SPAM, Maintenance, & Migrations So meanwhile on the career ranch. It's been busy. I wouldn't say I've been doing a bunch of things I really love. I am however doing things that are beneficial, and greatly appreciated. It's nice to be needed, I just wish I could be doing some more coding. When I actually get to it, I am usually to tired to get my head into it, or I just never get to it period.

There was a rash of complaints about the amounts of SPAM coming into several clients. So off I go into the foray of fighting SPAM. There are lots of different ways to tackle SPAM, and let me say I end up using all of them. Good thing I get to test out spamassassin on my own mail server, and then propagate onto the fortress servers before we move onto the client servers. First things first, pump in the SBL lists directly into the kolab/templates/main.cf.template. Apparently the spamassassin module doesn't use them correctly. Besides that, I'd prefer to have them dumped by the mail server as opposed to processed by the mail scanner to find out they are bad.

For some clients not running spamassassin (yet), I ended up using postfix header_checks options to use a set of rules I created myself (with some help on the internet to dump certain bad things. It has apparently helped somewhat, and no one has complained in the weeks since I put that in place.

For those of us running spamassassin in Kolab, I really had to experiment and tweak things. First things first, amavis runs spamassassin on it's own, and has it's own configurations to control SPAM. This overrides the user_prefs file. Took me a bit to find that out, but it's all good. I am wondering why the amavis default level is 6.3, yet the spamassassin default is 5.0? I had to crunch that down ... normal I use a 3.0 for clients. There's just so much spam out there. I prefer to lower the level, and customize the rules for their system, and opposed to leave a higher level. I've had no complaints thus far.

The last thing I went on to do was search for some more intense SA rule sets. There are a few sites that offer rule sets for people, and you can even automate the update. I'm not worried about that. I found some really inventive rules by some people. I created an SVN module, and a script to install and check the syntax after installation. this makes my updates much easier. Plus it's easy for all the clients to benefit at the same time from my SPAM fighting efforts. Update and run the script, and you are good to go.

I've been dealing with the issue of client maintenance. We have some clients who are signed up for bi-weekly maintenance. What do we deliver for the reports. I wrote a step by step procedure (commands, expected output, comments) on what do do for maintenance. Performing the maintenance is not supposed to be my job. We're working on that as well. The colleague who was supposed to do that actual maintenance is pretty green. He's also new to linux, so I spent some time doing "type this ... now this" kinda help. He missed the mark on what needed to get done. I ended up re-doing the report myself.

When I realized I was redoing all this work, I decided it would be nice to automate this. the time invested in this would payoff huge in the end. I wrote an entire suite of scripts that can be run to gather system information needed for the maintenance report. This is configurable for each client, and all stored in SVN modules. Just check out the SVN module you need for the client, and run their scripts for each server. I spent quite a few hours writing the original scripts. So I decided to time myself on the second server for fortress. Start to finish, with a checkout, running, and debugging the scripts and config, committing, and creating the report from a template took all of 16 minutes. That's pretty awesome. We can now condense the maintenance reports for someone at the company all at once. That's really really awesome. I told Gregg about it, and he was super excited, as he should be because I just saved him a ton of hours, and money. Good on me. :D

I also spent last weekend mostly not sleeping, and installing and migrating the L&Y office onto a redundant Kolab system. I ended up running into a system problem, with the PHP modules, and realized that the apt-get repositories were #@$%!. Some mix up between 64/32 bit, not using universe. I decided it would be easier to just re-install correctly, than try to fix it. I was right, but it encroached upon my sleepy time. The next day Andy H and I started the transition of client workstations. From about 1-7 we finished the entire south office (~35 desktops). That's account setup, and mail exports. This still left 5 satellite offices. I said I'd go to south bend, get Rich to let me in, I haven't seen him in forever anyways. It's only 5 computers ... should be quick right?

I got there about 9 P.M. Was still in the office when Dan came in @ 8:30. Dans computer was slow as molasses is the Yukon, 10 MB network. Plus his computer was having memory issues, and I ended up getting a blue screen of death on windows 2000 reboot. Wow. Rich's network card died after I upgrade him to Office 2003. That office install took over 3 hours. We had some really really unhealthy computers. Jim's import took 7.5 hours for his 1 Gig of email. That's what you get for remote upload over a VPN I guess. Tara' computer I ended up doing manually because she had like 100+ folders all with special characters not allowed like slashes etc. It took forever running the round robin from PC to PC. I was slightly tired after the 30+ hours of work in 2 days. But they are up and running. End users bitch and complain of course because it is not the same as before ... what else is new.  ¶ 4:43:00 AM 0 comments

  Bitching & Complaining I know it's been forever since I posted something. I usually talk mostly about work, but I'm going to cover that in another post. I've got to write about some things of recent times that may be amusing, but it's mostly just me bitching and complaining.

One of my first blogs I ever wrote was called "stupid people" ... something, something. I believe I wrote about an experience where I was at the grocery store and some lady boxed my car in, so I could not get in and drive away. Well the God's of payback must have read that because it happened to me again tonight. This time it was at blockbuster. That's the premise of the story, but I have to give you some background.

A few days ago I threw out my back. Just doing the laundry and I got a horrible twinge. Well it was slightly painful that day, and Dayle's massage chair didn't help any. They next day I was in excruciating pain. I haven't worked, or really done anything other than sleep, and watch the Olympics for 2.5 days. Today I must say I am felling slightly better, with some increased mobility. I only took 2 painkillers when I got up, for the entire day. That's opposed to the 10 the day before. It's not quite as twangy, and I'm not quite as grumpy.

I ventured out tonight to the store to get smokes and whatnot. In the parking lot I was approached by a young lady eating pizza. She very sheepishly asked if I could give her a ride to the French Maid for $10, even $20. I said just hop in, it's not a problem. I was in a generous mood. Mostly I think because I've been feeling shitty, that doing something nice for someone else would boost my spirits. Lets just say that she was not the most prim and proper of girls I have met in my life. But she looked interesting. And I was right.

Her name was Jody. We made idle chit chat along the short drive about the temperature being warmer than last week and some other local "talk about the weather". Then as I guessed it correctly and it got interesting. She had a fistful of cash she was counting, and proceeded to share some personal details with me. Jody had been stabbed by her husband three weeks ago. Yes ... she just blurted that out. So since he is currently sitting in jail, she took it upon herself to sell some of his things. I started to laugh and congratulated her ... what else could I do? She sold his porn for $400. That's allot of porn I must say. Then she took the proceeds and won big playing roulette at the casino. She was on her way to play the VLTs down at the strip club. So she said.

She had just finished inhaling some pizza and was complaining about still being hungry. All she does is eat all the time craving Vietnamese food, and was thinking about going for some after her still at the bar. Well the French Maid is in the right area of town, and I told her about the soup hut, but it was probably closed. She decided to do her make up in the car before getting out. She asked for my number. Here was the decision time for me ... I decided that she seemed nice, but there was just something about her that said "RUN ... RUN AWAY!". ;-) I mean she seems to have a tendency to get stabbed, and by tendency ... I mean once in your lifetime. I told her my usual out for avoiding people, that I don't use phones. I'm a computer programmer, and I communicate strictly by email. It's a good thing I left my cell phone at home, and it was not ringing in my pocket. She said that was really cool. "Thanks sweetie". Then she turned her head and looked at me. I knew right there ... I passed up a chance to bang some trashy girl. Oh well ... there's more than one slutty girl who just got stabbed and sold her husband's porn ... I'm sure of it. ;-) I'm fairly confident that she didn't "work" at the french maid, but as I drove away she wasn't going inside ... it kinda looked like she "works" outside the French Maid. I left ... alone.

I then stopped at a local pub to gamble in the VLTs myself. It was super busy being a long weekend, with only one girl working. I waited for 15 minutes to get some change. Only to discover the only open VLT was not accepting money. The next funny event of this night involved seeing a girl I kind of know. A friend of mine ... um ... "dated" her for a short time about 1.5 years ago. Let's just call her L. He'll know who I'm talking about. She was a waitress, and young, and we used to joke about how she was adept at getting things for free from men. She'd get hammered while out on the town, and never buy a drink. Typical girl. We made eye contact a few times like we knew either other, but couldn't remember from where. I made the connection, but didn't say anything. I knew exactly who she was when she was talking to some young punk, and said "You wanna go play some pool" ... he was like "Yah sure, let's go". The she says "It's like $1.50, and I don't have any change on me". Right there I knew who she was. I chuckled a little under my breath. They walked across the bar. OH MY GOD DID SHE GET FAT! I mean she always had big boobs, but now she has the ass and the gunt to go with them. I'm not fearful of her ever reading this anyways. She'd probably take 3 weeks to figure out why the little arrow moves on the screen when the mouse jiggles. I just shook my head and left.

I ended up gambling elsewhere for a while to no avail. Then gentlemen next to me hit big a couple of times, and was up around $600. Good for him. At least I didn't spin my money in about 3 minutes. I got to play for a while. Don't get me wrong ... I would have rather won, but I can't complain for not getting out when I was ahead a little bit.

I decided to head around the corner and pick up some movies. By this point in the night, I had been out and mobile for a couple of hours, and my back was starting to strain a bit. The line up was _HUGE_ at blockbuster, and the longer I stood in line the worse my back felt, and the more stupid people got. I mean ... you know you're holding up the line, when they say due back on Tuesday, do you really have to ask "You mean in 2 days?". Come on ... Video stores normally rent out movies in odd time frames like 9 days. Not to mention the GREAT BIG FUCKING STICKER on the front of your movies saying "2 day rental". It seemed like every person had some kind of problem, and the clerk would have to leave and go replace something on the shelf. The other thing that bothers me is the 6 people in front of me ... you've been standing there for 15 minutes ... that was ample time to ... I don't know ... get your video card out, or your money. Jesus Christ people are dumb sometimes.

So I finally get out of the blockbuster, and some jeep had back angle parked to box me in. I admit due to the parking arrangements before, that I was a little close to the divider, but this was so close I could only open my door to not even provide a foot of space to squeeze through. With my back all fucked, there was absolutely no way I could ever twist my fat ass into my car. Looking at the jeep, I was trying to guess who it belonged too in the store. Again, I guessed right for the night. My spidey senses were just tingling today. Young girl about 24ish, driving a small model SUV. Unaware of what's going on in the world that doesn't directly involve her. She didn't even notice me standing by my car, hunched over to release the pressure on my back. In fact ... she almost backed over me driving out. What could I do but shake my head. I was kind enough to not bang the shit out of her vehicle with my door, she could have at least acknowledged me. Bitch.

So after my fantastically bizarre night, and shitty weekend, I was so pissed off I went to McDonald's. I haven't eaten meat in over 2 weeks. It's been interesting, but I was shitty, and lazy, and hungry. So not I feel like shit again. Immediately feel asleep after eating. And I haven't watched my movies yet. At least I have them for a week. So that's like next Sunday right? ;-)

P.S. Canada lost the last two hockey games at the Olympics. 2-0 shutouts twice in a row. Not so happy about that.  ¶ 2:50:00 AM 0 comments