Watch Links

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No, I’m not saying pay attention to hyperlinks … I’m referring to the links in a watchband. 🙂

I recently purchased a new watch from Amazon.com … it is a Casio Men’s G-Shock Atomic Solar Watch.

The watch arrived last Friday without incident … but the watchband, which is metal and has removable links, was far too big. No big deal, all I had to do is remove some of the links to make it the right size.

Problem is, there’s no instructions on how to remove the links… and it’s not immediately obvious how you do it. Clearly you have to slide the pin down (I’ll add a picture of the link later) to get it out, but without a really tiny screwdriver, it’s impossible.

I checked the Casio website to see if I could find anything … but there is nothing but a PDF of the watches manual available.

I find their support number and give it a call … the guy I talked to indicated that they could email me the information on how to remove links. I say great … I’ll keep an eye on my inbox. He replies that it probably won’t be until Monday that the email is sent … because the person who sends email is out of the office today.

<sound of a jaw dropping>

I reply (with an appropriate level of incredulity): “What? You can’t send the email? Doesn’t your system just have the ability to send email directly?” I’m informed, that their system does not have that ability … and the only person with email access won’t be back until Monday.

Ok, I say, but I really think you guys should move into the 20th century.

After I hang up, and play with the watch a bit more, I’m able to figure out how to get the links out … and the watch is comfortably on my wrist right now.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where a technologically oriented company (as I’m assuming Casio is) wasn’t able to send email on demand. IBM, Dell, Compaq, even Yakima, have all been able to send me information immediately via email.

Update: Tuesday, 6/6/06 (auspisius date, to say the least).

Casio finally sent me the instructions … they sent a file named “RESIZING” … and informed me that I could open it with Adobe Acrobat or any Word Processing program. Of course without a file extension, it will be hard to open the file with any program.

[tags]Time, Watches, Casio, Watchband[/tags]

Say NO to Backup MX’s

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Word of advice … with a few exceptions, there is absolutely no need for most organizations to implement backup MX’s. In fact, if they are not setup and managed very carefully, they can cause significant harm to an organization.

In the past week I’ve had two people on my mailing lists get their subscriptions suspended because their companies backup MX’s were not configured properly.

For those who don’t know, a “Backup MX” is a mail server that can accept mail delivery if the primary mail server is not available. A domain’s DNS records have “MX” records that list the mail servers in order of priority. Sending mail servers will try to connect to the first receiving mail server on the MX list, if that connection fails, it will try the next, etc.

Why are they not needed and, more importantly, why can they cause harm?

  1. Not needed
    1. Most sending mail server will try to deliver mail for a few days (generally around 5). Even if your mail server is down for a whole weekend, the sending server will continue delivery attempts.
    2. Unless your organization is expecting a massive amount of email (and I’m talking about thousands of mail deliveries per second, the kind a major national ISP might get), most mail servers are more than capable of handling the load … and the extra work involved in maintaining the additional servers probably isn’t worth it.
  2. Why harmful
    1. If not configured properly, mail delivered to the backup MX might not be accepted … thus causing non-delivery errors. This is what happened to the subscribers to my lists. Their primary MX was accepting mail, but the backup MX wasn’t. The rejection messages were being processed by the list software and their subscriptions were suspended
    2. Backup MX’s are often not as spam & virus resistant as primary MX’s. For this reason, spammers and virus writers often target backup MX’s instead of primary MX’s.

In the end … backup MX’s do have their uses … but only if implemented where absolutely needed and managed very carefully.

Oh, and by the way, if you are having problems sending mail from a different system than your primary mail server … it’s not because you need a backup MX. It’s probably because the other system needs to have a reverse IP name setup in DNS. Many mail servers are configured to reject mail sent from systems that do not have reverse IP dns entries setup.

[tags]SMTP, mail, email, Mail Servers, MX records, DNS[/tags]

Stupid Outlook

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Sometimes I really hate MS Outlook.

Yesterday I had to run a test that Cindy, one of our QA people, was having problems with … she was trying to test our issue tracking system against a DB2/400 database, but were getting a system error from the iSeries.

She emailed me the instructions … they was pretty straight forward …

log on to test system
open a command shell
cd into the testing directory
run
. ./setup.script
command parm1 parm2 parm3
command parm4 parm5

Unfortunately, Outlook removed some line breaks and it looked like this:

log on to test system
open a command shell
cd into the testing directory
run
. ./setup.script
command parm1 parm2 parm3 command parm4 parm5

And so I couldn’t run the command properly because the parameters were wrong.

I wasted about 2 hours last night trying to figure out why the test procedure wasn’t working.

And, yes, I did find the option to disable that particular behaivor.

[tags]Outlook, QA, Testing, Work[/tags]

Frustration Abounds

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I had a very frustrating day at work today … nothing was working right … even when it did work right, it wasn’t supposed to.

I’ve been trying to track down a bug in some software that only manifests when we put the system under a very heavy load. Unfortunately, a heavy load is very hard to simulate.

Luckily, our QA has a pretty solid test framework that will simulate 18 users performing 10 transaction each all at the same time.

Problem is, I can’t debug when the test framework is running. If I try to run the test framework in my debugger, there’s enough delay added by the debugger AND additional latency in the communications that the error I’m trying to fix doesn’t manifest (not to mention that the server I’m interacting with doesn’t have as much of a load on it).

My only option is to add logging code to the software and run the test framework over and over and over again.

I ran the test framework a few times in the morning and saw the error … I wanted to add a bit more diagnostic code to extract more information about the failure.

I ran the test framework again THREE more times … and not once did the error manifest.

I know the error is there … I just don’t know what I need to do to fix it yet. And if I can’t get it to manifest, I can’t refine the solution.

Darn frustrating.

[tags]Work, java, debugging[/tags]

Restart Required

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Gahhhhh!!!!

Sometimes I hate Windows (more than sometimes, actually)!

Of course, I also hate software installers … especially those that require you to restart Windows after installing something … but don’t tell you before hand that it will (or may) be required.

What I hate even more than that … is installers that require a restart … but don’t give you an option to NOT restart after the install.

I just had to re-install the PocketPC “ActiveSync” software … and, after it finished the install, it informed me that a system restart was required … and I should click the “OK” button to restart.

Of course there was no way to avoid doing the restart … so my options were to let it restart (interrupting my work) or let the installer sit there for a few hours until I could take a break and do the restart when I was actually ready to. The 2nd option ran the risk of me accidentally clicking the OK button when I didn’t mean to.

Software vendors … GET A CLUE … only require a restart when it’s really necessary … and ALWAYS give the user the option of restarting later.

Phew, glad I got that off my chest. I’m better now.

[tags]Windows, installers, software, restart[/tags]

Five Ways To Spend Your Gas Rebate

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For a nation “addicted to oil,” as President Bush put it, Senate Republicans have a proposal that can only be described as enabling: Put $100 back into the pocket of every taxpayer.

The proposal, unveiled Thursday, has been roundly criticized not only by Democrats but also by fiscal conservatives who warn it will widen the deficit while doing little to encourage energy conservation.

“It could be one of the dumbest ideas of the year,” said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. “I haven’t looked at all of the ideas yet, but it’s got to be right up there.”

Taylor pointed out that as proposed, the rebate would go only to people who paid federal income tax last year, meaning it would be no help at all to the millions of low-income Americans who pay no income taxes but arguably suffer the most in times of rising fuel prices. About 100 million taxpayers would qualify for the rebate, which would be limited to filers with incomes under $150,000 for couples or about $100,000 for singles. It would cost more than $10 billion.

–
We love how a conservative numbers guy has to point out the obvious flaw in the GOP’s otherwise damn fine plan.

What shall we do with this munificent benefit, this tremendous windfall? Why, it will buy us about 2 tanks of gas eachl – an amount that’s pretty meaningless to both Ginny and I given our lightfoot driving habits. So what shall we do with our $100 gas rebate, assuming that this bill passes (and you can bet that the push will be on to pass it just in time for ‘lectioneering, kids, because after all it’s a “please-vote-for-me-in-November” ploy by the GOP).

Here are a few ideas we have about what we’ll do with the (theoretical) rebate. They all involve endorsing or re-directing the rebate to a more deserving target – this may not be possible depending on how it’s structured, so it may be necessary to deposit it and write a check, but I’m hoping endorsing to third parties will be possible. You’ll see why:

  1. Re-direct your rebate check to our local Meals on Wheels program, or to a a charity that picks up homeless people and transports them to shelters
  2. Donate it to a hybrid or alternative-fuels pilot project, or to the National Park Service to be used to fuel the shuttle buses they run in order to cut down on traffic
  3. Sign it over to your friendly neighborhood police, fire, and emergency rescue organizations
  4. Forward it to an organization that helps the working poor and Katrina refugees with gas money and bus/transit fare cards
  5. Endorse it over to the campaign fund of a Democrat running against an incumbent Republican, and fax a copy to Sen. Bill Frist’s office as a big “THANK YOU.”

Please feel free to steal this idea, or enlarge on it. Think of the good that could be done – $100 isn’t that much money to Ginny or I, but it’s a lot of money to a poor person, or to a non-profit trying to eke every last penny out of a small budget.

Note: This post also appears, almost word for word, on Ginny’s blog … we worked on it together.
[tags]car, gas, rebate, frist, hybrid[/tags]

Good Deed

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This morning the SSH scan detector software that I run (DenyHosts) sent me an email indicating that it had detected a SSH scan and blocked the host.

The host name it reported did not appear to be a dynamic host (like those usually assigned by DSL provider), so did a little digging to identify who owned the system.

I notified Terry about the problem … and they replied …

I just checked the .100 address and found that I had (in an unbelievable amount of stupidity) left a test account on the system, and someone from Italy was actively engaged in running an SSH scan from that account. I contacted their ISP, hopefully they will do something about it. I removed the account, and will be taking the machine down momentarily to be rebuilt after I back some data off of it. How embarrassing. Thanks for letting me know. I suppose it is time for me to install that bridging firewall running snort I’ve been meaning to build… gah!

Glad I could help, Terry. Chalk one up for the good guys.

[tags]ssh, security, linux[/tags]

Now I’m a ‘Pod’ people

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Yes, it’s true. I’m officially an IPODder.

For reasons I won’t go into, my good friend Steve gave Ginny and I a $500 gift card to ABT Electronics (he’s a VERY good friend).

Today we decided to go over to ABT to see what we could get.

Talk about a madhouse … I thought Frys was crazy, but ABT was insane.

Steve showed us some of his the kitchen appliances he’s getting for the house he’s building … and then left us to make our purchases.

After looking at various items, we decided to get the following …

  • IPOD Nano 4gb for me, including
    • Apple care 2 year warranty
    • Arm band & protective skin
  • Bluetooth headset for Ginny’s cell phone
  • Clock Radio IPOD dock for Ginny

I chose the IPOD because my current MP3 player only has 256mb of memory … and I find it quite frustrating that it runs out of space when I try to put more than a few songs on it.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the size of the nano … but with the skin it’s got enough bulk (and protection) to satisfy me.

Oh yeah … even if you’re not shopping for electronics, I do recommend at least one visit to ABT to see some of their art installations. They have a huge fish tank, a granite globe that floats on water, and this really cool piece that has marbles rolling around tracks. Ginny and I stared at it for about 10 minutes.