Attack of the Squicky Vandals

As I returned to the trail parking lot at the end of the Eliza Furnace Trail (There was rain predicted so I parked there instead of in Squirrel Hill), I was approached by another bicycle commuter. He asked if I too had been slimed. He was referring to occasions when I, and now clearly others, had automotive grease placed under their door handles.

The prime suspect is the owner of the adjacent Childrens Hospital parking lot. He apparently wanted ownership of the parking lot now owned by the city and provided free for trail users and when he didn't get it he began a campaign of petty vandalism in an effort to drive people away. I guess he figured that if he could drive people away he could claim that the space was under utilized and thus claim ownership because his neighboring lot is often full to capacity. It must gaul him to see those empty spaces that he could be making money off of.

The way he was caught (though there isn't any proof about the sliming) is that he left a note on someone's windshield saying that they couldn't park there all day and that his car would be towed. He signed the letter "Property Owner" and the phone number was that of the neighboring lot's owner.

The police have spoken with this guy and apparently the vandalism has ceased. . . for the moment. I have no doubt that he will attempt some other tactic to get what he thinks should be his. "Why should my taxes go to pay for an parking lot for bicyclists when I could be making money off of each space?"

The Fun Never Ends.

Last week, I signed up our sci-fi organization for web space at iPower. On Friday I investigated having the .NET domain we had point to the .ORG webspace as well. I was confused by the pricing structure and used the online chat to talk to someone at support. We danced around it because it didn't seem like he was sure what I wasking but he eventually said that it would cost $10.

Today, however, I learned that I had been charged $45.40. A $10 set up charge and a $2.95/month for 12 months charge for. . . something. I wasn't sure what.

I immediately got back on to the online chat and was told that the pricing structure had changed. I asked if that had happened between my request for additional service and the processing of my request and he indicated yes. He wasn't able to adequitely answer what the $3/month was for and referred me to the Additional Services department.

I called that phone number, got some running around and more insufficent answers and eventually got someone in Sales who explained that a redirect costs additional bandwidth for which there needed to be an additional charge to "deter" people from over using this service. I still wasn’t convinced but he was, at least, able to provide me alternative courses of action. One was to move my domain registry to iPower, whereupon the domain pointer redirect would be free. Second was to contact my registrar in that perhaps they could manage the redirect. In either case, he said that he would refund all of my money and cancel the redirect if I chose. He also made much of iPower’s high reputation and that it was not in their interest to jerk customers around over $10.

I contacted Network Solutions and was able to set up the forwarding for a $12/year charge.

I called iPower again to take the sales guy up on his offer to cancel the redirect and refund all of my money and was told that it was not possible. I asked for a supervisor and told that she was off the floor, apparently going over to the Sales department
to chide the sales guy for having offered me a refund.

When I finally got ahold of the manager, I was unable to convince her to agree to the terms that Sales had. Her manager was out of town. That person's manager, the CEO, was out of town. This struck me as a typical attempt to stifle the discussion so I confirmed names and the business address.

I've sent a letter to the company CEO. When someone tells me a service will cost me $10, I expect that it will cost $10. When someone tells me I will be refunded for a service who’s cost I was misled about then I expect to receive that refund. When a website says, "We make sure you’re satisfied, or your money back", I expect
that they will at the very least make an effort to resolve my problem.

Return of the Ping

The .ORG domain that I have been struggling so hard to lay claim to aggain is now mine. I almost immediately contacted iPower to purchase some web space and shortly thereafter applied the DNS settings at Network Solutions. Out science ficton organization web site is back on the air.

The Dam Breaks

I had an important e-mail waiting for me when I got home. This was from SnapNames.com, the apparent registrar above Bulk Register. It had the words "PENDING TRANSFER" which I assume means that my sci-fi group's domain will soon be transferred.

Time Warp

I just received an e-mail from Bulk Register:

BulkRegister received notification on 2005-06-15 7:52 PM ET that you have requested a transfer to another domain name registrar.

The curious thing is that I downloaded this email at 5:50 PM ET.

Is this some sort of time travel thing, are their clocks wrong or are they lying about what time zone they happen to be in?

Ghost Towns

This link was mentioned on the Geocaching.com forums:

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

It is a photo log of a Ukrainian woman’s motorcycling travels through the "Dead Zone" that surrounds the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. As I saw photo after photo of abandoned cities, poisoned and uninhabitable for the next half a millennium, I felt a terrible sorrow. The idiocy of the Soviet regime that imposed such a shroud of secrecy that people living in sight of the disaster had no idea about what was going on. By the time they were evacuated, it was already far too late. Hundreds of thousands died.

Block lifted. Again. Maybe.

I received an e-mail from Jeff at Bulk Register saying that the block was lifted. I’m at home now so tomorrow when I get to work I’ll fax the Change of Registrar request to Network Solutions again.

Never in a Million Years.

I hadn’t gotten a response from Bulk Register yet so I first tried to contact them through the on-line chat. The question was simple enough: the guy I had spoken to had told me that he was going to ask his manager and technicians to lift the second block (that was not TransferGuard). I was simply asking if that had been done. The person I got today said that such a thing didn’t exist and that the account was expired.

I knew that. I said that I had to submit to MongoHosting’s extortion to have ownership of the domain transferred to me but that they didn’t actually do that. She said that the domain had been transferred and I countered that my name was one the account but I was completely powerless to do anything with it. It was like being sold a car but never being given the keys. Without the ability to change things, I don’t really own it. She said that my ONLY option was to pay them $20 to be placed on some sort of hold list. I responded that I had already been ripped off by MongoHosting and Bulk Register wasn’t going to get a dime. She also said that there was no record of my second transfer request. I said that I had an e-mail from Network Solutions saying that the request had been rejected by Bulk Register so there should be some sort of record as to why and when that occurred.

I had been told that a block was going to be lifted and that this would resolve my issue. If that was not the case then someone either didn’t know what they were talking about or someone was lying. In either case, that answer was not acceptable. She transferred me to Jeff, the guy I spoke to last week.

He said that he hadn’t received a response from his manager or the
technicians and that he was going to send the e-mail again. I asked again for his assurance that once this block was lifted there would be nothing preventing the transfer of the domain. He said yes, there would be no reason for the transfer not to go through.

Echoes of the Past

Yesterday’s hiking debacle affected me so significantly that I decided to call off of work. Sure, I was sore but it was my emotional state that kept me home.

I lived with my Grandfather for the last 13 years of his life. I watched his decline from an independent, capable and active senior citizen to an angry, bitter, enfeebled old man. One of the things I saw during that transformation was an inability to change his lifestyle when his capabilities changed. And in that I saw a direct parallel with D***’s behavior.

When one gets older, the body looses fat and the skin thins out. This change allows body heat to escape more easily, which is why old people often complain about being cold and, in the case of my Grandfather, can wear long sleeve shirts and not sweat even in the hottest weather. Because they don’t sweat, they don’t think they need to drink as much water. Also, older people do not process the water they drink as well as they used to, leading to more urination. These two things, not sweating and more urination, lead them to think that they don’t need to drink as much water. This is not true. Seniors are at an even higher risk of dehydration because of both the physical changes and the changes in their behavior brought on by a misinterpretation of those changes.

My grandfather did this all the time and it was a challenge getting him to drink enough water to keep him from getting dehydrated. The biggest roadblock was his own stubbornness in that he didn’t want to spend so much time in the bathroom.

D*** was doing exactly the same thing on this hike. He didn’t have enough water and paid the price. And what’s worse was that J*** was being an enabler by saying “He does this all the time.” I learned out that D*** also has circulatory problems and diabeties. Eventually, D***’s luck is going to run out and he’s going be in serious or even life-threatening trouble. And half a dozen miles back in the woods, it’s not going to be an easy rescue.

And here I was, having made a number of mistakes that could have been the difference between life and death had it come to that. I was angry with myself for not being prepared. I was angry and D*** for putting us in that situation. I was angry that I hiked back up the mountain for nothing. I was angry that, when it was all over, D*** still had no concept that he had put himself at risk. I was frightened that my lack of due diligence could have contributed to someone’s death. I was emotional because I was seeing echoes of my Grandfather’s self-destructive behavior and was powerless to do

A Walk in the Woods

I went hiking along the Whitetail Trail today with other members of the Sierra Club. The plan was to start at North Gate of the Quebec Run Wild Area and travel north to Lick Hollow. There were plans for a stop at Pine Knob and D***, the hike leader and senior citizen, had mentioned the possibility of a side trip to White Rocks, making the total for the day around 13 or 14 miles.

I had purchased a new pair of FRS radios and had thrown them into my
trail-end bag along with a clean shirt and a 32oz Nalgene bottle of extra water. I asked if we wanted to bring the radios along but no one else was interested. I was to learn later that this was a mistake. We started on the trail at 10am and it was 80 degrees with almost 100% humidity. I thought maybe my 3-liter Camelbak might not be enough for the day but also thought the 32oz Nalgene bottle might be more weight than I wanted to carry. I left it behind. Another mistake.

The trail was in many places almost completely obscured by overgrown ferns but the blue blazes kept us on the trail. Mid-June is the time for the Mountain Laurel to bloom and there were explosions of white and pink flowers all along the trail. At a point we needed to decide whether to go down to White Rocks or not. The D*** clearly wanted to go. My first thought was to stay on the trail because I was using my GPSr to map the trail for posting to LocalHikes.com but I thought it was selfish of me to vote to stay to the trail for only that reason. Instead, I said that I didn’t care one way or the other so the vote was to go to White Rocks.

On the way down the old logging road we encountered a black bear on the trail. We watched him while he sat down and watched us. Eventually he grew bored with us and wandered off. It was the first time I had ever encountered a bear in the woods.

We arrived at White Rocks and D*** laid down for a rest. He pulled out an 8oz Diet Pepsi to rehydrate and I started to get the willies. His water was gone and I could tell that he wasn’t carrying a third of what I was carrying. And a diet soda is a bad, bad thing to drink under these conditions.

After a rest, we went around and climbed to the top of White Rocks where he took another lie down. I was getting genuinely concerned.

On the climb out of the hollow, I began to realize that D*** was starting to have trouble. He was very slow coming up the hill and when he stopped to take a break I asked him if he was drinking water. He said he had plenty.

I had a 3-litre Camelbak and I knew I was beginning to run low. Anyone who claimed to have plenty of water was not drinking enough. Thus, the conspiracy began. Myself and two others took the lead and as we climbed the hill we started planning on what we should do. Way back in Boy Scouts I had dealt with a similar situation of an extremely hot day and running out of water. The plan was for us to press on to Lick Hollow, stock up on water and then to return to re-supply the second group. This was when I was truly regretting not bringing the FRS radios.

We got to the next turn where D*** had wanted us to stop. The three of us debated and decided to press on after leaving a note. We didn’t get far before we heard them coming up behind. The others had gotten him to take off his hat, which was causing him to overheat, and someone else was carrying his pack. He was making much better time but still didn’t look well. We decided to wait at Redstone Creek for them to catch up.

J*** spoke with me. He told me that the D*** did this sort of thing all the time. But from experience, just because he does this all the time doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

At the Redstone Creek crossing it was decided that three of us would go on ahead and D*** and others would go to the end of Pine Knob road and wait for pickup at the gate. That would cut several miles off the hike. I ran out of water and the two women that were with me ran out a short time after that. It was two hours to finally get to Lick Run. We stocked up on water and drove the waiting vehicle to the gate.

Except that they weren’t there. We got really worried. They should have been there by now. Another mistake: we should have exchanged cell phone numbers (if the second group had cell phones) in lieu of not having my FRS radios. Two of us took the water and started hiking the road but she turned back because her ankle couldn’t take it. At the road that turns off to Pine Knob itself, I left one of the water bottles to make sure that they didn’t get past me and went to be sure they hadn’t make a sightseeing detour.

When I came back there was a bear sniffing around the water bottle I had left. He heard my approach and made his way into the woods. Night fell and I continued up the road. At 9:30 it was decided to call 911. It turns out that the D*** had gone to the other end of Pine Knob Rd. where it meets Skyline Dr., not the end that we were at much closer to Lick Hollow. That miscommunication was yet another terrible mistake in a day full of stupid and careless mistakes.

I had thought to bring my FRS radios but didn’t. I had thought of taking extra water but didn’t. I had thought of bringing my microfilter water bottle but didn’t. I thought about staying on the trail but didn’t.

Block Party

BulkRegister has done it yet again. Network Solutions has responded that Bulk Register has again denied my request to transfer my sci-fi club domain to myself. So, I call up Bulk Register and this time get someone named Jeff.

Jeff again gives me the story about contacting the host, MongoHosting and I again say that they refuse to respond to any of my e-mails and their WHOIS database is full of lies. I tell him that I have been at this for a month and have an authcode and the TransferGuard has been lifted, why is the transfer still being refused?

Each time he offers another platitude I cut him off saying that I've already jumped through that hoop. He uses the standard Help Desk response that "This is the first time I've dealt with this issue."

"I have been dealing with this issue for a month and have talked to at least three, now four different people at Bulk Register. Each one has told me something different and neglected to tell me some vital piece of information that has prevented me from obtaining posession of my own domain."

He said that he would send an email to his manager and the technician (Dip and Ming) to have the block lifted. I ask if this last action will finally allow me to have to domain transferred and he says yes.

I am going to hold him to this and if in a few days I don't get a positive response I am going be tracking down this Dip.

Return of the Squicky Vandals

When I returned to my car after work I discovered that some bastard had again greased my door handle. Now, instead of a one time incident a few months ago, I've got someone who will grease my door whenever the opportunity presents itself. I looked around and no one else seems to have been targeted. So what is it about a green Honda Accord with a bike rack that attracts such unwanted attention? What the hell is wrong with people?

It was raining today so I thought I would park at the Children's Hospital lot instead of in Squirrel Hill, cutting my ride in the rain in half. I suppose I'll just have to start ignoring the weather and riding the longer distance no matter what the weather. And the forcast calls for showers and scattered thunder showers all week.

The Power of Persistance.

I got a response today that my request to transfer my domain to myself was rejected by BilkRegister (oops, BulkRegister). So, I finally got ahold of someone online. First, they told me what I already knew, that the account was expired and that the Transferguard was still in place. I told them that I had spoken with a technician three days before and he said that he was putting in a work order to lift the lock and that it would take two days. That time had passed and it was still locked.

Domain Support: Are you a bulkregister member?

Geis: No I am not. And, before you say that I need to contact my reseller, I must reiterate that MongoHosting has refused to respond to any of my requests to release the lock for three weeks now.

Domain Support: Why dont you sign up with us. So that you can manage the domain yourself.

Geis: Because MongoHosting already blackmailed me into paying them for two years of hosting to get the domain transfered to me. All they did was change the name on the admin and did not release the transfer lock.

Domain Support: But if you sign up with us you can manage the domain totally.

Geis: If you release the transfer lock, like the technician I spoke to on Monday said he was doing, I can transfer the domain to another registrar and manage it there.

I could see where they were going with this as I had seen it in a number of previous e-mails and I will let the domain die rather then pay them a dime of blood money.

They tried to direct me to a phone number that didn't answer. They tried to refer me to MongoHosting who I again said had not been responding to me. I described my experience with MongoHosting in detail using words like extortion, blackmail, hostage and thievery. They tried to refer me to another number and I told them that wasn't getting through either. Then they told me to wait two days (I assunme for the lock to be lifted). I said I had already waited three days. In fact, I had already waited three weeks and have gotten nothing but the run-around.

All told, this conversation went on for an hour and a half with several long pauses as I'm sure the technician consulted with her manager. I did not let them go for too long with each pause, asking if there was a direct number I should be calling to actually talk to someone directly who could resolve this issue. I wasn't going to go away.

Finally, the word came back: "The lock is realeased"

I immediately re-faxed my transfer request to Network Solutions.

A temporary solution.

The backup domain I’ve purchased is set up. I’ve contacted my personal hosting service to add that domain to the DNS resolution so that people going to that URL will end up at my website. My website has been changed so that users will read that this is a temporary situation and that they can click on one of several links to get to a streamlined version of the website. Now, I have to disseminate the new domain address to all the search engines so we can minimize the damage.

Ten kinds of wrong.

Japan and China have been in a war of words recently over perceptions of the Second World War. It involves Japanese textbooks that do not admit atrocities committed in China. It involves war memorials that honor all of Japan’s war dead, including war criminals. Mostly I think it involves posturing and saber rattling by China to counter Japans influence in the region both politically and economically.

Well, a posting to a newsgroup has tried to defuse the situation. The posting was a photograph of a pouting 11-year old girl saying "Please stop these anti-Japanese hijinks. If you don't, I won't like you anymore."

It’s a clever personal appeal. Well, actually it’s somewhat contrived because the girl, model Saaya Irie, didn’t actually say what she’s quoted as saying. Even so, suddenly, the discussion groups went from China-bashing and Japan-bashing to conversations about how cute this girl is. But, what made it really work and what makes this so wrong is that this particular 11-year old girl wears an F-cup. Yea, the little child is completely stacked.



I recently saw an anime called Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan (which roughly translates and “Beat-to-death Angel Dokuro-chan). A time traveling angel lives with a middle-school boy and regularly knocks the top of his head off with a big spiked bat. That’s pretty messed up but what really makes it wrong is the reason. It seems that the buy is destined to discover the secret to immortality. The side effect however is that girls will not mature beyond age 10 and the angel has been sent back in time to murder him and prevent this pedophile’s paradise.

And if the school girl fetish wasn’t disturbing enough, I found a copy of a Japanese print that is the precursor to the tentacle porn genre. It’s titled "Octopi and the Maiden" by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1814) and portrays a woman being molested by an octopus.

I’m sure it is a cultural egotism and our nation’s puritanical roots that have me believing that the Japanese are messed up beyond all reason. Evidence shows that these disturbing behaviors occur in all cultures and have probably always been going on. In fact, evidence shows that even animals engage in what would be considered deviant behavior so maybe these sorts of things are really deviant at all. What we consider "normal" is merely an arbitrary central point in a broad spectrum of behaviors. That central point moves back and forth from time to time but the full spectrum remains.

This is not to excuse pedophiles for their criminal behavior but perhaps we need to clearly understand the foundations of what’s going on. It is normal behavior for males to seek out the best females. In nature, the best females are typically young and healthy. In early humans, these females would be "claimed" as soon as they became reproductively viable. Perhaps, even earlier to guarantee that the alpha male had first dibs. Puberty in modern humans begins at around age 8 or 9.

As society has gotten more complex, so too has the time necessary to
develop the ability to make decisions in that society increased. For a primitive human girl concerned with subsistence survival on the African savanna and might not expect to live past the age of 30, hitching up with a male at the age of 8 would be an easy and wholly appropriate decision. But to a modern girl in elementary school who is a decade away from entering the workforce and could expect to live into her 80’s, it’s far too early to be making those decisions for the rest of her life. And it’s always too early for an older male to be making that decision for her.

Does it sound like I’m defending these guys? It shouldn’t. Pedophiles are some of the worst kind of human filth I can think of. But it’s not because they are sexually attracted to young girls because we are all genetically programmed for some level of that. It’s because they prey on their youth and inexperience for their own selfish desires in violation of all the rules of modern society.

End Run.

One of the first things I did today is purchase another domain at Network Solutions as a backup for the one that’s expired through MongoHosting and BulkRegister. It’s not going to help too much as our our sci-fi organization flyers and publications have the old .ORG domain but if I can get the DNS entries changed and the new information out to the search engines we won’t be completely down.

The second thing I tried was contacting MongoHosting by telephone. As I mentioned before, the WHOIS information for Robert Dunbar of MongoHosting and Silvercities is incorrect. In one place it’s an outright lie. In another it’s merely disconnected. I tried calling directory assistance and searched on a few things and the one entry I found turned out not to be the person I was looking for.

Next, I called Network Solutions to see if there was anything they could do. Indeed, there was. Since my name is the Administrator of the domain, it should be an easy thing to transfer to myself. They looked at the entry and said that even though it was expired, the domain wasn’t locked (BulkRegister said it was) and they should be able to do the transfer. It couldn’t be done on-line, however. I needed to sign forms, provide proof of identity and fax the documents. It could take ten days, however.

One of the things on the form was something called an Authcode. This is apparently required for transfers of .ORG domains. I called BulkRegister directly and was able to get the Authcode from them. They also said that the domain WAS locked and that they would enter the work order to have that listed. Interesting, because in all their e-mails of the past two weeks they were saying that only MongoHosting could lift the lock. The discrepancies between what they say via e-mail and what they say when cornered on the phone are all the more reason to get the hell out of there.

Off the air.

I noticed that the website I had hosted at MongoHosting was off the air today. I’ve been trying for two weeks to get in touch with MongoHosting and they have not responded to any of my e-mails. Bastard. And BulkRegister hasn’t been helpful either.

Unfortunately, there isn't much I'll be able to do until Monday.

The rest of the story.

When the systems started having problems yesterday, the Help Desk got a call from a support person who said he was going to do something to try to resolve it. Because it was a production issue, he was told we would have to open a high severity tracking ticket. He said, "No, I'll take care of it."

Then it really went bad.

Whatever he did brought the whole system crashing down.

ID10T indeed.

We all fall down.

Because I'm still training, I don't get my lunch break until 2pm. It makes for a real short afternoon and isn't too bad except that it messes up my feeding schedule. I'm generally eating only one meal a day.

Anyway, on this particular day, shortly after coming back from my lunch, things went south. The Bank experienced a problem with the teller system causing users to go off-line. Our call volume went through the roof and stayed that way. At one point, we received a pop-up message from the Function Desk saying that the system "Should be back up in 10 to 15 minutes". Of course, that didn't affect the call volume.

As that deadline came and went without resolution, we received another message from the Function Desk: "If you get a branch on the line and they ask you how long it will take the system to come back up..... DO NOT TELL THEM 10-15 MINUTES..... YOU'RE NOT THE SUPPORT GROUP.... STOP IT IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE USERS ARE CALLING BACK STATING THAT THEY WERE TOLD 10-15 MINUTES."

But, wait. Didn't you just tell us that it should be up in 10 to 15 minutes? Don't you give us this information so that we can pass it on to the users who are clambering for just this kind of information? This problem came at the end of the day and the tellers needed to balance their drawers. They needed to make a decision as to whether they should stay after closing time 10 or 15 minutes to get the systems back up and balance things or just assume that it wasn't going to work at all and go to their backup procedures.

Now, that having been said, I rarely believe these ETA messages anyway. Usually they are based on the mistaken belief that a simple reboot of the servers will resolve the issue. In my experience, that is seldom the case. Whenever I give out these ETAs I do so with the qualifier that support says that it SHOULD be up in X-amount of time. I also usually say that if it's not they the user's are just going to need to continue with the specific interim procedures I've just given them.

Ugh. In any case, I took over 80 calls for the day, half of them in the last hour.

Two Minute Warning

So, the HR Rep come up to me at work and says:

"Did I tell you that you're training a new analyst tomorrow?"

"No. You didn't."

"You're training a new analyst tomorrow."

"Ah."

If this were a sit-com, that comment would have been followed by a cue from the laugh track. Unfortunately, there was no punchline and her comment was followed by a simple stare from me.

"Is that OK?"

"Whether it's OK or not is irrelevant. At this point I don't have any choice in the matter."