Microsoft’s Hotmail a Hot Topic (RANT)

If you have ever dealt with MS you have probably sighed in disbelief at the conclusion of you interaction with them. Frustrating? Yes! It makes you wonder how they got to be as big as they are…
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Parsing the ridiculously large DNC file – .NET Edition

So previously I posted about a problem one of our customers had parsing the DNC. The solution was done in perl and you can read about it in the Perl Edition of this. And it worked rather well and very quickly. However it presented a support issue: They didn’t have a linux box nor the inclination to install perl on a windows box just for that meaning each month we needed to parse it for them.

So I rewrote it in Window using .NET…
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Parsing the ridiculously large DNC file – Perl Edition

Recently, one of our customers had a unique problem. The national Do Not Call (DNC) list they pay $15,000 (yes, that’s a comma and yes those are zeros after it) per year for access to exceeded the 2Gb limit imposed by older systems they were running. Specifically, fox pro couldn’t handle 2Gb+ files. So they asked if we could make something for them that would separate the file into smaller files that could be consumed by the out dated system.

So we did…
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What is DNS Propogation?

I have received this question many many times over the years as an internet … person… most recently from our new graphic artist contractor, a fine young man from Joseph Turner Graphics. And it’s a very valid question, since people are often told things like “Your website won’t be up until DNS propagates which could be as long as 72 hours.” 72 hours! This is the age of the Internet! 72 hours is an enormous amount of time. Why does it take so long? Why is the range so gaping? I mean if it was EXACTLY 72 hours, that’s more believable than “could be one hour, could be 12, could be 39, could be 72”.

Unfortunately, there is a reason. And it’s one that no one has control over.
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What in the world would we do without Akismet?

The world of online marketing is split into two separate and occasionally difficult to distinguish groups: The first has legitimate products and services and attempts to spread the word about their products and services to the attention of the masses. The second sprays the internet with unsolicited garble and hopes that enough suckers will click thereon to justify their sad existance. Predominantly, they peddle pills, porn, or poker.

This article is about the latter… and queue the Law & Order music…
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Whoa, wait, what?

Did you just seriously click on a spam link? No! Bad! Don’t do that anymore. Here is a conservative list of potentially bad things that could happen to you as the result of clicking on a spam link:

You could be…

  • Tracked and harassed by bad marketers
  • Infected with spyware
  • Spoofed and your identity stolen
  • Kidnapped by a rough trick named Jim
  • Slapped with a newspaper by your CPU’s math co-processor
  • Increasingly vulnerable to DUI tickets
  • Censored by the FCC
  • Blocked by the Electric Company

So just avoid the hassle and don’t click on spam links!

CCNA (ICND-2) OSPF key points.

I’ve been working on my CCNA and have a need to break down the concepts, configurations etc. into bite sized study topics. So instead of creating this one in my notebook as I usually do, I decided I would share some key points of the OSPF protocol. Don’t expect anything ground breaking here, but if you are also working on your CCNA or just want to review, then maybe you’ll also find this handy.  Oh and all of these are notes from the CCNA ICND2 official exam certification guide (second edition) by Wendell Odom.

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