A rouge mail server started using my server to send tons of spam messages. After checking a few obvious things (rouge scripts on my server sending spam, users sending the spam, etc), I immediately submitted a ticket to the data center, LiquidWeb. Within 30 seconds, D. Walters responded to the ticket:

Hey Raam,

I’m logging into your server right now to check things out. If you’re
still logged in, feel free to follow my work with this command:

screen -x dwalters

Regards,
D. Walters

I was already logged into the server, so I typed screen -x dwalters and sure enough, I instantly saw what he was doing on the server (I never knew this was possible with screen). I watched as he did various things, including installing a custom script that he wrote to help handle spam on server.

After a minute or two, he started typing something in the terminal that didn’t look like any command I had ever seen:

web:~ root# Hey Raam, are you there?

Since I was attached to the same terminal as him, I was able to type back. Over the next 20 minutes we spoke back and forth several times and exchanged geeky jokes. I asked him a couple of questions and he showed me example commands that I could run to glean useful information from the exim logs.

The name D. Walters was familiar to me, as he had responded to several of my LiquidWeb tickets in the past. He was familiar with my technical abilities and knew that I was Linux savvy, so he invited me to watch what he was doing. He trusted that I wouldn’t foolishly try typing in the terminal thereby interrupting what he was doing.

Dealing with someone familiar is important as it brings a feeling of trust to the situation. I compare the feeling to that of my auto mechanic; he lets me stay in the garage while he works on my truck. I stay out of the way and in return I get to stand under the truck, walk around the garage, and watch as he goes about his work. I simply wouldn’t be able to do that if I went to a Chevy dealership.

The response time at LiquidWeb is second to none. I can always get someone technically able on the phone, 24/7. That person is always within walking distance to my physical server on the rack. Add those things to my recent experience and I can honestly say, LiquidWeb dedicated server support rocks!

First of all, I love MAMP (Apache, MySQL, and PHP for Mac). I use it on a regular basis for web development and it has been extremely useful since I started working on a Mac platform about a year ago. After upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), I discovered MAMP would sometimes have problems starting and stopping. The MAMP widget and control panel would both say that Apache and MySQL are running, when in fact they were not.

When attempting to stop the services, MAMP would show the progress meter for a few seconds and then do nothing (the lights stayed green). This was quite annoying to say the least.

Apparently this is a known bug. But don’t fear, there is a solution! Click the Preferences button on the MAMP control panel, then click OK. MAMP will do some reinitializing and then all is well again. You’re also able to start/stop MAMP from the widget.

The latest version available is 1.7.1 and it was released on 08-13-2007, almost a full year ago! I suppose that’s what you can expect from a free version of their main product, MAMP Pro ($60), but slow bug fixes to their free version certainly wouldn’t make me feel good paying money for MAMP Pro.

As I left Mojave, CA (where I comfortably spent the night in Motel6 with free WiFi for $40) and drove along route 58, I found myself surrounded by windmills. California is one of the top states for renewable energy sources and it showed.

Right after the section of hills and windmills, I went through the small flat town of Tehachapi. The most stunning sight going through this town was a group of very tall pine trees sticking up out of the ground like giant blades of grass. As I left the flat plains, the landscape quickly became hilly again, but now with a twist: the landscape was littered with stunted trees.

Route 99 was mostly surrounded by fields, the occasional section of giant trees taller than anything else in view, and flowery bushes dividing the the highway itself. I stopped in Visalia, CA to get lunch at Panera Bread and use their free WiFi. The town, like many of the towns I went through, looked like it sprang up from out of the dry desert. People flocked to the new stores (Starbucks, Target, and Lowes are visible in the pictures) with their kids, many dressed in what looked like local farming clothes. It was easy to differentiate between long-time residents and the new people.

Going through Los Banos on route 152, huge winding canals carried water and looked like paved roads of their own. The San Luis Reservoir appeared out of no where and route 152 snaked around half the reservoir, climbing up the hills and opening up to amazing views. As I came down the other side of the hills, the landscape became thickly forested for a short while, no doubt fed by the water from the reservoir.

Entering the San Francisco area on route 101, the weather turned extremely cold; 55 °F! I had spent the past two days driving in 100+ °F weather and the change was a huge shock. The pine trees in Mountain View (considered part of Silicon Valley, home of Google, Microsoft, and others) made it clear that I was no longer in the desert. Many parts felt eerily similar to New England, except that everything was extremely clean and lots of people had hybrids and rode their bikes.

I then drove into San Francisco, a very hilly and foggy city. Much of the city smelled like burning firewood from the forest fires. I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and took the first scenic stop on the right. I’m sure the views would have been even more incredible if it wasn’t so cloudy.

There is a huge section of trails to the West, but I didn’t have enough time to explore further. I headed back to the airport, returned the rental, and waited for the plane (it was delayed one hour). The plane left at 12:30am. Being a flight to Boston, MA, they offered Dunkin Donuts coffee on the flight. I hoped to get some sleep on the way, however the flight was very turbulent. I’m talking 30+ minutes of non-stop turbulence. People were vomiting, and even I was starting to feel sick (I don’t get motion sickness very easily). The pilot tried going around it, but couldn’t. Never the less, we landed safely in Boston at 8:30am and I took public transportation back to Central Square for $1.70. It took 35 minutes and we passed a $3.50 toll along the way. It was amazing how small everything looked when I got back; the rivers, the roads, the buildings, everything looked smaller.

California was an amazing place of diversity and I really look forward to going back. I’d like to live there at some point in the future.

Total miles driven: ~420