New Blogger Look

I didn't really like my old look, so I changed it a bit. Hopefully this is easier to read and work with for me. My CSS were making it difficult to place HTML in my post. Also, in response to my brother's sly, off-handed complaint of not having perma-links, I've added them.

Microsoft Exchange Rant

Sometimes I just despise MS Exchange. While it can be a great business productivity tool, there are times that it causes more hassle than it's worth.

On Monday, my network admin informed me that the inetinfo.exe process of our Exchange server was eating up processor cycles. It was keeping our CPU processes usage in the 90-100% range. Now, inetinfo.exe is the Internet Information Server process. My network admin proceeded to look at IIS for the problem. However, Exchange sits on top of IIS and integrates with it. So I knew we were having an Exchange problem. We finally determined that our SMTP virtual server was the service causing the problem. We noticed a lot of stuff in the queues, so we cleared them out and things seemed fine.

On Tuesday, we begin to receive sporadic reports of emails to certain places bouncing back. Also, some email was coming in, but not everything that was expected. This sounds like a classic DNS problem. We fiddled around with DNS.

On Wed, no email was coming in. We could send internally and send to some places. We found that our SMTP port was "clogged." We had over 50,000 messages from outside domains sitting in our queue. This seemed weird because we are not an open relay. I had had a third party testing facility test us on Monday, because I thought that might be part of the problem and we had come back clean. The problem was, though, that we were allowing remote computers to connect, but not to send. Exchange, then, was getting bogged down trying to resend messages that it did not have permission to send. We would clear the queues, but they would almost instantly fill up again with these messages. Finally, we found out the proper steps to not allow for remote computers to connect at about 8:00 PM last night.

Things seem fine from home this morning. I am heading into work now to see if we finally really did fix the problems.

My Sincere Appreciation

Mr. President and Distinguished Members of Congress --

Long-term tax cuts without long-term spending cuts are not tax cuts. They are "tax deferrals."

Thanks...I look forward to paying your bill.


Sincerely,

Randall S. Bowman

Understanding Poverty in America

The Heritage Foundation released a paper, "Understanding Poverty in America" earlier this month that Paul Harvey featured in the noon edition of his broadcast today. This is a very important issue to understand in an Election year because Democrats often claim to be fighting for impoverished people. However, never do they define what they mean by the poor.

Here are a few facts from the Heritage Foundation's research to keep in mind when you hear people talk about government needing to help the poor:
1. The typical "poor" person owns a car, has air conditioning, has at least one color TV, a VCR or DVD, has cable or Satellite TV reception, and has a microwave.
2. Most poor children are "supernourished and grow up to be, on average one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy."
3. The report cites that in the typical poor family only 800 hours of work a year supports the family (that is 16 hours a week). If only one adult would work 40 hours a week (that is 2,000 hours a year), then 75% of the poor children would not be labeled as poor.

While these three points can be found in the first couple of pages of the article, I would recommend reading the entire report. Near the end of the report the writers discuss "root causes" of poverty which are "low levels of parental work and high levels of single parenthood." It makes one wonder how the government can fix either of these problems. Both of these sound like individual responsibility issues to me...but hey, what do I know? I'm just a citizen who worked hard and practiced abstinence until marriage and family planning thereafter. Obviously I was just lucky and neither of those required discipline or sacrifice.

Letter to Democratic National Committee

This unattributed piece is making the email rounds:

Dear DNC:

Thank you for giving the opportunity to speak my mind.

I lost my job this past year. When Clinton was president, I worked in a prosperous enterprise. But in the last year, we had to close our operations. We simply could not compete with foreign labor. This foreign labor worked for low pay under very bad conditions. They worked very long shifts, and many even died on the job. This competition could hardly be called "fair." I was forced out of the place where I had worked for 34 years. Not a single government program was there to help me. How can Bush call himself "compassionate?"

Far worse, I lost two of my sons in Bush's evil war in Iraq. They gave their lives for their country, and for what? So that Bush's oil buddies can get rich. My pain of losing my sons is indescribable. While it is trivial next to the loss of my sons, I regret to say that I also lost my home. I simply had nothing left. How can Bush call himself a Christian when he neglects people like me? I am a senior citizen with various medical problems. I'm not in a position where I can begin a new career. I was reduced to the point where I was basically homeless, all because of President Bush. Mr. Bush, I dare you to look me in the face and tell me you are a compassionate man! I dare you to look me in the face and tell me you are a Christian!

If I had any money left, I would donate it to the Democratic party. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000, I guarantee I would still have a job, a home, and most importantly, my dear sons!

Regards,
Saddam Hussein