I should probably get an update in here before the end of March …
Progress: My last post had a lot to do with frustrations I was feeling at the time … Remembering the way things used to be when I was younger and comparing that to things that would be about that far away from the time when I was younger … In other words, the old old days from before I was born … The way things have changed which everyone suggests for the better, but in my mind I’m not so sure … I’m not so sure that the technology we have today won’t stifle the imaginative processes of the future … I guess it will when it comes to books and movies .. performing arts, but it will change the way things are developed … I mean look at these computers … They’re making feature length films on a computer that contain characters that you can actually get emotionally involved with … that’s pretty freakin amazing … Sometimes I just sit and think that we’d be better off having more contact with one another rather than shooting one another … Such as is the case with the feeding tube girl … you only get the story the media wants to tell you … You only get the images that the media decides to show you … There ought to be a law … and there ought to be consequences … Wait! There are consequences … The public’s reaction … but that’s not the result I would be after … it would be the person that decided what images to show, and what facts to leave out of a story … You know, if you don’t tell someone something that you should, that is still considered a lie … People say, ‘I didn’t lie to you’ but they didn’t tell you something that they knew that was vital to a decision making process … The fact that they knew that a statement would have an impact on an outcome so they held that information back, that’s a lie … Don’t even think it isn’t …
Father’s Office: Ah! Well, now that that’s out of the way … I ventured over to my father’s office to once again try to repair some things that are working kinda funny in his database application … I once again became frustrated in the database program’s way of doing things and I decided that it is time I buckled down and actually rewrote the whole thing from scratch using current technologies … I am thinking that the easiest way is to make it a web based application … Either Intranet or Internet, or in some cases a mixture of both … The first thing I have to figure out is how to do printing for customer remittance … How to print from a browser and not have the browser put any information on the page such as the page number(s) or the URL of the information it’s printing … So if I can’t work that out, I may have to write a native portion just for reporting … that would suck … I don’t know how long this will take, but I think it’s better than trying to keep putting bandaids on something that’s so old and outdated … It’s sort of amazing that they’re still using it to conduct business daily …
Employment: To completely change the subject, no, I haven’t found an IT job yet. Not that I’m looking … I’m thinking I would be “discovered” hehe … Surely someone somewhere will realize my talents and have a 100K a year reason to contact me … I find that my interests when it comes to this area are completely diverse … I deal with all aspects of all sorts of things running at my location … If I were to take one of those cookie cutter jobs I would be frustrated … I don’t get how some people can spend 40 hours a week changing passwords and setting up/deleting accounts … Boring … yet they get big bucks to do it … Whenever I have actively looked for a job (which to me means going to a web site and searching for jobs) I see all of these degrees and pieces of paper that they want you to have … Like a puppy coming with papers to make sure that the breed hasn’t been compromised … Not that these paper people know anything about what they’re doing, they just simply passed a test given at the end of a class they paid thousands of dollars to take … I’ve been hands on since the mid eighties … Mainframes, Minis, Micros, boxes that simply load microcode … you name it … Started with 2400bps modems through the leased lines of those days to the leased lines of today … Having the background makes you completely understand the current results … Quite amazing when you think of it …
Octane: Bah! I am going through a phase where I can’t wait until the weekend again … I love mixing Octane … The power while they’re on stage playing their music … Using the equipment that I have acquired to do this … It’s quite the rush, and it ends so quickly … It has been a while since I looked forward to the weekend … It started a while back when I first got into doing sound … Then for a while there it got to be a job when the band I was doing sound for, I didn’t agree with their direction … I didn’t like how the situation was going … There were changes made, and I started to enjoy it again … But I think it was a little too late to keep it going, and that band eventually folded … Too bad … they were really good … Then I stagnated a while … While it is more work to do what I’m doing now, and it’s much more of an expense … It is much more enjoyable … Also, I could complain about the travel and the time it takes, but anything that doesn’t take 6 days out of my week and sort of trash the 7th day is a good thing … On the 7th day, I rested and got nothing done … Yes, I was God … every week, and it tired me out … So, now traveling with Octane and putting on shows wherever they may fall is a most enjoyable thing … There are issues that rise here and there, but for the most part they’re easily handled and everything has been going smoothly for the last 6 or 7 months … It’s a good thing …
Kids: Yesterday for Easter we celebrated Frank’s 7th birthday … His birthday is the 30th, but the Sunday seemed to be a good day for the get together … My grandson was in attendance … He usually just exists and looks around … a quiet kid with a blank expression on his face, but I was able to make the kid smile after a while … It came pretty easy and then I knew what the ticket was to make it happen … He would just crawl around with that blank look on his face with no sense of accomplishment from moving from the living room to the dining room … If I caught his gaze, it was possible to invoke the smile action and it worked nearly every single time … When it didn’t work, I just assumed he didn’t see me … You know how kids that are like only several months old can somehow look through you at times … From the way my son holds him (the kid’s father), I wonder how many times he’s dropped him … I mean, surely he has …
Steve Vai: Raining .. it is raining today, and I get very tired when it rains … I usually get bad sinus headaches too … Today the most recent Out On the Town ads were delivered just moments ago, so another couple days of either putting them off or actually getting them done … Tonight is a Steve Vai concert at the TLA and there is a possibility that I might go … This possibility was realized Saturday night after the Octane gig in Maryland … We’re sitting in the motel room and Quinn just mentions it … ‘Hey Dave, Vai is at the TLA Monday night … Let me know if you want to go … We’ll get backstage passes and stuff and hang out.’ … I’m thinking … uhm … really?! I am a Steve Vai fan … I have a couple of his solo records and I also bought a Jewel Box that he released … Supposedly there were only so many made, and I own one … I saw Steve Vai with David Lee Roth on the Skyskraper tour and he simply amazed me … I also own one of the G3 DVDs … I have an Ibanez poster right next to me desk of Steve Vai sitting in a beach chair, (or maybe it’s a deck chair) and years ago when Vai first brought up Vai.Com I emailed him about the poster and naming my cat Vai … It’s a huge poster and my brother Bill got it for me somehow out of New York … Anyway, Steve returned my email … that was way back when I used the Netscape suite of programs … So I wait to see if Quinn gives me the call to be where and when tonight and I may possibly meet Steve Vai … I would not know what to say to him except that I simply enjoy his music … What else is there to say? Hi, I know just about everything there is to know about you, and you have no idea who I am, I’m not even a stalker … How much time you got? It’s already after 3pm and so far no call … I remember asking Quinn a couple weeks ago what you’d say to the guy backstage, and Quinn says he’d say “You’re lucky it wasn’t me up on that stage.” … Cool, Quinn called about 4:00 … We’re on …
Father Support: So, there’s all these things going on … The weekends with Octane … a paper to put out this week … an entire application to write to run my father’s company … a possibility of seeing a musician I utterly respect in many ways … there is also the fact that I really should take over my father’s email … He gets gobs of SPAM … He had a problem recently where he got an email attachment that had a virus in it … He runs Eudora, Norton AV and ZoneAlarm … He called me AFTER he had talked to Eudora and Norton … Neither of their support could get him back into his mailbox … Eudora made him purchase Eudora so he could get the support to begin with … Eudora blamed Norton because it was the Norton Auto Protect message coming up when he tried to access his email … Norton blamed ZoneAlarm for locking his inbox … He was left without a resolution and he finally called me … I was like no, no and no … ZoneAlarm has nothing to do with it … Pass the buck support … so f’ing stupid and incompetent … I connected with his machine … Shut off Norton … Loaded Eudora … no problem accessing the mail box … deleted the attachments that came in with these useless emails … Got out of Eudora, turn Norton back on … Loaded Eudora … everything was now fine … How is it that neither support could figure this out or do this? Here I am sitting here working for none of the 3 companies involved but knowing how to go about solving the problem … See? I just don’t understand why I am not raking in the money somewhere because I have common knowledge around these computers … But this goes with the individualized specialties … I am not individualized … I know way more … Am I being cocky? Maybe, but it’s true … Just about everything I do now is a hobby when it relates to the computers … I don’t consider the hosting a paid job as I really don’t make any money doing it … I just use it to support my Internet habit to pay for the connection … It’s a good thing in many ways … I know the Internet technology and I know how to get around the meanies that are lurking out there at every turn … I think that someday when I get around to automating the operation of all the machines that it will start to grow … I’m not in a real rush either cause besides the meanies, there are a bunch of people like the following …
Support Ticket from Hell!: On the suggestion of a reseller customer of mine … Or, not really a suggestion, but he wanted to get this application working for himself and he asked me to look into it … In looking into it, I started using this application myself … So, to clarify … It wasn’t a suggestion, it was him asking for help and I just decided to run the thing myself … Anyway, this thing is called OTRS … It’s a ticketing system for support issues … I guess it’s scaled to satisfy companies of any size handle their support issues … It has many features I don’t even use … I think they can also use it for some sort of accounting to see how much time is spent in support issues … Anyway … It all works fine for me, but it used to be that I would have to check it via the web every so often to see if I had gotten any support issues … I hardly get any, so I didn’t check there very often … I have since configured it to send me an email as soon as there is something that needs my attention … but anyway, this isn’t about the reseller, it’s about this next guy …
Because OTRS didn’t send me a message, I didn’t see this support request for 6 days … I finally responded as soon as I got this message … It was from an individual that was working on a site that a guy has hosted here … So, the guy paying the bills was paying someone else to update his web site … this guy complained that he couldn’t FTP into the site … that was it .. no description, no nothing, and who knows who this guy is … He says he’s supposed to update this site, but how do I know this for a fact .. He said he was using the original credentials suplied when the site was initially set up … So fine … He then returns the message from my response which asked what FTP program he was using, what was the error message, and did he read the FAQ and try any of the resolutions there … He’s using AbsoluteFTP, his error message is “No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.” and what was the URL to the FAQ … (The URL to the web site is at the bottom of every support message, and any messages I send via regular email … not to mention that the email address also has the domain name in it) … I think this was about the time that I tried to upgrade the OTRS system … In trying to bring it to the latest and greatest, I broke it … So now this guy is in limbo somewhere … I think OTRS was still receiving the emails, and I think I got a copy of this somehow, so I responded via regular email … Anyway, according to the OTRS system , it was 10 days to get the thing up and running again and I began the back and forth again … Almost all of the time FTP problems (when they come in) solve themselves, and there wasn’t much urgency to get OTRS fixed as soon as possible because I rarely get support issues …
So I get it working again and I send him a message that if the issue wasn’t solved yet that I would reset the FTP information so he could get in without problem … At this point I thought it was a userid/password issue … Here is his response:
I don’t want the FTP settings reset, as another person needing the information would then be unable to login. I want to know what the issue is, and want it solved. I’ve told you of the problem, and you’ve yet to suggest anything that has been of any help. Support?
He ended this message with “Support?” … Well, this pissed me off a little bit … I responded telling him that there’s 147 other domains on that server and that they’re not having problems … He continued to maintain that there’s nothing wrong with his program, his connection, nothing … about 9 back and forths of this … Then eventually the owner of the site emailed me, complained that it took me weeks to respond to emails and that I offered no support, and I sent him all of the correspondence … I gave this guy tons of support … many suggestions … This guy was like … “I will not use MSIE, it’s loaded with bugs” … “I do not have Dreamweaver, last I checked that costs money. I don’t use bloated applications, I use Notepad” … So I responded with the software I used and the text editors that are superior to Notepad … I use Firefox, but it doesn’t have a built in FTP client … Whatever, but he still was doing or trying NOTHING I suggested.
“Have you tried anything else but your proven AbsoluteFTP?” — No. This is all I have tries since I find the interface to work for me. It has not been an issue with any other sites, and I don’t suppose it is the problem with this site.
I’ll provide the error message 1 more time: “No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.”
So here he admits to trying nothing I have told him to try … I wrote a very long email berating him, in fact, I can post that here:
> “Have you tried anything else but your proven AbsoluteFTP?”
> No. This is all I have tries since I find the interface to
> work for me. It has not been an issue with any other sites,
> and I don’t suppose it is the problem with this site.If you cannot try anything else but the program you’re using to diagnose the problem, I don’t think there’s anything further I can do to assist you. You seem to be convinced that there is nothing to be changed on your end. The FAQ instructs you how to determine if it’s your connection or your program by going to the basics using the command line FTP interface …
Following this method has uncovered problems in the past, and we’ve been doing it this way since 1999. FreeBSD has dominated our network for about the last two to three years, and all facilities of importance have been handed to FreeBSD servers … We’ve had active Windows FTP for over five years … The same third party FTP server software has been in use those five years …
We host many local sites as well as sites across the country. One site that shares your server was slammed for three days after a David Letterman appearance … They update their content constantly … Just their access log files amount to twenty to thirty megs daily …
> I’ll provide the error message 1 more time: “No connection
> could be made because the target machine actively refused it.”I don’t claim to know why VanDyke’s programmers report the error messages that they do. I would assume that the error that the program is running into will report this error regardless of what it is that’s blocking it, even if it’s something to do with the active configuration …
I also don’t claim to know how other hosts that you transfer files with have their firewalls configured … Whether they’re a *nix shop that doesn’t need such a robust set of rules to protect Windows machine on Internet faced connections or not …
Finally, I have explained to you that there are hundreds of customers without issue and 147 of them share your particular machine … The only other thing I could think of doing for you is a mass email to all customers and resellers to find out if someone else is using AbsoluteFTP … I would also have to request that all resellers email their customers … If someone else is using it, I would have to ask them to send me their settings so you could emulate them in your environment …
But I put on the restraints … I thought, let me try to make a firewall change that won’t open me up as much as some suggest … I did a little searching on IPFW and I found some interesting solutions … One was to open all ports above 1024 … Uhm, I don’t think so … Here was another ruleset I found:
ipfw add 107 permit tcp from any to any 20
ipfw add 108 permit tcp from any 20 to any
ipfw add 109 permit tcp from any to any 21
ipfw add 110 permit tcp from any 21 to any
So okay, if you configured your nasty program to attack whatever port you desired on the above protected network, all you would need to do is to be sure that your nasty program used outgoing ports 20 or 21 and you have free reign … This is a stupid configuration … I made a smart change, I reset the firewall (which kills all active connections) and I sent him an email to try it again … He said there was no change … Then I finally got fed up and sent: Have you ever tried changing anything in your configuration at all? Have you ever tried toggling PASV? and I get back:
I don’t know what PASV is or how to change anything. I know how to add a connection, and that’s all. And for other sites, I had nothing I needed to change.
This is when I realized what I was up against … This is when I realized he wasn’t trying anything to help me in helping him … He didn’t try another program, he didn’t try and test or making any changes that were in the FAQ … He did nothing but try to connect as he did the very first time that prompted him to send me a message for support … So I sent him off the following:
Please refer to your documentation to find out how to toggle the PASV setting … This is very common the way FTP is run these days … FTP is a very old protocol that was never meant to handle accessing sites behind firewalls or to work in an environment where firewalls have become necessary … The PASV transfer allows for FTP to maintain a connection behind a firewall by realizing the effects having a firewall between client and server present …In almost all FTP programs, this is simply a box to check in the settings and will usually be set on individual connection setting so it isn’t a global change … I think as soon as you make this change you will see desirable results …
As you can tell by this message I sent him, I finally realized I was corresponding with an idiot … I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t send the above message that I held back from … and then I get this back:
Thank you so much. As far as I can tell, everything is working. Thanks again.
Oh! I was fuming at this point … All of his nasty matter of fact messages, and telling me how my suggestions were so far beneath him … His slamming of MSIE and his crap about Dreamweaver costing money, etc … All the while I’m actually trying to help this guy … Then the email from the site owner about my lack of response and lack of support … Oh my God I was so ready to explode, so I composed myself to send the following:
Your original email came in on the 4th … I didn’t see it until the 10th … In that message I referred you to the FAQ which covers toggling the PASV option within FTP programs. The URL to our web site is at the bottom of every support message I’ve sent including the one outside of the ticket system.The reason I didn’t see the mail for 6 days was because notification was broken and we had to upgrade the machine’s software as well as the OTRS software … In that time, OTRS was broken for a while so that was the downtime which may have lasted approximately 10 days …
If the volume of support was higher, we would have fixed this faster but honestly there’s hardly ever a problem with our network services … Problems such as yours normally “fix themselves” being that individuals refer to the FAQ or Googling for issues and figure it out …
Whatever made you finally act on my suggestions I wish I knew, but you seemed very unwilling to take any advice given … Regardless, it appears you have reached the intended goal and I will set this ticket to automatically close unless you have any further issues …
You tell me, am I crazy? Bah!
Firewall Solution: So I figure that some people looking for an IPFW/FTP issue may happen upon this page if using Google to search or something, and I will post the resolution here for FTP through the firewall:
add 02300 pass udp from any to any 20 in via xl0 keep-state
add 02310 pass tcp from any to any 20 in via xl0 setup keep-state
add 02320 pass tcp from any to any 21 in via xl0 setup keep-state
Originally I had only port 21 (rule 2320) enabled, but I enabled udp and tcp 20 for this guy, and it should probably help others … In doing it via this method, I am still restricting access to only FTP services within my network and not opening up other ports that don’t need to be opened … I still find that many FTP problems that are reported are due to the lack of the client being able to deal with a FTP server running behind a firewall, and all that need be done is to switch the client into PASV mode … See, you learn something new by stopping by, don’t you?