The Flock developer preview has been released! Definitely worth a look-see. It’s definitely in early stages, but I’m lovin’ it so far; very impressive.

You can view the main site here or head straight to downloading the setup here.

Also definitely worth a checking out is the Flock FAQ. Click here to get into it.

These cocksuckers deserver a ‘Fuck You, Site’ of their own. Every time I get off the phone with them I sit and stew in just how incredibly negative my experience with them is and always has to be. Never on the same page, most often rude, silly, stupid; I’m almost a hundred percent certain the last tech had downs. But what can you do? What can a person do who’s tied into a contract with a company who can’t, nor won’t, get their shit together. If it’s not one thing, it’s always another.

To add a little insight, Cingular Wireless informed me that I would need to manage a $450 deposit in order to add an third line to my account. Funny, seeing how my credit isn’t all that bad for one, and two, I’ve already got two lines, neither of which needed a deposit. So what the fuck? A deposit? Not acceptable, however what is acceptable is Cingular Wireless telling me that I can provide my own phone and bypass any sort of deposit. Fantastic! I’ve got phones coming out of my ass over here. I manage to unlock a couple courtesy of someone or another. I’m ready to go and call back to activate.

“Sir, you’ll need a SIM card to activate,” nostrils out the Indian whine.
“Great, so where do I get one of those?”
“You’ll need to purchase one from a Cingular store.”
“Dandy.”
Click.

So off to the Cingular store I go; I know the way, I’ve been there often. I’ve returned one phone at least three times now because it doesn’t work for shit. They keep giving me new ones and seemingly to make sure that I never retain any sort of static phonebook. (Good job, fellas. Mission accomplished.) Standing inside are two Cingular Wireless employees. One is a little too tall and kind of skinny, the other guy is short and damn near round. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-Fat-Ass. Dee tells me that the SIM card is free, not a problem, but I need to drop a $750 deposit.

“$750? What are you talking about, I got my own phone, now the deposit goes up?”
“Yes, we’ll need a deposit of $750 to add this line.”
“You guys are un-fucking-believable.”
Fat Ass pipes up, “Sir, that language will not be tolerated in–”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Slim! You gave me the impression that mouth of yours only had an intake, now you’re going to go and tell me that something comes out, as well? Fuck the both of you.”

Needless to say, I’m not all that happy about people wasting my time and jerking me around. Calling customer service does me zero good; they’ve of course lost any record of my previous calls (like there was a record to begin with) and the most they’re willing to do is possibly give me some credit, granted that I wait until next week for a supervisor to call me. Bravo, Cingular! Bravo!

Today, I finally decided I’d just file a complain with the Better Business Bureau. These folks are usually my only recourse and I have no problems in using them (as I do so quite often, in fact.) Screwing me the hard way will almost always end up in your receiving a complaint from them on my behalf, plus you usually get to call me back and make an attempt at resolving it through your friendly company mediator. If your company is small enough, it will be you who gets to talk to me again. Let’s see you put on the same show a second time; can you do it? Probably not, asshole.

Fuck You, Cingular Wireless.

For the longest time, I was using Mailwasher Pro to handle all of my issues with Spam. Then, after realizing that bouncebacks only tell the spammer that their destination does exist somewhere, I moved on to more radical measures.

First, I decided to scan all incoming mails against DNSBLs (DNS Blacklists) which basically involves checking each and every incoming mail against an updated database of spammer IPs. This worked really well for awhile, but I started noticing that I wasn’t getting all of my wanted mail. My next step was to use some DNSBLs that were a little more lax in their databasing policies and then move on to SPF. AOL (the granddaddy fuq_ of them all) actually started requiring that all incoming mail originate from servers with reverse PTR. No reverse PTR, no delivery. An excellent policy, hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit. Until then, no deliveries to the fuqpc server unless you can pass with at least a soft fail SPF.

Eventually, I moved on to whitelisting. Whitelisting works great except it doesn’t do much to reduce mailserver traffic. In fact, it increases it. It does, however make sure that you’re only getting what you want to. All in all, I’d avoid whitelisting on future accounts, it’s just too much of a hassle and seemingly increases junk mail as the auto-whitelisting lets the spammer know he’s hit a valid email address.

More time passes, I move on to banning entire countries from sending email to my servers via GeoIP. This works great. I can’t even begin to tell you how effective this is. I went through my logs and just started adding country after country until I had this huge string of abbreviate, far away lands blocked from my mailservers. Hey, why not GeoIP Whitelisting? That’s what I’d like to see; being able to simply add US, EU, AU, and a few others to the list and leave it at that. The rest will have to snail mail me.

All in all, my most valuable anti-spamming resource has been Spamcop.net. These guys are great. Basically, you can either forward on your spam, or simply copy and paste the headers and source content into a browser window and reports are then filed to the owners of all networks involved. They also have a pretty decent and up to date DNSBL (which occasionally does block some valid emails. Hey, we all make mistakes.) Spamcop has almost completely stopped spam on my end. If I do get spam, I take the time to copy and paste the info into the Spamcop submission form and they pretty much take care of the rest.

Ultimately, I’d like to use some Unix based tools to keep away the bad guys, but for now I’m happy with Spamcop and what they have to offer. I’ve even donated a few of my hard-earned dollars to their cause - be sure to check them out! I also shouldn’t fail to mention that Argosoft provides my mail services. Argosoft is by far the most affordable and effective way to go for those that aren’t serving out mail at the enterprise level. The author is brilliant and responds well to bugs, feature requests, and even some gently rib-poking.

fuq_:To Manpower and Adecco Technical. Two companies worth complete shit in my book. You’ve hired on idiots to find jobs for those with actual skills? Where’s the logic in that?

Oops, that’s about all I can say. I somehow managed to muck up my server permissions, so instead of following this document, I went ahead and made an attempt in installing Active Directory on a production Windows 2003 server. It pains me to be using W2k3, but with the software paid for I’m almost obligated. I did make an attempt at installing several different flavors of Linux and then compiling and configuring apache, mysql, and php, but even with it up and running I’d be dead in the water if something went awry. If only I knew more (or had a few extra machines to use as test servers - wanna donate?)

So thinking the solution to my problem is Active Directory, I make an attempt, fail, then uninstall. Uninstalling wasn’t a good idea (not that installing was) and I ended up wiping out several dozen permission settings on all my webs. How was I supposed to know? Fucking Windows.

PHP 5.1 rc1 didn’t do much for me. As soon as I laid it down, all of the Wordpress blogs I’m hosting choked and refused to take comments. Probably something I’m doing wrong. Live and learn, I guess…

…version of MySQL installed much easier than I expected, plus I’ve discovered the beauty of using the MySQL Administration tool - a truly wonderful thing. Finally, something that eliminates me having to relearn the CLI every time I need to make a minor change to my configuration. phpMyAdmin has always been a great help along with phpBackupPro, but with the admin tool, not only can I now schedule my backups without having to fuck around with crons or scheduled tasks in Windows, but I can view the status and the health of my server by looking at pictures! I like pictures.

Another great resource I’d like to throw out there is Dave Child’s php.ini guide from ILoveJackDaniels.com; I’ve been looking quite some time for something that can explain to me in layman’s terms just wtf all of these variables mean and how they work. Hopefully he’ll get around to finishing the last half of the guide so I can muck up my servers even more than I already have.

Still a big fan of Zend Optimizer, even though it was causing me some grief the last time around. I guess we can’t all be perfect all of the time…?

fuq_: To that stupid fat whore who was zipping in and out of traffic today while on my way home from the store. Ten miles down the road and you’re still only a car ahead of me. What gives?

fuq_: To that piece of white trash who veered out into oncoming traffic while on his dirt-bike. I thought dirt-bikes were illegal on the road, let alone your camo-pants, wife-beater shirt, black boots, and BB gun hanging off the back end of seat. The only thing missing is your personalized plate stamped, “Uncle Dad.”

Ever think of a few things that you want to bitch about, but just don’t have enough to go on in order to post a complete entry or email about them? I’ve got just a few, I’m sure I’ll add more to the list as time goes on. In fact, in order to keep it neat and clean, I’ll simply include a fuq_: tag at the end of each post and add any essentials as needed. Until then…

fuq_: To the guy at blockbuster video - you’re such a fucker with your condescending tone. Just keep in mind that you’re the guy working at blockbuster, not me. (I’ve got more to be proud of being unemployed, IMHO.)

fuq_:To Wells Fargo Bank- you guys are dirty rat fucking bastards with your fees here, there, and everywhere. It’s no wonder I’ve never any money. Go suck an egg.

fuq_:I can’t even begin to get into how highly irritating it is that Qchex screwed me out of ten dollars. No wait, I can. What good could your services possibly do me when you wait almost a full month and a half before pulling the money out of my account (none of it of course ever to be seen again) while the merchant I intend on doing business with runs out of stock 4 weeks ago? Fuck you guys, I hope you wind up in jail.

fuq_:To Adecco technical - telling me that I’m not qualified for the position when I’ve held the same goddamned position before really, really pisses me off. It’s one thing for me not to be able to do my own job, but not being able to do yours? It can’t be that hard - you get people jobs. Are you going to tell me you went to school for that? If you did, fuck you anyway.

Just a few to start, I’m sure I’ll come back with more… (I feel better already!)

Anyone out there have any idea what it would take in order get a small snippet of php code to smoothly and stealthily transfer a large amount of American currency into my bank account every day, for one-hundred days, or until I press the ’stop’ button? Doesn’t have to be php, could be asp, I suppose, although I’d prefer to stick with the former - the latter makes my stomach ache a little.

Keep those cards and letter coming, folks. I can’t get enough of ‘em.

…doesn’t mean shit unless it’s applied towards something worthwhile.

I get more done on a slow day than most do otherwise, but I still bring in a gross amount of zero dollars leaving me with this empty feeling in the pit of my stomach (could it be hunger, maybe?) I guess I just haven’t found my niche, but when, how? Here I sit, day after day, involving myself in one project or another with even a few a moderate success, but I’ve yet to find something that generates a flow of cash.

I took a break today and headed to the library. Pulling my eyes away from the screen and giving my fingers a rest puts my brain to work using entirely different processes, which is completely necessary at least once or twice a day. It’s amazing what even a five minute break will do for me when asdf starts to mean awdr. For me, the library is an amazing place at which I’ve come to appreciate the patience a person must have, in comparison to the internet, when seeking out information.

Books on eCommerce, technology law, and general online business information - there must be a way for me to keep doing what I’m doing, and without turning to someone else for employment, generate a dollar or two. Got an idea? Lay one on me; I’m open ears to anything that might keep me afloat or better.

Fuck You, Computer is right! When your RC1 turns out to be worse than your Beta 4, you know you’ve got problems. All day long I spend in getting a decent logo, style, and build together of what this site will eventually look like and operate with - and what do I get in return? Irreversible SQL errors. Nothing like it.

To throw something out there on a positive note, I did find this super-cool spell checker for when I occasionally use IE - the name is original enough, I guess. ieSpell. Have a go at it here. For those that stick with Mozilla, there’s the ever-popular Spellbound which is actually the reason why I did a Google search for ieSpell in the first place. With either you can highlight a block of text and click a magical button to spellcheck it all just as you would when using Writer or Word, or whatever you use.

In looking through my server logs, I can’t believe the percentage of folks who are not only still using IE, but IE version five! Would you believe there is a larger percentage of people browsing the web with IE5 than with Mozilla or any other browser? Maybe this is not the case - maybe it’s only ME that attracts IE Fivers. Are you an IE Fiver?

Fuck you, Computer.

How many times do I say that throughout the day? How many times do I really mean it? How often do you say it? What kind of variations do you use? I sometimes throw in an exclamation or two (maybe three), sometimes a question mark, and other times just the old dot dot dot. The best use comes with a semi-colon, but those are few and far between.

I say let’s not put them to waste! Let’s get those Fuck you’s out there and documented!

Anyone who finds their way here is encouraged to (in the very least) sign up at the Fuck you, Computer forum. The forum is to be used for either obtaining help with something, or helping someone else (hey, almost like a Fuck you, Community!)

For those even more ambitious, register here at the Fuck you, Computer blog and publish an article of your own. Tell us what brought you here, what motivated you to write, why your Computer deserved or deserves the big Fuck You and of course, what you’re going to do about it.

And last, but not least, don’t forget to spread the word. Use the contact form at the Fuck you, Computer forum to get a free promotional pack!

Don’t keep those Fuck you’s bottled inside! Let them out at www.fuckyoucomputer.com…