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spamassassin update

Most email users are blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the spam problem. Major email providers do a pretty good job of filtering, so you might see little or no spam in your inbox. Even the stuff that gets sent to your “spam folder” is only a tiny fraction of the spam that gets sent to you. That hides the magnitude of a really big problem, and one you pay for even if you don’t realize it.

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IPv6

IPv6If you don’t know what IPv4 and IPv6 are, this post isn’t for you.

If you know, and are wondering how you might implement IPv6, this might be of interest. We handle http/https requests using a white box router running Debian. Until recently, we were IPv4 only, and the router used NAT to connect to an existing subnet with a local IPv4 address space (in the 10.x.x.x range). What makes it odd is that the subnet is also reachable through a different IPv4 address and NAT—it’s ancient history in a network that has been running since the 1990’s.

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new bed

My old bed cost, I think, about $1,500 and was too big — Caper and I rattled around in it. It was also over 10 years old. I got a Wirecutter recommendation for a compressed foam mattress that you can order online and it comes in a relatively tiny box — for less than $300. Uncrate it, and over a day or two it expands to a full 12″ deep mattress. I bought one for Matthew, and he liked it, so I decided to upgrade (and downsize) my own bed. Continue reading

shelf feet/caps

I have a number of industrial racks I use for servers and storage. They’re a fairly standard design: angle iron and particle board. Interestingly, some came with no feet (which would be fine on concrete, but I have actual tile floors). Some came with only four feet. Some came with eight feet, the other four serving as caps on top of the angle-iron uprights.

When I first got a 3-D printer, I was excited to discover that somebody had already uploaded a design for feet to Thingiverse. The design was for much larger shelves, but it worked—it was, perhaps, the first actually functional print I made.

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Florida trip

In the past, we’ve usually stayed in California for our vacations. I decided it was time that Joshua and Matthew saw a little more of the world and, on something of a whim, decided it would be cool to visit the Florida Keys. It had been a long time since I was in the land of John D. MacDonald, Ernest Hemingway, and Jimmy Buffett. I had fond memories and thought the Matthew and Joshua might make some of their own. Continue reading

cheap phones

A year or so ago, I was looking for a new phone. I had been using a Google Nexus 6 for two years, ever since I became a beta tester for Project Fi. I loved Project Fi (Google is eversomuch cooler than any other cellular carrier/MVNO in the US), but getting timely updates—even security updates—for the Nexus was like pulling teeth, and they dropped support for what had been their flagship phone barely a year after I bought it. Add to that the fact that there’s no effective private backup solution for Android devices, and I didn’t have any real choice. I had an old iPhone 5 that I had owned for maybe four years, and it was still running the latest version of iOS with all the security updates delivered instantly, while my three-years-newer Android was a security breach waiting to happen.

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agony of da feet

What better test of new orthotics than tromping around Key West and then Disney World for two weeks?

I’d like to say that the shoes were 100% successful. Alas, it was not to be. I endured some pretty remarkable pain, particularly after the second day at Disney. Overall, however, some foot pain is to be expected in such extenuating circumstances, and I was able to (pretty much) keep up with Matthew and Joshua for the whole trip. So, overall, I’d say the plan worked.

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