If you do not know anything about DNS records and how they work then this will not make a great deal of sense to you. My niece was having trouble sending email to someone she knows as it would bounce back saying mail.theuncle.com was on a blacklist. I checked and it seemed the reason was because the reverse lookup of the mail server IP address was not available at all. I pulled up good old Interland, my hosting company for ‘theuncle.com’, and created a ticket. I ended up getting an email saying it was fixed and closed. I checked the records by doing a lookup and noticed it had the old IP address of a mail server of theirs that no longer exists. I tried to get to my mail server to no avail. This meant that no email would be able to go out or come in. I had to re-open that ticket, then call them up and specify that the tech. that ‘fixed’ the reverse broke all of my email resolving. The guy fixed the record back to the proper IP address and so email works again but the original problem seems to still exist. So I still have a ticket open for it and my temper is a rising.

Well, I have learned something recently. Well, specifically yesterday I learned it. If you install Mandrake Linux 9.1 be careful since it likes to put LILO in the MBR. I had to learn the way to restore the Windows 2000 MBR so I would be able to boot Windows. I have Windows 2000 set up exactly the way I want to with all the software installed and i was at least irritated when Mandrake killed it like that. All I wanted to do was have the NT bootloader boot Linux also. It is easy in Redhat and Debian Linux but a pain to specifically do things in Mandrake.

Oh man, I just remembered that I will have to reinstall Windows 2000 on my primary workstation. You know you have to when the copy/paste function suddenly stops working for no reason with no errors and then later on starts working again. I have had it installed for a long time. At least for someone like me which usually reinstalls about every quarter. This means I need to make sure everything is backed up first which should not be a problem since things are backed up nightly. It is just the huge hassle of doing a reinstall. Then at the last minute being lazy and not making an image of the system in pristine condition(quite possible). The only problem with the imaging is the fact that I have an almost pure SCSI system and I would have to dig up the necessary drivers and get it working before the image creation could take place. Normally I do not have time for this. I will have to find time soon though.

Apophis is the name of one of my computers. I was having problems with it this past week. I was having trouble pinpointing the problem until I looked at the Event Viewer and saw that the DVD-ROM drive was throwing out read errors. I decided to be lazy for the interm and just plug a SCSI controller in the computer and hook an external 16x CD-ROM drive. All that work just to keep from having to open both sides of the case to take the bad drive out seemed easier than fooling with moving the computer from where it is located right now. It just sucks a great deal that I will now have to one day purchase another DVD drive for that computer. It currently acts as my graphics/sound editing and gaming machine. My main machine still can do all of the above but I am trying to seperate duties of each computer.