Moundalexis.com

Keeping Your Windows PC Clean

alexm — 2007-11-12T18:50:57-05:00

In the course of dealing with computers for more than a decade, I've seen just about everything. Most of these experiences have been with Windows users. I've removed viruses from people's PCs and recovered their files. I've cleaned up systems...

Quoted in Express, Young Cousin of The Washington Post

alexm — 2007-08-06T21:50:19-05:00

One of my blogs was quoted in The Washington Post's Express newspaper this morning.The quoted article -- Anyone Fancy a Drive to McDonald's -- is actually part of my Technology & MSG blog. Less heavy tech stuff. More amusements.Thanks for...

New PDF Attachment Spam

alexm — 2007-06-27T07:28:34-05:00

As of last night I'm getting PDF attachment spam and the filters aren't getting them. Content analysis isn't catching them because there's nothing in the content of the email to analyze. Just the attachment. The subject always specifies the name...

F5 BIG-IP Balances World Cup Web Site

alexm — 2006-06-10T10:24:02-05:00

ZDnet reported that a set of F5 Networks' BIG-IP load balancers are handling the official World Cup website. Despite this, F5 shares (NASDAQ: FFIV) are down $10 from last month....

This Domain is a Victim of Forgery

alexm — 2006-04-03T22:32:14-05:00

I know nothing about Erection PowerPack, nor do I care to. But it really pisses me off when bulk mailers use my domain to forge a return address for their spam mailings....

Transparent PIX Firewalls Across Foundry VLANs

alexm — 2006-03-28T00:27:59-05:00

When configuring a Cisco PIX in Transparent Mode to operate across VLANs, take caution when using Foundry's Virtual Ethernet (VE) interfaces....

Goodmail May Affect AOL & Yahoo! Users Negatively

alexm — 2006-02-04T10:22:53-05:00

AOL and Yahoo! have both announced changes in policy that may affect your ability to receive list traffic from this system, at least in an unadulterated form....

"NRPE: Command 'X' not defined" Caused By Command Name Length

alexm — 2006-01-18T17:02:17-05:00

NRPE commands must be less than 32 characters, else NRPE will fail with the "NRPE: Command 'X' not defined" message. This is another reason why NRPE checks can fail inexplicably....

S/MIME Mail Causes RT EX_TEMPFAIL Errors

alexm — 2006-01-05T19:53:19-05:00

S/MIME message don't interact well with RT. If you send an S/MIME email to the system, you will likely receive the nondescript "no value sent for required parameter 'message'" error. The mail administrator will see EX_TEMPFAIL errors (if using Sendmail)....

Working in the Datacenter

alexm — 2005-12-31T11:39:09-05:00

Whenever we get a new hire or transfer that's going to be spending some time in our datacenter, I immediately give the individual two bits of advice when it comes to working on the datacenter floor. The first is to...

Simple Changes to Increase Page Impressions

alexm — 2005-12-11T13:03:41-05:00

With a few simple changes to a robots.txt file, the daily page impressions on one of my sites have more than quadrupled. The bottom line is this: don't underestimate the effects of Google's search results....

BSDi Lives On Within Commercial Products

alexm — 2005-12-09T12:36:33-05:00

BSDi is a proprietary BSD Unix variant owned, developed, and maintained by Wind River. Despite the common "BSD is dying" flame wars, the operating system has been found in numerous network appliances....

Troubleshooting "NRPE: Command 'check_disk' not defined" errors

alexm — 2005-10-23T09:23:27-05:00

NRPE is an indispensible part of many Nagios-based monitoring solutions, however the sample NRPE config file -- though well documented -- doesn't mention the in's and out's of all of its options....

Inserting Random Delay In Cron Jobs

alexm — 2005-10-09T10:29:21-05:00

There may become a time when you need to insert a random delay into a shell script. The follow script attains this in five lines of code....

Pat's Mega Fries Are Still The Best

alexm — 2005-09-25T12:30:10-05:00

Pat's Pizzeria is home to the famous Mega Fries, first introduced to me when I visited friends at the University of Delaware. A wonderful mess of French fries, cheese and bacon that I came to enjoy most every time I...