dealing with odd newsletter mailings without pissing off the entire world

I got this delightful message in my email today, along with several related "wtf?" messages:


-----Original Message-----
From: **REDACTED**
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 7:50 PM
To: **REDACTED**; newsletter-bots-list@belldandy.booksite.com
Subject: Re: did you send this?

I did not send this.

----- Original Message -----
From: **REDACTED**
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 5:44 PM
Subject: FW: did you send this?

I"m trying to track down this problem.
aw
----------
From: "Automatic Email Delivery Software"
MAILER-DAEMON@belldandy.booksite.com
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:39:15 -0500
To: newsletter-bots-list@belldandy.booksite.com
Subject: hello

The message was undeliverable due to the following reason(s):

Your message could not be delivered because the destination computer was
not reachable within the allowed queue period. The amount of time
a message is queued before it is returned depends on local configura-
tion parameters.

Most likely there is a network problem that prevented delivery, but
it is also possible that the computer is turned off, or does not
have a mail system running right now.

Your message could not be delivered within 2 days:
Host 125.187.47.159 is not responding.

The following recipients did not receive this message:
newsletter-bots-list@belldandy.booksite.com

Please reply to postmaster@belldandy.booksite.com
if you feel this message to be in error.

As a public service, and because I am a bit of a... I don't even know what... I replied to the "wtf?" messages (the individuals who sent them, not the list) with this:

When each of you replied to the message, the "to:" field was
"newsletter-bots-list@belldandy.booksite.com"
That means that your reply went not to the *sender* of the email, but to the entire list. Which is why I got it, and Kate, and Warren Licht, and probably dozens/hundreds/thousands of other people. So, you're an inadvertent spammer. Happens all the time, so I'm writing you as anti-spam community service.

At the end of the messsage that you got, it tells you what to do:

Please reply to postmaster@belldandy.booksite.com
if you feel this message to be in error.

Another good thing to do would be to try to find the source of the message via the web, without generating more email traffic.
The first step is to visit http://belldandy.booksite.com, which in this case isn't informative. So the next step is google: a google search for "belldandy booksite"
http://www.google.com/search?q=belldandy+booksite&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

That takes you to
http://belldandy.booksite.com/nonesuchbooks/book_link.html

Reading that page gives clues that the originating site is a bookstore in Portland, Maine.
The yellow pages on a9.com gives this:
http://a9.com/nonesuch%20books?ypLoc=Portland,%20ME

...which in turn gives you an address and phone number for a bookstore:

Nonesuch Books & Cards Mill Creek Store
50 Market St, South Portland, ME 04106
(207) 799-2659

On A9.com's yellow pages, you can actually call that business for free -- it's pretty neat. So you call them, and you ask them if they have an email list, and if they meant to send this mailing. Probably they didn't.

What probably happened is that a spammer is just pretending to be belldandy / nonesuch books, in which case, there's nothing you can do about it.

mac status report

My mac is hanging in there! Hooray! It's been a week since I got it back from service, and it's still basically working. A few minor problems:

  • When I unplug it, even if the battery is fully charged, it sometimes immediately shuts down, and won't restart until I plug it in again.
  • It seems to have trouble reading from cd's, but not dvd's.
  • I can't complete the 10.3 install from the install disks. I had to install X11 explicitly, and I don't have iPhoto at all.

In other news, ChemPad has hit 1.0, and we're now adding features for version 1.1. I'm working on a tutorial, but ye gods writing documentation is stultifying. Also finding bugs in code generated by a mechanical language port is stultifying.

quicksilver

If you use a mac, you need Quicksilver. Follow this tutorial and your jaw will be hanging open with amazement. You knew the mac was cool, but quicksilver makes you so powerful. Superpowers. You know those unix masters who write scripts for everything and get their keyboard commands to do everything... this will make you like that, but more powerful, and with a nice aqua interface. This just about makes me want to get a development environment set up here... but that would be approximately decades of work. It's so amazing.
Now I need a milky way dark.

more mac weirdness

Last night, I watched a dvd on my mac... it worked. Also playing RealAudio. This is good.

Today I unplugged the mac in my bedroom and went out to the living room. I ejected the dvd and then... the screen went black. I hit the spacebar, nothing. I moved the display for no particular reason, and I heard the beginnings of the happy-mac chime... but it was cut off. Then it restarts again -- or did I hit the button? No, I don't think I hit the restart button... and it boots okay, except that the date has been reset to 1969.

This is a mac with hardware trouble.

say it ain't so

Remember about my mac being fixed? You know, this morning?
It's hosed again, hosed as in, gets stuck importing perfectly normal cd's, and can't be stopped, and won't eject the cd until I force-quit a few times and maybe restart a few times.
Here's what I've done since I got it back:

  • switched out the battery with the replacement battery

  • updated to 10.3 using the 10.3 retail install disks

  • ran software update

  • restarted, ran software update some more, restarted again

  • installed firefox & some other software mentioned above

  • plugged in my ipod, ran podworks, discovered that podworks didn't see the ipod, resigned myself to re-importing the few albums already on the ipod


With that all done, I said to myself, great, it's time to start importing music. I take a cd I burned from my pc a few weeks ago, my favorite Yo-Yo Ma concerto and American Idiot. I set the mac to import to 128 bps mp3's, because my ears can't tell the difference. It importants the concerto, and the title track of American Idiot, then... no more -- iTunes hangs, I can't eject the CD, I can't even force-quit iTunes. I think after ten minutes of trying I get iTunes to shut down and eject the cd... I import Yo-Yo Ma Plays Bach succesfully, then go for The Thrills, So Much for the City. It gets up to the fifth song, "Say it Ain't So," and then just seems to get stuck on that song. It stays on importing that song for many minutes, although it still makes cd-accessing-sounds. I force quit iTunes, then run it again, and re-start the import at "Say It Ain't So." Same deal -- just seems to get stuck importing.
I notice, meanwhile, that the machine is getting hot. Somewhere around 120-140 -- not hot enough to boil water, but hotter than you'd want bathwater. The repair depot replaced "everything related to the heat sink" yesterday so I don't understand what's going on.
The whole time I've been writing this entry, it's still been trying to import that one song.
I think my mac is past the point of no return -- it's been repaird by apple twice in the last month, and has never really recovered from whatever originally went wrong this summer. I think I'm screwed.
Please, Apple, say it ain't so.

my mac is back!

My mac came back and it works now!
I installed 10.3, upgraded to 10.3.7, and now I'm installing all the sweetness:
fire
ecto
Cocoalicious
PodWorks
and generally raiding joi ito's list of favorites. I've never met joi, don't know joi's gender or age or anything, but somehow I've learned that if joi likes software, I probably will too.
now, what shall I use for an RSS reader? I think I bought a license to StickyBrain a while ago. And NetNewsWire.
My god, this two year old mac is so much more fantastic than my brand new tablet pc.
**rejoices**

Cavewriting and del.icio.us

I finally wrote some documentation for the cavewriting software I’ve been working on, for Noah ’s Cavewriting class. I’ve also started using del.icio.us for bookmarks I can access anywhere. I’m also trying out basecamp, to manage projects; it provides a shared, prioritized, web-based todo list. Basecamp’s little brother is tada lists, which is just plain lists, but simple and clean.

As for the mac saga: Apple has my computer and lists the status as “in repair.” Hooray!

I want my mac back. So much.

I'm sitting here with my tablet pc and my giant superpowered dell laptop, and I'm yearning for my Mac. It's come to my attention over the last few days that I've been dropping tasks, forgetting to do things that I should do, losing track of appointments... so I want iCal, and StickyBrain. Alas, my mac is currently in a box waiting for DHL to pick it up to send it back to Apple to be repaired, again.

And I'm really tired of not having the perfect html authoring tool. I just want to make something that looks decent and maybe has a few images. Dreamweaver is total overkill. Emacs is a little bit less WYSIWYG than I'd like. I've been using TopStyle which is also overkill; it's a CSS/XHTML/HTML editor, but it gives good previews and decent text editing. I'm very excited to use iWork... but I need my mac. Sigh.

No love.

Re-running the installer didn't work.
I called tech support. We ran disk utility, and the disk reported that it was fine. Then we did erase and install, but that failed too. Now it's blinking at me... the "I can't find a system disk" blink.

...and I'm on hold with tech support again.

In other news, Josh is back!!! I'm planning to spend the incredibly blizzardy weekend holed up in the cave finishing the screen port and watching ROTK ee. Possibly at the same time -- Dmitri hasn't yet figured out how to watch movies on the cave screens, but we've got a big mac G5 (which works) and dolby 5.1 surround sound.

Maybe I'll even bring in my radiant heater so that I can stand to be in the cave, where it's a balmy 66 degrees most of the time. Mmm, radiant heater, cave, ROTK ee, Joshy, and warm chocolate chip cookies! If only I could bring the kittens in to the cave.

I'm still on hold with tech support. So far we've zapped the parameter ram (cmd-option-p-r) and done something else (boot with option held down) and booted to open firmware (cmd-option-o-f). Still no joy.

a bad day for apple

Damn it, Apple!
Damn it!
I WANT MY MAC TO WORK.
Today I decided to upgrade my powerbook to 10.3. I'd had it at 10.3.4 when I sent it away for service, but Apple rebuilt the machine with 10.2 installed. So I put in the Panther install disks, hit restart, say "okay" and "continue" and "I agree" a few times, then leave it alone. I check back in a while; it's at "Performing Base Install, 29 minutes remaining." Then I take a nap. A two hour nap. When I get back, it's still at "Performing Base Install, 29 minutes remaining." I stare at it in dismay for a while, then give in and hit the power button.
It restarts, ejects the Panther disk, and gives me the "where's the startup disk" icon.
I hit the power button again, and this time I hold down the C key, to get it to boot from cd-rom. It boots to the installer again. I say okay/I agree/continue a few times, then leave it alone while I have a complete and useful conversation with a health insurance customer service representative. When I come back to the mac, it says "Installation was not successful. Please try again."
So I hit restart. It ejects the Panther CD, then goes into an all-too-familiar state: light gray background, dark gray apple logo, spinning gray "working" icon. For a long time.
I pushed the cd back in, waited, then hit the power button. Nothing. I then held down the power button for several seconds, to force it to shut down. And now I'm going to restart and try to install panther again. I'm pretty sure I will spend a few hours this evening on the phone with Apple tech support, though.

It's a bad day for Apple when a call with a health insurance customer service rep is both briefer and less irritating than an OS upgrade.

a beautiful morning in bed with my mac

This is just silly amounts of niceness. I went to sleep at bedtime watching 24 season 3 on my powerbook on my bedside table, after a snack of nutella and cream cheese on graham crackers. I woke up at 6 am and watched another hour of 24... then I found myself downloading software for my mac. I gave in to the urges, and I've spent the last hour just downloading and installing new software -- from bed!

It's so much easier to download and install software on the mac. I hope I can find the dvd with my huge backup. Of course I have other backups, but the easiest would be to just get it all off my one dvd backup. And I have to rip all my music again -- but this is sort of good, because last time I ripped as if I had infinite disk space. 30 gb is not infinite disk space.

I also can't exactly find my 5 gb firewire drive. This is a problem with shrinking peripherals.

Now... another little nap before I wake up, I think. Yummy.

ahhhh.... my mac is back

...ahhh....

my mac is back.

feels so good. to my right is a monster of a dell lapsquisher. to my left is a rather tasty toshiba tablet, with a gig of RAM. But right in front of me is my mac, my powerbook.



I think I will take my tablet to work... and leave it there!

If I need to code at home -- as I so often do -- I'll use my dell monster.

And my mac will be my cuddly computer. My couch computer. My communication computer.

Nothing has to drive me crazy in here.

the continuing saga of my mac repair

I called the computer store today, and they're like, yes, we have your mac.
"How long have you had it?"
"Oh, I don't know, I'd have to check the paperwork."
"Were you planning to call me?"
"We had some trouble finding you."

Hmm. Okay, even if all of the phone numbers I gave them didn't work, then, how about just looking up my name in the brown directory? I gave them my legal name, which, indeed, is what's in the brown directory.

Anyways -- so now I've got a brand new, clean-as-a-whisper powerbook G4. What shall I put on it? Firefox, of course -- that's my first download. What should I use for blogging? I think I'll go back to Mail for mail. I liked Mail.

Also, it seems that I remember linear algebra well enough to debug a vector/3d math library. Who knew?

I miss my mac.

I miss my mac. Since it started going flaky this summer, I've been using this Toshiba Tablet PC as my everyday, everywhere communications device. I just hate how its rules for powering up are different depending on whether it's plugged in, or not, or how long I've let it sit without using it. I open it up and I have to give it a few seconds to see if it's going to wake up on its own, or if I'm going to have to hit the power button. If I hit the power button when its already waking up, it might reboot. Or it might not. And then it might get on my wireless network, or I might have to wait a while, or I might have to go hit the connect button manually. And for all this, it doesn't have an integrated cd/dvd drive, even though it's barely lighter than my powerbook. And the built-in speakers suck.

Please, Apple repair gods, put my mac back together and make it wonderful again. I wonder if they'll just replace the entire machine... probably not though. Just please fix it properly.

the kittycats

Here are some things you might want to know:

The cats only like to sit close together occasionally. I guess they have to be in the right mood. The pattern often goes like this: one of them sits somewhere nice. Somewhere nice might be my lap, the papasan chair, or the couch. Or the right-hand top corner of my bed. The other one will sit somewhere else... and then eventually decide that she wants to sit where the first one is sitting. She'll jump up there (although Isabel's approximation of a jump is pretty pathetic) and just sit down. The other one will get up and leave resentfully.

Isabel always gets to eat first. Darling waits.

They can tolerate the other one sitting on the back of the couch at the same time, but usually they face in different directions.

Isabel spends all day in the winter lying on my bed. I usually have one of my big down pillows under all the covers, and she curls up on top of the covers on top of the pillow. It's about 5 degrees colder in the bedroom than in the living room, but I guess she really likes the pillows.

Darling wants to sit on my lap almost all the time and is sort of pathetically sad if I don't want her in my lap -- which is only when I'm using the computer. She'll jump up, I'll push her away, she'll jump up, I'll push her away... We'll repeat this maybe five or six times before she gets the idea.

Isabel loves catnip; Darling is not particularly interested.

Darling sometimes does a little stretch where she crosses her paws over her chest and squeezes.

Isabel sometimes tucks her nose under her paws or her tail.

Every time Isabel wants to jump onto the couch, she sits and stares at it for thirty seconds or so, gathering her courage to jump up. She couldn't jump much higher than the couch or the bed. Normal cats can jump to shoulder-height or so. Darling can jump to table tops, if she goes via a chair. Isabel can, but doesn't often; I think it scares her.

That scene in Shrek 2 where Puss In Boots makes his eyes all big? Isabel does that constantly.

When I come home, Darling comes to the door to greet me. Isabel stays on the bed. I go in to greet her and she stretches and says "meep" or "mrowr" and rolls over on her back so her tummy is up in the air. She then squirms around until I pet her. She is fairly irresistible when she does this.

I maintain that Zeb's first word was "ittykat." No one else believes this. Before he could talk, he learned some signs -- "milk," "all done," things like that. He also picked up the sign for "kitty come here," which is pat-pat-pat on the couch next to you. His pat-pat-pat was always rather more energetic than the cats liked, and I don't think they came when he called them. I'm not sure about now, though; they've probably learned that he is another person-who-can-pet-cats, so when they want love (which is pretty much always) they probably go to Zeb.

they didn't *lose* my computer

Well, my computer isn't lost. The technicans at the Brown Bookstore have it. Nooooo!
Let me explain this slowly:
there is a hardware problem. Not a software problem. A problem with the hard drive and/or the PMU. It's covered by AppleCare. When I dropped it off, I said, "Please send this to Apple for me so Apple can service it." And they said "okay."
So today I'm on the phone and I'm explaining that I brought it to the Brown Computer Store to be shipped to Apple for repairs, and the guy says, "Why didn't you just ship it to Apple yourself then?" Arrrg. Because the Brown Computer Store is a Licensed Apple Reseller and will ship it to Apple for free and in good packaging, whereas I don't have any packaging in which to ship it, and it would cost me a lot of money. Arg. They claim to be an Apple Authorized Service Location, but jesus: they have so far failed to order my computer succesfully, or to process a simple return to manufacturerr for me. I don't trust fuck-all that they do to my computer. As far as I'm concerened, it's a pile of metal and silicon until Apple themselves check it out, fix it, and bless it.
Have I mentioned that I'm angry about this?

paperwork

I don't have that piece of paper from the Brown Computer Store saying that they received my computer. It might be in the cave somewhere, but I doubt it, and even if it was I'd never find it. So now I have to just hope that they have some record of it at the computer store, or that my powerbook is in fact just sitting somewhere in the back of the store waiting to be looked for, found, and sent to apple for repairs.
Arrg. I just implemented about half of Getting Things Done, but that was a few days after dropping off my mac at the computer store. So that receipt is one of the last pieces of paper I'm going to lose... Arg.

the brown computer store lost my powerbook

Oh, dear.
On December 18, I finally brought my mac into the Brown Computer Store. I already had a dispatch number from apple -- that is, apple had heard all about my powerbook's problem, agreed that it was covered by applecare, and told me to bring it in to a licensed apple reseller to be sent back to apple. So I did. I got a receipt, and a salesman's assurance that they would mail it to apple straightaway. Every few days since then, I've been checking my repair status on the mac support system... but it doesn't turn up. Tonight I called Apple, and talked to someone in dispatch, who said that they hadn't received my computer. Um. This is not so good.
Yes, I had backups. Backups like mad.Go me.
She said, though, that if Brown has indeed lost it, that they will somehow make it right with me -- either give me a replacement, or a refund. Can anyone say "Sascha wants a 12" iBook G4"? In fact, a 12" iBook G4 would probably be a better machine than my 15" 667 Mhz powerbook g4.

Still, sigh. The brown computer store people are rather idiotic. I tried to buy my mac from them two years ago, and they just couldn't get it right. I ended up driving to a store in Palo Alto and buying one off the shelf. No, I didn't drive to Palo Alto from Providence. Don't be silly.

My mac has been borked since... sometime this summer. I flew with it out to Microsoft, and at the airport where I changed planes, I noticed that it took >20 minutes to reboot. That's not so good. From there on it's been downhill. Luckily, my job keeps me supplied with fast tasty computers. If that mac was my only machine, I would be so screwed by now.

Is borked a word, or just something I glommed onto from my brother's typo in an iChat window?