Technology & MSG

For the last couple days, the cron job for updating my SpamAssassin rule set has been throwing an error:
Argument “1.39_01″ isn’t numeric in subroutine entry at /usr/bin/sa-update line 81.
It turns out this is a bug with the Archive::Tar module that was released a few days ago, not SpamAssassin or CentOS per se. The fix — [...]

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When I set up software RAID, I have any errors sent to me via email. I recently found the following email in my inbox.
From: mdadm monitoring
To: root@foo.tld
Subject: DegradedArray event on /dev/md0:foo.tld
This is an automatically generated mail message from mdadm running on foo.tld
A DegradedArray event had been detected on md device /dev/md0.
Faithfully yours, etc.

That’s it. [...]

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I use CrossOver Mac when I need to run Windows applications on my Mac. It isn’t that often, but I’m glad it’s an option. I picked up a free download code a few years ago, before I really had a use for it; I’m not one to pass up a $40 package for free. CrossOver [...]

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Every once in a while a friend will refer some side work my way, usually fixing home computers. Most suffer from performance problems stemming from spyware and malware, usually from running with administrative privileges. Some problems are more exotic, like having two different anti-virus suites fighting for resources. While fixing malware issues is a fairly [...]

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I had a small group of people over after we closed out the show. At one point during the evening, one of my guests approached me and whispered into my ear, “your toilet is broken.” It was in the same tone as someone would use when they say, “where’s your plunger?” Fortunately it wasn’t a [...]

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I’ve got to research some options for remote access. The goal is to provide a Windows-based application — which is rather expensive to license and tedious to manage per-seat — to a group of remote users. The licensing is all taken care of from my perspective, so the remaining requirements are as follows.

Sessions must be [...]

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The oil pressure warning light on my car has been flickering lately. After a day or two it began to bother me. I’ve had lots of tech support moments where people complain about something but then can’t describe the circumstances, so I began to pay attention to when it was happening so that I could [...]

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I find ProcessLibrary to be incredibly useful when diagnosing Windows systems. The site — with a refreshingly clean interface despite it being an advertisement-page-disguised-as-a-tool — will tell you all about processes that you find listed in Task Manager. A quick summary of whether it is good or bad, but with details of what it does, [...]

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So I was bitching this morning about 1&1 refusing email from my mailserver. One of my subscribers complained to 1&1 technical support and got a tech named Jiggy to remove me from their blacklists. Amazing, but with amusing responses from technical support.

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In the past two weeks 1&1 Internet has stopped accepting mail from my mailserver. I get the following error whenever I send an email to them or one of their customers: “421 mails from 71.127.149.126 refused: local dynamic IP address 71.127.149.126″
Now I utilize greylisting so I’m familiar with sending the user a 450; essentially [...]

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I was reading someone’s blog today. I’m told to keep that someone on the DL, so I won’t even say whose. You know it doesn’t matter. It is completely irrelevant whose blog it was.
I saw a trackback link on the blog.
It triggered me. I couldn’t recall receiving any pings under WordPress, despite having the “Allow [...]

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I wrote a new page today detailing some of the places I like to eat. It isn’t a regular post since I intend to update it periodically when I try new places or dishes. Damn you Alton Brown for creating a television show named after a phrase I use regularly!
One irritation with pages (which I [...]

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I noticed this weekend that my Motorola V325 was starting to experience some serious menu lag. When you’d key the Talk button to bring up the “All Calls” list, it would take several seconds before the menu came up. The same thing would happen when attempting to dial someone from the list or the contacts [...]

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I use Mailman to provide mailing list services to friends, family, and non-profit groups in addition to running a few administrative lists. Doing so has recently exposed a problem with Gmail’s mail delivery.

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When configuring a Cisco PIX in Transparent Mode to operate across VLANs, take caution when using Foundry’s Virtual Ethernet (VE) interfaces.
On firewalls from Cisco, Transparent Mode is a significant new feature of PIX 7.0, where the firewall can be configured to behave like a Layer 2 bridge. Previously PIX devices behaved like an ACL-enhanced Layer [...]

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