That's right, you, the guy/gal with your hands in your pockets looking at your shoes - I hold you responsible.
Sure, it wasn't you that unleashed this volley of spam on the world, BUT, it was you that configured your server in such a way that it sends a helpful little email NDR informing me that the 4,500 emails I apparently sent out yesterday, unfortunately didn't make it - because jjwse032jds@yourdomain.3ejw doesn't actually exist...
Recipient filtering and tarpitting - AD Lookups - Recipient validation. Every half decent mail system has this functionality, and if yours doesn't then you either upgrade your life to the 21st century, or drop any anti-spam system infront of it - such as GFI or Vamsoft (no, anti-spam built into your anti-virus, is not real anti-spam)
OK, I accept some of the responsibility - I have a catchall setup on my domain. Why? Because I have had it for so long that I don't know what addresses I have published. I have an idea, but I will miss a few. Needless to say, after this little stint, that is going to change (especially as I am now staring down the barrel of a long weekend).
Additionally, I wan't to make an apology of my own, and plead for you to bear this in mind the next time you write a fake email address in a public forum. Make it unroutable, please. I have been guilty of using yourdomain^com or whatever^com but am far more concious of this since being on the other end. A few years ago, some online star trek folk (no capitalisation for you) had a website called swd (or something). Anyway, their domain was swd^net^au - they then had the idea of masking that against spam by listing it as BLOCK^net^au - see the problem here? Fair enough, the domain wasn't registered back then, and their domain is now long dead (posted in 98 originally, I believe), but it has made me pay more attention to what I am writing as a domain name.
Anyway, I have a few thousand emails to move around
Kieran
It has been a HUGE few weeks, I have finally completed my commercial website http://www.block.net.au . That has taken me, disappointingly, about 9 months to do - further proof that I am not a web designer, or moreso, I am rubbish at writing content.
Being a Frontpage web, and GoDaddy not liking Frontpage and Community Server living on the same hosting account - I took the blog down. Fortunately, I figured a way to write an ASP form for the site, and simply stripped the sitemap - meaning there are no frontpage components left. So all I had to do was reactivate the CS site, which was relatively simple, considering I found my initial blog post in the Google cache on how I did it initially (Thanks Google!)
So, that ends that trial of my website, on to my helpsite and the help guides. I have been wanting to build and document a test network, particularly so that I can detail more of the common setups (like Self Signed Certificates on the clients, RPC/HTTP, etc). Now, I have my virtual server, which has survived a few upgrades, primarily RAM, Hard drive, and RAID Controller - so I am building a full virtual network there. Aside from the usual test network build, I thought it would be an idea to create a video of it all. Fortunately, the MVP award has given me a copy of Camtasia Studio 4, courtesy of Tech Smith (no doubt so that people like me use it, see how good it is, and then write a blog post about it :) Anyway, this has brought out the perfectionist in me again, as I detail absolutely everything, and then compile it into videos that are actually worth watching. So far, I have full (read: unedited) videos of the network being built, and am now starting to get into the useful stuff, like RPC/HTTP configuration and troubleshooting.
This has all taken a back seat for the moment, thanks to a few new clients. I am excluding names primarily because I have not asked for a testimonial (but I will for the commercial site), but they are taking up a lot of my time, and more importantly forcing me to think more :) Key to this has been to solve a problem of frightening regularity in Australia.
Telstra are useless.
When getting the phone system organised, and preparing the contract for the client, I gave the wrong address - 255 instead of 225. A tragic mistake, but fortunately one that was noticed that same day by the client, correct with Telstra, and then even confirmed by the client with Telstra in a separate phone call. So, we waited our 5 weeks for the ISDN phone lines be installed.
"Hi, this is Joe Installer from Telstra, trying to install your lines at 255...." Good work Telstra.
Fortunately, they worked very hard to resolve it - and actually had the lines installed and working the Monday after they were due (they were due the previous Friday). A stellar feat, but one that was overshadowed the next day by the most disgusting person I have ever dealt with - our account manager Claire (I would give the last name if I had it!)
Fully knowing that I am a consultant, she told the client that I was responsible for giving them the wrong address in the first place when they complained about the delays (not just the lines, but even once they were installed, they didn't ring...). This is after she had already admitted it was a Telstra fault, and knew full well that the contract, signed 5 weeks earlier, had the correct address.
Now, this client is not small fry, they are part of one of the largest banks in the world - exponentially larger that Telstra themselves - and this "customer service" person actually hung up on the client, refused to listed to the manager (she stopped listening to me after the first day, and having walked the "bend over for Telstra" path before, I was definitely not trying to stir the pot), and even had the misguided notion that somehow trying to pass the blame around was going to work. Luckily for me, this client is very switched on - and knew straight away (before I had a chance to even protest) where the issues were.
Wow, now that was a rant :) Anyway, the point of this was not to whinge about Telstra, or this horrid Claire person, but rather to solve a problem they caused. Without phonelines, our internet was also delayed indefinitely (and still is) - the scope, to use a neighbours alternate ADSL line. The problem, getting through the tennancy walls (which cannot be penetrated). The solution, a wireless bridge.
Now, I had never used one of these, but I knew they existed (just not what they called). So, go to what you know, I asked at Experts-Exchange -> http://www.experts-exchange.com/Q_22598618.html
The real thing I am trying to convey here, is that the WET54G is (out of the box) a piece of rubbish. It would not connect to the WRT54G, and when it did, it would lose ethernet, so here is how I fixed it, and got it to work;
- Reset the WET54G to defaults (not easily done, but this worked)
- Plug the unit in
- Press the reset button and count to 10
- Leave the button in and disconnect power for 10 seconds
- Leave the button in and reattach power
- Count to 10 again, and then release the button and unplug power
- Disconnect the LAN cable
- Plug the unit back in again and wait for it to boot
- Disconnect power, plug in the LAN and then turn it back on
- Done - these are probably redundant instructions, but they consistantly worked for me, and I did it at least 20 times (no, really)
- Now, with the unit reset to defaults, immediately update the firmware of the unit - I tried for hours without doing this (like a fool) but you need to do it
- With that flashed, you should be ready to now follow the (non Vista compatible) instructions
And, after many issues with range, dropouts, tradesmen and anything else that can go wrong - it is now working. The users have full internet access, and now almost have a full office!
Hopefully that little tidbit helps someone else - if not, whinging about Telstra made me feel a little better :)
Kieran