Student of the Month and other news

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Today was the student of the month breakfast at my daughter’s school. We got a letter about 2 weeks ago letting us know that she was the student of the month. So this morning I got to have a cup of coffee in the school library. They also had some danish and some fruit. Now when I think of breakfast I think of my old Catalink Direct/Elcom days when the sales team would have there monthly meetings. They would bring in the whole spread…eggs, bacon, sausage and other breakfast stuff and of course the omelet station with cook. I was sort of hoping for that this morning..but it was the PTO who brought the breakfast so no omelet station 🙁 ….

In other news easter is just around the corner and that means spring is here. I have to get out to the back yard and replace 3 fence posts and 2 1/2 fence panels before the summer party season starts. We are going to be having the usual 3 parties on Memorial day, 4th of July and Labor day weekends. This summer is looking like it’s going to be a busy one. My mom is throwing her self a 70th birthday party in June..for gifts she wants you to make a donation to something (I don’t remember what right now). Going up there for it will probably be my only trip to Bath this summer. My 20th High School reunion is this summer but it’s scheduled for the same weekend of the La Vigna Picnic in July so I won’t be making that. 🙁

In the work world I am going to finish off the move from the old NT4 network to the 2003 Active Directory network this weekend by going to the Harrisburg office to migrate all the desktop machines over and move all the data from the old server to the new server that is already in
place.

So that’s all for now…

Listening to: Hanging On The Telephone – Blondie – The Best Of Blondie

Verizon SMTP Servers not accepting mail from my domains.

This entry was posted in Technology on by
Last month my uncle got the FiOS Internet service from Verizon and with it a Verizon E-mail address. So yesterday he sent me an E-mail and when I sent my reply to him I got the following failure notice:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mailhost.bilancio.org. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

xxxxxxxxxx@verizon.net:
Connected to 206.46.232.11 but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 550 You are not allowed to send mail:sv22pub.verizon.net

At first I thought that my IP address for my mail server was on an RBL, but after some checking I found that wasn’t so. So then I went out and found someone else with a Verizon E-mail address. Again I was unable to send to him with my bilancio.org address, but if I sent something from my @lguip.org address it went through. I was also able to send E-mail to my uncle with that address as well. …till this morning now I can’t even send him E-mail with the lugip.org address.

I called Verizons Abuse number and the recording told me to go to www.verizon.com/whitelist and fill out the form. After Googling this problem I found that Verizon has been blocking E-mail from domains from outside the US since the beginning of 2005, but that shouldn’t effect me since my domain is hosted here in the US.

So I have filled out the whitelist form so now the wait is on to see how long it will take for Verizon to let mail in from my domains. This wouldn’t bother me to much but my parents have bilancio.org addresses and I am just waiting till my dad calls me to tell me that he can’t get mail to his brother in-law or his sister. We are a very spread out family and E-mail is a way of life for us.

So if you have a Verizon account please go to http://www.verizon.com/whitelist and fill out the members form and request bilanco.org, lugip.org and haverling.org be add to the domains that can send mail to Verizon users…..
Listening to: Come Talk To Me – Peter Gabriel – Secret World Live (CD 1)

UPDATE 4/7/06:

Got an E-mail from Verizon last night:

Subject: RE: Whitelist Request for IP Address 66.89.234.157

Thank you for contacting Verizon Online Security.

After a thorough investigation of your issue, Verizon Online Security has determined that normal e-mail delivery should be restored within 72 hrs.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online Security
http://www2.verizon.net/policies
abuse@verizon.net

We will see if it’s fixed by Monday night…..

Great to See Phill & Friends agian…the only true band that plays the best of the Dead

This entry was posted in Concerts Reviews on by
Headed to The Tower Theater last night with my cousin Henry for a night with Phil & Friends. Neither of us has seen P&F in over 3 years. We have either missed when he was close by. This was a new set of Friends since the last time we saw him. The only ones left from the Quintet was Rob Borraco and Phil himself. Phil has added Joan Osborn, Larry Campbell (guitar+more) Jeff Sipe (drums), and Barry Sless (guitar, pedal steel). It was a good show the crowd was great. We weren’t even in our seats for more than 3 min when a guy 3 rows back ralphed on the floor and it moved downhill to row L..so Henry and I headed down to the front and were there for the whole show. On an aside..why do the ushers even bother to get the standing crowd back to there seat? As a crowd Deadheads are the most laid back group of concert goers…just let us be and let us enjoy the show. I think it’s a Philly thing..when I see a show in NYC I never get hassled for being down front or off to the side. Last night I saw more people getting hassled for being up front…but anyway the show was great..it did drag in a few spots but the band kicked it right back up.

Joan is defiantly a great improvement to the band. She stayed right out there danced during the jams and had a great voice and did great justice to the music….

Here is the setlist:

Set 1:
Spacey Jam (Joan harmonizing)>
Crazy Fingers> Jam>
Alligator> Jam>
Easy Plateau> Jam (Joan harmonizing)>
No More Do I> Althea
Cosmic Charlie

Set 2:
Jam> New Speedway Boogie>
Jam> Bartering Lines> Jam>
Death Don’t Have No Mercy> Jam>
Lady With A Fan> The Wheel>
Terrapin Station> Space> Rosemary
Turn On Your Lovelight>
Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms>
Turn On Your Lovelight

Encore:
Donor Rap/Intros
Mason’s Children

Wish I was able to go to all 3 nights because tonights and tomorrows should really rock…

I’m Listening to Viola Lee Blues – Phil & Friends – Providence, RI February 22, 2006

I was a BBS Sysop…it’s all rock ‘n roll 1

This entry was posted in Fun Stuff Technology on by
Last night I went to the new Princeton Library to see bits of “BBS: The Documentary” and meet the director with Ed and another member of LUG/IP. It made me think of how things were back in the days before the internet became a big thing.

I remember the day I talked to my wife about starting my own bulletin board. We were living in Princeton in an apartment over my godparent’s kitchen. We had a living room, bedroom, bathroom and a room in the attic. We shared the kitchen with my godparents, Our main food was take out pizza. We didn’t have a lot of money and we were expecting our daughter. I had checked out a lot of software and other BBSes in the area and had decided to use the Wildcat! a product from Mustang. It was a well thought out program and a had a lot of good sysop tools. The problem was it was a good amount of money for a guy making $13hr and had a baby on the way. The first computer for the BBS was a 386sx with a 40 meg hard drive and a 2400 baud modem….can you say slow. I purchased the Single Line version of Wildcat! and turned on the “It’s All Rock ‘N Roll BBS” at 609-252-0260 in the fall of 1993. We offered all the popular door games as well as message boards. The BBS was a member of Fidonet (node 1:107/370 ), Wildnet, CollNet, Tekkernet, and Throbnet. I tried to offer a lot of files for D/L and I also offered adult material but the person had to send me proof of age in the mail. The big upgrade for the BBS in Princeton was taking the winnings I got from Atlantic City when my wife and I went on our honeymoon and buying a Zoom 9600 baud modem….a little faster…

I ran the BBS for a year in Princeton and then we moved to Trenton and the board’s number changed to 609-695-9319 and my Fidonet number changed to node: 1:266/155. I also changed to the multi-node version of Wildcat and added a Novell server and 2-1 GB SCSI drives. I ran the wildcat software off of a 486 machine with 16 megs of ram and a used 14.4K baud modem and OS/2 as the operating system. With the multi-line version of Wildcat! I was able to interact with the BBS from my desk in the living room instead of having to go to the basement where the server and main node of the bbs were. On August 9th, 1994 (2 days before my wedding anniversary…my wife was so proud..not) I started offering Internet E-mail with the Domain Name rocknroll.com, I was one of the first BBS in the Central NJ area to offer internet E-mail and access to UseNet newsgroups as well as owning a domain name. The board stayed up till late 2000 when I decided that cost of the phone line was draining my pocket of much-needed fun money and I was just tired of the work that went into it or I just grew up. Also, the World Wide Web came along and there was more to see and more to do, call volume dropped and the world moved on. I had a lot of fun doing it and I met a lot of people online, it was a community when you were on a good board. Today the internet is more one-sided not as much a community more of little fish in a big pond. I actually have the whole BBS zipped into one big file….some day I will unzip and fire up a machine and take a tour down memory lane. 🙂

The movie last night hit a few spots of nostalgia. I recommend downloading it (it was released under the creative commons license so it’s legal to download) and enjoying the interviews with sysops and users of the BBSes around the world.

More to come on this subject at a later date I am sure……If you were a user of It’s All Rock ‘N Roll send me a message. Also, check out bbsmates for other BBS you might have visited.

A rule that I think should be followed….

This entry was posted in Opinion Personal on by
A buddy sent me a list of rules that George Carlin put out and the last one hit it right on the head. I bitch about this all the time and I glad to see that others feel the same way.

New Rule: When I ask how old your toddler is, I don’t need to know in months. “27 Months.” “He’s two,” will do just fine. He’s not a cheese.

What was I thinking?

This entry was posted in Technology Work Stuff on by
So yesterday was Friday the 13th……and I stupidly reboot the main server at work in the morning. I broke 2 of my rules…1. Never touch Production boxes on a Friday. 2. Never ever do anything in the production environment on Friday the 13th. I knew I had to reboot the server so I could work on some new software that I installed the day before so I got up early, logged in remotely and restarted the server. While it was “rebooting” I jumped in the shower and figured I would do the tweaking of the new software when I got out and head to work a little later. Got out of the shower and tried to log back into the server…..no go. Tried pining it still no response….so I got ready nice and fast and headed to work….did I mention it was 5 am…..got to work and found the server in a continual reboot cycle. It would get to the screen to logging and then reboot. I just stood there for about 3 cycles saying every swear word I could think of…

I decided to first do a parallel install of the OS and see if I could get to the registry of the bad install and get the new software uninstalled…After I got the new install done I jumped into the registry of the bad install and found it totally messed up. So that idea had gone nowhere and cost me about 40 min. Now this server is the server that has all the work data for the company..every drawing, memo and documentation of all our current and past jobs so I had to get this server back up and running so I didn’t have managers yelling at me that their people weren’t working and the projects weren’t getting done.

I checked the RAID container that holds all the data and saw it was okay. So I sat down figured that the only data needed from the OS RAID container was the databases for the NetBackup software. So I copied the whole backup software folder to the data RAID. I then started a fresh install of the OS. While that was going on I jumped on to the phone with Veritas to find out what files/directories to put back once I got the server back up and the backup software installed. I ended up talking to Simon in London who was a great help. I found that I was unable to call England from my phone system. So when I hadn’t called Simon back when I told him I would he called me directly and I told him my calling problems and let him know that I wasn’t done with the OS install so he said he would call me back in an hour. Once I got all the drivers and software installed and files copied back Simon called right in time to walk me through a test and to see if all my metadata for all my back up…yea it was….and the backups went through last night.

So after many reboots and share setups the server was back up and running with a fresh OS install and all the data was safe and sound and I didn’t lose all my backup information.

The lesson learned – never touch anything on a Friday especially Friday the 13th 😉

I think I work to much….

This entry was posted in Work Stuff on by
I came in on New Years Eve day and ripped all the patch cables out of the switch and patch panel rack. It was a mess as you can see from the pictures I took that can be found here. I have been color coding all the patch cable in the office. Red for Internet connections out side the Firewall, Orange for connection in the DMZ, Green for all server connections on the LAN and Blue for all work stations and printers on the LAN. So my goal was…if it was gray it had to go…. It took me about 2 hours to pull the cables out and move the switches apart for better air flow and re-cable. After I restarted the switches I have now realized that we will be needing new switches next year. The fans are starting to go.

A good way to End the YEAR!!!!

This entry was posted in Concerts Personal Reviews on by
For the last 3 years, I have accompanied my cousin Henry to New York City 2 nights before New Year’s Eve to see the hot band Gov’t Mule and this year was no different. It rocked. The setlist says it all.

First Set:
Mr. Man > Perfect Shelter> Lola Leave Your Light On>
Livin Lovin Maid She Said > Tomorrow Never Knows Jam (with a verse of vocals at the end)
Tastes Like Wine
Banks of the Deep End
Suffer
32-20 Blues with Ron Holloway

Second Set:
Game Face> Mountain Jam> Game Face Johnny Bratton Jam (from Miles Davis Jack Johnson Sessions)
Hunger Strike> Dear Mr. Fantasy> Hunger Strike
Wandering Child> Drums> Devil Likes It Slow w/ Ron Holloway (and a smokin’ solo from Warren as always!!)
Oh Well Little Toy Brain
Lively Up Yourself
Mule

Encore:
John The Revelator (Danny on Trumpet Playing the Outro as he comes across the stage)

This was the first show in all my years of going to shows that I actually wore my earplugs the whole night. I bought a pair of ER*20 High Fidelity Ear Plugs a few years back from Etymotic Research and they were great. They deadened the sound but didn’t affect the sound quality of the music. They were worth the money. My hearing isn’t the greatest any way from playing my music too loud all these years and going to shows with unprotected ears. It’s been getting so bad they are ringing even after I get out of the car with the radio on to loud. So it’s time to change my ways and turn the volume down……

Merry Christmas

This entry was posted in Family Personal Work Stuff on by
It seems like just the other day I was wishing you all a Merry Christmas. Yesterday was spent doing some last minute shopping and then ended up at work for a few hours. Then headed out for dinner with Avery, Carolyn and my sister-in-law at the Chines Buffet. Yes, I ended up at work on Christmas eve…I decided to get the server room network cabling redone. I used 3 different colors red for Public network(Internet) nics, Orange for the DMZ nics and Green for the LAN NICs/servers. I had to get this done, I was stepping on network cables that were lying on the floor. I also got the KVM wires cleaned up and put an IP KVM on my 2007 wishlist the KVM wires I have now are too bulky and too hard to get routed the way I wanted them.

Well, I have to go and start cooking Christmas breakfast and then start dinner after opening the gifts with the family…… 🙂

Again MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Christmas party and new monitor

This entry was posted in Personal Technology Work Stuff on by
Saturday was my companies Holiday party. A good time is had by all that go, the down side being I have to wear a suit and tie, it confuses the users though so it makes it worth it. This year I was celebrating being with the company for 5 years. At this company you get $500 for 5 years of service, $1000 for 10 years and so on. So this year I got my money which I just spent on a DELL UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor for my office at home. I have been using a 19″ monitor that is slowly going bad and it has a big scratch in the middle of the glass. I have been looking at these monitors for a while but the price has been to high. But they dropped to bellow $500 dollars with a 25% special and free shipping so I couldn’t resist….Now if I could only get my company to buy me one of these.