News Archives: May 2006

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Sudoku

Short note to say that I've put my Sudoko Solver program up on my web site. Feedback always welcome.

Posted by graham @ 09:41 am

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Birthday Party Plans

Less than a week till the party - probably time to make some decisions...

Party is on Saturday, 13th May. Open invites. Contact if you need directions, lift from Linlithgow station, crash space, etc.

Weather permitting, we will have a BBQ. Otherwise we have a range cooker with frying pans, griddles, etc. We'll probably start cooking around 6pm.

The theme suggestion met with general apathy, so I'm giving up on it. You can dress up if you like, but you'll need to come up with your own excuse. "'Cos I wanted to" works for me...

Probably best if you set Doctor Who to record. We haven't managed to replace our bust telly yet, so don't really have a set that dozens can watch at once.

Hope to see you all then.

Posted by graham @ 07:46 pm

Prize-Winning Doggy

We took Tara to a dog show yesterday - specifically the first Linlithgow Fun Family Dog Show. Mainly we went along to socialise Tara with the other dogs. She was the third largest there - only two Great Danes beating her, and they didn't stay long. On the whole she was well behaved, and much admired, even allowing various terriers, Dachshunds, and one overly-soppy Labrador to climb on her. Claire's becoming more convinced that our next dog should be a long-haired, miniature Dachshund. Possibly because the absurdity appeals to her. I suppose the "little and large" and "better keep the big one well fed, or it'll eat the little one" "jokes" will make a change from the endless bloody variations on "it's a horse"...

Tara also entered into two of the competitions - Best 6 Legs (with Claire providing the missing pair), and Best Biscuit Catcher. The biscuit catching was a flop, with Tara not managing to reach far enough forward to catch the biscuit. However, the girls were placed second in the Best 6 Legs, and we collected our rosette and free bag of expensive dog biscuit.

The show also featured displays from the Greyhound Awareness League, a working Huskey team, and a local agility club. Money raised will go to support Linlithgow's entry into Britain in Bloom. All good fun, and hopefully the event will be repeated next year.

Posted by graham @ 05:24 pm

Thursday, May 4, 2006

Rackspace Spam

A while back, we talked to Rackspace about maybe leasing a dedicated server from them. They were vague about costs, so we didn't pursue the matter. A few days later, I started getting calls from them. "Could we ask a few questions, then we can quote." A few questions turned out to involve large amounts of unconvincing marketing drivel. "We're different from other companies, because we treat our customers as valued partners." Eventually, I managed to get them to send out the quote, which was horrendous. Thoroughly over-priced, no details of bandwidth costs or service level guarantees (both of which I specifically requested), and precious little about support levels (other than a claim to have trademarked "fanatical support"). I rejected it, firmly, but politely.

The next day, I got an e-mail asking why we'd rejected them, which I ignored. Four hours later, they phoned. I said I was busy, they insisted on talking. Perhaps if I told them where they had gone wrong, they'd be better able to help another customer. I said I was busy, and that improving their services wasn't my job. Ah but, they said.

Eventually, I explained exactly why they had been rejected. The high price, the lack of information in the quote. I also explained that calling a potential client by his first name is unprofessional, and so is constantly phoning. I got one more e-mail - perhaps I'd like to speak to someone else, who I might find more professional. I ignored it, hoping the matter was finally dropped.

Then I received their spam. "As someone who has shown interest in Rackspace in the past, I thought you would be interested in receiving our newsletter, designed to give you useful industry information and business tips as well as an update from Rackspace." One complaint later and I'm told that "this isn't legally spam, as you did ask for information, and it contains an opt-out link".

The e-mail was unsolicited - in fact I specifically stated I wasn't interested in hearing from their company. It was bulk - mail-merging in my first name does not make it "personal". It was commercial - just a glorified advert. And certainly it was e-mail. By any normal definition, that's spam. And the UK has no legal definition of spam.

Rackspace use bullying marketing tactics, don't listen, and hide behind semantic trickery. Avoid like the plague.

Posted by graham @ 01:55 pm

DNS Failure

Yesterday evening, around 5pm, the company we use to provide DNS services was subjected to a massive distributed denial of service attack. This meant that connecting to our server was difficult to impossible for much of last night. The worst now seems to be over.

All of which means that Claire and I spent much of last night trying to sort alternative DNS. The slowness of DNS updates means that we probably just about succeeded as everything started working again anyway... Hopefully, next time there'll be less impact, as we have an alternate server in place. Even more hopefully, there won't be a next time - the company we use is one of the largest there is, and very reputable. I've used them for various services for some six years now, and this is the first problem I've ever had.

Apologies to anyone whose e-mail didn't get through. Now to catch up on stuff I should have done last night, but didn't have time for.

Posted by graham @ 01:30 pm

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