Archive for September, 2007

Running a web hosting service can be frustrating, especially where email service comes in. A web server with a bunch of shared virtual domains can mean hundreds of mail users passing email through the server throughout the day. On top of that, the server has to deal with 10s of thousands of spam messages per day. When I bother to look at the statistics about 80%-85% of the mail that hits the server is spam and the overall amount seems to grow weekly. Controlling spam takes a huge amount of resources from servers.

Some mail services have started taking extraordinary steps in an attempt to handle the spam issue. Apparently, one of them is Yahoo Mail. Unfortunately, for their users (anyone with one of those free yahoo.com accounts - I have one) their policies mean that email may be delivered only after long delays or sometimes, not at all.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what they are doing, and I only became aware it recently when a couple of my customers started complaining about lost or long delayed email going to yahoo.com through our mail server. I started looking at our mail queue and tracing what was happening to email addressed to people at yahoo.com.

Time and again certain messages going to certain addresses were getting delayed error responses from yahoo.com.  This has been going on for quite some time as I discovered at this forum thread. A casual Google search finds this is a widespread issue.

What’s really frustrating is that it seems totally capricious. Some yahoo.com messages get delivered immediately. Others get delayed. If I force a particular message that is stuck in our mail queue, it may get delivered, or it may get delayed. But sometimes if I do it a second time it will go through. What kind of a system is this? Repeated attempts to get through to Yahoo support have ended only in canned responses and no resolution.

If email continues to get delayed, eventually it will get deleted from server mail queues. So, unfortunately, yahoo.com mail users may not even know how much email they are missing.

As a result of this, I recommend no one rely on yahoo.com accounts for anything critical. Switch to gmail on hotmail or something else. Given this situation, not ISP or web host can guarantee delivery of yahoo.com email.

Technorati Tags: email, web hosting, yahoo

One of the more intriguing developments in the tech world has been the movement to get low cost, rugged laptops in the hands of children in the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, the head of MIT’s Media Lab has been leading this program. It’s been dubbed the $100 laptop, but now that it’s ready to go on sale in November the price appears to be closer to $150. But here’s the deal: If you buy one for yourself, you’ll also be buying one for a child. Starting November 12 you can pay $300 $400 and get one for yourself while paying for one to be given to a child. What’s more, this sweet little machine is a big step toward a green machine. Something folks over on the RTC List have talked about.

You can donate a laptop to a child now or wait until the 12th to ‘get one give one’ here.

Thanks to the HumLug Mailing List for a couple of these links (the computer runs on Linux).

At long last a local paper has started providing RSS feeds for its web site. The Times-Standard started offering a “Most Viewed” feed a few weeks ago. But as I wrote earlier, that’s not of much interest.  Now, they are offering a “Local News” and a “Sports” feed. Let’s hope the other local papers (at least the Eureka Reporter and North Coast Journal) follow suit.

What could be a better combination? This evening, starting at 5:30 there will be a benefit for the Humboldt County Library to get wirelss installed (first in the main county branch in Eureka) but eventually at all the branches. So go on over to Woodley Island and look for the big tent. There will be a live auction, ‘celebrity’ tap pullers and a band along with the oysters and ale.

Sounds like a lot of fu and for a worthy cause. Getting wireless around the county, one node at a time…

To continue my little odyssey in to the health care world: Generally, I am quite healthy. I’ve never had an operation, never even been in a hospital, am not on any medications and don’t have back, neck or joint pain usually. So, this pinched nerve, if that’s what it is has got me very disoriented. It’s hard to concentrate, and I have had to cancel a couple trips trying to work it out.

I finally did get to see my P.A. who gave me a bag full of drugs and told me not to take them if I had gastrointestinal side affects. Great. He also recommended physical therapy and said he would get a referral going right away and to call in if I hadn’t heard from the referral person in a day. The referral is important because that means my health insurance, such that it is, would cover some of the cost of th PT. This was over a week ago. And in spite of several calls to the referral desk I have not been able to speak to the actual referral person, I have not had my calls returned, and no referrals have been made.

In the meantime, I did get in to see a physical therapist. I’ve been twice, a different person each time, who each did different things, and recommended different exercises. The second one said I should go back to the chiropractor and get a manipulation to get my vertebrae re-aligned just before coming back for another session. So I have that scheduled for tomorrow. However, the chiropractor isn’t sure the adjustment is advixed and is concerned its a disk issue that could only be fully diagnosed with an MRI. But the P.A. said I didn’t need an MRI. OK, so who is right?

And since I haven’t had an official referral to PT from the medical office, I don’t know what if any of the cost of those sessions my health ‘insurance’ will cover.

So here’s the thing: It’s been 3 weeks. The pain is slowly getting better. I have no way of knowing what, between the ultrasound, traction, massage, exercises, ice, hot showers, a couple drinks in the evening, a massage from a neighbor’s mom, or just simply time is causing the pain to subside. And it seems like none of the experts I have seen really knows either. In spite of all the medical and technical advances, it seems a lot of this is still guess work. Try this. If it doesn’t work, try this other thing.

I know that the medical community often perfoms amazing feats. But I tend to think that this most often happens with people who have extreme needs and a very robust health plan. For someone who just has a pain in the neck, it seems they may just be pain in the neck. No one wants to throw a lot of resources at it because, in the end, unless it’s really serious, it will probably go away on its own. But neither are they willing to say, “Go home, put some ice on it, take some aspirin, don’t do jumping jacks for a while and it will go away.” That would have saved me a lot of money and time. Of course, the next time, if I ignore whatever it is, it will probably be a symptom of something dire. I may take my chances.

I have no answers here. Just some frustration. And so, I rant.

Update: As if on cue, Leo Sears has an essay in the Times-Standard about his wonderful experience with the health care system. Of course, he had a very serious medical issue and one would presume, since there was no mention of payment or insurance, excellent coverage. Blessing upon him.

When I was a child we had a family doctor. Doctor McGillis. He made HOUSE CALLS! But that was the idyllic 50s and 60s. He didn’t have the depth of knowledge or the advanced science or all the technical diagnostic machines that are available now. But between the maze of health insurance that acts as gatekeeper to the even more complex maze of health care practitioners, are we better cared for? It’s hard to say. Many people have a story about their encounters with health care. Some good. Some not so good.

Here’s my story:

I haven’t seen an actual doctor for at least 5 years. My last doctor quit general practice and I have not been able to get access to any records of tests that he ordered. In spite of making many phone calls to track him down, I have not even been allowed to talk to him. And no one at his former practice seems to have access to my medical records.

For the last 5 years I have been seeing a Physician’s Assistant. While he’s been associated with a doctor, I have never actually seen this doctor. The PA has now moved from one medical office to another (this new medical office happens to be where my previous doctor had practiced). I like this guy pretty well. So I called to get an appointment with him because of a pinched nerve in my neck/shoulder area. It had been killing me for a couple weeks and 5 sessions at a chiropractor hadn’t made much difference. Since this office no longer had a record of me as a patient, I was designated a new patient and new patients had to go on a waiting list for a month!

Fortunately, I was able to persuade the office to see if I could be squeezed in early and, to my relief, I was. So, I checked in to the office at my appointed time, actually arriving early to fill out a bunch of forms. Once I had filled them out I sat and waited for about 45 minutes before I was called in to an exam room. But while I waited I watched a couple of elderly ladies try get their even more elderly mother in to see a doctor. The mom was tiny, bent, thin as a rail, clearly weak and frail physically. She had fallen and was in pain. They had been waiting for over an hour. But her doctor was in surgery and couldn’t see her at all that day. Could they get the mom’s x-rays so they could go to the emergency room at St. Joe’s and see if they could see someone there because we live way out of town and having to come back tomorrow just won’t be possible? Yes, the aide said. We could probably arrange that.

Relieved, I was finally led to an exam room. The clutch of elderly ladies were placated for the moment while they waited some more for the x-rays to be delivered.

End Part 1 (yes, it’s just beginning).