Dave’s Blog

One thing nice about having your own blog is you can spam if you want to. I promise I won’t do it very often and the circumstances are, hopefully, something that won’t happen again for a very long time.

As noted in my previous posting, my oldest brother passed away on 11 May 2008. Rob was a collector of all sorts of things most of which neither my other brother nor I have any interest in. Since the “stuff” is located in Nettleton, Mississippi (near Tupelo) the logistics of the situation argue against attempting to move it to either here (Parker, Colorado) or my brother’s place (Columbus, Ohio) and then sell it on eBay. Thus, we’re going to try to move as much as we can through an estate sale. The estate sale will be at my brother’s house outside of Nettleton on 11 and 12 July 2008. I can provide details of the location to interested parties. Please feel free to e-mail me as dave “at” davenjudy.org

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This is a quick follow-up to my previous post, “I hate spam.” Adding the RBLs mentioned in that posting brought my spam count down to something more manageable but, unfortunately, the effect didn’t last. My spam count has been edging back up and got to the point where it was definitely annoying again.

A post to the CentOS mailing list included three addition RBLs. I have added these to my spam gauntlet and they seem to have helped. My RBL configuration for sendmail now looks like:

FEATURE(`dnsbl', `bl.spamcop.net', `"Spam blocked see: http://spamcop.net/bl.shtml?"$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `cbl.abuseat.org', `"Spam blocked see: http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi?ip="$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org', `"Spam blocked see: http://spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip="$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `list.dsbl.org', `"Spam blocked see: http://dsbl.org/listing?"$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl',`dnsbl.sorbs.net',`"554 Spam blocked " $&{client_addr} " found in dnsbl.sorbs.net"')dnl

spamcop and spamhaus are old friends. The new additions to the gauntlet are:

• The composite blocking list at http://cbl.abuseat.org/
• http://dsbl.org/ is currently offline due to a disk crash
• The Spam and Open Relay Blocking System at http://www.au.sorbs.net/

As with the previous addition of the SpamCop and Spamhaus RBLs, I have noticed a marked reduction in the amount of spam reaching dSPAM. The actual sendmail.mc configuration section now looks like:

FEATURE(`dnsbl', `bl.spamcop.net', `"Spam blocked see: http://spamcop.net/bl.shtml?"$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `cbl.abuseat.org', `"Spam blocked see: http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi?ip="$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org', `"Spam blocked see: http://spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip="$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `list.dsbl.org', `"Spam blocked see: http://dsbl.org/listing?"$&{client_addr}')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl',`dnsbl.sorbs.net',`"554 Spam blocked " $&{client_addr} " found in dnsbl.sorbs.net"')dnl

Cheers,

Dave

That most software test plans fail is apparent in the abominable state of most software products’ quality. The blue screens of death, security breaches and unanticipated, quirky behavior, etc characteristic of all too many software products means that each product’s test plan failed.

There are many reasons why a test plan can fail. Even an absolutely perfect test plan can fail if management does not allow sufficient schedule for the test effort to verify that the product meets its quality requirements. Sadly, most test plans are far from perfect and would fail given even an infinite amount of time. These test plans fail because they only consider whether or not the product under test meets its functional requirements.

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This is a short follow up to my previous post, Life Happens. We learned that my oldest brother was seriously ill so I flew into Tupelo, MS on 26 April 2008. The goal was to get him up to our parents house in Ohio where he could be with family. The folks at North Mississippi Medical Center were unable to do anything for him and we hoped that a larger, research facility such as University Hospital at Ohio State would be able to offer a better prognosis. Sadly, that was not to be and he died of cancer on 11 May 2008 at the age of 57. My brother was very much loved and will be missed by both his family and many friends.

I’m still in shock since my brother was always vibrantly alive. My surviving brother and I are attempting to settle his estate with as little upset to our parents as possible. My brother was a collector with varied interests which will make carrying out this process somewhat difficult. If anyone knows of any sites that can assist us in identifying especially crystal glassware, please drop me a line.

A posting to one of the many blogging sites I subscribe to mentioned “therapeutic writing” which sounds like a good way for me to express some of the multitude of emotions I have running around in me. I will probably start a separate blog for that purpose while continuing to keep Dave’s Blog on it’s current subjects.

Dave

I will be away from blogging for the next several weeks due to a family emergency. If anyone is in the Tupelo, MS area and wants to drop a line my way I would appreciate it.

Cheers,

Dave

The downside of finally retiring my wife’s old Windows 2000 system is it was the only remaining Windows box in the house. As much as I would prefer to use Linux exclusively, there are a few sites that were built with no regard to compatibility with anything other than Microsoft products. Every once in a while I need to access one of these sites like when I do my State of Colorado income taxes each year. The apparently easy solution with my Athlon64 X2 desktop is to run Windows as a virtual machine.

The easy part was getting the virtual machine up and running. The hard part was in getting all of the various Windows updates applied. I don’t know if the if the problems I ran into were due to running Windows in a virtual machine (I doubt it) or are just a normal part of updating an older release of Windows with the many patches and fixes that have been released in the mean time. Either way, this is what I went through to get a fully updated version of Windows 2000 running in a virtual machine.

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Under normal circumstances, I don’t need to allow any remote access to my network. At most, I need to be able to check my e-mail and squirrelmail (see the squirrelmail article) now lets me do that. On the other hand, there are times when I’m gone for a long enough period that I really like to be able to log in from wherever and make sure everything is copacetic. Plus, there is always the possibility that the tape changer will throw a hissy fit and decide not to recognize one of the backup tapes or something similar will go wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

I put together a high level description of what is involved in setting up and running your own blog server over at The Idiot’s Guide to Blogging. Working with Raivyn has been fun and I highly recommend her blog.

I’ll be back with new material here at Dave’s Blog shortly.

Cheers,
Dave

I have tried a number of solutions to the problem of keeping spam off of my systems over the years. I’ve had my e-mail address for quite a few years which means it has been harvested a number of times. Because of this, I get quite a bit of spam. Until I instituted my latest set of changes, I was getting between 200 and 300 spam e-mails a day.

I have no intention of giving up or changing my e-mail address so keeping spam off of my system has become something of a personal battle for me. One thing nice about running my own mail server is I can use any weapons I can find in that fight.

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‘Tis the season to talk politics so here’s my first post on a non-technical subject. I describe my politics as libertarian with a small “l”. I use this expression to differentiate my political philosophy from that of the Libertarian Party (note the capital “L”).

Some years ago this distinction wasn’t really needed. The Libertarian Party was about limited government and individual responsibility. We all traced our political philosophy to Ayn Rand and her heroic characters who both insisted on personal liberty and lived with the knowledge and belief that they and they alone were responsible for their own actions and their consequences.

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