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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I propose a new approach to email reputation that allows the (legitimate) little guys to compete

  By Scott • 2012-09-28
spam_score_ss

I have a problem… I administrate roughly fifteen domains that send email on a regular basis.   Outbound email is handled by two corporate (and one personal) email servers running Zimbra and Exchange, as well as a couple of mail exchangers that handle automated email from web servers. I also don’t send spam.   All automated emails include a clear unsubscribe link, which is a single-click mechanism resulting in an immediate blacklisting of the user’s email address.  Automated emails also include the name and mailing address of the company from which they were sent, as per US federal law.  Corporate and personal emails are used responsibly;  In other words they are not used for blind solicitation nor for any other purposes … Continue reading

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Finding Out the IP Address of a New Piece of Tech from eBay

  By Scott • 2012-07-15
brocade_traffic_screencap

I’ve been through this many times over, and thought I would share:   I just bought a pair of HP Storageworks 4/8 SAN (AKA: Brocade Silkworm 200E) switches off of eBay.  They were listed as “powered up / as-is” by the seller, but the price was too good not to take a risk on them working properly. Of course, they came with no documentation, and not even a label to identify the IP address they held in their original home.  (I have had luck with other items where the IP and even login/password were labelled onto the front of the case). Most times, the following will work flawlessly: Connect your new piece of tech’s management interface (in this case, we’ll use … Continue reading

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Delivering Pre-Compressed (gzip) Javascript with PHP only

  By Scott • 2012-07-05

There are plenty of results in Google for delivering compressed Javascript files using PHP.  However, most of those techniques involve compressing the JS file(s) on the fly. I was looking for a method that would meet the following criteria: The JS file should be pre-compressed using gzip. The gzip version of the JS file should only be delivered if the client’s browser supports gzip. The code below has some pitfalls: It will not work with a CDN or any external content server that does not support PHP. It is more difficult to maintain than compressing on the fly at the web server level (as you must maintain the compressed version of the JS file. I’ll use my quick and dirty … Continue reading

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Using Postfix with MySQL Stored Procedures? (Just Use Functions)

  By Scott • 2012-01-12
postfix_random

If you’re like me and want to use Postfix with a MySQL backend, you may have also wanted to be able to call stored procedures from Postfix. Unfortunately, MySQL stored procs return multiple resultsets while Postfix’s call to the MySQL C API can only process a single resultset.  I banged my head against the wall for a while until I realized that a function called from a SELECT statement would return a Postfix-friendly single resultset. For example, this would be a perfectly acceptable virtual alias map file: user = mailreader password = somepassword dbname = mail_config query = SELECT retval FROM (SELECT fnPostfixVirtualAliasMapGet(‘%s’) AS retval) t WHERE t.retval IS NOT NULL; hosts = 127.0.0.1 This is useful if, for example, … Continue reading

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Quieting Dell PowerEdge 1855/1955 Blade System Chassis Fan Noise: Undocumented DRAC/MC Commands

  By Scott • 2012-01-06 ,
fan_speed_hex

TL;DR: Skip right to the undocumented commands Background I recently purchased a Dell BMX blade chassis on eBay that came loaded with ten 2x dual-core, 24GB PE1955 blades.   For a system with 40 cores, 240 GB of RAM and two 16-port gigabit switches in a 7U frame, $2500 was too good to pass up.  Especially since shipping cost me a mere 2 hour round-trip to Brooklyn. I didn’t really need ten more servers, so I figured I’d sell off 5 or 6 of them (hopefully breaking even on the entire system — the 4GB FB-DIMMs in 6 of the servers is worth $1450 – $1900 alone).  The remaining servers would be all mine! But I forgot to research the noise!  … Continue reading

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Eulogy for the Jeep

  By Scott • 2011-08-31 ,
Jeep XJ Destroyed - 02

Back when it was en vogue to play music from Compact Discs, the Death and Destruction mixes provided adequate motivation to ruin lawns. Mo once took the Jeep to Florida, and Sag fixed the intermittent wipers in his anger.  Another time nine people took it on a camping trip that ended poorly, with no camping. It went to Pittsburgh twice, getting towed only once.  It had a laptop mount, because that’s important.  We yelled at passers-by with a megaphone until the police made us stop. It got pulled over by the police more times than anyone can remember, and even had its license plates confiscated in the name of gross irresponsibility. Sure, it crashed into some things unintentionally, but that … Continue reading

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Chevy Volt Electrical Cost Analysis

  By Scott • 2011-06-27 ,
Voltec Installation - Meter powered on

I’ve been tracking the electrical usage of our Chevy Volt, Sparky, for the past couple of weeks.   Before we bought Sparky we did some research on the Volt’s electrical consumption and did some off-the-cuff cost projections.  Unfortunately, there was very little real world data available online, mostly because other bloggers weren’t able to monitor their Volt’s actual kWh utilization and were instead using the change in usage pre- and post-Volt. That was my impetus for installing a kWh meter inline with my Level 2 charger,  a project that you can read about here. I’m going to periodically update this post with fresh data as it becomes available, and the numbers below cover the period 6/13/2011 through 6/27/2011. The electric rate … Continue reading

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Chevy Volt Counterarguments: Price, Government Subsidies, and Operating Cost

  By Scott • 2011-06-12 ,

I guess for better or worse, I’ve become a Volt advocate.  I’m no fanatic, however.  Only time will tell whether the Volt is a win or a loss, either for me personally or for the nation at large.  Will the batteries fail as soon as the 8-year/100,000 mile warranty is up?  Will GM still be in business to honor those warranties?  Will this first leap into mass-market electric vehicles (including the Leaf and Tesla) drive technological improvements and economies of scale? I can’t answer those questions. But I do love our Volt.  My wife and I bought it not because it was an electric vehicle, but because it fell into the criteria we set for price range (with rebates), performance, … Continue reading

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Sparky: MPG Update

  By Scott • 2011-06-08 ,
Sparky's Grille

Sparky has a few more miles on her, and so I wanted to give an update on her gas stats.  Why the gas stats, and not the battery?  There are three reasons:  I don’t have any electrical consumption data right now*, I would like to know the cost of a long road trip (which would be mostly gas-miles), and the lack of a clear MPG number just plain annoys me. *Electrical consumption data is now available here. What I mean is that the car itself, and the related OnStar apps will tell you that the vehicle has traveled (for example) “211 Miles Per Gallon“, which is such a misleading statement that I find it offensive.  While the car may have … Continue reading

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Installing Our New 240V/Level 2 Voltec Charge Station (Phase II)

  By Scott • 2011-06-07 , , , ,

This is a follow-up to my previous post, Chevy Volt Metered Charging (Phase I). In the first phase, I ran a new dedicated circuit from the subpanel in my garage to the opposite wall to connect a 120V charging station.  In this phase, I removed the existing receptacle, rewired for 240V, installed the Voltec Level 2 charging station, and wired the kWh meter inline. It’s not my intent to write a full set of instructions for installation here.  The purpose of this post is to illustrate some of the installation steps with real-world pictures, which are somewhat hard to come by online (the pictures are rather small, but you can click on any of them for a larger version). As … Continue reading