Digital Choke Daynotes

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What I Did On My Summer Vacation (July 2003)

Housekeeping note: you'll notice the new 'report' up there on the right. That link should be self-explanatory. And the "last week" link up above points to the week of 6-21-03, which was the last week's worth of posts before going off on vacation. Even though I had the laptop with me, I didn't have the connection (and sometimes the inclination) to keep up the posts while on vacation.

I am actually writing part of this on Saturday night, catching up a bit. Pam and I went up to the in-law's cabin (in Strawberry, about 1 1/2 hours up the road to Lake Tahoe from Sacramento). It's at about the 6000 foot elevation level. It was time to 'open up' the cabin: turning on the water, cleaning up a bit, minor repairs.

My in-law's went up there a couple of weeks ago, and found that Old Man Winter decided it was time for one particular tree to fall. It just missed the cabin, but it took out the electrical wires and the electrical circuit box. Insurance covered the electrician's work of installing a new power panel and other parts; he just got it all done last week. There were a few other trees that needed to be cut down. There was one that was tricky to do, since it was tall enough that an expert was needed to lay the tree down just in the right spot. So they hired a local tree cutter to take care of it. I didn't see this one, but I did watch him work a couple of years ago. The tree that was dead was between our cabin and the neighbors', which are about fifty feet apart. The tree was about 10 feet from our cabin, and probably 80-90 feet tall. I watched while he laid that tree down neatly between the two cabins. It made quite a loud noise when it fell, but no damage to anything other than the tree.

This year, a tree about 90 feet tall (and about 30 inches across at the base) needed to come down. (The forest service marks the trees that need to be cut, then the owner of the cabin lease gets to cut them down.) The same guy came out to cut it down, and did the same fine job of putting it right where it needed to go.

So, we headed up to the cabin Saturday morning to help out with the 'cabin opening' chores. Pam's father has cancer, which is mostly in remission right now, but he is not as spry as he used to be. So, with him as the instructor, I fixed the usual pipe that breaks out of it's union each winter, and got the water running. (Although I did it by myself last year, I have found it wise to let him direct me when needed.) We got everything running and ready for my oldest daughter (Christine) to come up for a "girl's weekend" with her's husband's sisters and sisters-in-laws. They do this once a year: spend a couple nights at the cabin, just "the girls", no husbands, no kids (except babies). They really enjoy it.

I had planned to cut a few of the fallen trees into shorter pieces for eventual splitting. We got the water going by lunchtime, but something about lunch didn't sit right, which caused me to spend a lot of time sitting in the small reading room. So that part of the plan got cancelled. I'll probably go up in a few weeks to do that (using the chain saw, not all the library-sitting).

On the way home, Pam and I stopped by a couple of furniture stores, on our search for a desk for the office. We ended up at the same place that we got our kitchen table, where they had a nice L-shaped desk on sale. It is oak, stained the same color as our cabinets throughout the house, and was priced at 35% off. We got the owner to take the same percentage off of a padded oak chair. It will get delivered and installed (put together) next Saturday afternoon. The total cost was about $700. We had looked at the office supply stores, but all they had was veneered desks that are mostly pretty junky. And the furniture stores have nice stuff, but the prices are above $1200 for an L-shaped desk (often much more, even when they are on sale). This one will look nice in the office. Right now, the desk computer is sitting on a folding table, with piles of paper and boxes. It will be nice to get that room a bit more organized.

We had a nice steak dinner Saturday. I'l getting the hang of the new barbeque. I've got a digital thermometer probe that helps me not overcook the meat, so they turned out nice. We had some red potatoes, and some corn on the cob. Quite tasty.

Sunday was the usual. Slept in a bit, breakfast with the Sunday paper, off to church. Back home again, a late lunch, then Christine/Jared/Joelle/Liam (daughter, son-in-law, grandkids #1 and #2) and Pam's folks came by for dinner. Dinner was 'chicken and stuffing in a crock pot'. The basic recipe is some chicken breasts (boneless), some stovetop stuffing mix, and cream of chicken soup. Toss it in the crock pot, cook for several hours, serve with home-made bread, salad, and green beans. Good stuff, quite simple to make. Then spent the evening visiting with everyone.

Uupdate Monday 7:00 am Hmm...it probably would be a lot easier to read this drivel if I uploaded it. Here it be.

It's always interesting to return from a vacation. Not only do you get to do all of the stuff that would normally occur on a workday (and it's a Monday, of course), but you also get to do all of the stuff that didn't get done because you were on vacation.

I got into work a bit earlier than usual -- traffic was light this morning, so there weren't the usual slowdowns. I started out on the email. First, I got rid of the spam that made it through the filtering process (or was able to bypass the anti-spam server altogether). Then I printed out all of the messages that needed handling (who says we have a paperless office?). I suppose I could have moved them into separate priority-driven folders (he said with 20-20 hindsight). That stack was only about an inch high. Then I prioritized them into three piles. The plan was to take care of the "A" pile today.

Most of the "A" level messages had to do with complaints about blocked or undelivered mail. The boss is a bit sensitive about those complaints, so that's why they got on the "A" list. Investigating each one requires using the SurfControl (our email spam filtering software) Message Administrator program to find the blocked message (if it really did get blocked). Although it's a bit slow (partly because of the design of their logging database, partly because the database is so big, and partly because it's not a full SQL database), you can search for the sender or receiver's email address to see if there were any messages blocked. Then you get to decide why it got blocked, and whether the rule that blocked it needed to be tweaked. Then you get to write a message to the user telling them why. And that's just for one problem.

Some of the problems were undelivered mail. There is a tendency for users to blame the last thing you did, because "I never used to have these problems before". In our case, they like to blame the spam-blocking server. So the guy that didn't get his mail message thinks the message got blocked. It certainly wasn't the extra "bracket" character (a "]") that was placed at the end of his email address. Or the fact that their network user name was changed (at their request) and they didn't think that changed their email address (on our system, your email address is your network user name plus the company's domain name).

Then there were the complaints about the spam that got through the filter. So you get to look at the mime.822 header information (it contains all the routing information for the message -- which servers got the message, when they got it, who they got it from, etc.) to verify that the message bypassed the anti-spam server. (That's a subject for another day.)

Or the complaint about the message that didn't get delivered on the first attempt, because we were doing some maintenance on some network infrastructure (which we told everyone about). And the message was ultimately delivered (due to the way that email works on the 'net), but the user assumed it was the fault of the anti-spam server blocking the message. ("I never used to have these problems before you put in that spam thing.")

And the complaint about messages from a vendor that didn't get delivered. So you query the blocking log for any message to that user (there are about 500 just in the last three weeks), and those are just the ones that got caught by an anti-spam rule. The subject lines all indicate actual spam (mostly shopping stuff), so I get to tell the user that there is no record of any message from that particular person (at least none of their messages were blocked, because we're just looking at the log of messages that were caught by a rule).

So, that was most of the day today. I did get almost all of the "A" list messages done, so it was a productive day.

It turned out to be a really nice evening. We got the "delta breeze" going tonight. That's a breeze that comes from the ocean outside of San Francisco through the delta. It's a common thing around here in Sacramento, and it cools off most of the hot days around here. So Pam and I took a short walk around the neighborhood after a dinner of pork chops and red potatoes and salad. I hosed off part of the back patio, and now, as the sun goes down, am sitting in the family room while Pam is making a low-fat gingerbread. She had to get some ingredients from the store, and then went next door to borrow some baking soda. That allowed her to visit with one of our neighbors. I'm just patiently waiting for the gingerbread cake to be done.

How does your company handle the departure of an employee? Do you have a good process for notifying all the appropriate departments when somebody leaves (no matter how they leave)?

For instance, do you have an active or passive payroll system? If active, you have to fill out a time sheet to get paid, like most hourly workers. If passive, then you get the same pay each week, no matter how many hours you work, like most senior management types. If a passive worker leaves, is there a process to tell the payroll department to stop automatically sending out the paycheck?

What about the 'stuff' the employee has? Like tools, lockers, notebook computers, cell phones, PDA's, keys, access cards, cars, parking passes, and more. Does your company know how to get all of that back (and what to ask for)?

What about the access to computers? How many inactive user accounts are on your network? Do you immediately disable the account? What about other computer access (especially for network administrator types)? What about remote access? Can an ex-employee dial into the network and log in? Can they still remotely access their email? When do you lock out their account? Can they still access important data areas? If someone is leaving (especially if it's an involuntary departure), do you immediately lock out their account, and change passwords on other accounts they might have had access to?

What about physical security? When do you need to change the door locks or keypad access codes? Did anyone tell the guards up front that the person has left?

Lots of interesting questions, which was the subject of this morning's meeting. Although some of the above is already known in my company, there is no comprehensive checklist to make sure that all aspects of a departure are covered. Our little group (into which I was drafted, as the IT Security dude) is in charge of developing a more comprehensive procedure and checklists for this. Our plan is to have it implemented by January 1 next year. That includes a buy-in by everyone, including some training sessions for the people that need to do all the work. Should be an interesting project.

The rest of the day was spent in catching up on email problems and other things that happened during our vacation. So I kept quite busy. We managed to leave just before 5pm, so the traffic wasn't too bad.

Got home and fired up the barbeque and grilled a couple of steaks, which we had with corn on the cob, some french bread, and a salad. A fairly healthy meal, I guess. Then a quick trip over to Home Depot ("My Toy Store") to pick up a toilet plunger. The toilet in the master bathroom is sometimes reticent to fully flush, so some encouragement was in order. I also picked up a rubber ball on a string to set up in the garage to help get the car in far enough to close the garage door. Yeah, I could have done it with a tennis ball and some string, but I had neither, and it only cost $4.95. I also wandered around the place a bit, but I am coming to an interesting realization. When you move into a newer home, there's not much that needs to be fixed. I am having some serious difficulties finding things to do on a Saturday. No yard work to speak of (the gardener takes care of that), nothing is really broken around the house, and the cars are running OK. This Saturday we'll get the new desk, but the delivery guys are putting it together (delivery and setup only cost $35). I'll just need to find some time to get the computer organized when they are done.

There are some minor odds and ends that I can do, though. There's a door stop that needs to be installed on the front door. I could unpack some more boxes in the garage, and neaten it up a bit. The roll-down bamboo blinds on the back porch need to be fastened a bit more securely. A couple of clothes hooks in the bedroom closet might be nice. A vacuum of both upstairs and downstairs is needed. Hmmm....with any luck, I can stretch all of that out to fill up the day, and I might not have to go shopping for furniture. Besides, isn't the Hallmark channel running an all day "Bonanza" marathon? I guess I'll be able to keep busy on Saturday after all.

Hmm. Wednesday's post seems to be missing. Perhaps that's because I didn't write it. And you know what that means....you'll have to read two day's worth of drivel in one sitting.

A problem with the mail server developed yesterday. I usually look at the mail monitoring program a couple of times a day to make sure that the email is being processed. Late yesterday, I noticed the backlog of messages was getting quite high. Usually, you might see under 30 messages backlogged, caused by some larger messages (attachments). But when it gets into the 3 digit range, you know that there might be a problem.

That's an important concept. It is useful to have a feeling for what is normal on your network. It's like driving in your car: you know what sounds normal, so an unusual noise gets your attention. It's the same with your network. If you watch the monitoring screens, over a period of time you can tell what is normal activity, and what isn't. Knowing what looks normal on your network helps you know when something is wrong.

I've looked at the mail monitoring program enough to know what it looks like when things are good. Yesterday afternoon, things weren't looking good. The backlog of messages was too high, and getting higher. It took a bit of poking around, but it looked like one particular message was not getting processed. I used Notepad to take a peek at the message file, and it looked normal: the message header information looked OK, and there was a binary file attached to it. But for some reason, the program wasn't processing it right.

It was getting late in the day, and the backlog of messages was quite high. So I stopped the "rules" process (it's the process that breaks apart a message into it's components, then looks at the pieces to see if any of the blocking rules applies), then moved the bad message into another folder. A restart of the rules process, and it worked for a while, then started locking up. The problem was caused by about eight messages from the same outside person, each message with a file attached to it. I was able to identify all of the similar messages, since they were about the same size. So I stopped the rules process, moved the bad files, then restarted the process. And watched the backlog of messages slowly go down back to normal levels. (And was able to leave the office just a bit later than normal.)

Pam fixed some enchiladas, which we had with some fried red potatoes and a salad. While she worked on dinner, I installed the 'tennis ball on a string" thing in the garage. If you set it up right, you pull the car into the garage until the ball hits the windshield. That's where you stop, and the car is far enough into the garage to allow the door to shut. And if you attach the other end of the string to the garage door, when the garage door is down, the ball is up near the ceiling. It works pretty well.

After cleaning up from dinner, we took a nice walk around the neighborhood. There are some nice walking trails on the edges of small greenbelt areas around the various subdivisions. So it is not wall-to-wall houses; there are some undeveloped areas interspersed. And some nice neighborhood-sized parks.

We got back and turned into couch potatoes. There was a western movie on the Hallmark channel ("Mary Rose" was the title, I think), which was a pleasant movie to fall asleep to.

This morning, I got a late start into work. There was a department-wide meeting this morning, but the mail server was still having problems. It was the same type of message from the same person. So I spent almost all of the day watching the mail server, trying various things to get those problem messages delivered. The file attachment was a ".cab" file, so it wasn't anything unusual to get. I had the sender try zipping the file, but that didn't work either. (I really didn't think it would, since the mail server program unzips zip files so it can look inside them.) I tried several other things, but those messages would always cause the server to get stuck on that message. I've got a call into the tech support guys, so will probably have to spend some more time on that tomorrow. But the good thing about that was that I got to miss the department meeting, which can sometimes be a bit boring. The bad thing about missing it was that some of the staff was complaining about how the physical access was tightened up a bit. (But I don't think I want to go there.)

The other big thing today was the review with the boss. We went over my performance over the past 8 months as the security dude. It went pretty well, and was pretty fair. Overall, things are good; there's some room for improvement, but they still want to keep me around.

I was able to leave a bit after the normal time. I'll need to monitor the mail system tomorrow, and figure out the problem with that. I need to get the six-month plan more organized, which will probably require a bit of homework. Tonight's plan is to relax a bit.

The mail system is fine, now that it got rid of that hairball file it was it was choking on. I missed the return calls of the tech support guys, but I figured that I could just put the hairball message in the server's 'out' folder, and it would get delivered. Sort of a manual bypass of all the checking. That worked out OK, so I was able to finish up some other projects.

I put the final comments in the new telecommuting policy, and the email retention policy. One more meeting on both, and they will be ready to shoot up for senior management's final approval. Both of them are pretty close to on schedule.

I had to look for some missing messages. Not a hard job, but a bit time consuming with the current configuration. But we have a plan (and budget, and equipment on order) to re-do the mailing systems infrastructure so that it will be a lot more efficient, along with not having single points of failure. That project will start happening towards the end of this month as the new equipment starts arriving.

I brought home a few things to work on during the weekend, but with any luck it won't take much time. The new desk is arriving tomorrow, so it will be nice to get that room a bit more organized. And we decided the house was much too quiet, so we're having our granddaughter (age 3) spend the night. Her mom is up at the cabin with all her sister-in-laws for their annual girl's retreat. So we decided that her Dad would appreciate only having to take care of the 1 1/2 year old.

Other than that, it looks like a quiet weekend. One of the advantages of living in a nearly new house is that there is not much to fix on the weekend. But I might find a few things to do. Including a trip to the park down the street with my granddaughter.

Since Joelle (granddaughter, age three) spent the night last night, we had a nice breakfast of pancakes, then a bath for her. Then we watched "Dora the Explorer" (for about the thirty-eleventh time since we bought it last night). The neighbors were having a garage sale this morning, and Pam decided that we needed to have a crib around here for visits from future grandchildren. It was a really nice one, in good shape, and only $50. And it didn't take long to put together.

After that, we all took a walk over to the park and did the swing and slide thing for a bit, then came back and hung around the house until the desk delivery guys showed up.

It came a bit after noon time, and it took the guys about 45 minutes to get all the pieces put together. Then I spent about an hour getting the computer set up, routing all the cables and power cords. I need to pick up some of those sticky cable tie mounts to finish it off, but it looks quite nice. (And I did it to the background music from "Dora the Explorer". )

The new desk in the office looks nice. We got if from one of those oak stores. It's an L-shaped desk, stained medium dark, a bit larger than most. There are three drawers on the left side, two small and one large. The other side has a cabinet that holds the computer box on one side. There are two center drawers, one for the keyboard and one for the pens and pencils. And the desk has lots of holes hidden underneath to route the cables and power cords.

Had one call for the trailer we have for sale, so went over to show it off. The guy was mildly interested, but no deals yet. Then came back for barbequed hot dogs for dinner, and then more "Dora the Explorer". (Actually, we got a break during the afternoon, while we watched "Cinderella, part 2".) Joelle finally went to bed about 9pm. She is actually great fun to have around.

I didn't get all the things done today that I had planned on, but I did get some good memories and quality time with Joelle. The day was enjoyable, and the time was well spent.

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