Are you all top endians or bottom endians for email replies?
I'll go for bottom endian.
At 10:11 PM 9/1/2004, you wrote:
Fellow computer tinkerers,
I had a recent E-mail exchange with a fellow named Ed Kelleher,
apparently the president of a company called 'Macro-Inc.com.' They appear
to sell overpriced (to my eyes, anyway) DEC systems and parts.
What had happened was that I had found, in my mail server logs,
entries which showed that Mr. Kelleher had tried to send me something,
only to have it bounced repeatedly due to the fact that I'm currently
blocking traffic from the
biz.rr.com domain (this last due to RR.Com's
utter lack of response to ongoing spam, port probes, and other abuse
coming from their network).
I sent him a polite note advising him of what I'd found, and
asking him to please re-send the message to my backup address, which is
not spam-filtered in any way that I know of.
It worked -- sort of. I got back a very terse -- I would actually
call it rude -- reply to the effect that he'd tried to send whatever he
was sending five times, with and without attachments, and had finally
given up. In his words "I don't care to send it again. Stupid policy of
yours."
This tells me right away that he has absolutely no concept of
what I, as a self-hosted SysAdmin, go through each and every DAY, trying
to protect my network effectively against outside abuse.
That point aside, I sent back another polite request, saying that
I'm sorry he felt that way, and asking that he please not blame me for
doing what I felt necessary to protect my tiny corner of the Internet. I
also asked him if he would consider at least telling me what it was he
was trying to send.
No response yet, of course. I'm not sure I'll ever see
one. Based on what I saw of his company's web site, though, I suspect
that what he had to send may have been of minimal value in any case
(possibly even spam).
Has anyone on the list had any contact with this person or his
company?
The vast majority of people that I've asked to re-send their
original message have no problem with it, and are fully understanding of
why their initial attempts might have been blocked. What's gotten into
this fellow that he can't seem to understand the view from my side,
especially considering that he sells (and presumably works with) computer
goodies?
Insights and opinions welcomed. Thanks much.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Hi, I'm Ed Kelleher.
You might remember me from such smash threads as,
"Hey, put a magnet by the CRT and watch the pretty colors!", or ...
"Do you really have to use that word?"
Thanks Lyle and Ashely for your kind comments.
The other day I posted a message to the list saying I had Teledisk images
available of software for most Emulex hardware.
Several folks emailed me on/off list asking for a copy. Happy to oblige.
Including Bruce Lane, author of the above. His off list solicitation is
copied below.
Despite being an avaricious purveyor of "overpriced" DEC hardware, and
defender of eBay,
(I published my mea culpa when I first joined this list not too long ago
"At 05:37 PM 5/28/2004, you wrote:")
I was happy to send copies of what I had as my very small part in promotion
of the hobby.
I sent Bruce Lane a copy, at his request, and tried to get through to him 5
times in different ways.
No joy. I didn't want to appear to be blowing off his request and give up.
How do I get through?
Searched the cctalk emails to see if he was a participant.
Wasn't going to bother if he were just a lurker - take but no give. He wasn't.
I found posts of his and an earlier post on cctalk from someone else who
had same problem getting through to Bruce Lane.
I posted it to cctalk with a brief request that Bruce Lane get in touch
with me. I didn't particularly like to do that, but didn't want to appear
rude in ignoring the guy's request either.
Bruce Lane then sends me an email saying in effect, through his diligent
effort he saw where maybe I was wanting to contact him but he blocked
entire domains like
biz.rr.com. This was after I posted the same to cctalk.
> During a routine review of our E-mail server logs,
I came across
> an indication that a message you sent may have been wrongly rejected as
spam.
<snip>
If this was indeed you, please try re-sending your message to my
backup address of kc7gr(a)qsl.net --
RoadRunner.com has been heavily
blocked at our servers because of a very high incidence of spam, port
probes, and similar network abuse. This includes the
biz.rr.com domain.
Thank you for your patience, and I apologize for the hassle.
Damn right it was a hassle.
Sent it 5 times, with/without attachments.
Stupid policy of yours.
I don't care to send it again.
"Hello, have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"
Sorry, but that hit a nerve.
I decided not to accept his apology (and resend the file) because I thought
he needed a wakeup call (purely IMO).
Two schools of thought I guess on telling people if their fly is open.
I'm in the "let them know it" school.
Bruce Lane asks me to send stuff, "I run my own servers, so attachments
are not a problem",
but blocks my domain and doesn't tell me of an alternate address.
Trying to do him a favor, at his request, he forgets he invited me, locks
the door in my face, ignores my knocks and calls me rude?
Since he cared to make his thoughts public, I'm happy to follow suit.
"What a wanker!" is what I'm thinking.
(Eudora says that's a bad word ... sorry <g>)
[End of personal rant]
[begin domain blocking rant]
Blocking domains like
biz.rr.com to reduce spam is stupid, IMHO.
What? Maybe you go from 98% spam to 90%?
Pull the plug and you'll not have to worry at all.
Just counted and I have 543 rules setup in my Eudora email filters.
I am not using any other spam filters, but 99% of incoming spam goes to the
trash folder.
Of course some good stuff goes in there, but I skim the trash and get most
of them before flushing.
(Like a request for Maxtor XT2190 disk drive from South Africa that I have
to get to here in a bit).
Bruce Lane wrote:
This tells me right away that he has absolutely no
concept of what I, as a
self-hosted SysAdmin, go through each and every DAY, trying to protect my
network effectively against outside abuse.
I'm not sure what a "self-hosted SysAdmin" is but I think I are one too.
Maybe I have my eyes closed, but we have box on the table and it just sits
there and hums.
I pay a little extra to get "business class" from RoadRunner (big US cable
access provider).
That's the
biz.rr.com domain thing ("thing" so all you purists don't
jump
on me<g>)
that gives a fixed IP with a little more bandwidth, router and stuff.
There's lots of business class road runner users.
Seems nonsensical to block it because of a few spammers.
My nephew (young geek, I'm the OLD geek as Sellam has pointed out<g>) set
us up with a PC with Debian Linux, Apache and QMail.
He knows all that web/linux stuff, I can muddle through if necessary, but
try and avoid it.
I guess the thing has our website
www.macro-inc.com on it because when I
sneaker-net stuff to \var\www\ , it pops up on the web.
I do our webpage by text editing the html code (not with TECO though).
My nephew pops in every couple of months and updates the Debian, etc. stuff.
I got a spare computer and manage to image copy the server hard drive to
the backup occasionally.
So, I'm pretty much web clueless, but it still doesn't seem such a big deal
that I'd have to cut off a leg or something.
Which is why I thought Bruce Lane's domain blocking was foolish -- an
unnecessary impediment and a hoop I didn't care to have to jump through.
Wasn't a big deal. He apologized and I was going to send him the files
anyway, but then I thought that if his domain blocking foolishness had no
cost he wasn't likely to change, so didn't send them.
I'll be happy to send the files if he removes the blocks.
Of course Bruce Lane might very well think if someone is so ill considered
as to use
biz.rr.com, or AOL, or hotmail that he'll let them know it has a
cost as well and block them from sending to him. And he has every right to
do so.
[whois Ed Kelleher]
"Google - Images" for "Ed Kelleher" will show you a picture of my
father
(in white skivvy shirt) in Korea in 1952.
I was a few months old at the time. He didn't see me till I was over 2
years old. Another example of nasty American imperialists spending blood
and treasure to take advantage of and enslave poor South Korea. As we did
in France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
And as we're doing to poor Iraq and Afghanastan today. My father made it
back, seemingly whole, but didn't live much longer.
www.macro-inc.com as has been mentioned is my vocation.
"Google - Web" for "Ed Kelleher grassroots" will show you my
avocation.
Sorry for long OT thing.
Ed
Hi, Ed,
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 31-Aug-04 at 14:23 Ed Kelleher wrote:
Got an email offlist from a person in .de wanting
a copy of Emulex
tape/disk/comm product diagnostics and formatters.
My replies keep bouncing, so go ahead and contact me again please.
I have 2 teledisk images and txt file zipped up.
Is there a place that archives this and would want a copy?
<snip>
I would be happy to archive these, and make the available to
whoever needs them.
Please send the disk images along. I run my own servers, so
attachments are not a problem.
I will post a note to the list when they become available.
Also, if I may be so nosy: Are you related to Herb Kelleher?
Thanks much.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,