Monthly Archives: January 2006

Spam

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I’m wondering if anyone has actually gotten a satisfactory response from a major ISP after sending a report to their abuse department?

I’ve submitted a large number of abuse reports to SBC, Comcast, RoadRunner, etc … but have yet to get any satisfactory response at all. One report I submitted to SBC, via DSLReports SBC Direct forum got me some grief because they wanted me to Opt out first. My opinion, of course, was that I should never have been Opted In involuntarily in the first place.

A week or so ago I got an email from GoDaddy, my domain registrar, about a abuse report that was mistakenly reported against midrange.com … and they demanded a response within 24 hours … which I gave them (it was a total misunderstanding … someone was reporting spam against someone else hosted by GoDaddy … but the email they forwarded was misconstrued to be coming from midrange.com). Even though I responded well within the 24 hours they specified (I responded within 24 minutes), they did not respond back to me for more than a week. I had to send 3 requests for a response to get them to reply.

I guess the two questions I would like to see answered are …

  1. Do ISP’s actually act on abuse reports?
  2. If ISP’s do act on the abuse reports, do they respond to the reporter with a resolution?

My own experience is no to both.

[tags]Spam, email, ISP[/tags]

Snow!

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Well good evening all.

It’s around 11:45 at night and I just got inside after doing a micro-photosafari outside in the snow.

As I was getting ready for bed, I looked out the window and saw that it was still fairly bright (due to the light reflecting off the snow)… and the snow was fairly undisturbed … so I thought it would be a good idea to try and get some pictures.

Unforunately, the light started to fade … but I got some interesting pictures of the street and the trees near our house.

Hopefully we’ll get out tomorrow and do some more when the light is better.

Disable IPV6

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You can disable the ipv6 module by adding or changing /etc/modprobe.conf:

alias net-pf-10 off

After a reboot it should be gone.

Note: I only know that this works with Fedora Core 2 and higher.

[tags]Linux, IPV6, networking[/tags]

Coincidence

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I had a very odd experience today … a very strange confluence of events that kind of freaked me out.

I’ve currently got 3 monitors on my desk … one 21″ CRT, one 17″ CRT, and my laptop (MaxiVista gives me a ‘virtual’ display on my laptop). Obviously with that many displays on my desk, space can be at a premium.

I requested, and today received, a new 20″ flat panel display to replace the 21″ CRT. With the help of a co-worker, I swapped the monitors. Now I have plenty of desk space.

I asked our IT guy where I should put the monitor … and if I could use the rolly cart to move it (21″ CRT’s are not light). He told me to use the big cart in the computer, and just leave the monitor on the cart.

(Ok, enough rambling … here’s the gist of this post)

So I grabbed the cart and started pushing it out of the computer room … the moment I crossed the doorway of the computer room, the building’s fire alarm system went off.

For some reason, my first thought was that the alarm had been set off by moving the cart out of the computer room. Obviously this wasn’t the case, but it was the first thing that I thought of.

Lucikly there was no fire and the alarm was set off accidentially (not by me).

Linux Upgrade!

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Well, I did it … and, so far (knock wood), it’s working ok.

What I did was: Upgrade my Redhat Linux 8.0 system to Fedora Core 4.

Last time I tried this it went horribly wrong … there was some kind of problem with the system that caused all available memory to be eaten up like it was going out of style … and then it started chewing on the swap space … to the extent that there was no memory and no swap space available.

To add insult to the injury … my backup procedure wasn’t as solid as I had hoped.

The end result was that my system was down for about 2 days while I recovered manually.

This time, however, I had a absolutely fool proof backup plan.

Continue reading →

Dell Discount

I have some Dell discount codes that I’m not going to use.

One is $20 off electronics and accessories purchases of $200 or more.

The other is 20% off select desktop and notebook purchases of $999 or more.

If you would like one of the codes, leave feedback explaining why you deserve the code. I’ll give the code to the person with the best explaination.

They Expire 1/31/06.

Dell, Coupon, Discount

Happy New Year

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Well, another year is came and went.

New years eve in the Gibbs household was quite exciting … basically, we stayed home, built a fire, and cooked dinner.

Dinner, however, was kind of interesting. Ginny had a taste for potato latke (pancakes)…. and she found an interesting chicken recipie.

So we had a truly multi-cultural dinner … eastern european potato pancakes, greek chicken, and while we were cooking, I was snacking on edemame beans.

Tomorrow we’re going to my folks place for a late lunch with the family.