Digital Choke Daynotes

"Daynotes" are popularized by a Internet Web site called the "Daynotes Gang" (http://www.daynotes.com or http://www.daynotes.org), a collection of the daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. You can send your comments to us by clicking on any mailbox icon.

Reports

Anti-Spam Server

Friday was preparation for Saturday's high school graduation ceremony. Not that I had anything to do with the ceremony itself, but we did have to get the food ready for the small family lunch after the ceremony. So, there was a trip to Sam's Club to pick up the deli trays and the cake, and other assorted snacks. And the preparation of some potato and pasta salads required a trip to the grocery store for various ingredients.

Saturday morning, the weather was nice and cool. A small cloud cover (actually, what the weather dweebs call a "marine layer", which I guess is high fog. The ceremony was at 9:30am in the high school football stadium. We got there at 8:30, and the place was already filling up. But we had our blanket reservation in place (a blanket on the bench), so we were able to get a good spot for our gang. There was just a slight cooling breeze, then the sun came out just before the ceremony (or the marine layer melted), but it was still cool and the humidity was only in the 20-30% range.

While we were waiting for the ceremony to start, we were treated to a short 'thanks!" speech from many of the seniors that had been pre-recorded. And the football field was packed with seniors. As the starting time got closer, the seniors stood around the edges of the football field, in a nice neat row (one deep). They filled up the far sideline and both end zones; the class size is about 350, I think.

Promptly at 9:30, the band fired up the traditional commencement march (that brought back memories, as I was in the band during high school), and the students quietly filed into their seats on the football field. Then it was time for the speechifying. There weren't too many speeches, and they were kept short. The valedictorians all spoke, but only for about one minute each. They were full of the usual platitudes and massive use of the thesaurus, but they were short and well-done. It was noted that the senior class received over a million dollars worth of scholarships in total, and most of them were for academic achievement. (I am proud to announce that my daughter received about $2500 of that total.)

Then the handing out of the diplomas. After the announcement to keep the "Huzzah's" short, and a reminder that they were going to announce names every five seconds, they started in. And they kept their promise, although it may have been closer to 10 seconds each. The whole process was quite efficient.

After the diplomas, the class president presented the graduating class to the audience, there was the traditional moving of the tassel, and a final "Great Job!", and we were done, with almost every student's hat thrown into the air.

The whole thing was very nice and efficient; the ceremony was completed by about 10:45am, and then everyone milled about with congratulations and pictures and hugging. And we all trooped out to the parking lot, where it only took about 10 minutes to leave.

Then back to the house, where our family and a few friends gathered for lunch and gabbing. I took the four small kids upstairs where we watched "Shrek" on our new TV. That worked out well; although they had all seen it before, it's an enjoyable movie. And it kept the kids from running around too much, so the adults could visit. (I'm not much of a party guy, so it was OK with me.)

We all had a nice visit, then people left to go to other places. We cleaned up a bit, rested from our labors, and then it was off to the in-law's for dinner and a birthday party for a niece. Barbequed steaks all around, some french bread, baked potatoes and beans. (I didn't participate in the beans, which I like to eat, but at my age they do fight back later on, with severe environmental consequences for all.) Some birthday cake and ice cream, and we were done. We got home about 9 pm, and Pam and I decided to watch the new James Bond movie. Well, I watched it (most of it, there was a part towards the end of the movie when I missed a few parts due to eyelid drooping). Pam fell asleep on the couch. But, it was an enjoyable escapist movie.

It didn't finish until about 11:30pm, and I was too tired to do any posting here.

It was nice to sleep in this morning. A balanced breakfast of AlphaBits and toast while reading the Sunday paper, then we got ready for church. Afterwards, a late lunch of leftovers (deli sandwiches, potato salad, etc), and more relaxing before the oldest and her family came by for dinner.

After dinner, there was one more graduation meeting: this one is for the early morning church class that Stacy went to for all of her high-school years. It starts at 6:30 am, and lasts about an hour before they head off for school. It was a nice meeting, which a couple of good speeches by the students, and it only lasted about an hour. And they did have cookies afterwards, along with the visiting with several friends.

So, we got home about 9pm. I managed to get about an hour in of work on the project list, then these posts. And that about gets you up to date.

Another busy week ahead at work. And probably lots to do at home. I still have a garage full of boxes that aren't unpacked yet (mostly garage stuff), so want to get that done. And the VW Cabriolet should be done Tuesday. It did need a transmission, so they will be putting in a rebuilt one. Although the car is older, the rest of it is in pretty good shape. The engine, with proper care, should last for another couple of years. And we only paid $300 for it, so putting about $1200 in it is still justifiable if we keep it for another couple of years.

After we get that one out of the shop, we plan on getting Stacy's 1994 Corolla in for a checkup in preparation for it going back to Idaho. We'll give it a complete checkup to ensure that she doesn't have any problems with it while she is back there. And since she is leaving in a couple of weeks, there will be lots of preparation involved in that trip.

I spent most of the day working on the project list. A bit of monitoring of the email filter and web filter, and releasing two messages that got blocked by mistake. Not a bad average considering we get about 40-50,000 messages a day.

After work, a short trip over to Best Buy to get a computer for Stacy, who is off to college in a couple of weeks. We picked up an HP system with 2GHz processor, 256 memory, flat screen LCD monitor, 120GB hard drive, CD/RW + DVD, and a HP inkjet printer. With rebates, it came to about $900. Yeah, I know that I could have built one from various components, but I don't think that I would have saved much money. I also went for the 3 year carry-in warranty. She's going to be about 1500 miles away, which makes it harder to fix things when (probably not if) they go wrong.

And I let her put it together. Not a big problem, since everything is color coded and simplified.

So, there are a bunch of rebate forms to fill out. And she gets to do the work on them. I get to keep the money; actually apply it to the bill. She's upstairs with a friend watching a DVD on the 15" LCD screen, rather than the 27" television.

We also picked up a pair of FRS short range radios. They have a five mile range, and we'll use them as we caravan off to college. I suspect that I'll be driving the truck with all the boxes of stuff, while my wife and daughter drive the other car. We'll use the radio to keep in touch while on the road, rather than cell phones, since cell phone coverage might be a bit thin in northern Nevada. I also got a little LED clip-on light for my notebook.

We also plan to stop by Yellowstone, since we'll be in the neighborhood. We haven't been there since the first year of our marriage. I suspect that a few things have changed a bit since then.

And Brian C. reminds me that I've been slipping a bit on my grammar, especially the "it's" and "its". I was doing so well for a while. But I write these late in the evening, and tend to not do any checking (other than a spell check, when I remember) after I write them.

I helped my daughter connect her computer to the Internet. Although she gets a six month free access to MSN, we used my local ISP for now. And the first thing we did was go to Windows Update and get all the latest updates. We still have dial-up here, so it took a couple of hours to download the 24 updates needed. But the process was really clean. You tell WIndows Update to get all the latest stuff, wait a while to download, then the install happens automagically. When it gets all done, you get to reboot the computer, and it's done. A useful thing to do (have you updated lately?).

After a stop by the local Winco food complex (it is quite big) on the way home from work, Pam fixed a nice dinner of pork chops, baked potato, fresh green beans, and a salad. While she worked on that, I worked on the garage a bit, unpacking a few more boxes, rearranging things a bit, and breaking down the empty boxes. My cousin is moving this weekend, so the boxes will go to a good home. A wondrous thing is about to happen in the garage -- there might actually be room for a car in there. That hasn't happened for at least 13 years, since we moved into the last house. It will be quite impressive.

After dinner, I did a bit more in the garage, hosed off part of the back patio, and got the garbage can out to the curb. And then we decided to head over to the local frozen yogurt shop for dessert. We sat outside to eat it, as the sun was going down. It's been a bit cool today, I think it only got up to 82 degrees. And there was a nice breeze from San Francisco cooling off the area, so it wasn't really prime time frozen yogurt eating weather. But it was good.

By the time we got home and got settled in, Stacy's computer was finished downloading, so I helped her with a few settings. We still need to install a bit more software (anti-virus, etc). And I am sitting here watching "Father Knows Best" while I write this.

Keeping spam mail out of the corporate environment is very hard work, and it has varying levels of success.

I've mentioned before the amount of mail we process every day at the office -- it averages about 50,000 per day. About 70-80% of that is incoming mail. And there is lots of variety, as you might expect. And there are lots of different expectations of users. Some want the marketing stuff, but only certain categories. Most don't want the adult stuff. Some want news, others want newsletters. And all of this doesn't include the mail that actually is related to the business.

Our email is checked in two basic ways. One is based on different dictionaries, one for each type of category. Each dictionary has words related to that category. For instance, the shopping dictionary might contain words like 'order', 'price', or 'special'. Each word has a point value assigned to it. The dictionary-based rule will add up score for words found in the dictionary. If the total score is over the limit as specified in the rule, the message can be rejected.

The other process looks for known spam: mail from known spammers, or known content. For instance, there are movie files that are commonly passed around, so the program knows about those and can reject them, if the rule specifies it. The database of known spammers and content is updated each night as part of the maintenance contract.

All of this sounds good in theory. You build a rule that blocks unwanted mail, and everything is both hunky and dory. But it is inevitable that you'll block business-related mail. For instance, if you order something on-line, you might get a confirming email. And that email will probably contain marketing junk reminding you of all the latest specials. Your anti-shopping rule might catch that one and block it.

Here's another example. You set up a rule that blocks mail with adult content. It's dictionary based. And it works just fine for the adult mail. But it will also block an email with standard contract language, like "no sexual harassment", "no discrimination on sexual orientation", etc. Or the message might contain numbers like "69". (I apologize for the content here, but you get the idea.) Of it might be a message with a database. Or a draft letter. Have you ever written something like "don't forget to bring the xxx and xxx". Boom! (he says in his John Madden voice). Too much of that might cause the message to be blocked.

So why don't you just tell people a message has been blocked? Think about the implications of that. You don't want to send a reply back to all incoming messages that the message was blocked. That would double (at least) the load on your mail server. And it would validate email addresses for mail from spammers. (That's why, in most cases, you don't want to use the 'unsubscribe' function for mail from anyone but the big companies, and even then it might not be a good idea.) When you validate your email address, you'll just get more unwanted mail. Now, we do tell our staff when we block outgoing mail.

All of this requires a lot of my time. Whenever I create a rule, I let it run in passive mode, sending me a BCC of the message that was caught by the rule, and delivering the message. I then look at the message copies, and if one was valid mail, tweak the rule a bit to make it better.

In the meantime, some people are complaining that we are blocking good email. So I spend a lot of time looking at blocked messages of all types to see if there are some that need to be released from their quarantine. Or, people call the help desk and we have to search a bit to find the blocked message. And then spend a bit of time placating the user, explaining how their precious message got blocked.

I'm not sure of the solution. I know that we are blocking a lot of junk. And I know that there is still some junk getting through, despite my best efforts. I know that some valid messages are blocked, but they are a very small percentage, well under 1%. I think that people will need to adjust their mailing practices a bit for the reality of spam blocking.

Spam mail is a big problem. There are no easy solutions. And don't get me started on the problems of web site blocking. That's a whole other can of worms. Between the two, I'm getting a lot of flack from users doing the things that management decided was important.

Big changes in the Daynotes world. Tom Syroid, one of the original Daynoters, announced today that he is taking a sabbatical from his writings. They have intruded a bit too much on his work (he does computer stuff out of his house up in Canada), and his posts have been a bit erratic for the last several months. (Although I should talk, as you might notice from the lack of a Thursday post.)

Tom's been doing the Daynote thing for about five years. I don't recall how I found his site, but I have been reading it for about two years. His site led me to the Daynotes site, where I have found several other places that I regularly visit. I'll miss his writings.

The Daynotes sites have been around for a while. There are a couple of dozen 'official' Daynoters, and probably several wannabe's like me. Some of the sites listed on the daynotes.com pages have gone 'dark', although they are still listed there. The alternate Daynotes site, www.daynotes.org, recognized that, and that list shows those that are also on sabbatical Although there are a couple of links missing from the 'org' site, due to some ill feelings between a couple of them. I don't know anything about all of that (and don't want to know), so I just cloned the links I wanted and built my own local page that I use to get to the others. I just know that I will miss hearing about Tom, his wife Leah, and his kids and dogs, and the weather they get up there in Canada.

As for me, yesterday was one of those 'a-fib' (atrial fibrillation -- irregular heartbeat) days. It cropped up a bit after lunch, and I left work early to go home to relax. It lasted about the usual length of time until sometime I after I went to bed. The whole thing, while not life-threatening, is very tiring, so I stayed home from work today. The heart rate was almost normal, just a bit of skipping, so I spent most of my time in the family room watching TV. Lots of westerns, some Do-It-Yourself channel, and Food Network (which is doing lots of stuff on barbecuing this week). It's all better now, at least until the next time.

We did get Stacy's car over to the shop to see what it needed before it goes off to Idaho for college. They called today and gave me the list: new timing and accessory belts, ignition wiring and spark plugs, valve cover gasket, rear brakes, transmission oil change. That totaled up to a bit over $1000, which was a bit much after the $1500 for the other car. Some of that stuff I can do, so we agreed on their replacing the timing and accessory belts. Coupled with the diagnostic fee, we cut the total down to $425. I figure that the rest of the stuff can be done for about $150 in parts, and a bit of my time. (Or, one of Stacy's friends that is into working on cars. His labor has to be cheaper than the repair shop.) That total is reasonable, since we want to make sure that the car works properly while she is off at school. A 1800 mile trip to work on her car is not my idea of fun. With this work, the car should last during the two years she is at school. At that point, she'll be a Registered Nurse -- their starting pay is about $30/hour, so she should be able to get a newer car by then. And, with the snow during the winter up there, I figure we'll be lucky if she avoids fender smashing in the slippery snow.

Tomorrow's plan is to make a short trip over to Lowe's for a small workbench kit I saw on sale for $88. And I may stop by the barbeque place to see what they have. We gave our old barbeque to my in-laws; they used theirs so much that it was worn out. And it was a great opportunity to get a new one. So we need to find one.

Then it's off to the in-laws to do a final cleaning of the trailer. We need to get that sold to fund some more furniture buying. After that, we plan on going to the new Harrison Ford movie in the evening.

We got a lot accomplished today. We went to Lowe's and picked out a Weber propane barbeque that we'll try out tomorrow. I also got the workbench, and some light fixtures for the garage. Then I had to stop by the office to pick up some CD's to install MS-Project on my laptop. Then to a furniture store to look at desks, but I didn't find one that I really liked. Then to the in-law's house to finish cleaning out the trailer. Back home again for a short break, then off to Quizno's for dinner (toasted deli sandwiches). Back to Lowe's to pick up the barbeque (they put it together for free, and you also get a full propane tank), then to Winco Food store for groceries. Back home to unload the groceries, get the barbeque in the back yard. By the time we did all that, it was 8:30pm. Quite a busy day.

I've been working on the project list for work for a couple of weeks. The boss wants it in MS-Project format, so I loaded that on my computer. The project list is in an Access database, so I figured that it would be a simple process to import it into MS-Project. I spent about an hour trying that, without success. So I created some extra columns in Project, then did a cut-paste of from Access to Project. That worked enough for the data that the boss will want, I hope.

So, tomorrow is Father's Day. A bit of relaxing, and we'll try out the barbeque. I'll just need to decide whether it's steaks or ribs. Either one works for me.

Daynotes	a daily journal of our activity	Send us email
Digital Choke	an action that is sometimes needed for your computer; also a short techno-story available here.	Send us email