Author Archives: Scott

About Scott

I'm a computer guy with a new house and a love of DIY projects. I like ranting, and long drives on your lawn. I don't post everything I do, but when I do, I post it here. Maybe.
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Cisco WebEx Customer Support: Blech.

  By Scott • 2014-10-09 ,
webex_contact_support

I want to briefly describe a recent encounter I had with Cisco’s WebEx support. I do this only because this sort of script-based customer service is, while efficient when training new reps, grossly wasteful in situations not covered by the script. And by wasteful, I mean it pointlessly uses up hours of the customer’s time. So here’s the deal: After months and months of WebEx working flawlessly, the client application started crashing during the meeting setup process. This occurred on all of our users’ workstations. I knew that between the time it had been working and the time it stopped working I had pushed out no Windows updates and I made no changes to the network (firewalls, IP ranges, NATting, … Continue reading

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Bash “Shellshock” Bug – Quick Vulnerability Test and Patch

  By Scott • 2014-09-25
Shellshock

This is not meant as a comprehensive guide to the Bash “shell shock” bug, but as a quick reference to test and patch for the vulnerability. First, test your version of Bash with this line: env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable’ bash -c “echo this is a test” If you get the world “vulnerable” in your output then you need to update Bash: vulnerable this is a test If your output contains errors followed by “this is a test”, then your Bash version is not vulnerable: bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt bash: error importing function definition for `x’ this is a test Check to see if your distribution has an updated/fixed version of Bash available in its repository. … Continue reading

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FedEx: Still Rubbish

  By Scott • 2014-09-12
FedEx: Rubbish Again

Never a good experience It seems like every single FedEx delivery I receive has something wrong with it. I haven’t ranted about this in a few years, so let’s look at this week’s experience. But first I’d like to say that my local FedEx delivery guy is top notch. He’s friendly, and I’ve seen him loading and unloading his truck outside our building and he doesn’t violently throw packages about. Check this out… So…? That looks pretty normal. They delivered a package from Texas to New York via ground in 4 days. Pretty good, actually. Well that’s what the tracking screen looks like now that the package has been delivered. But while it was in transit I wanted to do … Continue reading

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Integrating Bullhorn with Exchange 2003 Using Journaling and Forwarding

  By Scott • 2014-08-26
Bullhorn vs. Exchange

Bullhorn vs. Exchange 2003 One of the companies for which I manage IT uses Bullhorn’s applicant tracking software for their recruitment workflow. That company also uses the now-ancient Exchange 2003 for their email. But, Bullhorn doesn’t officially support integration with Exchange 2003. What’s involved? First off, “integration” is a strong word. It implies that our servers will pass information back and forth and stay in some meaningfully synchronized state. That’s not the goal in this case. The integration simply consists of passing all emails that are sent and received by our recruiters to Bullhorn’s servers. Once Bullhorn receives the emails, they’re parsed and can be viewed in the Activity Center and/or under the contact record to which they apply (using … Continue reading

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Netgear LG 6100D Sprint LTE Gateway – Advanced Configuration

  By Scott • 2014-08-26
Netgear 6100D Native GUI Backup and Restore Settings

Man, oh man! I was getting frustrated with my new 6100D LTE gateway from Sprint. In fact, I posted a very long rant about it yesterday. This post is all about solutions. Really, it’s about one very big solution: http://[Netgear 6100D Address]/index.asp What is that? Oh, not much, just the native Netgear configuration GUI. It has about ten times the feature set of Sprint’s half-baked GUI. Seriously. Already have a problem? This didn’t happen to me at first, but I must have triggered some state within the 6100D that causes this screen to appear when returning to the Netgear GUI after having used the Sprint GUI: If you find yourself redirected to this utterly pointless landing page, just change the … Continue reading

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Netgear LG 6100D LTE Gateway for Sprint Review – Bad Device, or the Worst Device?

  By Scott • 2014-08-25 , ,
Netgear Joke 9000

I recently obtained a Netgear LG6100D LTE Gateway from Sprint as a backup for my hard internet connections. The device seemed perfect on paper: Cellular connectivity for the home or business network! I’ve used some bad consumer routers in my day, but this is one of the worst I’ve encountered. Or maybe it’s that it looked so promising at first and then let me down so hard. Update (2014-08-26): I found that you can access the native Netgear web GUI. It has a heck of a lot more features, and solves many of the complaints I have with the “correct” way of configuring this device. Upon logging in the user interface is clean, fairly informative, and I noticed that the … Continue reading

ARIA Resort and Casino Mega-Review (Las Vegas, NV)

  By Scott • 2014-07-01 ,
Relaxing at the ARIA after the room was cleaned

I don’t usually post hotel reviews, but when I do… I’m not sure how much MGM paid for the ARIA’s Five Diamond award from AAA, but I’m sure it must have been a lot. Note to lawyers: My previous statement was intended as hyperbole, and not as an accusation of bribery on the part of MGM. That’s how poor the service is at this hotel: They’ve left me with the impression that they’d sooner sue me to take this review down rather than improve the overall customer experience. If I could sum up the attitude of the hotel staff in one word it would be uncaring. I stayed at the ARIA for 4 nights encompassing 3 different hotel rooms. I … Continue reading

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Oh, Pebble! You have a great product that’s being ruined by your support.

  By Scott • 2014-06-16 , ,
pebble_case_24XXXX_mq_sanitized

Two important things before I get started: I really like the original Pebble Smartwatch.  I’d probably like the Steel as well, but I haven’t tried it. I have a lot of respect for Pebble as a company.  It came into being through crowdsourced funding and actually delivered the product it promised. However, after about 6 months of ownership, my watch stopped vibrating.  Trying to resolve this issue was my first interaction with Pebble support, and hopefully will be my last.  Their process is slow, detrimental, and offensive. You may wonder at that last one:  “Offensive?” My gripe isn’t with the particular customer service person that handled my case.  (In fact I’ve redacted their name from this post.)   The CS … Continue reading

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Fix for: Keepalived router enters fault state on link down

  By Scott • 2014-06-06
keepalived_logo

TL;DR: This is the configuration option you want: dont_track_primary At work and at home I have pairs of redundant “core” routers in an active-passive (or master-backup as you like) configuration. They consist of commodity hardware, a few 4-port gigabit NICs, and CentOS. All of these machines had been running flawlessly for anywhere from two to six years (as they were put into service or upgraded). That is until yesterday when my primary router at home had an SSD failure which completely stopped it in its tracks. The backup router took over, and in less than a second traffic was being routed. All of my point-to-point VPNs reconnected within about 20 seconds. In other words, it worked exactly as it should. … Continue reading

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Redundant email servers with soft-fail (450) vs. hard-fail (550)

  By Scott • 2014-02-10
postfix_soft_fail

I manage a fairly large number of incoming mail exchangers, which are numerous both to handle large message volumes as well as to provide redundancy. In most cases, these mail servers are Postfix with MySQL providing virtual alias maps, transport maps, relay domains, and virtual alias domains. Unfortunately the Postfix+MySQL implementation isn’t always 100% great. On very rare occasions the Postfix instance may fail to communicate with the MySQL server, for any number of reasons. From the perspective of the sender’s MX, this usually results in a 550 status code (often given as “Relay access denied”). This is a hard-fail, in that it tells the upstream MX that the recipient they’re trying to reach is permanently unavailable. The upstream MX … Continue reading