Archive for category Rants
Krunchy’s 4TW tips for email server management.
Posted by ekrunch in Rants, Technology on April 29, 2010
While conversing with my friend over at dopplercow.com, we got into a discussion about how companies allow their users to have HUGE email boxes and other stupid behavioral patterns that they allow. It’s amazing how out of hand email has become. What started as a joke has now become a blog post, here’s some quick tips on how to successfully manage your email servers.
- Stop using email for attachments. Collaborative Document Suites 4TW
- Stop CHATTING in email. Instant Messaging 4TW
- Stop being an idiot and delete your old mail. Cleanliness 4TW
With the addendum from Chris over at Dopplercow
Allow IT to implement mail quotas.
I’ll add my 0.02 to that and say
- Allow IT to implement mail quotas. Good IT Practices 4TW
LikeThe life and death of Skunkwerkz
Having recently formed up a new company, my business partner and I had an idea one day. We’d call our development group Skunkwerkz. It was an inside joke. Nothing ever came of it until one day I needed a domain name. I was building an email archive and needed a domain name to host my old corporate email on for searching purposes. What better place to do that than on our development machines, so I registered skunkwerkz.com and set it up. No web site, no publicly reachable email accounts, etc. Hidden away from the public eye, not visible except via WHOIS, etc. Just for me, just my little thing. All was clicking along fine until one day, I got a really ugly email from an attorney.
So apparently Lockheed-Martin FUCKING SUES PEOPLE for registering domain names that “infringe their trademark” and I made the hit list. My little joke that I never intended to be publicly available apparently got found and was misinterpreted. So apparently they’ve got attorneys that sit around and dig through WHOIS or something. WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT?!?!? Maybe they have a bot or something that scans for it. Whatever the case, I got a nasty gram from them showing previously won cases and a list of domains that they’ve ceased… over 100 of them. Some not even really all that similar. But apparently, you can’t use the name Skunk and Works in the same sentence without lighting these guys up.
So with that, my email archive is now moved over to good ol’ Intellidick.com where it will live out the rest of its days. The skunkwerkz.com domain has been surrendered and I’m left without anything. They didn’t even offer to cough up the $12 bucks to cover the registration fees.
Long live Skunkwerkz.com, my pointless little joke that never was going to be anything more than a URL for me to use. Oh and to all of the attorneys that have nothing better to do than sit around and scan the WHOIS registry, congratulations on being great at your job. You got what you wanted. You took away my freedom to enjoy the internet. Thanks for that.
Hey Nikon! Thanks for nothing!
Posted by ekrunch in Rants, Technology on November 30, 2009
Looks like Nikon put out that update for the NEF Codec that I was asking for.
It officially supports W7 now, even though the 1.8.0 release worked from what I read. Still no 64-bit support for Vista / W7. So hey, thanks for nothing!
Seriously though… what’s the hold up? Are you using some 3rd party library in your code that’s not available in 64-bit or are you just too cheap and/or lazy to upgrade your development tools? Come on now, 64-bit Windows is coming. Almost all new servers are 64-bit and a significant portion of Windows 7 installations will be 64-bit. Get with the program already! NEF Codec 2.0 needs to get here and it needs to be 64-bit.
Not cuil guys, not cuil at all…
Posted by ekrunch in Rants, Technology on May 29, 2009
Here I sit, broken hearted… my photo gallery is down. I happened to click the link this morning and the gallery was down with a 500 internal server error. I hit the logs and what do I see, i’m being spidered and it’s beating my web server down. There’s a new search engine on the block called Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’), and apparently it’s not very nice to the small web server owner. They advertise themselves and brag about how many pages they crawl and such… well, thanks for killing my damned web server jackasses. Your mega crawler just blasted my web server into oblivion. Now I have a robots.txt in place and hopefully that will shut this crap down. Funny, i’ve never had problems with Googlebot or any other search engine’s crawler until now.
Another fun day on the web. 
Prolific USB to Serial Adapters
Posted by ekrunch in Rants, Technology on April 30, 2009
What’s the deal with these things? It seems like no matter how hard I try, I can never get one to actually work with the device that i’m using. I’ve successfully managed to make it work with an old serial swipe card reader, but that’s about it!
It also seems like completely uninstalling the Windows drivers is an impossibility. I have three different USB to Serial adapters, all made by different vendors, all using the same Prolific PL2303 chipset. The installed drivers work for ONE of them. No amount of deleting ghosted devices or clearing USB IDs out of the registry can make the other two work correctly. I’ve even tried forcing them onto the older versions of the drivers with no luck. It’s just disaster after disaster with these things, yet it seems like everyone is using this same chip set.
Yet another piece of terrible driver software accompanied by bad hardware. Any recommendations for a good USB to Serial adapter would certainly be appreciated! If anyone is into the aquarium scene and has used one with an Aquatronica controller, that would be even more helpful. Sad irony, Aquatronica sells a PL2303 based USB to Serial adapter and i’d say success rates are abysmal. I see LOTS of people complaining about them not working. At least i’m not alone!
Linksys WRT610N and IPv6
Posted by ekrunch in Personal, Rants, Technology, Useful Information on February 2, 2009
Thanks to the shoddy job that Linksys did with the WRT300N, I grudgingly purchased a new Linksys WRT610N. What a pleasant surprise! Finally another decent product from Linksys. Not that i’ve ever expected much from the bargain networking gear, but the WRT300N was very, very bad. Several of the features didn’t work consistently, new firmware was no where in sight, and the 802.11n was abysmal. The WRT300N made me regret ever upgrading from the WRT54GS, which was one of the best routers on the market and still is in the 802.11g game.
Fortunately the new WRT610N solves most of those problems. The simultaneous 2.4/5ghz radios make life really nice and performance is good. I’m now able to run all of my 802.11n gear on 5ghz while 802.11g stays on 2.4ghz. Each radio can also be restricted accordingly. Very handy. Well done Linksys. The updated features of the firmware are always welcome as well. More granular control over the system for those who need it definitely helps. And then there are those surprise features that we get from time to time.
I’ve recently started running IPv6 on my home network for the enhanced features that are offered. Things that were extensions in v4 are part of the standard in v6 and can make life nice, especially in high throughput situations. Imagine my surprise when I was updating my Ubuntu box and noticed that the WINE mirrors’ IP address was a v6 one! So apparently, the WRT610N does IPv6, it just doesn’t tell you! This is some scary stuff folks, imagine that modern operating systems come with IPv6 enabled and people go and buy this router, not knowing that their doors are now open via a whole new protocol. Granted, most home users will never know, but I seriously wonder if the firewall in the 610N has v6 support.
Let’s hope that Linksys is one step ahead of us here or a lot of users are about to get their horizons broadened when the hackers start coming in via IPv6. 
For those who are unfamiliar with IPv6 and would like to know more, Ars Technica has a nice primer. Read more here.
Ahhhh, the joys of the standards compliance…
Posted by ekrunch in Rants, Technology on December 30, 2008
After managing to build a functional copy of MediaTomb for my DroboShare, I then found out that it doesn’t support the Xbox 360. Yay… the single device that I wanted to work with it. Oh well, I suppose I should have loaded up the Ubuntu based version first or something beforehand. According to the authors of MediaTomb, it is the fault of Microsoft. That I can believe. I have yet to do a protocol trace but I do know that most other UPnP media servers have a special switch that you have to flip to make it work with the Xbox 360. What a bummer… so much for the UPnP “standard”.
No really, it’s your fault.
When I was 18, I started smoking. Who’s fault was that? Was it the evil tobacco companies for selling and advertising their products? No. It was my fault. I was hanging out in bars with people who smoked and was trying to fit in. Sounds like it was my fault for hanging out with those people.
When I was 19, I flunked out of college. Who’s fault was that? Was it because my professors didn’t like me and had something against me? What is because I was a minority or something like that? No. It was my fault. I didn’t go to class enough. Sounds like it was my fault for not doing what I should have been.
When I was 20, I lost my job at IBM. Who’s fault was that? Was it mine because my boss was picking on me? No, it was because I wasn’t as dilligent as I should have been with my duties. I was slacking. I was young and stupid and not doing my work to the expected levels. It had nothing to do with capable, I was very capable. I was just lazy and arrogant. Sounds like it was my fault for not doing my work.
These are three examples that I felt were relvant to the current situation with my beloved country. I can’t believe how much blame everyone puts on everyone but themselves. It’s always someone else’s fault. Do I think that you should always blame yourself? No. But most of the people in my generation and the next are whiney children who got whatever they wanted and now life is starting to kick in. Life isn’t easy, nothing is free. Work for what you want and achieve it. Stop blaming everyone else for your failure. Get over and get on with life. And please, please stop teaching this garbage mentality to your children. Overly sheltering and giving them everything they want only hurts them more. Haven’t you seen enough spoiled kid movies to know that this happens?
Oh, and stop looking to other people for help. Stop reading self help books. The problem is you, deal with it, fix it. Stop whining about how you can’t and how you have to changle slowly, etc, etc, etc.. all of these are just excuses. Toughen up, it’s not that hard to have a decent life in this country if you truly stop and appreciate all of the gifts we are given as US citizen.
Go vote you retards!
If I hear one more person tell me that they’re not going to vote because “it probably won’t make a difference” I think i’m going to vomit.
People, you need to vote. It’s really not an option. Granted, I think most people are single issue voters who don’t pay attention to the big picture, but you still need to vote! Even if you’re not voting the same as me, you need to vote.
And while you’re at it, vote for McCain.
My most recent UPS experience
Posted by ekrunch in Personal, Rants, Useful Information on July 3, 2008
Has anyone noticed a steady decline of service quality in UPS here lately? My last few run-ins with UPS have not been pleasant.
The last major item that came in via UPS was a server that I purchased. It was damaged… I know the box was heavy and all but it had obviously been dropped on its corner. It was wet outside that day and I could see the water on the corner so I assume it happened on the way up to my door. No major damage, just the face place. Bummer. The next week the rails for the server came in and the box for them had suffered the same fate. The sad part… both packages were packed by “professionals” at the UPS store and shipped to me in UPS boxes packed by UPS employees. Pitiful.
I recently had to send my Xbox 360 back for service due to my run in with the Red Ring of Death. The UPS guy showed up with the empty box that Microsoft sends you and we both had a good chuckle because he already knew I had a dead console based on the address of where it came from and the fact that it was empty. He smiled and said he’d see me in a few weeks when they returned the console in that same box. Off to UPS my Xbox 360 went and one week later I get a notice from MS saying that it has been shipping back. (48 hour turn around, bravo Microsoft Xbox service center!)
Now I’m excited… I’m ready to have my Xbox 360 again. And here’s where the drama begins.
- 07/02/2008, Afternoon some time – I receive a call from an unfamiliar number. It’s an automated message from UPS saying I have a package arriving tomorrow that will require a signature. I jump online and look at the tracking number Microsoft gave me. Sure enough, it’s my Xbox. Now i’m really excited.
- 07/03/2008, 08:00 – I’m at home, waiting for my Xbox.
- 07/03/2008, 10:00 – I decide to track my package. I get the weirdest message… something is wrong with the label on the package but apparently it has been repaired. The package no longer has a delivery date and says “Exception” instead. Weird, but okay, whatever.
- 07/03/2008, 11:20 – I track the package again. The package is now back to normal status… to be delivered on Monday! Too bad i’m going to be out of town all next week and i’m already sitting on my tail at home waiting for this package. No big deal. I’ll just call UPS and set it up for a “will call” pickup.
- 07/03/2008, 11:23 – I call UPS. I get a really nice lady who tells me that she’ll have someone from the Palatine, IL center call me back within one hour with a status as to when I can pick my package up. Now i’m happy again. Nice lady too.
- 07/03/2008, 11:37 – Marie from Palatine center calls me. Wow! Fast response! Go UPS! But wait… The package never made it to Palatine this morning. It must be on the truck! Marie tells me that she’s going to find out and she’ll call me back. No problem. Now we’re getting somewhere and maybe the web site is just out of date. If a UPS Representative is reading this post, Marie was a really nice lady as well. She really was making an effort to help… read on for the part where the experience goes bad.
- 07/03/2008, 11:45 – Once again, super fast response from UPS Palatine. They’re either really good or really bored.
Either way, i’m happy that they’re being so responsive. Marie tells me that the package is not on the truck nor in Palatine and that I can expect it Monday. If nothing else, call her and she’ll put the package on hold in Palatine and I can pick it up when I return. I’m a little angry at this point because i’ve now stayed at home today waiting for them. If I worked a normal desk job i’d have had to have taken off of work and would be pissed that my package didn’t show. But whatever, okay. I’ll figure something out. - 07/03/2008, 12:03 – I decide to call UPS corporate back and have them track my package. Them not being able to tell me where it is right now is unacceptable. They really need to at least provide me with a current location of the package because it should be in Palatine. I get another nice lady at UPS corporate. I tell her the story and that neither Palatine nor the driver have it and I would like to know the location and expected delivery date so that I can make arrangements for someone to be home to sign for it. She tells me that it’s not a problem and she’ll have someone from the main Chicago center call me. It must be there still.
- 07/03/2008, 12:27 – UPS Palatine calls again. Wait? UPS Palatine? Why would they call me. I was expecting a call from Chicago center. Hmmmmm… Okay. It’s not Marie this time. It’s some other lady that I didn’t catch her name. She was talking too fast and in a very abrasive tone. She “informs” me that she was sitting next to Marie when I was on the phone and that there’s nothing else she can do. She then tells me that my package should go out on Monday and that I need to call by 07:30 on Monday morning if I want to have them pull it from the truck for a Monday will call. I started to explain to her that I wouldn’t be in town but decided to just save it because she’s obviously angry at me for calling again and isn’t going to help me. She was quite possibly one of the rudest customer service representatives that i’ve ever spoken to.
- 07/03/2008, 12:35 – The second time I called UPS, the lady told me that i’d have to call the sender of the package to escalate any further. It was a nice way of telling me to stop calling and that they weren’t going to help me anymore. So, that’s what I did. I called Microsoft. Unlike my first experience with Xbox 360 support, I get a really unfriendly individual with poor english skills. Oh joy… i’m screwed. I explain the situation. The first thing he does it try to give me the UPS tracking number and disconnect the call. I explain that I have the tracking number and I need Microsoft to escalate with UPS. He then proceeds to track the package himself and tells me that it will be here tomorrow. I try to explain again. He tells me he’s going to let me talk to his supervisor. After almost 15 minutes of holding, he returns… no supervisor on the phone. He then trys to give me the URL to get to UPS and track the pacakge. I explain to him that i’ve already done it. He tells me “but the status was updated 10 minutes ago!”. I jump on and check and no, it wasn’t… he’s in a different time zone and doesn’t realize that the web site isn’t updating for his timezone. I explain to him that it’s in central time, not wherever he is. That update was 1h10m ago, not 10m ago. Oh joy… I have one of “those” customer service representatives. We go back and forth for a few mintues with him insisting that my Xbox will be at my home tomorrow. I explain that tomorrow is a holiday and he just does not get it. I guess when you don’t celebrate Independence Day as a good US citizen should, you wouldn’t know that. He tells me that he’s going to go talk to his supervisor again, after another 10 minutes, I hang up.
Do I have a right to be angry? I think I do. UPS called me and said I needed to be here. I stayed home and waited, only for them to say that something is wrong with the label. It made it all the way from Texas to Chicago before somebody noticed the label? It was supposedly illegible. Funny… it was legible when they used it to look up my customer record for my phone number. My other concern is that they can’t find the package and aren’t willing to help me track it. I wonder who’s kid just got a repaired Xbox 360. Only time will tell but it bothers me that UPS employees know the box and address of repaired Xbox 360′s that well. Even the UPS Corporate lady made a joke about it.
Maybe i’m over reacting here but damn… what an annoyance. A total array of cluster f*** just to get an Xbox shipped from Texas to Chicago. Time to find a new shipping carrier.
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