Rants

Last Thursday, I was registered to go to a Microsoft training seminar for Registered Partners.  My business is a Microsoft Registered Partner.  So I woke up at 6am on Thursday, and hit the road by 7am to make the long trek from Duluth Minnesota to Madison Wisconsin (6hr drive).    The conference started at 1pm.

Well the 2.5hrs to Eau Claire Wisconsin went well, but when I hit Eau Claire, it started to snow.  The snow then proceeded to turn into a blizzard with limited visibility.  This of course brought back memories of driving through Wisconsin over new years during a snow storm (when I went into the ditch and totalled my car).  And here I was, driving my brand new car that I hadn’t yet fully learned how it handled in snowy conditions.

Thankfully the hand of God was upon me and I made it to Madison safely, and by 1pm!  As I pulled into the Alliant Energy Center, I saw on the big billboard in big blaring letters: “Microsoft Seminar CANCELLED”.  Oh great!  I drove 6 hours through a blizzard for nothing!  So I called up a friend who used google to give me directions to the nearest Panera Bread so I could at least use their free Wi-Fi internet access to try to get some work done.  I also stopped by Best Buy and picked up Microsoft Streets & Trips with GPS for my laptop.  I hung around Madison for 4-5 hours and left around 6pm.  I wanted to wait and see if the storm would subside.  Nope, it got worse!

By the time I left, there was 8-10 inches on the ground, the roads were not plowed, so I was driving around town in at least 6 inches of snow, thankfully my car is like a tank in the snow with its nice winter snow tires.

The drive back to Duluth was long and tiring.  A 360 mile trip at 45mph with limited visibility.  Every few miles I would see someone in the ditch.  By the time I made it back to Eau Claire, it was around 9:30pm, I used my Mapping software with GPS to find a restaraunt, I didn’t want to eat McDonalds again, and didn’t feel like getting out into the storm to ask for directions.  The GPS navigated me right to a Fazolis Italian Restaraunt.

I got back to Duluth around 11:30pm, and went to my office to check my email.  And that is when I found out that I had a meeting at 10am in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis / St.Paul).  So I had to get up early again on Friday and drive to the cities to meet with a potential client.  Luckily the meeting went well and I closed the deal and now have another web-design contract.  So I guess it was worth it.

Just too much driving and getting up early this past week.

I just got off the phone with EV1.net tech support. Do I have a server with EV1.net? No. But I did about 2 years ago.

The reason I called EV1 is because I had been receiving complaints of spam and hacking attempts coming from my servers. But I couldn’t find any evidence of such.

Finally, I found out why. The person who was experiencing the spam/hacking attempts was getting them from a certain IP: 216.127.XXX.137. And when they did a reverse DNS on the IP, it came up with one of my domain names. So they contacted me!

I didn’t recognize the IP address in question, it definately was not one of mine. So I did a reverse DNS/IP whois on the domain, and lo and behold, it belongs to EV1! Apparently, when I cancelled my server with them 2 years ago, they didn’t remove their reverse DNS entries. So the new owner of the server was causing trouble, but my domain still showed in the reverse DNS.

EV1 is now removing those reverse DNS records, and I commend their support, as it was a rather painless phonecall to make to get everything cleared up.

So, the lesson to be learned here, if you have ever had servers somewhere, make sure that they remove the reverse DNS records after you leave their services!