This Wired article says that BIND (named) software should have a patch available quite soon to make it ignore Verisign’s *.com and *.net “typo redirect” DNS entries. ObPersonal: The article quotes Paul Vixie who I used to work with briefly at DEC. He is good people. Go Paul! Go ISC!

I just sent this to ICANN- To: comments@icann.org Subject: Complaint: Verisign wildcards Verisign’s recent addition of wildcards in the com and net TLD’s: \* is a blatant abuse of their “custodianship” of these domains \* will cause numerous headaches and lost productivity for network admins \* will also cause a *huge* amount of spam to flow unhindered, which would otherwise be stopped as an obvious fake domain They claim this is intended to “help users” – but it is clear that their motives are selfish and commercial. *.com is intended to cause advertising dollars to flow to Verisign and to cause Verisign to have an unfair advantage in securing new .com registrations. ...

Saturday: Went to Fry’s and got a printer for my mom. I also got a scsi card so I could hook up the old tape drive, and a mini sheet scanner. The first one had no instructions or software disk so I had to go back. The second one didn’t seem to work (got huge black lines all through) but after rerunning the calibrate option it seemed to work OK. Had Chevy’s mexican food for dinner. ...

cos reports that Howard Dean will be in the Boston area Tuesday and Wednesday… FYI

How well do you know me? It’s possible that some of you know me better than I know myself. I have made a list of the 3-4 principles or ideas that I am most passionate about. See if your impression of me matches my idea of myself. Please rank items as to how important you think they are to me. Mark one item 10, one 9, etc. Mark 0 or just leave blank if you think I am not passionate about it.

Chapter 23 of Managing Your Manager (by Greg Connor) (posted as a comment elsewhere but I wanted to save it here too)

Wow, it has only been a day or so and my friends page grew by 76 entries? You guys are prolific. And that was only including like 1 comic. I drove M’s car to work because the battery was dead – luckily all it needed was a jump and some driving to get charged up, not a new battery like last time. That is all.

Made three jars of pickles. As an experiment (and because I ran out of cider vinegar) I substituted some rice wine vinegar and red raspberry vinegar for the cider vinegar.. so we will see what happens. Batch one made two jars 13. Kinda Sorta Sour Carrots and Asparagus Carrots, onions and garlic in one jar, asparagus, onions and garlic in second jar. 1.33 C cider vinegar 0.33 C red raspberry vinegar 0.33 C rice vinegar 1 C white win vinegar ...

Posted as a comment in someone else’s journal, but I want to save it here. Regarding common courtesy, and how small favors may not be returned or even noticed by others… I believe two things. 1. Common courtesy isn’t. People are either stupid or selfish a lot of the time. 2. If I’m going to expect people to act a certain way, I have to act that way myself. If the power of expectation has any real power, it should work when the belief/expectation is strong - strong enough to be unconscious and automatic. ...

Trip to Sac. Up at 6, shower, leave 6:50, get gas. Arrive Sac 9am. get settled in conf room, read email. I am there to meet with LM, and AN was there too. Before lunch, they mostly talked about monitoring and I listened in. I facilitate some communications between TP and SR. AIM is great but sometimes you just need to call. These two didn’t call each other for whatever reason, so I end up passing messages. I’m a great communicator but I’m not the only communicator. Anyway, after a bit they get settled in with AIM and I don’t need to pass messages anymore. I do some double-checking before fetching the main admin machine that all of SAC uses. Apparently it is not enough double-checking… questions start almost immediately after I do the deed. What’s my password, why can’t I ssh in any more, why is my shell changed from bash, etc. I had been handed some bad information, but instead of pointing fingers I decide to just address the pre-existing problems as if they were my problems. I think I scored points by being polite and listening to everyone. Anyway, the one task I did for the day had to be half-reversed because that was clobbering changes they were trying to make using the old system, so we will try again next week. I will not make my deadline but it was a soft deadline anyway and it’s more important to keep people happy and marching in the same direction. After lunch, I spent time getting LM set up on fetch, not really training but more just showing him where everything is. 3pm I wrap up the change event and go to the data center to say hello and reassure everyone. Just spending time talking seemed to do a world of good. Stayed until 5 pm. 5-7 drive home ...