The Net Monkey

I had a good Christmas!

My weekend started out with a semi-spur-of-the-moment visit from Dan, who arrived late Friday night and stayed with me until Sunday afternoon. We had a very nice time and I’m really eager to see him this coming weekend for New Year’s.

Anyway, everyone in my immediate family converged at my parents house on Christmas Eve. We had our usual Christmas Eve meal, which included food we only seem to have during this time of year. I’m particularly fond of the cocktail wieners wrapped in bacon. They’re so bad for you, but so damn good!

Mom always goes all out decorating the house.

I got some really good gifts, including sentimental items (pictures of my sisters, etc.), some nice clothes, a cat carrier for Bess (because my old one is broken), etc. I have no complaints at all and was really happy to spend time with everyone.

This weekend is New Year’s, of course, and then I’m heading off on my trip to Europe. I can’t wait!

What about the rest of you? Did Santa bring you everything you wanted?

Title: Decorations

Uploaded By: mattbarton77

I received an email today asking for assistance on a problem one of my fellow employees was having delivering email to another via our corporate mail system.

The email itself wasn’t anything special, as far as I could tell, but SpamAssassin (one of the most commonly used spam-fighting tools) scored the email high enough to consider it bad enough to be delivered to the recipient’s spam folder.

Here is a list of the tests which affected the score of the email.

• MSGID_DOLLARS
• RATWARE_MS_HASH
• RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME
• SPF_HELO_PASS
• SPF_PASS

So, what’s interesting about these tests?

Well, before I tell you, I should inform you that the email was sent using Microsoft Outlook via a Microsoft Exchange Server. As some of you may know, this is a very common software combination in the corporate IT world.

So, on with the analysis!

The first three tests specifically address the headers (Message-ID, etc.) of the email, which are hidden from normal view to most users. These tests negatively influenced the score of the email; however, the other two tests (SPF_HELO_PASS and SPF_PASS) influenced the score in a positive fashion. They simply state that the mail server which sent the email was authorized to do so for our domain.

In researching this problem, I discovered that many people claimed that emails generated by Outlook were getting falsely classified as spam due to the above tests. It would specifically seem to be related to one or more missing headers when email is sent from a Windows Mobile phone via Exchange. I haven’t had a chance to verify if this was the case for our problem, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

The frustrating thing is that the spam-like qualities of the email are completely out of the control of the email sender. It isn’t like the email contained a bunch of bad keywords (e.g. Prozac, etc.), but instead the email client is producing (or not producing, as would be the case) headers that cause SpamAssassin to throw false positives.

So, what can we do about this?

Not much.

I ended up suggesting that the receiver try to have our domain whitelisted. That isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish, but probably the best in the long run.

Lets hope that the SpamAssassin folks and the Windows Mobile folks get this resolved.

Link: SpamAssassin Bug

I took a nice out-of-town trip this weekend to see Dan over in Columbus.

Generally, we spent a lot of time hanging out and talking, but we did manage to get out and about. We met up at a party Friday night, which was fun, but crowded; and Saturday night we went to Delaware, Ohio, to a pub where a friend of Dan’s performed in a cover band. We played a few rounds of pool, too, but left after it was getting too crowded.

One of the highlights of the trip was eating brunch at a vegan restaurant called Dragonfly. I admit that I was a bit apprehensive about eating there, knowing that it was vegan, but I ended up loving the experience. I was surprised because the food was absolutely delicious; and the environment was really elegant. I look forward to going back there.

Anyway, the trip was nice and I am glad that I got to know Dan more. Honestly, I can’t wait to see him again, which hopefully won’t be too long from now.

Jason Clarke at Download Squad wrote an interesting article today about Digg (a popular social bookmarking site) and his belief that it and its cousins (i.e. Slashdot, del.icio.us, etc.) are destined for failure.

Jason asserts that Digg and similar services will loose their relevancy due to the low quality of the traffic generated by Digg users to ones web site.

Anyway, he makes some good points and generally echoes the sentiment I expressed back in late 2005, but with a lot more thought and relevance.

Article: Why Digg is Destined for Failure

Here are some minor blurbs to update you all about.

My company’s annual Christmas party was last night at Union Station. It was in the grand hall, at the main entrance, which quite Victorian and beautiful. I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was a teenager.

I took the opportunity to take Christopher R. on a second date. He’s a graduate student from Purdue that I’ve known for a few months, but hadn’t had the chance to hang out until fairly recently. We had a lot of fun and everyone liked him, too.

Photo Set: Company Christmas Party 2006

On a totally unrelated note, we had to deal with some really awful winds yesterday here in the city. Gusts were so bad that the lights on the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument are without power (which won’t be restored until Monday, as I’ve been told), but that didn’t seem to hinder people from coming downtown to see the decorations. It is that time of the year, after all.

Speaking of the season, I have yet to do any Christmas shopping. I need to get hopping on that very soon because I really don’t want to be stuck doing it at the last second, which always sucks.

Anyone doing anything special or different for Christmas this year? Please let me know.