It's the fifth of something …

Friday, May 05, 2006

At times, all it takes to ruin the rest of the day is a small event.

Today, I dropped my cell phone.

I've accidentally dropped my previous phone multiple times, and it never suffered any damage (other than cosmetic scuff marks). But not so with my new phone. No scuff marks, but the display is now malfunctioning—half the scan lines are now white, making it hard to read anything on the display.

I just want to crawl back into bed.

Update on Tuesday, May 9^th, 2006

I should have stayed in bed. Just after writing this, I called Smirk telling him I was too sick to stay at work—I had barely enough time to make it to the bathroom before making my offering to the Great Porcelain God.

Traffic driving back home was bumper to bumper.

I don't remember much after hitting the bed.

Blarg.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Pings from a Plane

[Spent most of yesterday in bed—when I wasn't in bed, I did some surfing and came across this link worthy of being mentioned, but didn't have the energy. Good thing, since I can use it for today when I, thinking I was feeling better, did stuff I probably shouldn't have and paid for it later on. Oi. —Editor]

I just saw my plane cross the mid-Atlantic, not by looking out the window, but by watching routing updates cascade across the Internet. I'm writing from a Lufthansa jet right now, travelling from Munich to Boston. This plane offers the (relatively) new Connexion by Boeing wifi + satellite Internet service. It's seriously cool stuff—high latency, but absolutely functional. I've been aware of it for a while since the Boeing folks did a NANOG presentation about it last year. But this is the first time I've been able to use it.

Via jwz, Tracking Plane Flight on Internet

Now that's just darned neat. I know that Dan the Network engineer is playing around with BGP (setting up a dedicated BGP server to handle the full BGP routing table instead of trying to shoehorn the full BGP routing table into our routers) and I think it would be neat to see an Internet visualization via BGP routing (which is more a policy based routing protocol through autonomous systems than a technical based routing protocol like OSPF).

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Stiff, sore, sick.

Yesterday's activities (which, while a good idea, was probably something I shouldn't have done but did anyway, sigh) left me incredibly sore which meant I had a lovely night trying to sleep, leaving me this morning feeling quite ill—almost, but not quite to the level I was on Friday.

I'm beginning to think I should have stayed in bed both Friday and Saturday.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Nothing like a Monday to start off the week

Feeling much better today , except that the box that was hacked last week was hacked again this week (box was involentarily serving up files of dubious legality). The customer on said box mentioned the possibility of an insecure PHP script and this time, I threatened to shut off PHP if the script isn't fixed or removed the next time I had to fix this problem.

I also tested the cabling of the non-functioning T-1 and it's okay, which leaves a misconfigured T-1 card to muck with.

Nothing quite like Mondays.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Notes about a cold call received on a tech support line

“Hello, technical support,” I said.

This was followed by a two minute schpiel extolling the benefits of obtaining, free, for 30 days, a special hands-free phone that allows one to walk up to 300′ away from the base unit and all they need to do is confirm out mailing address at such-n-such a street.

“We're not interested,” I said.

This in turn was followed by two more minutes imploring me to consider the benefits of a hands-free phone and that yes, truely, we can try it out for 30 days and return it no obligation if we so care to, and we were located in Boca Raton, right?

“Still not interested,” I said.

I was then subjected to two minutes of a hard sell, imploring us to accept the unit least the employers will release the hounds upon them least they fail to send us the special hands-free phone that works up to 300′ away from the base unit and to confirm that we are indeed located in Florida.

“Still not interested,” I said.

This in turn was followed by much wailing and sobbing and then the caller thanked me for my time.

“You're welcome,” I said. I could have sworn I hear baying in the background as I hung up the phone.

Can't I just sleep until next week?

It turned out to be the cable after all.

Sigh.

Now I just need to figure out how to get OSPF to communicate over the DSL link (which it isn't) and that will be that.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

I think Nigeria has run out of money—a rash of dying government officials leaving millions to be siphoned off from banks will do that to a country.

From

Jamil Troure <jamil_troure88@hotmail.com>

To

sean <sean@conman.org>

Subject

Urgent Response Needed

Date

Fri, 5 May 2006 17:55:00 -0400 (EDT)

Goodday Sir/Madam,

I am pleased to introduce a business opportunity that will be beneficial to both you and me. It involves transferring to your overseas account the sum of ($7.5;US Dollars) Seven Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars [emphasis added], from one of the Fidelity Finance & Security Company here in Dakar-Senegal.

I am Jamil A. Troure the Auditor General in the Fidelity finance & Security Company here in Dakar Senegal west Africa, During the course of our auditing , I discovered a floating fund in an account opened since 1982 and till date no body has operated or filed papers to claim the fund.

After going through the records I discovered that the owner of the account, Engr. Mahmoud Al-Salem Shafiq an Iraqi oil merchant, died in the month of October 2005 in an auto crash. Since there was not infomation concerning additional members of his family, next of kin or known relation, the fund has been declared floating and if nobody comes forward for it, will be forfeited to the government.

Since I hardly know any foreigner,I am only contacting you as a foreigner to stand and apply as his next of kin because this money can not be approved to a local person here as his next of kin.

I need your full co-operation to make this work fine because the management is ready to approve this payment to any foreigner who has correct information of this account, which I will give to you upon your positive response and once I am convinced of your capability and assurance that you will never never let me down.

At the conclussion of this project ,we may proceed into an investment as equal partners with you in charge, pending my resignation from the company, but method of sharing profit should be based on 15% for you and rest for me and my colleague.

Regarding moral justification of the fund ,i wouldn't want you to consider it sinful. If you had being the victim ,Certainly you wouldn't be happy having your hard earned fund shared among government as an unclaimed deposit I believe they are many other aspects of life we may contribute with this fund to help the less priveledged and the needy in our society .

Furnish me with your direct telephone & Fax number for easy comminucation and please reply to me on this emails:

jamil_troure88@yahoo.com
jamil_troure@she.com

I look forward to your earliest response.

Jamil A. Troure

Man, they must have run out of money in Nigeria because this is the lowest amount I've ever seen in a 419 scam—only 7½ thounsand dollars? I'm supposed to be tempted to help someone gain illicit funds for only $1,125?

Although, with people like these, maybe Nigeria isn't running out of money

An enduring trait of Nigerian letter scammers—indeed, of most con artists—is their reluctance to walk away from a mark before his resources are exhausted. On February 5, 2003, several days after the checks were revealed as phony, after Worley was under siege by investigators, after his bank account had been frozen, after he had called his partners “evil bastards,” Worley received one more e-mail from Mercy Nduka.

“I am quite sympathetic about all your predicaments,” she wrote, “but the truth is that we are at the final step and I am not willing to let go, especially with all of these amounts of money that you say that you have to pay back.” She needed just one more thing from Worley and the millions would be theirs: another three thousand dollars.

“You have to trust somebody at times like this,” she wrote. “I am waiting your response.”

Via Flutterby!, THE PERFECT MARK

Nothing more to add other than it's a scam, people!

Thursday, May 11, 2006

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”

From this point, things can only go up.

I'll skip the blow-by-blow details since even I don't care to remember them. But briefly:

Of the three carriers we have for Internet connectivity, one suffered not one, but two (2) fibre cuts today, so our connection to them was pretty much toast; the second one was suffering massive network connectivity issues themselves, but declined to go into more detail than just “shut up! Yes! We have issues!” And the third one wasn't announcing all our routes properly, so we were pretty much dead in the water.
Because of the one above, we in the office were dead in the water because of DNS issues on our own XXXX network! (we use resolving only DNS servers, and if they can't get to the root servers, then … well … yeah, can't even resolve local domains all that well). So even checking email locally wasn't an option.
Because of the one above (don't ask), I was reminded of just how much I hate the labelling of ports on the Riverstone router/switch we use. It's way to easy to mix up ports on the Riverstone.
Control panel. Webmail. IMAP/POP server. None of which are working together on a server for a customer. Enough said.
The display on my phone took a turn for the worse. Of course, it didn't help things when I slammed it on the floor because I couldn't deal with two phone calls on the thing at the same time and lost both calls. More on this later.

I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Methinks they missed the point

“For Spanish, press one.”

From an actual voice mail system I called today.

One of the few amusing bits from today.

I have it good.

“I don't see what you have anything to be upset about,” screamed Smirk. I guess he heard me bitch about control panels one too many times today. “You have it good! You still have all your hair!”

This was one of the other amusing bits from today.

Now, about that cell phone …

Last week I dropped my new cell phone. Maybe three feet total. And the display went wonky. Over the week it got worse. Oh sure, I could still send and receive calls and still take pictures. But I couldn't read anything on the phone. Now my previous phone has been dropped countless times and it still works (I still have it and it's currently in service, for reasons that will become apparent in a moment). But the new phone?

Pretty much unusable.

So I called the service number for my provider.

Let me state that their phone mail system is a twisty maze of voice mail boxes, all alike. Really. I thought I got into a loop the first time I called. The second time I peristed enough to talk to a Real Live Operator.

Where I learned that any physical damage to the phone, such as liquids being spilled on it, being dropped more than one inch, being breathed on too hard, is not covered by the warentee (the service provider warentee—the warentee from the manufacturer might be different), but that I might have insurance to cover a replacement phone.

So a transfer, and another twisty maze of voice mail boxes and I'm now talking to the insurance department of my cell phone provider where I'm told that no, my account does not have insurance on the phones.

Well.

Good thing the darned thing was free to begin with.

You can see the outside display was pretty bad—pretty looking image, but it's supposed to be displaying stuff like the battery status, time, photos of people that call; not an abstract painting.

[The outside screen is pretty, but it's also pretty badly damaged]

And the inside display is even worse off.

Mr. Cellphone, meet Mr. Hammer.

Yes, that's right, snuggle up close now.

I realize that this cell phone wasn't the cause of my problems today, but it certainly didn't help matters either. And the fact that Sony Ericssons are known to be rather fragile and can't handle drops from more than a few inches doesn't help either.

[As my friend Gregory would say, “RMA THIS!”]

But it sure felt good.

The Boston Diaries

Friday, May 05, 2006