Month: May 2005
Don’t get shocked or excited! I went to look at my site at the library yesterday and found that it was blocked. This is the first time that I am aware of that my site has made the filtering engines and been classified. Apparently it was blocked as it is on a server that hosts pornography or free sites. I know for a fact that it doesn’t host free pages and there may be some sites on the server that have adult content. However, blocking by ip address seems pretty drastic as using ip to get to the server fails as it relies on the hostheaders to direct you to the appropriate virtual server/directory on the machine – instead you get a “no website exists at this site” message.
I’ve contacted the library and SecureComputing.com who make the filter to see if I can be removed. (The library assistant didn’t have the correct password to temporarily override the filter when I asked)
When a new outbreak of virus’ comes through, I really wish that either I didn’t have a catch all address or that relaying mail servers had antivirus technologies in them. I had 27 emails from myself notifying me that my account was closed and that I would need to contact myself to ensure my account would still be active. The ones that I’ve been getting are varients of the Mytob strain. If it wasn’t illegal it would be tempting to use the backdoor that these virus’s create to open a session to the sending computer, create a file on the desktop that says “OY – YOU HAVE A VIRUS – GET SOME ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE – NOW!!!!!”, open it and then shut down the backdoor.
The PIL’s are still getting loads of the latest sober virus’s – I’ve tracked it down to a business in columbus using Road Runner but that could be anyone. The weird thing is that they’ve not had an email from this person in their normal email so I can’t track down who this would be.
or at least not if you want it quickly. Only after I started the transfer off from the UK did I find out that it was going to take 7-10 working days for the money to arrive in my US paypal account. Then in order to transfer the money into the US bank account it is going to take another 3-4 working days. I’m sure they don’t publicise the fact that it could take 2 weeks for money to get transferred when you sign up for paypal.
The weird thing is that when I took some money out of an ATM in the mall the other day I didn’t get charged a disloyalty fee from the issuing bank as the card was not an american card. I got the money instantly (as you’d hope from an ATM!) at an exchange rate of 1.77 though.
To transfer $500 via an atm would cost 281.92 pounds and I’d get it the following day (as there is a limit you can withdraw). Via paypal it cost 270.21 pounds but takes 12 days (and thats just to reach my US account)
The alternative is to do things “properly” and use a bank transfer which is a flat rate of 10 pounds but can take 10 days.
If you are getting excited about the upcoming new Star Wars film then you may not appreciate Store Wars a very funny flash movie about organic vegetables.Thanks to Awasu for the tip off.
After my previous post on an alternative mail client, most people recommended thunderbird (as I expected). However the suggestions of creating identities didn’t really help the situation as I need lots of identities. However this morning I had plenty of time (it is 5am at the moment) to browse the list of available extensions and there is one to create virtual identities on the fly, which easily enables me to edit the from field.Virtual Identity is the perfect extension for what I need….Now to import the Bat settings……….
Arrggggghhhh – I’ve had it with theBat! being so unstable on this new pc. Keeps freezing at very strange times and I can’t risk getting my mail store corrupt on the machine. The strange thing is that it was nice and stable on the old machine – both running xpsp2 and this one is a clean install so should be even less chance of crashing.
So, I’m in the need for a new (free) email client. I do like thunderbird but the lack of being able to type any old email address into the from field is the thing that stops me using it. I must have the ability to type in sales@ or fred@ or dontbotherspammingthisaddress@ in the from field so I can track down where I am getting spam and filter on it. From what I could tell with Thunderbird this is not possible. The feature of being able to run “macros/programs” on certain events is not critical now either as Geocaching Swiss Army Knife now does the email checking within the application.
Any suggestions? (oh – and the ability to import theBat! files would be fantastic)
This morning went really well and if I had known it was going to be that easy I would have been a lot less stressed out about the whole thing. The test consisted of reversing out of my angled parking space (much easier than ones parallel to the kerb), pulling out into the main road and doing 3 right turns, followed by a left back into the testing car park. I then had to do the manoevrability test which was pretty simple too. Just before I did the manoeuvres I asked if I was allowed to lean out of the window and I was – the only thing I wasn’t allowed to do was to hit the cones or run them over. This was the main thing that I was concerned about as when the cones are out in the parking lot you can’t practise with them and when they are not out, it is very difficult to see where they are placed as you rely on a painted square on the ground. In fact when we were practising last night I had to get Kristen to get out of the car and stand on one of the spots so I had an idea where the poles would be.
The practise was worthwhile though as I did this with no problems. I also found out that they introduced this test when they stopped doing the parallel park – something we had spent quite some time on practising as it’s quite different when you do it on the “wrong” side of the car.
Whilst doing the test the extremely nice examiner was asking me questions about how long I had been over here and noted that I wasn’t wasting any time in getting the licence (3 weeks to the day) and asked how Kristen and I met and we had a nice chat which reduced the nerves and also showed that I was capable of driving AND thinking at the same time 🙂
Anyway, I got the piece of paper to say I had passed with no points deducted in either of the two driving pieces or the written test, so what can I say – perfect all round 🙂
The only downside is that I couldn’t get the full licence straight away as we didn’t have my Social Security card with the correct number on it (my learner permit had the wrong number on) so we had to drive to another dmv centre after stopping at home to get the card. (oh and the other downside is I’m not insured to drive the porsche 🙁 )
Kristen booked me in for a driving test tomorrow morning at 9.30 so hopefully we’ll wake up in time (I had a layin this morning). I’ve not done any maneuverability practising yet – that is this afternoons job but hopefully it shouldn’t be too hard. Yesterday I spent a torturous hour watching a video on how to drive which I got out from the library. Unfortunately it was filmed in canada so the guy talks about kilometres an hour for speeds and some of the things he said were wrong. There were also a couple of times that the woman demonstrating the manouvres actually did something wrong (she crossed a “sidewalk” and entered the road and only stopped once – these are meant to be treated as two individual stops.
Also the talking and effects were really cheesy. There is some debate going on about my steering as I now find it very difficult NOT to use the push-pull method of steering that we are taught in the UK, but according to Kristen the hand over hand method is preferred in the states (although a couple of books that I’ve read mention both methods but with push-pull used in certain circumstances).
Kristen also got her new numberplates yesterday – expect to see something on her blog very shortly (as soon as I’ve uploaded the photo)
It’s all very well having moving backgrounds for powerpoint images at church (although they are distracting) but it really is a bad idea to have an animated background image of a lightning storm when people are trying to read the words in a darkened room – it’s enough to give anyone an epileptic fit. (Danny I don’t think WHBC are quite ready for this yet!)