Author: Grant

The hardware support guy representing Dell arrived with a new power pack – all systems go! He also had a spare motherboard in case the fault was the power connection on the current one. Handy.

At least my computer’s back and running again…

While talking to Dell support, I had to move the power pack so I could read out some codes/numbers on it. Shame, actually, as I’d just got the damned thing working. Of course, after moving it around, I couldn’t get any power to flow again. Next thing you know, while trying to twist the cable around and get things going again, the cable broke entirely.

Whoops…

At least the problem’s no longer intermittent :)

Well, my Dell laptop has found yet another way to piss me off. The external power adaptor has died – the lead coming out of the adaptor and going to the computer must be fraying inside or coming loose – I have to twist the lead around and/or tuck it back out of the way before power flows to the computer.

I’ve called Dell tech support, jumped through the hoops and now we wait for the new unit to arrive. Meanwhile my laptop’s dead in the water and I’m having to use machines from other people. Hope it doesn’t take too long to replace. At least I have a “next business day” warranty so I’m not out of pocket…

The Mayday party finished some time on the Saturday morning – not sure exactly when as I’d left around 5:30am to get some rest before a big day. All reports indicate that it was a good event.

The past couple of weeks have been incredibly busy due to APC.au and AWU work. It’s made it very hard to focus on the various things I should be doing for Platinum.

The recent changes made to block IPs that fail a Reverse DNS appears to be working. People are reporting significantly reduced levels of SPAM and we’ve not had any reports of valid emails being blocked. The inbound bandwidth levels have also dropped significantly.

To celebrate Andrew’s birthday, we all went out to a great Asian restaurant (via the pub :) where we proceeded eat great food (mostly duck) and drink Zubrowka :)

A great night was had by all – even those of us who had to leave early and couldn’t make the fun.

While I couldn’t make it (I was at home with Nykolai) I’ve been told that the Bar Social event at Q Bar on Friday was a great success. We’re looking forward to doing more of them as they seem to be a great way of meeting new people and inviting them to our events.

In an attempt to reduce the number of viruses and SPAM emails that we’re getting hit by, I’ve modified our mail system so it will refuse to talk to any machine that fails a Reverse DNS lookup. The majority of mail servers are set up so that a Reverse DNS on their IP address will map to a real name. If this fails, it’s usually a sign that the sending machine is an infected workstation.

By blocking these machines outright, we do not have to receive their infected/junk emails. This should hopefully save us quite a bit of incoming bandwidth, thus reducing our monthly hosting charges. It should also help reduce the amount of SPAM we receive.

I’ve also modified the “Shields” system so that it only blocks sites that have sent 3 or more viruses in the past day or two. It was blocking sites if they’d sent 3 or more viruses in a week. This was much too long and resulted in the blocking of some valid sites that accidentally let a few through.

At last, Nykolai and his mom have returned from five weeks vacation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I met them at the airport after they’d been travelling for over 23 hours, including a one hour delay getting into Auckland which meant that they wound up missing their Sydney -> Melbourne flight.

After having a “family lunch” in at Pause in Balaclava, we dropped Rocio at her apartment and headed back to my place. Despite being quite tired, Nykolai and I headed to the park to fly our aircraft, including a new one that he had been given in Argentina. We had to try a different part of the park because the kids from the local school were using the oval. During the flights, the air-powered aircraft wound up doing a gorgeous flight which almost ended in disaster when it landed on the road. Ooops. Fortunately, the cars managed to dodge it so it wasn’t damaged.

I managed to keep Nykolai up until the evening but he passed out before 7pm. No surprises given the jetlag and long travel times. Great to have him back again – I missed him while he was over there.