Tag: Misc

I had another run in with AOL today. I got bounced mail from a customer with the following error messages in it:

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mailin-01.mx.aol.com.:
DATA
<<< 421-:  (RLY:CS4) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421rlycs4.html
<<< 421 SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE
... while talking to mailin-02.mx.aol.com.:
DATA
<<< 554-:  (RLY:CS4) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rlycs4.html
<<< 554 TRANSACTION FAILED

So I checked the error message and it said that there was a compromised script on my server. OK, yeah right. I called AOHell and they opened a trouble ticket. I then tested sending email to an AOL account I setup and it worked fine. I then tried sending mail from a PHP script. It failed with the same error message which got me looking down the right path. My script was extremely simple, so I didn’t understand why it was being rejected. I searched on the net and didn’t find anything. I looked at the headers and the only thing that struck me was the X-Envelope-From address was apache@linux.gruby.com. Hmmm. So more searching and found a reference to php.ini. I looked in there and found:

; For Unix only.  You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

so I changed it to:

; For Unix only.  You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -f anotheraddress@domain.com

Low and behold, I can now send email from my scripts to AOL users. So AOL’s error message is misleading and their detection is wrong. They check for apache@domainname and assume that it is from a compromised script. Lovely. This is a misguided attempt by AOL to combat spam.

Anyway, hopefully someone else that encounters this problem now has a fix.

The other day I bought a kneeling chair to help my posture. I went to the Healthy Back store and bought an inexpensive one; I liked it better than the others ones. I ended up getting the Healthy Back Kneeling Chair. It wasn’t until today that I discovered a huge design flaw in the chair. I was noticing that the chair wasn’t rolling properly and after some detective work (and luck), I found that if I lowered the chair, the problem went away. The chair is in two pieces in an x pattern with a height adjustment (and a pivot bolt) connecting them. The problem is that all 4 casters are perpendicular only at the lowest seat position. As you raise the seat, the front part pivots causing the casters to no longer be rest flat on the floor. This is fine on carpet as the carpet and pad take up the slack, but I have hardwood and the chair doesn’t roll. I went back to the store and after a brief explanation and demonstration, they let me exchange it. I got the chair I was originally going to get and because of their special sale, it only cost me $1.08 more; I still like the other chair I got because of the angle adjustment, but I’d rather not scratch my floor when it doesn’t roll. I was very pleased that the store made things right.

I’ve never been a big fan of switching back to standard time from daylight savings time as it gets dark sooner and the long days of winter are ahead (OK, I live in San Diego and winters aren’t all that bad, but I’m more of a late spring/summer kind of person). On the news last night, they reminded us that this will be the last time change in October as next year daylight savings time ends one week later. What problems will this cause? Well, for every device that has time zone information built into it, for example Palm handhelds, they’ll either have to issue a software update or everyone (in the US) will have to create new time zones with the correct start and end dates for daylight savings time. Furthermore, all the synchronization software will have to be updated to handle this. Talk about another headache for me. Time zones are enough of a problem in software without them changing.

San Diego has consistently been ranked as have poor emergency (fire/medical) response times with average response times being somewhere around 10 minutes or so. For a major city, this is pretty awful. We saw this first hand today. We took our dog to Dusty Rhodes park in Ocean Beach (there isn’t a dog park near us) and as we were sitting there, I heard a crash, looked up and saw the tail end of a multi car accident on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Lots of people went over to see if they could help and several dialed 911. The first fire truck didn’t arrive on scene for somewhere around 15 minutes after the accident, then an ambulance arrived more than 5 minutes after that (we saw the ambulance come around the park and it took about 3-4 minutes for it to drive around the park with the traffic). Next, the police arrived maybe 5-10 minutes later. It’s really a good thing that no one had injuries and there wasn’t a fire, because the delayed response could have been disastrous.

Our city (which has no money) is in dire need of more emergency resources. It is a real shame that our politicians create the pension crisis and has put our great city is such a financial mess that we can’t even afford to put more emergency personnel on the street.

On a side note, the accident was a Cadillac Escalade that rear ended a Subaru Forester. The front end damage that the Escalade sustained was severe while there didn’t appear to be much rear end damage on the Subaru; it had its windows shattered and it looked like a non-functioning wheel, but no apparent collapse. I’m not sure how a speeding Escalade that significantly outweighs the Subaru had so much damage.

Yesterday I replaced our reverse osmosis system as the one we had was costing me something like $200 per year to replace the filters. The previous owners of our house installed probably one of the most expensive systems they could find and to top it off, the replacements filters had to be ordered. So I picked up a GE Profile Smart Water system from Home Depot where the replacement filters are about $40 every six months so not only is it half the price per year, I can get the filters right from the local store.

Plumbing is definitely something I hate doing and this job only reaffirmed that. A simple task (since it was already setup for it) turned into an all day affair and I still didn’t get it exactly how I wanted it as I wanted a shutdown value for the refrigerator water line (2 Home Depots were out of the part).

Anyway, after I got it installed, I noticed a warning label on the tank “This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer.”

Hmmm. Now that is a great thing to have in a system that is supposed to clean my water. I figured it was the paint on the outside of the holding tank, but called GE this morning. The lady I spoke with knew exactly what I was talking about and said that their tests have shown that this is not the case and the label is being removed from new production runs. I asked if my tank was the same and she said yes, so I should have nothing to worry about. My question is, how does a company put out a product that is advertised to reduce harmful contaminants when it has a sticker on the side indicating that it could cause cancer? This label is not on the outside of the box, but is inside. I would have thought that they would have cleared up this issue before shipping. That kind of explains why most of the units were opened at Home Depot; I managed to get a sealed one as I have no idea what people may have done to the units before returning them.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I decided to see a Padres baseball game in the “new” stadium that our tax dollars helped fund. While I was skeptical at first that the location of the stadium downtown was a good idea, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a downtown location makes the stadium convenient and isn’t the traffic nightmare that many had suspected. It amazes me that after paying to get into the stadium, we were bombarded by advertisements all over the stadium; on every part of the scoreboard from fixed signs to electronic signs, to sponsorships of this and that (including a sponsorship for each strike out), and of course, to the name of the stadium, Petco Park.

If I’m subjected to so much advertising, the least they could do is lower the ticket prices as I felt like we weren’t going to a ballgame, but to an advertising event. I’m sure some would argue that the ticket prices are lower because of all the advertising, but I think the advertising has gotten a bit out of hand.