Thursday, October 31, 2002

perl interface to lifelines

I've started hacking a perl interface into lifelines so reports don't have to be written in lifelines scripting language.

Until it is far enough along to check it cvs, grab an early snapshot from http://www.nozell.com/marc/lifelines/

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

i-zimbra was up for 353d 22h 00m

Well it had to end. i-zimbra a whitebox Pentium 200 running Red Hat 7.1 was up for 353d 22h 00m when a snow-induced power failure was out longer than the UPS system could handle.


353d 22h00m


When it rebooted this morning, i-zimbra was ranked at #14 for tuxtime.dk's Current Top 100 uptimes for Linux machines. It now is #35 on the All times Top 100 uptimes for Linux machines list and #52 on the All times Top 100 uptimes.

RKS Marketing & Web Design -- reputable marketing company or spamhaus?


Hmm, I just got some more Unsolicited Commerical Email (UCE) from middletownhealth.org again. Sheeh, and this is after I called and left a message for "Jeffrey A. Spina, D.C. - Editor" by calling (845) 342-0000.



Again I gave them a call (~8pm EST), but they office was closed. I left polite voice mail that told them that spam/UCE was not a good way to advertise their company and asked to be removed from their list and for them to email me.



Then I decided to give RKS Marketing & Web Design (http://www.rksmarketing.com/) a call at (952) 417-7040 since they hold the copyright of the website design. The receiptionist forwarded
me to 'Rog' (sp?) who informed me that they create similar website for over 200 doctors offices and send out millions of pieces of mail on their behalf. I informed him that I live more than 500 miles away from both middletownhealth.org or northrocklandhealth.org. He said I must have signed up for their free newletter which I told him was not possible since I've never lived anywhere near there.

I have run a genealogy mailing list that has a New York State focus and have a number of relatives in the Orange County area, but none would have used my email address, even by accident. I asked that my email address be removed as well as my domain, nozell.com, be put on their banned email list. We'll see if I get more junk mail from them or not.




I've sent email to:

info@rksmarketing.com, href="mailto:info@middletownhealth.org">info@middletownhealth.org,
info@northrockland.org
pointing them to these webblog entries:




The funny thing is if you go a google.com search on either href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=northrocklandhealth">northrocklandhealth or href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=middletownhealth">middletownhealth
my weblog entry is the first hit!



I did some googling on 'href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=rksmarketing">rksmarketing'
and see that they use extremetracking.com to analyse their website hits. Take a look at the href="http://extremetracking.com/open;geo?tag=rstieg">geographic breakdown of hits and notice all the 1, 2, 3 page requests from all kinds of different countries. I wonder if people are looking at their page in response to some spam. One from Brunei, two hits from Saudi Arabia and Thailand, three from Indonesia.

Sunday, October 20, 2002

verticalresponse.com reputable mailing list marketing company or spamhaus?


A few years ago I bought a new PC from a large computer manufacturer and dutifully registered with them using a web interface and provided them with a particular email address so I could track who they sold it to. I own my own domain name and have it setup so anything(at)nozell.com gets forwarded to my default address.




So I've gotten tired getting junk mail to this particular account -- there are over 150 messages in just the first 20 days of October. Most of the messages have a message about click here to reply to this
message and be removed from the mailing list. The most common one from the href="http://www.verticalresponse.com">verticalresponse.com list. Since a lot of spammers use this trick to find 'live' email addresses, I was hesitant to remove the address that way. Since thier website looked reasonable and provided a phone number I called up on Friday (17-Oct-2002) and asked the nice woman on the phone to remove the email address. I told her how I track who sold my email and she had no idea how my email make it from the large computer manufacturer to their mailing list but assured me that she would take off the list. I mentioned that some of the email didn't have their removal notice and said that they just send out the email from lists provided by their
customers and the customers should always have the notice.




Well, it is the weekend and I'm still getting spam to that account, albiet none with the verticalresponse.com message. I'm wondering if verticalresponse.com is just feeding me a line or what. The companies still spamming me are: thesuperspecialsales.com, tremendousbuys.com, summertimedeals.com, greatoffrs.com (yes with the funky spelling), c0olmail.com (with the l33t spelling), and everydayoffers.com.




Here is what the junk box holds for that address:




144 Oct 19 reply-34872443- ( 117) Check It Out Nortans Software!
145 Oct 19 Tremendous Buys ( 316) Know what your family does online
146 Oct 19 ScreenSaver ( 198) Free Haunted House Screen Saver
147 Oct 19 GreatDeals ( 81) Important Pet Halloween News
148 Oct 19 Cool Mail ( 792) Friend, Government Secured Certificates That Pay You 16%, 18%, up to 50%!!
149 Oct 19 EveryDayOffers ( 38) Double your Download Speed and get Free Software
150 Oct 19 Cool Mail ( 792) Friend, Government Secured Certificates That Pay You 16%, 18%, up to 50%!!
151 Oct 20 Tremendous Buys ( 198) For the Lip Plumper: Full Pouty Lips - A s Seen On NBC Today Show
152 Oct 20 Kate ( 218) Order Confirmation
153 Oct 20 Super Best Deal ( 790) Friend, Government Secured Certificates That Pay You 16%, 18%, up to 50%!!
154 Oct 20 Cool Mail ( 92) Friend, Printer Cartridges - Save up to 80% - Free Shipping Offer
155 Oct 20 Cool Mail ( 92) Friend, Printer Cartridges - Save up to 80% - Free Shipping Offer
156 Oct 21 The Super Speci ( 73) Friend, Prescriptions with Privacy

Lotus Agenda is dead, long live Chandler

I had almost forgotten about Lotus Agenda when I saw a pointer to Mitch Kapor's blog where he talks about his new open source project PIM, Chandler, that is 'in the spirit' of Agenda.

Way back in the late 1980s/early 1990s I worked in the then DEC/Digital VMS (now OpenVMS) development group and PCs where first showing up on engineer desktops. Microsoft Word 2.x and Lotus Agenda were pretty much all it was used for. The nice thing about Agenda was you could just dump in random notes and it would semi-automatically index, sort and categorize them. So a "email Rich project functional design doc" would make a todo entry under email, link to Rich's email and also be searchable by 'functional design doc'.

I have hundreds of email messages (RMAIL files read by evolution, mutt and just plain Mail), status reports (in Microsoft Word format as required by my management chain), notes to myself (simple ASCII text), personal and business contacts (Palm Pilot synced to Evolution Address Book as well as the corporate LDAP). To be able to search for all references to "Joe FieldPerson at onsite at BigCompany" would be a godsend.

OSA Foundation mailing lists: http://www.osafoundation.org/mailing_lists.htm

Sunday, October 13, 2002

Jeffrey A. Spina, D.C. - Another Spamming Doctor -- Don't do business with spammers

It seems that this is the week for Doctors Who Spam(tm)! As with
the spam from Dr. Jay H. Schwartz, D.C, this looks like Jeffrey A. Spina, D.C. has signed up with marketing company that uses Unsolicited Commercial Email/Unsolicited Bulk Email.




Friday afternoon I gave Jeffrey A. Spina's office a call and talked to the receptionist who told me the doctor was too busy and took down my name, email and phone number. No call back yet.




This spam from mail@MiddletownHealth.org
looks remarkably similar to the info@northrocklandhealth.org
spam. See
for yourself
.




Did you get this spam too? If so give him a call (try collect) and politely explain why spamming is not a good way to drum up business. Here is the contact info from http://www.middletownhealth.org/





Middletown Health Online
54 Dolson Ave.
Middletwon, NY 10940 (Yes, they misspelled the name of the town, Middletown)
Jeffrey A. Spina, D.C. - Editor
E-Mail: info@MiddletownHealth.org
Phone: (845) 342-0000
Fax: (845) 342-0000



Please remember that the only reason people spam is because some small fraction of the recipients actually respond to the ad. Please don't do business with spammers. Thanks!




Here is the spam I received twice. Be aware that I live about 4 hours from where Jeffrey A. Spina, D.C. practices and have never signed up for any sort of medical mailing list.




From mail@MiddletownHealth.org Fri Oct 11 16:01:29 2002
Return-path: <mail@MiddletownHealth.org>
Delivery-date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:01:29 -0400
To: marc@nozell.com
From: mail@MiddletownHealth.org
Reply-To: mail@MiddletownHealth.org
Subject: Middletown Health Online
Message-Id: <20021011200853.A67ADB5AD7@relay3.datapeer.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:08:53 -0400 (EDT)
Lines: 286

Middletown Health Online: All kinds of healthy "stuff"

"Just keep banging until someone opens the door."

Middletown Health Online, as a free community service,
broadcasts health information to many thousands
of local residents to help improve quality of life
and to provide assistance when having to make
important healthcare decisions.

We apologize if you received this e-mail in error. To unsubscribe
simply click http://www.MiddletownHealth.org/subscribe.shtml

Jeffrey A. Spina, D.C. - Editor
www.MiddletownHealth.org

==================

AOL USERS: LINKS MAY NOT BE "CLICK-ABLE" FOR YOU.
PLEASECOPY AND PASTE LINKS TO YOUR BROWSER WINDOW.

==================

Featuring:

1. Family Tips - Laughing away the pain
2. Light & Easy - Beating the blues with exercise
3. Just the facts - Eye Safety
4. Question-of-the-month - Doctors keeping you waiting?
5. Feature Article - Growing up with orthotics
6. Late Breaking Consumer & Natural Health News
7. If selling your home - It's all about curb appeal
8. Health Department Updates
9. Community Calendar - Wazzup 'round town?

==================

1. Laughing has got to be good for you!
A new study indicates laughter may reduce pain as much as 40%.
Can something that make you feel good stop you from feeling bad?
UCLA Medical Center researchers continue testing this in their
pain labs. How about working there?

Apparently kids are asked to submerge their hands in ice water.
Those watching "funny videos" where able to keep their
hands submerged 40% longer.

The notion that humor might produce healing enhancing changes
in the body is gaining respect. Regardless, we can all laugh a little
more, and that has to be good.

Excerpts reproduced with permission from
Chiropractic Wellness & Fitness Magazine
www.cwfmonline.org

Tuesday, October 8, 2002

Dr. Jay H. Schwartz, D.C. - The Spamming Doctor -- Don't do business with spammers


Okay yesterday, I got two copies of the spam below -- one to my personal email address and an identical one to an old work email address.




So I visited their website and called the number listed there. The receptionist who answered as happy to take my call and yes this was Dr. Jay H. Schwartz, D.C.'s office. She was surprised about the spam (technically Unsolicited Commerical Email/Unsolicited Bulk Email) but said the Doctor, Dr. Jay H. Schwartz, D.C., 'does things like that sometimes'. I explained that the doctor's junk mail was in the same category as porn site ads, viagra or penis enlargers. I told her that it was not a polite advertising policy and like most of the people who got the email likely weren't even within 100 miles of Dr. Jay H. Schwartz, D.C.'s office. I volunteered to talk to the doctor but Dr. Jay H. Schwartz, D.C. was busy and left my phone number and email.




No reply.




So I'm going the public shaming route.




Did you get this spam too? If so give him a call (try collect) and politely explain why spamming is not a good way to drum up business. Here is the contact info from http://www.northrocklandhealth.org/doctorsoffice.shtml




Phone: (845) 354-7621
Fax: (845)354-7627
E-Mail: info@northrocklandhealth.org
Mail: Pacesetter Park Rt. 202
Pomona, NY 10970


Please remember that the only reason people spam is because some
small fraction of the recipients actually respond to the ad. Please
don't do business with spammers. Thanks!



I wonder if Chiropractic Wellness & Fitness Magazine
(www.cwfmonline.org), Foot Levelers, Inc. (www.footlevelors.com), and
www.ERA.com appreciate being mentioned in this spamming doctor's junk
mail?






Here is the spam I received twice. Be aware that I live about 4 hours
from where Dr. Jay H. Schwartz practices and have never signed up for
any sort of medical mailing list.




From mail@northrocklandhealth.org Mon Oct 07 13:12:24 2002
Return-path: <mail@northrocklandhealth.org>
Envelope-to: marc@localhost
Delivery-date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 13:12:24 -0400
[deleted]
Received: from [12.109.176.230] (helo=relay3.datapeer.com)
by slammer.netnation.com with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1)
id 17ybO3-000101-00
for marc@nozell.com; Mon, 07 Oct 2002 10:09:43 -0700
Received: from localhost (unknown [66.111.253.14])
by relay3.datapeer.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 2CE82B60E4
for <marc@nozell.com>; Mon, 7 Oct 2002 13:25:33 -0400 (EDT)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
To: marc@nozell.com
From: mail@northrocklandhealth.org
Reply-To: mail@northrocklandhealth.org
Subject: North Rockland Health Online
Message-Id: <20021007172533.2CE82B60E4@relay3.datapeer.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 13:25:33 -0400 (EDT)

North Rockland Health Online: All kinds of healthy "stuff"

"Just keep banging until someone opens the door."

North Rockland Health Online, as a free community service,
broadcasts health information to many thousands
of local residents to help improve quality of life
and to provide assistance when having to make
important healthcare decisions.

We apologize if you received this e-mail in error. To unsubscribe
simply click http://www.northrocklandhealth.org/subscribe.shtml

Jay H. Schwartz, D.C. - Editor
www.northrocklandhealth.org

==================

AOL USERS: LINKS MAY NOT BE "CLICK-ABLE" FOR YOU.
PLEASECOPY AND PASTE LINKS TO YOUR BROWSER WINDOW.

==================

Featuring:

1. Family Tips - Laughing away the pain
2. Light & Easy - Beating the blues with exercise
3. Just the facts - Eye Safety
4. Question-of-the-month - Doctors keeping you waiting?
5. Feature Article - Growing up with orthotics
6. Late Breaking Consumer & Natural Health News
7. If selling your home - It's all about curb appeal
8. Health Department Updates
9. Community Calendar - Wazzup 'round town?

==================

1. Laughing has got to be good for you!
A new study indicates laughter may reduce pain as much as 40%.
Can something that make you feel good stop you from feeling bad?
UCLA Medical Center researchers continue testing this in their
pain labs. How about working there?

Apparently kids are asked to submerge their hands in ice water.
Those watching "funny videos" where able to keep their
hands submerged 40% longer.

The notion that humor might produce healing enhancing changes
in the body is gaining respect. Regardless, we can all laugh a little
more, and that has to be good.

Excerpts reproduced with permission from
Chiropractic Wellness & Fitness Magazine
www.cwfmonline.org

Wednesday, October 2, 2002

wifistatd-0.1

I ran across this little app today. One of those things I was going to code up but never got around to doing.

Linux User #6436

Are you a registered Linux User?


linux user 6436


I am and so should you.