Friday, 29 August, 2003. 12:23:30 PMThe bastards at Road Runner are blocking me from sending mail to them
because I have a residential IP address. Since I won't use the SBC
mail server as my outgoing server, I had to call SBC and ask them to add
a P record to my DNS information. The P record allows reverse lookups
of my IP address to return the name "mail.pdrap.org" which should now match
the domain produced from a forward DNS request. When this change propagates
to the root nameservers, I'll give Road Runner a call and tell them to
unblock my IP address.
Wednesday, 27 August, 2003. 04:54:43 PMThe spamstats are back up, with graphs being generated by ploticus. The last
30 days of spams are shown right now, and another graph with the historical
record by month will be added.
Wednesday, 27 August, 2003. 12:01:39 AMI received this interesting e-mail a couple days ago:
-----------------
Envelope-to: slashdot@pdrap.org
Delivery-date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 01:29:12 -0500
From: "John Llamas"
To:
Subject: I am seeking a reputable vendor of inflatable sheep ...
Reply-To: "John Llamas"
X-SpamProbe: GOOD 0.0000000 20c7ae9ffa1ebefb73cdcda0f0918364
Hello
I am a 'generously proportioned' male (375 pounds) with a less than
generous penile length (4 inches erect). I seek a vendor of quality
inflatable sheep who can give away free samples as I am unemployed.
Best regards
John Llamas
Tuesday, 26 August, 2003. 02:12:18 AM
I just finished my scripts that record spam and ham counts in a database
by date. The databae is postgresql, and the scripts are Python triggered
from procmail recipes. They connect to the database using psycopg.
Friday, 22 August, 2003. 11:13:06 AM
Last night my friend Krista called me up and invited me to a big party at
the W Hotel
called the "International Taste of Tennis". It's a big event associated
with the U.S. Open tennis tournament. It featured some great food, and
some very famous tennis stars and chefs. I saw Morimoto, Agassi, and Andy
Roddick. Roddick was standing next to Morimoto, tasting his soup while
the cameras were clicking away. There were models roaming all over the place,
hired to stand around, look good, and make the high power people there feel
good. Some of the models weren't working, but were there with their tennis
player boyfriends. It was pretty funny to see that, but it
was hot and crowded, so we ate all the good food and got the hell out of there.
Tuesday, 19 August, 2003. 03:20:39 PM
Google has a full scientific calculator built in. Searching for "1+1" returns
an answer of 2. Searching for sin(45) returns the right result. It'll even
convert units for you. Typing "1/2 cup in teaspoons" returns the result
of "(1/2) US cup = 24 US teaspoons". This is going to be very handy.
Monday, 18 August, 2003. 01:27:49 PM
The Thunderbirds are performing on October 30th in College Station.
Monday, 18 August, 2003. 01:26:33 PM
The Blue Angels are performing in San Antonio on November 1 and 2.
Friday, 15 August, 2003. 01:08:38 PM
The power at the hotel is still off, but Wall St. has power. I'm at work charging all my batteries.
Thursday, 14 August, 2003. 09:14:59 PM
According to the clock across the river, New Jersey got their power back 16 minutes ago. I just got
back from a walk up Broadway to Soho and back. The streets were absolutely crowded with people
and cars, and many of the people I saw were obviously trying to figure out how to get out
of the city. I didn't see any crime, and I was out after it got dark. There are no streetlights
or traffic lights, but there are enormous numbers of police and emergency vehicles with flashing
lights everywhere. I suppose that I am 'lucky' in a way to be here during this major power
failure, because these sorts of events are rare. People still talk about the big one some decades
ago, 1966 I think it was. But this one won't extend as long as that one did. I expect the power
will be back on later tonight.
Thursday, 14 August, 2003. 06:15:23 PM
I managed to call Alex, and found out that CNN is reporting that the power outage extends over
the entire Northeast United States and Eastern Canada. Her parents in Windsor don't have power,
nor do any major cities from Detroit to the coast. The reports say that the power should be
restored in a few hours. From my hotel window I can see a large clock on the New Jersey shore.
That clock is stopped at 4:12 PM. Supposedly, Manhattan is locked up completely with traffic,
so if I want to go anywhere, my only option is to wait until the power is restored, or walk.
Thursday, 14 August, 2003. 04:23:29 PM
We just lost power here in NYC, and there's lots of rumors flying. People are saying that the
power outage is national, and that even LA lost power. So far, it seems that the outage is just
for this region, maybe the northeast of the US. When the power comes back on, we'll see.
Wednesday, 13 August, 2003. 04:08:43 PM
I need to go visit the Kansas Cosmosphere
in Hutchinson Kansas
sometime. They have a Soviet Vostok and the Apollo 13 command module on
display.
Wednesday, 13 August, 2003. 04:05:37 PM
There's no reason for anyone not to have a virus scanner on their
Windows computers. Besides the big ones that cost money, there's a top notch
free version called
AVG Antivirus that is
available in a free version.
Wednesday, 13 August, 2003. 12:02:29 AM
DeBeers has developed their
DiamondSure and DiamondView machines to detect large carat, high quality, artificial
diamonds. This is a defensive move on their part. I think that it's
inevitable that their monopoly will be broken.
Tuesday, 12 August, 2003. 11:34:01 PM
According to an article on Wired, in a few years, the diamond industry
will be transformed. Large flawless diamonds can now be manufactured for
less than $30 a carat with microwave plasma machines. DeBeers is going to
lose their monopoly. And these cheap diamonds will eventually displace
silicon in computer chips as well.
Tuesday, 12 August, 2003. 03:01:33 PM
"Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes." - Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Tuesday, 12 August, 2003. 01:58:54 PM
A great tool for working out regular expressions is regexplorer. It has a
window where the candidate expressions are listed, and another window
where the matches are displayed. As expressions are tested, the pieces of
the candidates that match are highlighted in the output window. It's easy
to see how the expression is matching, and easy to test new expressions.
Tuesday, 12 August, 2003. 10:59:34 AM
The new worm called "Blaster" has completely taken out our team's computers,
except for my Linux laptop. This is the worst virus I've ever seen.
Monday, 11 August, 2003. 11:41:04 PM
We had a power failure that my UPS couldn't handle. The UPS can keep my
server running for about 15 minutes, and the power failure was longer than
45 minutes. So, my uptime record on the Internet server ended today at
280 days.
Monday, 11 August, 2003. 11:18:07 AM
TAM5 has landed! TAM5 is a
model airplane powered by a single model airplane engine, a GPS, and a lot of
gas that successfully crossed the North Atlantic ocean from Newfoundland to
Ireland this past week. This flight sets a record for distance in its class.
The total weight of the model fully loaded with fuel was less than 5 kg (11
pounds).
Monday, 11 August, 2003. 11:05:20 AM
I'm headed off to New York again today. I was hoping to be able to stay
in Austin for a while, but that's not going to happen.
Monday, 04 August, 2003. 08:35:52 AM
I just walked all the way from the city center of Helsinki to our hotel,
and oh boy are my arms tired. That's about 5 kilometers. And I walked into
town this morning from where I dropped Alex off, which is about 3.5
kilometers.
Sunday, 03 August, 2003. 08:50:14 AM
We've been in Helsinki for two days, and are just about adjusted to the time
zone now. We're 8 hours ahead of Austin. Compounding the problem is the fact
that it gets dark at about midnight, and is starting to get light again at
3 in the morning. Helsinki is a beautiful city, and we're really enjoying
it. Our hotel is the Park Hotel Kapyla. Kapyla is a city just North of
Helsinki, and it's easy to take the bus of the tram into the city. Alex has
her conference tomorrow and Tuesday, so I'm going to have some time to
explore by myself. She's already exhausted all the department stores in
the city center.