and words like nude, naked, without clothes, photos, fake, topless, and so forth. Otherwise instead of Erica Durance nude, naked, topless, house of the dead, and such, for all I know we’d get searches for Erica Durance’s vagina or vulva. Sorry, we’re not privy to those.
I sometimes fret that it’s not quality traffic, but Erica Durance has been a huge boon for traffic. Some of the other names have been as well. The only things that come close to celebrity names and associated keywords are technical items when I post about work problems or other geek stuff. Make a few of the right posts mentioning the right errors or technology, and you get a steady stream of traffic if you never post anything else. The celebrity names can depend on when shows air or who’s hot at a given time. For instance, West Wing has ended, so there should be far fewer people looking for Janel Moloney nude. But there will be some, and they add up. So I keep expanding my nude, naked, without clothes, undressed, dressed, fake photo, video, film, topless list and posting it periodically, even if it doesn’t attract as much traffic as ugly things like beheading videos: Kate Hudson, Emma Watson, Linda Park, Jolene Blalock, Alexis Bledel, Lauren Graham, Keiko Agena, Liza Weil, Amber Tamblyn, Becky Wahlstrom, Mary Steenburgen, Mageina Tovah, Constance Zimmer, Hilary Duff, Sprague Grayden, Lacey Chabert, Lindsay Lohan, Erica Durance, Allison Mack, Kristen Kreuk, Emma Taylor-Isherwood, Meg Ryan, Kathryn Morris, Jorja Fox, Emily Procter ("Proctor"), Moira Kelly, Mary McCormack, Janel Moloney, Melissa Fitzgerald, Lisa Edelstein, Elisabeth Moss (did you know migraines are real?), Teri Polo, Mary-Louise Parker, Annabeth Gish, Jennifer Finnigan, Haylie Duff, Lea Thompson, Amy Pietz, Melissa Theuriau, Hallee Hirsh, Lauren Storm, Kristy Wu, Jill Hennessy, Kathryn Hahn, Caroline Dhavernas, Katie Finneran, Diana Scarwid, Tracie Thoms, Jewel Staite, Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Sarah Paulson, Helena Bonham Carter, Missi Pyle, Annasophia Robb, Julia Winter, Dakota Fanning, Maura Tierney, Parminder Nagra, Linda Cardellini, Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell, Kelly Rowan, Mischa Barton, Melinda Clarke, Rachel Bilson, Kellie Pickler, Kelly Pickler, Katharine “Katâ€? McPhee, Melissa McGhee, Lisa Tucker, Mandisa, Paris Bennett, Becky O’Donohue, Stevie Scott, Brenna Gathers, Heather Cox, Kinnik Sky, Ayla Brown, Nicole Vicius ("Vicious") (of Diet Coke fame, and I think also in the latest Old Navy commercials), Mandy Amano, Lisa Ryder, Lexa Doig, Laura Bertram, Brandy Ledford.
But I digress.
We go through each thousand so quickly these days that I don’t normally note even the five or ten thousand demarcations, nevermind in-betweens. But 250,000 is a big deal number. A quarter of a million. Nothing compared to some of our contemporaries like this guy and that guy, who tried harder to become traffic powerhouses whatever it took. Pretty cool nonetheless. We’ll be watching for the big moment.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Well, that pretty much covers it.
|
Your Personality Is Like Acid |
 A bit wacky, you’re very difficult to predict. One moment you’re in your own little happy universe... And the next, you’re on a bad trip to your own personal hell! |
Mmmm… Ice Cream
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You Are Chubby Hubby Ice Cream |
 So there’s more of you to love… a whole lot more! |
Via CTG, who is a yummy sounding flavor I have never heard of before.
Friday, May 26, 2006
And Done!
Argh. I ended up closing the browser in the course of trying to run speed tests and lost the post I started writing.
It’s done. As of an hours or so ago. It was really pretty simple, even though we were a “pain in the ass” install, as 2nd and 3rd floor apartment addresses generally are. Once the wiring was done, nothing to it. And the new router, which replaces the combination of the DSL modem and linksys router, has wireless built in if we ever want it. We weren’t offline for more than about an hour for the switch.
We can tell the difference. In the first speed test I did, I got 4.8 download, but there was no upload test. Once I found one, I got 1.2 upload. This will make uploading pictures in bulk, for the family to download, a lot faster. In fact, I haven’t done that lately in part because I figured I might as well wait.
Sadie, Bear and Tea Girl
This seems to be Sadie’s current favorite bear, and the other toy she’s holding, which we call Tea Girl because she is pouring tea from a pot, is her favoritest toy ever. Part of the Strawberry Shortcake collection from a McDonald’s Happy Meal, of all things. She plays with the others, which I believe all remain at the office (which is when we end up having McDonald’s, usually on days that involve doctor appointments), but she always loved Tea Girl the best and pointedly brought her home.
Even Happy Babies Get The Blues
So Far…
The Verizon installer is here. He was baffled as to how to wire the ethernet into the house. Basically the phone service is on the outside of the house, near the front on the driveway side. Ethernet has to come from there to the opposite corner of the house, where my office is.
His solution, after looking in the cellar, is to do exactly the same thing the cable TV people did when they wired our apartment. That goes through the cellar, up the outside, and in through the baseboard in the office, where it hits a splitter and has a cable for the office and one going through the wall to Sadie’s room. Without looking I don’t remember if it goes from there into the living room, or if the living room has its own wire from outside.
So he got started. That’ll take a while. He has to string fiber from the pole to the house. I wonder if they string extra over for when the other apartments someday get fiber. That’d make sense. Anyway, it’ll get a junction box and so forth. He’ll have to hook on into the phones and have the service switched over, and wire the ethernet. My question now is, knowing the thing is powered and they supply a UPS, where will that plug in. I was assuming the junction box would be in our apartment. Guess I’ll find out.
Speaking of the other apartments, the people upstairs moved yesterday. I echo that guy’s sentiment, hoping we get someone good. They were excellent neighbors, apart from the parking antics during the winter, and that was mainly just funny. How could you not like a guy with a PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals sticker, and a couple of pro gun stickers, on his pickup. And when they put out all their trash by the road yesterday, they put ours out too. I added a couple bags later, but that was so nice. I assumed I’d need to take out their final stuff, but it was conveniently a Thursday so they did it. Sadly, there’s now a pile of trash on the lawn, apparently including heavy stuff like phone books, almost as if one of the trash pickup guys threw it on realizing what it was, or an animal tore it open and it spilled enthusiastically. Oh well.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
FiOS Installation Preview
After the last post, I decided to search out descriptions of FiOS installations to have a better idea what to expect. FWIW in our case the installation is free, along with the wireless router. I think there was some kind of a multi-month initial discount too. At any rate, the grand total for everything, with the same calling plan, was allegedly about $30 a month lower than what we pay now.
Here is a detailed story of Dan Bricklin’s FiOS installation last fall to his house in Newton. Ours will vary some, being an apartment.
Here is another, very brief FiOS installation story.
Here’s a FiOS installation FAQ answer.
Here’s the Verizon installation info page.
Light Blogging R Us
Please pardon the lightness of blogging today, despite there being so much to say, and so many pictures I could post. Sadie has been on a roll lately, and appears to be ready to more or less self-teach the potty.
We’re cleaning and organizing the apartment in preparation for the Verizon crew to come install FiOS tomorrow. I planned tomorrow off, but today it worked out I was able to stay home for this and help people remotely. Once I e-mailed the office manager instructions how to access documents on the AS/400, between that and memory of back when she used to use the system, she ran with it and spent most of the morning looking for what they needed. It would have been interesting had she found it, because the thing has a 4 1/4” floppy drive, and I have floppies and a drive I could throw into a PC in my office, but I have no idea whether the AS/400 would use the same format and 1.2 MB capacity, or whether the format would be different or it would want old single-sided floppies. Well, then again, I have some of those too. See what happens when you don’t throw things away?
Maybe later tonight when we have done what we can do for the day, I’ll be back. Tomorrow, who knows. Depends when they arrive and what we continue trying to do about cleaning and organizing. I’ve emptied boxes here in my office that were never unpacked, repacked some stuff, and organized the closet where we are going to put unpacked or not regularly used items.
And here goes, back to it… We also still need to run to the store, or I do anyway.
My Mini Me
Me at 18 months and Sadie at 18 months. No resemblance at all.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
OK…this is one of the stranger results I’ve run across lately.
Have I mentioned lately how much I still miss smoking? LOL. Seriously, 26 1/2 months later, I’m starting to suspect that I won’t ever not miss it. *sigh*
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You Are Pork |
 You like to think you’re the other white meat, but many people don’t want anything to do with you. You probably smoke. And it’s likely that no body part of yours is off limits. |
Happy Birthday
To blogger and blog naming whiz Andrea Harris.
Happy Anniversary
To my nephew Ryun and his lovely wife Sharon.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Ah, but will the little people be allowed to talk about it before an election?
McCain believes in nuclear power.
Sometimes I’m happy to be short.
I didn’t have far to fall when I made like Bruce and fell right over:
Give me a minute here to pick myself up off the floor.
Via cbs4Boston.com:
BREAKING NEWSThe Mass. House has voted down the primary seat belt law.
Damned if they don’t get it right once in a while.
I Rule
We did end up having to resort to accessing the AS/400 as mentioned below. Once upon a time, this is what ran their network. There’s still a patch panel in a cabinet on the wall, with what’s left of the CAT3 cables that were wired to the terminals. Nobody really remembers so much as how to log onto the system.
When last seen, it was stuck on an odd screen where it could accept no input and would not change, and the keyboard just beeped when pressed.
I figured out how to change modes, get it out of that frozen state to where the Sys Req key would call up a menu and the keys would do things. First thing I did was silence the keyboard. The horrible beep it made with each keypress was a setting! To me a sound like that means keyboard buffer overflow, or some other problem. Well, the first thing after logging on, which was a complete non-issue. I used the name of the former employee whose documents I needed to look through.
Anyway, I gradually figured out how to list directories, list files in a specific one, and view them. It was an easy matter to identify the probable location. Indeed, this brings back memories. When I worked at The Renovator’s Supply, they had terminals that went to a System 360, which IIRC they upgraded to an AS/400 while I was there. Thus when I see Sys Req or Sys Rq as an alternate function on a regular PC keyboard, I know where it came from. I can remember the “Field Exit” key that’s in the Enter key’s normal position. Cmd 7 (F7) to exit, Cmd 3 (F3) to bring up a menu, Cmd 2 (F2 to go back), all seem familiar. Of course, some of this also reminds me of trying to use old Novell Netware without knowing what I was doing, except this is closer to intuitive.
After a while I was flying around the system as if I’d always used it. Sadly, if the document they seek exists, it is not in the logical location, or was deleted or overwritten by modifications. This is bad. I left it running, ready to look around some more tomorrow when I can get more input on logical places to look.
This is one of those prime examples of why and how I am good at what I do. I can almost intuit my way around without having specific knowledge. It’s impossible to describe; sort of like using the Force and being one with the machine.
Now There’s A Challenge
Today’s adventure, besides getting e-mail and spam filtering back working reliably and cleaning up stubborn malware on a computer that is sending out spam via a mail server in Russia, is to retrieve a document from 1995 from an old AS/400 system that was turned off about five years ago when it got noisy and they realized they weren’t even accessing it once in a while for archival accounting info anymore.
I don’t know the first thing about using an AS/400, apart from having used internal e-mail of sorts at a terminal connected to one, and a custom inventory system written in RPG on that same one.
Oh boy.
Update:
I Rule
AI 5: Finally Finale
I’m cheering for Taylor, of course.
I have, however, been forced to reassess my deep dislike of Katharine, due to this USA Today article that my darling husband sent me. In it, Katharine’s plastic cracks a bit, so to speak, and she shows both a bit of wildness and a bit of common sense that I find far more appealing than I ever have found her musical style. To wit:
While her favorite past time is dance class, she says, “I haven’t worked out in four months. I feel like I’m a big blob. I don’t have any muscle in my body. I’ve definitely not been dieting. I’m an anti-dieter. I don’t think it works. I’ve totally struggled with body weight. I was up and down with my weight. I’d get good feedback from bookers — we’d love to book her, but… it’s a shame you have to be so skinny and so in shape. I met a dietitian before American Idol and she just taught me to eat normally and have peace with food. Now I just don’t have any kind of emotional eating anymore. I still have weight on me. I’m still not what Hollywood wants — stick skinny. But I’m happy with food and able to eat and that’s what women should be able to do — eat food and I don’t think twice about it. After American Idol, I’d love to have a trainer who gets me to the gym two or three times a week because I surely don’t do it on my own.”
I just can’t hate her anymore after reading that.
Happy Birthday
To blogger and former primary quiz source Drumwaster.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Crockpots Rule
I made the barbecue shredded beef yesterday, as mentioned, and what appropriate timing. This week’s Carnival of the Recipes is a crockpot edition, featuring mainly but not exclusively recipes for the crockpot.
As for my latest shredded beef, it came out yummy, if not the same as last time, which was not the same as the first time. I had probably 6.5 lbs after trimming, and there was not enough ketchup for that. I also could have stood to go heavier on the vinegar. Still, I could have just feasted on the meat after stage one of cooking in water with vinegar and brown sugar, even before shredding it and adding the rest of the stuff.
We’ll probably freeze or give away about a third of it. Otherwise it might not all get eaten.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
So the Valerie?
3 months old today.
Wow.
I’m sure her father will be along with pictures in the next day or two.
Mmmm… Barbecue Shredded Beef
Hannaford had big, yummy looking London broil steaks on sale for $1.49 a pound last night, so I bought the limit of four of them with the idea of making barbecue shredded beef in the next few days. Not the ideal time, as Deb’s stomach has been acting up enough to render her diet mainly rice or Rice-a-Roni, bananas, and some cooked veggies temporarily.
Anyway, I just used Google to search barbecue shredded beef, knowing I am near the top, and at one point was number one, for that phrase, and could get right to my recipe for barbecue shredded beef that way.
I ended up adding the word accidental to the search to find my recipe; oh how the meaty had fallen.
To my surprise, my recipe involved less than 2.5 pounds of meat as described. I’d have thought I used more. Maybe I did, the next time I made the stuff. Anyway, what I bought amounts to a little over 8 pounds, meaning probably 7.5 lbs or a bit less after vigorous trimming of fat.
Perhaps we can freeze some of it, or freeze some of the beef. Which is what I am about to do with the few pounds of 90% ground beef I got last night. It was even less than Wal-Mart. The good thing about Wal-Mart is it’s always a low price (not to be cute or anything) and consistently superlative quality.
I am tempted to start the beef cooking now, before I head to the office to get the “must go, I promised” stuff done, so we can have it tonight. We speculate that Deb could handle a small amount, and it seems like it would be fantastic with rice.
Anyway, no particular point to the post, except to remind people of that yummy recipe and try to get Google to put it way up high in the results where it rightfully belongs used to be before slipping.