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| Greg's diary |
| January 2023 |
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| Sunday, 1 January 2023 | Dereel | Images for 1 January 2023 |
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60 years!
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Topic: history, general, opinion | Link here |
It's been 60 years since I started keeping a regular diary! How time flies!
60 years? Only a month ago I noted that I had completed 30 years. Why the difference?
As I mentioned at the time, I stopped keeping the diary in 1 October 1970 and didn't start again until 1 September 2000—29 years, 11 months.
But wait, there's (much) more. In their Christmas message, Eric Allman and Kirk McKusick noted the sad passing of Glenn Groenewold's husband, Wes Muchmore. They gave Wes' diary to the GLBT historical society—all 4 carloads of it! Clearly he wrote on paper, and it seems that he started long before I did, but I'm still greatly impressed. If I had kept my diary on paper, even without interruptions it would probably pretty much only fill a single bookshelf. I'm humbled.
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Welcoming the New Year
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Topic: general | Link here |
New Year's Day today, and a Sunday at that. Time to sleep in and recover from last night's festivities.
Oh, wait, that was in a different millennium. We haven't made it to midnight for 12 years. On the other hand, today was forecast to be hot (37°). In fact, it hit 41°. A good idea to take the dogs for a walk earlier, while it was relatively mild (only 30°).
And we weren't the only ones. Graeme was mowing his lawn, Fiona unloading hay:
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Somehow the old clichés no longer apply.
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Sending the New Year's message
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
New Year, new New Year's message. I dread sending it: it gives me all sorts of problems with email.
Today I decided that it was no use fighting the big companies that have come into existence long after I started the LEMIS mail server nearly 31 years ago. Instead I'd relay it through Aussie Broadband's server. But:
Jan 1 09:01:08 eureka postfix/smtp[75154]: F3A442635E3: to=<foobar@wehi.edu.au>, relay=mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25]:25, conn_use=4, delay=0.62, delays=0.15/0.37/0.04/0.05, dsn=4.7.1, status=deferred (host mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25] said: 450 4.7.1 Error: too much mail from 121.200.11.253 (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
Jan 1 09:01:08 eureka postfix/smtp[74950]: 016DB264AAC: to=<beastie@FreeBSD.org>, relay=mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25]:25, conn_use=4, delay=0.62, delays=0.16/0.37/0.03/0.06, dsn=4.7.1, status=deferred (host mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25] said: 450 4.7.1 Error: too much mail from 121.200.11.253 (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
That wasn't a Christmas message, it was spam! It seems that Aussie stops accepting mail after 40 messages in a short period of time. I waited for a while for the mail queue to drain, but it stayed:
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F12272635E5 522 Sun Jan 1 09:01:07 grog@lemis.com
(delivery temporarily suspended: connect to mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25]:25: Connection refused)
bewaerbaby@gmail.com
F08C1264AE6 521 Sun Jan 1 09:01:08 grog@lemis.com
(delivery temporarily suspended: connect to mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25]:25: Connection refused)
estland@crisny.org
F2740264AE9 527 Sun Jan 1 09:01:08 grog@lemis.com
(delivery temporarily suspended: connect to mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25]:25: Connection refused)
lig@gmail.com
-- 101 Kbytes in 199 Requests.
OK, we can fix that. Change the mail relay back to lax.lemis.com, and off it went.
But that wasn't all. First I got this message:
grolsch@gmail.com> (expanded from <grolsch@elch.com>): host
gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.20.26] said: 550-5.7.26 This message does
not pass authentication checks (SPF and DKIM both 550-5.7.26 do not pass).
SPF check for [lemis.com] does not pass with ip: 550-5.7.26
[54.202.1.33].To best protect our users from spam, the message has
550-5.7.26 been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.26
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for more 550
5.7.26 information. a10-20020a170902900a00b00189b279b8d3si3009433plp.45 -
gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA command)
Of course! I need to add Aussie to my SPF list.
And then there were the messages I was expecting. Bigpond (a site currently with an invalid security certificate) says:
<go.cuy@bigpond.com>: host extmail.bigpond.com[203.36.137.234] said: 558
5.7.1 6392E81D059CEBB3 Message content rejected due to suspected spam.
IB703 (in reply to end of DATA command)
Suspected spam. People, if you don't know, in dubio pro reo. And what part of my message upsets their broken spam detector? All I wrote was:
Merry Christmas from Greg, Yvonne, and myriad animals. Our New Year's
letter is at http://www.lemis.com/grog/Albums/Christmas/2022.php
All the best for the New Year
Greg and Yvonne
And then there's Outlook.com, which is not even that clear:
<mry@area.com>: host area-com.mail.protection.outlook.com[104.47.56.138]
said: 550 5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. AS(201806281)
[CO1NAM11FT013.eop-nam11.prod.protection.outlook.com] (in reply to RCPT TO
command)
What does that mean? It could almost mean that the user no longer exists. But I'm guessing that it's either a broken spam filter or a decision that small, unknown servers are untrustworthy, even if they have been around since before Microsoft knew what email was.
So what do I do? Add the Aussie SPF records to mine, and try again to send the messages to these broken servers. If that doesn't work, I'll have to do it manually via Gmail.
What a pain these modern times are! Once email Just Worked.
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Dragonflies!
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Topic: animals, Stones Road house, general | Link here |
Round dusk we discovered hundreds of dragonflies flying around outside. It was too dark to get a photo, even too dark to see exactly what they were. Where did they come from? Maybe we'll find some left over tomorrow.
| Monday, 2 January 2023 | Dereel | Images for 2 January 2023 |
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Hay!
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Topic: general | Link here |
It's been a strange spring and summer, and Yvonne has been worrying continually about getting enough hay for the coming autumn and winter. Finally she succeeded and persuaded Fiona Drayton to sell her the rest of her hay (from directly across the road). Yvonne was looking for 200 bales, but they ended up with 220:
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That should keep her happy for a while.
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More deep freeze problems
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Somehow I forgot to enter some foodstuffs into the database, and this morning we spent some time looking for some sliced salmon. We found it, but not before Yvonne found this:
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Empty plastic freezer bags. I reuse them, and they stay in the freezer to avoid having to wash them. But these had fallen down behind the baskets and the wall, where they got heated to melting point and stuck together by the defrost mechanism:
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That's not the first time: six months ago I paid an eye-watering $280 to have somebody come and remove a bag that had clogged up the defrosting mechanism. Admittedly it had suffered more:
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So: don't do that, then. But how do I store them compactly and with easy access?
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Registering Perfectly Clear
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been using “Perfectly Clear“ for touching up photos fo some time now, but Yvonne doesn't. And she needs it. OK, install.
Oh. It's there. Load some photos for processing:
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Well, I have a license. It's just not associated with this (Microsoft) user on distress. How do I enter the license key? Buy? No, that just takes me to the user manual, after starting a non-default web browser (“Internet Explorer”). Looked through the menu at the top. Nothing obvious. “Get Support”? No, that gives me the user manual too.
Trials & ActivationSimply click Activate and copy and paste or carefully type in the license number you have been provided. When you click Activate again, we will validate the license and will unlock Perfectly Clear for continual use.
But where? The illustration looks nothing like what I have, and I can't find an “Activate” button anywhere.
Much more searching, and I finally found it: it's under “About”. I suppose that's par for
the course for modern software. But I wasn't done. Yes, it accepted the license key, but
it still only allowed 5 images. First I had to guess that I had to restart
the program app for it to work.
On the positive side, of course, it's good of the maker to allow people to use the software without a license, with only the restriction of 5 images per run. And maybe this pain is due to the fact that they have discontinued “Perfectly Clear” (2 days ago), and they're producing a new product, “Radiant Photo”, at a price that I can resist. It seems that right now they don't have any product for sale.
| Tuesday, 3 January 2023 | Dereel | Images for 3 January 2023 |
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Domain name renewal, the easy way
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
The domain name registration for lemis.com needs renewing. Straightforward, right?
Well, yes, in principle: go to GANDI, select lemis.com and renew.
But: I want to pay by debit card in Euros: PayPal charges too much for international
transactions. And I should check that I still have enough credit. OK, off to TransferWise to check.
What a pain this site is! Every time I go there I need to find my way around it again. But yes, I had enough € credit, just not enough USD. Transferred some money from my bank account, which of course arrived in AUD. How do I transfer it? After a lot of searching, I gave up. It's not that important: if I pay in USD and there's not enough credit, they'll choose another account (which? how do I know?) and transfer automatically under the same conditions. The only issue would be a different exchange rate, which could even be to my advantage.
OK, back to the domain name. Renewal only in AUD! Or at least, I didn't find a way to change it. OK, renew one year. Login, please. Did that. No, no, not the old, worn-out handle approach, try again with the new web interface.
OK, did that, And it changed its language to French! They wanted the card number and things, of course, also what kind: Visa, Mastercard and more. What do I know? It's a “virtual card” (in other words, just numbers). Visa maybe? Put that in and completed the transaction, slowly. And Wise had another “security” question for me: which of this list of recent transactions had I made? I didn't recognize any of them, so I clicked on “none of these”. Correct! Is that a good security question? Or does it reflect my relatively seldom use of the “card”?
Only later did I discover that it was MasterCard. What's the purpose of the question? The information is implicit in the card number.
Done! Renewed for another year. And I got a confirmatory email:
Vous recevez cet email car votre adresse a été renseignée pour recevoir les notifications qui concernent l'organisation groggyhimself chez Gandi.
So now I'm an organization all by myself!
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More pale lilies
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Last year I noticed a number of new “wild” lilies in many places outside the house:
My guess was that they're self-seeded. But they were everywhere this time last year, and sure enough, here they come again, many more:
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I can't make up my mind whether I like them or not, but Yvonne wants to use them for flower arrangements.
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KL Hokkien Mee approved
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Philip Paeps today. His partner Cat (further names to be established) comes from KL, and she found my recipe for KL Hokkien Mee. She approves, which is reassuring.
Of course, she has suggestions for improvement. The powdered ikan bilis must be there for the flavour, and so should much more garlic. I'll think about both suggestions.
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Piccola goes walkabout again
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Topic: animals | Link here |
It's amazing how much more healthy Piccola is looking after only two weeks of more natural diet. I had never thought that canned cat food could have had such a detrimental effect. Now she goes outside from time to time, and this afternoon she went out and didn't come back.
Problems? Well, the outside door to the laundry was open, and we have lots of new hay. Where there's hay, there are mice. Do they taste better than the food we're giving her? Hopefully she'll be back tomorrow morning.
| Wednesday, 4 January 2023 | Dereel | Images for 4 January 2023 |
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Piccola returns
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Topic: animals | Link here |
As expected, Piccola showed up again early this morning, apparently not as successful in her hunting as last time.
But she still doesn't overly like the food we're giving her. She left some of the (for human consumption) minced beef behind. And when Yvonne came home from shopping, I gave her some animal minced beef, fatter, and some minced chicken. The minced beef went away immediately, and she left the other two behind. OK, we can eat the remainder of the human mince that she hasn't touched yet. I wonder if this is balanced enough.
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What's this?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
While looking through the pantry this morning, I found this:
