Thursday, January 29

More Exchange 2003 Update

It took about 13 hours for the Compaq array to update itself. After which it was supposed to have a much larger storage partition. It didn't. Made another call to Compaq, and they walked us through how to add the additional space. Took about 2 hours, didn't work. We could see the space, but it was not part of the storage volume for some reason in Disk Manager. Called Compaq yet again, the tech tells me, "sometimes the proceedure does not work, and Windows does not see the additional space as part of the volume. When this happens, you need to purchase some third party disk partition software, but we cannot recommend any, nor can we help you further with this problem." Gee, thanks for nothing.

After some web searching, we found Partition Expert 2003. It was just $50 and downloadable from the web. It worked like a champ and got our storage volume expanded in under 30 minutes. So about 7:00 PM on Tuesday we had an operational Exchange 2003 server again. What a pain in the ass that was.

Tuesday, January 27

Exchange 2003 Update

Started the Array expansion last night at about midnight. Compaq tech then informed me that it could take up to 27 hours to complete. Gee, thanks. Went home about 1:30, got home about 2:30, got up about 8:30 and I'm back at the bank. Phase 2 of 3 now reports 100% done, and has for about 30 minutes. Don't know when phase 3 will begin, or how long it will take.

In the meantime, I've found some great stuff to play with while waiting. I've also been updating the program on my Home Theater remote control, a Phillips Pronto TSU3000.

Cool Games Here:

Whack The Penguin

Chinese Rocket Game

Monday, January 26

HP/Compaq Tech is an Idiot

Ok, I'm troublshooting the problem with adding storage to my array, I have Compaq on the phone right now. I explan that I have one RAID 5 container of three 18.2GB drives, with two Partitions, one 10GB, one 24GB. The brilliant Compaq tech informs me that we are missing 20GB or so of storage because three 18.2GB drives makes 54GB. So, I asked him if he waas familier with how a RAID 5 array works, and that you loose one drive in your RAID 5 to pairty. This seemed to be news to him. Kudos to Compaq, they ship jobs overseas, their chairwoman claiming that Americans aren't well enough educated or smart enough to hand jobs here. Maybe next week they will fully discover RLL drives there.

Exchange 2003 Server Update

Fucking thing ate itself last night at 10:30 PM. M: drive filled up and it quit working. Figured out it was a storage problem, grabbed 3 new drives and headed onsite. Installed the 3 drives as a RAID 5 and tried to add them to the M: storage. Something didn't go right on reboot and the whole stinking M: drive vanished. After two calls to Compaq and one to Tech Data, and explaining over and over, no, we don't have a current backup, it is a new server, it took a $245 call to Micro$oft to get the volume restored. Now we ARE making a backup, been waiting about 90 minutes, it is almost done. Then it will be time to call Compaq again and add the extra drives their recommended way. Bitches. Guess I didn't need to go home tonight.

Saturday, January 24

SBC DSL - You suck, quit calling my house...

I'm about to change my home phone service from SBC to anyone else. They call me every other day, trying to sell me DSL service. I've tried the following responses, with no luck:

1) No thank you, I'm not interested.
2) I told you before I am not interested, quit calling here.
3) Look assholes, I don't want you calling my house, I don't want your goddamn services.
4) What the fuck is the matter with you people? Don't fucking call my house.
5) Just pick up and hang up.
6) I told you never to fucking call this number again bitch.

None of this seems to work. I think I need to find a different local phone services company.

LULAC Requests New HPD Policy

Ok, they aren't brave enough to come out and ask for it direclty, but here is what LULAC seems to be requesting of the Houston Police Department, "Please don't pull your guns on hispanics anymore, we're too fucking stupid to obey your orders and you will end up shooting us dead."

This revolves mainly around a 15 year old, hispanic, unlicsenced driver that was shot and killed by an HPD officer workind an extra security job last fall. The family hasn't said much about why their son was out breaking the law, and failing to follow the instructions of a police officer in uniform. They are however trying to get $5 million out of Houston through an extortion lawsuit.

LULAC wants HPD to change it's policies. I guess it would be more work to try and educate the local hispanic population to obey the lawful actions of the police.

Story here.

Friday, January 23

Free SimCity Classic Online

Don't have the time or brains to play the new, supercomplicated SimCity 4?

Now you can play the original online for free!

SimCity Classic

Thursday, January 22

Catch Them Boys!

Oh no! The boys are escaping from Neverland Ranch!

Catch them before they get away!

Texas Police Bust Dildo Saleswoman

I don't know if I want to live in a world where it is illegal to sell sex-toys. When dildos are outlawed, only outlaws will have dildos...

Story here

Star Trek: Enterpirse - Red Alert?

Looks like Paramount might be considering cancelling one of the few good, original Sci-Fi series on regular TV. This would be a shame, the show has gotten much better this season, and is one of the few things left that I watch on a regular basis. Even looking forward to my HD-Tivo so that I can start watching it in HDTV.

Enterprise in danger

Wednesday, January 21

New Spammer Blog

Instead of crapping up this site with my anti spam stuff, I created another blog site, spammerblog, to post that stuff.

Tuesday, January 20

General Updates

"Yesterday it was my birthday,
I hung one more year on the line,
I should be depressed,
my life's a mess,
but I'm havin' a good time..."
- Paul Simon (The singer, not the recently deceased politician.)

Still sick, having good days and bad days. My wife got me the Alien Quadriliogy for my birthday.

I had some birthday and Chirstmas cash lying around, so I finally bit the bullet and got a GPS toy from Magellan. Now maybe I won't get so lost on those work trip all over the place.

Finally, had a bowl of Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream before bedtime last night.

I've successfully reloaded my laptop, upgrading the hard disk drive to an IBM/Hitachi 7k60 60GB 7200RPM drive, and it is so much faster now.

Only one wierd thing after reloading all my software. My Palm Vx was previously syncing my e-mail with Outlook XP, and that seems to no longer work, no matter what I try. Maybe I just need a vacation.

Sunday, January 18

Environmentalists are bad at math...

This one has been bothering me for a while. My house has these great, environmentally friendly 2 gallon per flush toilets that are supposed to be saving the environment. They are the ones that replaced the good old 5 gallon per flush toliets we used to have everywhere. Two gallons is less than 5 gallons, I'll give you that. But when it takes 3 or 4 flushes each time I take a crap to get the shit down into the sewer, that's 6-8 gallons per crap instead of the old 5 gallons. Maybe I can arrange a road trip to Canada and get some 5 gallon toilets back, sell them here and make a fortune...

Then again, I hear Canada closes at 9:30 PM...

Feeling better...

Looks like the doctors made another mistake. After feeling like crap for most of last week, and missing Monday, Tuesday and Friday, I quit taking the new drug, Pancrease, that they had prescribed. Now I feel much better. Looks like the cure was worse than the disease. I feel like a goddamn walking and talking pharmacy these days. I know more about drugs than a junkie. Or Anna Nicole Smith.

Sunday Spam images...

Once again, deep links, paid for by spammers every time you load this page.










Ain't technology grand?

Sunday morning. Streaming mp3s from my Windows 2003 Enterprise server to my XP Pro Home Theater PC, watching the visualizations on the HDTV, browsing the web on my laptop, wife browsing the web on her laptop, drinking coffee, and the dog is licking my knee. Ok, so the dog is decidely low tech...

Tuesday, January 13

Stupid School Administrators:

Ok, when I was a senior in High School, I got busted for selling Computer Math Class finals with a couple of buddies. We each got a 10 day in school suspension at the "Alternate Learning Center (ALC)".

Here is a kid that got SUSPENDED for three days for using the NET SEND command in DOS to send a friendly message of "Hey!" to everyone at school. Wonder what they would have done to him if he had done something really bad...

Story is here: Star Telegram

Kids response is here: Hey!

Back in the hosptial again...

Got to spend last night at St. Lukes, I'm home now. Had "Severe Gastritis" the doctor said. Can't have alcohol or caffene any more. Great, I'm pretty much restricted to water and sugar free Cool-aide now. And I got a prescription for Protonix, an industrial stregnth antacid. Wohoo! More prescriptions to fill at CVS!

Two more Spam Images:





Additional Image Update:


Wednesday AM Update:

Sunday, January 11

More Penis Spam

Ok, here is the problem with this thing, it says it is a Penis Patch, but this idiot has the patch on his tit or shoulder. Bet it would work better on the penis! Not only that, but he is wearing shorts with a gorgeous naked woman there. You'll never get it in that way. And look, with a body like that, you know he is shooting seroids, his dick is going to be a little shrivled up thing no matter what he does. Deep link paid for by spammer:



Same Spammer, different product:



Late Update !Even more pictures!:




Friday, January 9

Hmm.. Might be time to move to Austin...

Back in 2000 I was laid off from my job. At the time I think I managed to get onto every job board and listing service know to be on the internet. As a result, I still get e-mail from all the big players on a nearly daily basis. Some days I read it just to see what is happening in the job market currently. Think I might have to take this one to my boss to get him to match their pay rate, or maybe it is time to move to Austin.

MS Network Specialist

COMPANY: Hall Kinion
SKILLS REQUIRED: MS Network Specialist
LOCATION: Austin, TX
RATE: $40,000.00 - $60,000.00 per hour
AREA: 512
LENGTH: Perm
TERM: CON_HIRE_W2 CON_HIRE_IND
SUMMARY: Hall Kinion is seeking two Microsoft Network Administrators for a contract to hire position in Austin. Our client is a successful locally owned company that has been in business for 13 years. The Level II Network Specialist will spend the majority of time

Wednesday, January 7

Wierdos are all gonna have a name now....

The world's greatest morning radio show, Walton & Johnson has a brand new web page, check them out at:

Walton & Johnson.com

The Dren replies to other people's mail:

From the Houston Chronicle, January 7, 2003 editorial section:

Marriage not a car sale
Who is doing more to destroy the sanctity of marriage? Britney Spears, with an oops and a giggle, annulling her hours-old marriage to a childhood sweetheart or a gay couple whose relationship has stood the test of time and who want the legal and emotional comforts of a permanent commitment set down on paper?

We make marriage sacred by the way we treat each union -- whether it be between a man and a woman or between two people of the same sex.

Allowing a couple to marry and divorce as easily as they might buy and sell a car is not upholding the sanctity of marriage.

Any couple -- gay or straight -- should be required to have premarital counseling, and a waiting period before marriage or divorce should be mandatory.

Polly Barnes Coleman,
The Woodlands

The Dren Replies:

Dear Polly,

You are exactally correct. But instead of a waiting period, there should be an IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient) test before you get married. If you are not smart enough to figure shit out, or emotionally stable enough to deal with another person's shit all the time, then you should not be allowed to be married.

As for the waiting period to get divorced, I can see where this could be good in some situations, but really bad in others. For a couple with kids and a long history, counseling and being sure this is the right thing to do is probably the proper path, but in other cases, a waiting period can just exacerbate (make worse) the existing problems. A good example: My frist wife - Two adults, 31 years old, filed the paperwork in Brazoria County, Texas, no children, property settlement complete, not living together. We had to wait the requisite 60 days here in Texas. What for? I have no idea, but I was worried, this is a community property state, and as long as we were married, if that psycho bitch went out and opened a bunch of credit accounts, I would be responsible for 50% of her debt. Not a good thing. Not to mention when one party is psycho and prone to violence. The sooner you get away from a psycho, the better.

As for Brittney, any guy would be stupid not to marry her, given the chance, hope Jason Alexander at least got some $$ for his 55 hours of marriage.

As for gays getting married, I've got a lesbian couple two doors down that has been together for over 5 years, are the best neighbors, and a lot of fun for me and the wife to hang out with. Wouldn't have a problem with them being married. Pretty much looks like they are now, but they don't have the freakin marriage penalty with their taxes each year.

-The Dren

Some Random Thoughts

That's right, I got married at the same place as Brittney Spears!

Pete Rose, possibly one of the dumbest people ever is trying again to get reinstated to baseball. Guess the idea of "Lifetime Ban" is still hard for him to comprehend. Just another sorry athlete who broke the rules and now wants to cry about his punishment. Here is an e-mail you can use to tell them to keep that crooked bastard out of Baseball.

My Exchange 2003 project is now finished up, and it works great. I'm a freakin' Exchange 2003 expert!

My Project Gotham Racing 2 project is now cooking along. My worldwide Kudos rank is in the low 15,000s for online play out of nearly 100,000 worldwide players. Someone with no life has like 15,000,000 Kudos now, but I'd like to stay married and employeed.

A buddy of mine in Austin sent me what has to the dumbest online game of all time.

A great new Bruce Campbell movie, Bubba Hotep is now playing in Houston, but I can't decide if I should go now, or wait till the DVD comes out. Maybe I will go tomorrow for Elvis' birthday.

I'm still getting lots of Penis Enlargement SPAM, if anyone knows how to setup a record in DNS that will block an entire domain, in this case .biz, please e-mail me the instructions.

Monday, January 5

Spammer Update

After forwarding about 100 e-mails to the support address for the .biz domain, I finally get a response that says they don't care if their customers are spamming me, it is not their problem.

Ok, not your problem, but maybe the spambots will pick up your e-mail address from your correspondance below and you can get some of the crap I get every day.

Oh, and I will continue to send all the .biz spam to these assholes, all I get from .biz is spam. I am also researching how to block all .biz domains from being passed at the sites I manage.



From: Support [mailto:support@neulevel.biz]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 10:16 AM
To:
Subject: RE: {Registry#258-104} Contains the info you're looking for

Greetings-

Thank you for contacting NeuLevel/NeuStar regarding the SPAMMING you have recently experienced.

Please note that NeuLevel is a third party provider of registry services to over 100 ICANN-accredited .BIZ registrars. As a registry, we only provide a database in which registrars store their customers' domain name records. Only the respective registrars can delete or block a domain from resolving, if the registrar determines that the domain's registration violates one or more clauses in the terms of use. Therefore, the most appropriate party with whom you should file your complaint is the sponsoring registrar, whose name appears in Line 3 of the domain name's WHOIS record found at http://www.whois.biz . You can get the registrar's contact information by submitting a WHOIS query for "Registrar" instead of domain name.

You can also report domains with inaccurate WHOIS information directly to ICANN by completing the ICANN report form available at: http://reports.internic.net/cgi/rpt_whois/rpt.cgi .

As a domain name registry, NeuLevel has no authority, legal or otherwise, to police the internet, and only law-enforcement can, when provided with appropriate evidence, pursue violators and stop them from continuing their illegal practices. Therefore, if you believe that you are being SPAMmed in violation of the law, there are remedies that you can seek with the United States courts (or courts from other jurisdictions in your region). In addition, you can file a formal complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov ) pin-pointing the specific culprit domain, and the kind of illegal and/or unfair act that you believe the domain owner is perpetrating.


Kind Regards,

NeuLevel Customer Support
___________________________________________
NeuLevel - The home of .biz
Email: support@neulevel.biz
Help: http://www.neulevel.biz/faqs/index.html
Address: Loudon Tech Center
46000 Center Oak Plaza
Sterling, VA 20166 USA
Web Site: www.neulevel.biz
___________________________________________

This transmission (the e-mail and all attachments) is confidential
and intended solely for the use of the addressee(s). If you have
received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by
reply and delete this transmission immediately. Any unauthorized
distribution, or copying of this transmission, or misuse or wrongful
disclosure of information contained in it, is strictly prohibited.
The information contained in this document is provided on an as-is
basis and does not constitute a binding legal contract or receipt
for services. While this information is believed to be substantially
correct, it is not intended to be substituted for appropriate legal
counsel.

>-----Original Message-----
>From:
>Date: Monday, January 05, 2004 10:42 AM
>To: support@neulevel.biz[support@neulevel.biz]
>Subject: FW: Contains the info you're looking for
>
>
>The remove address does not work, please have your registrant stop
>spamming
>this account.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Imrpove Your Computer [mailto:lhaykojr@return.abc-host.biz]
>Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 5:05 AM
>To:
>Subject: Contains the info you're looking for
>
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>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Link to cease fur ther e mail to you:
>http://www.abc-host.biz/softsite/pap1/remo.html
>
>Copyright 2004, all rights reserved/Privacy Policy:
>http://www.abc-host.biz/softsite/pap1/priv.html
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Thursday, January 1

Merry New Year!

Beef Jerkey Time!

Hmm... Some new years resolutions seem in order...

1) No comas in 2004.

2) Finish my Windows 2000 MCSE exams. Then I can start on the 2003 MCSE Exams. Yeah, that's the ticket.

3) Clean up the disaster area known as my house.

4) Get an HD Tivo, hack it for extra storage and start watching Star Trek: Enterprise in HD.

5) Watch the Daytona 500 this year instead of working all day in a bank that Sunday.

6) Sell the toy car I've been meaning to get rid of for the past 4 years.

7) Make this Blog interesting enough to read.

Number of people who will never get their time back from reading this page:
Counters