I have finally had enough. A few days ago, I decided to start using JunkMatcher with Mail.app because my spam was out of control. I am pleased to say, I am very happy with it and plan to continue using it. On another spam front, I recently had to turn to moderating my comments with this blog because I was getting some comment spamming. Well, last night, I had 61 comment spams so I am now using a cool plugin that produces a series of numbers in a graphic so you will now have to manually type in the numbers before your comments appear. I am going to moderate for a few days until I am sure it is working, but hopefully it will 
Archive for December, 2004
All posts written in December, 2004.
Dec
30
2004
spam…email and blog.
Dec
29
2004
speed up firefox.
Well, my friend Ben accidentally passed a link on to me that I wanted to pass on to others. If you use Firefox and you want to speed up your web surfing when you use your broadband connection, check out this cool guide.
Dec
27
2004
flavors from around the world.
Back in November when I went to the World of Coca Cola with my friend Doug, we sampled flavors of pops from all over the world. Today, I have finally had a chance to post pictures of what we sampled. Some good, some bad, but none better than Coke itself.
PS. Stay away from pop from Italy, unless you request a Coke.
Dec
22
2004
growl.
I am always looking for cool stuff for Mac OS X…and I have been carrying around a bookmark for growl for the last few months, and today I finally installed it. Growl is “a global notification system for Mac OS X .” Translation: something really cool that works with multiple apps. So you have mail checking mail all day and you would like to be notified of new mail, or perhaps you are listening to iTunes, and the song changes and you would like to know what you are listening to, growl will notify you with a cool little window.
You can do a number of cool things with growl.
- Have your web server notify you of anything strange going on.
- Using Growl, Rendezvous and Python for LAN notification
- Remote notification using growl.
So if you want something cool and useful…download growl today!
Dec
20
2004
half can of coke, nine pretzels and a marching band.
Having grandparents that moved to Florida a few years, there are times when I find myself on a flight to see them. I went down for the weekend for a family emergency (Queen of all card playing was in the hospital), so my sister and I made a last minute decision to fly down and see her. Well, I am not one for layovers…but I would do anything for my grandmother, so I had a two hour layover in a midwestern city I had never been in before…and that is where the excitement began!
I already have issues about flying to and from FL to begin with because you have a 99% chance of being on a flight with more wheel chairs and strollers than not, but this time I happened to be on the other 1% of all flights to FL…the one with a 100-150 piece middle school marching band that had finally made it to play at Disney World.
We took off late because the marchers could not get their seating arrangements worked out. This friend wanted to sit with that friend but did not want to sit by the other person, etc. This was pretty exciting for some because it was the first time they ever flew anywhere but between the flashes of the cameras, combined with the late departure because the seating situation, coupled with all the “coolness”, well I was ready for a Yuengling. (at least I was not on Spirit Air) I am not a fan of turbulance, but for once, I had to smile when we hit turbulance because the marchers knew for a few minutes that they were just not as cool as they thought they were. But fortunately they felt cool once again and began the count down until landing when we were close to the ground.
Moral of the story…I have yet to have a “normal” FL flying experience when going to see the grandparents, but in the end I guess it is all worth it.
Dec
16
2004
expect the expected.
I can get riled up easily, but I am trying to work on that. Things easily get to me, such as summer time on the Metra, dealing with Internet Explorer’s “standards“, dealing with certain people who still do not realize that a phone works both ways, and the regardless of how much quality work I output, I am going to get the same treatment as the person who sleeps at their desk or does the bare minimum to “look busy”. I expect things in life: fair treatment (no double standards), hard work will pay off, people should be equal in relationships, people should have some sense of humor, and that when I go to McDonalds and order a plain hamburger, I do not get one with that still tastes like dehydrated onions and pickles even when I scrape all that crap off. Well…last week I picked up one of A’s healthy magazines and read an article that really made me think. One of the points in this article which explained “how to get along with anyone” really stuck with me: “Expect the expected.” So just as Frank Costanza would say “Serenity Now“, I am trying to say “Expect the expected!” Oh how I would love to really say more, but I will be nice.
Dec
14
2004
.mac webmail
I am not a WebObjects programmer, but I know one …but please, I have had just about enough with .mac web mail. With errors like: “Did not receive any response from application. It is possible that the application does not exist, or that the requested url is incorrect.” topped off with a little does of no junk mail support, and no filtering…I just do not understand. How much effort does it take to make filtering a possibility? I have been using Squirrelmail for years now and it has some nice features, such as…you guessed it, filtering. Apple, don’t you see the opportunity? If you somehow offered filters, aka rules, and made them like our bookmarks, and address book…mobile via iSync, that would be amazing. I have been a paying customer since the beginning of the end of the “free for life” accounts. I think I have been patient. Time to get with the program. Give me some filters/rules!! (Junk mail filters can be apart of that.)
Dec
13
2004
iBook logic board failure.
For the past few weeks, A’s 500mhz dual USB iBook has been acting a bit flaky. Every time she or I would open the iBook and wake it from sleep, you would have to carefully adjust the angle of the open lid, a 1/32 of an inch this way or that way could mean you would have video or lose video. I finally had enough so I decided it was time to look on-line to see if I could somehow open up the case and re-seat the sensor. I figured it had to be a lose cable that was causing the problem because the iBook is about 3.5 years old and it had been opened and closed several thousand times…a lose cable to the sensor just made sense. As I went to the Apple Discussions > iBook > Displays, I found a thread that had over 300 replies and bingo…it was exactly what I was experiencing. One of the messages referenced Apple’s iBook Logic Board Replacement policy, so I then went to that page and then headed to the closest Apple Store. The Apple genius confirmed the problem and told me I was lucky I brought the iBook in when I did because it would not have been a free repair after December 18th. Wow. Close call.
Sadly Mac OS X 10.3.6 has really slowed it down and A and I begain talking about an upgrade. Depending on Christmas/tax returns, looks like a nice 12 inch PowerBook might be in the future.
Dec
08
2004
american folklore.
Not often do I even bookmark a non-technical web site, but I have found one I am going to add to my bookmarks. (Yes I am a Netscape girl, no “favorites” on my system.) If you have some time and want to enjoy some light reading about American Folklore, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_folklore. I will never forget the time I asked someone in my family…ok it was my sister…after she had graduated from college…what year the Consitution was written, and her response was: 1878. What do you say? I smartly said “oh you mean after the civil war?” and in my typical family way of diagreeing, that was the end of the conversation. In my family, with me as the exception, we do not “discuss” certain things such as anything that goes against the grain of the family members. You want to discuss something or question something, they shut down. Perhaps that is why I was grounded half of my life. Anyway, check out the web site.
Dec
07
2004
more helpful UNIX stuff.
While I am taking my UNIX/LINUX Systems Administration training, I pick up cool UNIX tidbits and it is time to share some more of my latest tidbits. (First installment)
Random commands and information I have jotted down:
- When compiling something from source code, I used to always use:
./configurethenmakethenmake install, but I learned you can combine commands so you can use:./configure; maketogether in one statement while compiling source code. - Daemon stands for Disk And Execution MONitor
- Sometimes we don’t want to remove an account, but we need to disable it temporarily. A common way of doing this is by adding a star (*) to the beginning of their encrypted password in /etc/shadow using a text editor.
- The command
host -v www jappler.comwill show the server address and DNS servers for jappler.com - The command
kill -HUPon the process ID to kill the process and restart it.
That is it for now, more to come soon.
