Ready For A Good Laugh

[Jimi Thompson]

Ok, I have to paste this in time order so that the rest of you can play
along

it all started when I tried to transfer in a new domain name for - of all
people, my future father in law.  I am SO not screwing that up because I
don't want to hear it at every family gathering  Since my hunny bunny
who is somewhat technical has been managing it, he wanted me take it over
mainly so that we could host his email on the server I already run.  I
apologize in advance for the HTML email, but plain text just can't convey
some things - including the phishy appearance of the official emails that
come from these people.

Email #1 - Dated May 4

*
Aplus.Net
110 East Broward Boulevard, Suite 1650
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Phone: 1.877.275.8763
*

  *
Customer Information*

Name: Jimi Thompson


 Customer number:
 *
Amount due:*

   All amounts in US dollars.   *Service Description* *Term* *Total*  Domain
Registration -- Domain name: XXX -- Ongoing fee from 2011-05-04 to
2012-05-04 1 year $12.99
1 month $0.00  *Total Savings*   *$0.00*  *Total Due Now*   *$12.99*

Keep in mind that this is just the domain registration - NO hosting.  I do
my own hosting.  So I get this on May 5.

Congratulations on your decision to host with Aplus.net!
We're proud to have your business, and we're committed
to making your web hosting experience a success.

This email provides you with information on how to get started.
Please keep this message for future reference.

Thanks again for choosing Aplus.net!

Best regards,

Your Aplus.net Team


Now what I can't paste in here are the several rather heated telephone
conversations we had because they don't preserve the DNS servers when a
domain name is transferred to them.  Oh, no... YOU get a parking page until
the transfer is complete and you can manage the name servers. And I was
informed that the transfer would take at least 5 business days. And the user
interface doesn't allow you to set the DNS servers until after the transfer
is completed.With the weekend included, that was nearly a full week of down
time.  Completely unacceptable.Finally, they agreed to cancel the
transfer.  This missive arrives after a few hours of wrangling with their
tech support and DNS support people, who incidentally are also unable to set
the name servers until the transfer is complete.  And during all this, I am
required to recite both my user name and password.  Since one phone call
happened at Taco Bell during my lunch break, I'm understandably upset over
having to give sensitive credentials in order to attempt to obtain some
assistance.

Dear Jimi Thompson

We confirm that the following domain transfer has been cancelled.
Followed Immediately By This

Dear valued customer,

Your email has been received by the Aplus.net Support Team. One of our
technical support representatives will review and respond to your request.

Should you have an immediate question or concern, please call us at
877.275.8763, or try our chat service at www.aplus.net (select Technical
Support). Our reps are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you have questions related to the recent platform enhancements, please
visit http://faq.aplus.net to view answers to many frequently asked
questions.

Thank you for choosing Aplus.net. We appreciate your continued business.

Sincerely,
Aplus.net

And not long after that arrived, I got this:

Hello Jimi,

Thank you for contacting Aplus.net Technical Support!

We have forwarded your question on to our Customer Service Department team,
and they will be able to assist you with this issue. You will be hearing
back from them directly. If you prefer to contact Customer Service
Department directly, you can reach them at bill...@cs.aplus.net or by phone
877-275-8763 option 3+1 for United States and 858-410-6929 option 3+1
Worldwide.

For more information about the Aplus.net Upgrade or for answers to
Frequently Asked Questions please visit our Aplus.net FAQ at
http://faq.aplus.net.

To find out more about how to set up your email account visit
http://faq.aplus.net/email

To find out more about domain registration visit http://faq.aplus.net/domain

To find out more about how to connect to your site using FTP visit
http://faq.aplus.net

To find out more about new DNS settings visit http://faq.aplus.net/dns


Did You Know?

You can review or submit tickets to the Aplus.net Support Team through your
control panel. To review or submit a ticket simply take the following steps:

1. Log into your control panel.
2. Select My Account.
3. Click on the Tickets icon.

To assist us in serving you better, please do not delete any portion of the
Technical Support Specialist correspondences.

For your convenience we are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and
invite you to contact us if you have any additional concerns.

Regards,

Sylvia Y.
Technical Support Specialist

APLUS.NET http://aplus.net/, a Deluxe Company
Phone: 877.275.8763
Email: supp...@aplus.net
www.aplus.net


 I'm having

40 acres and a mule, was Lightly used IP addresses

[Jimi Thompson]

It was 40 acres and a mule - FYI


On 8/14/10 11:22 AM, John R. Levine jo...@iecc.com wrote:

 Convincingly said here on an ISP mailing list. But what about the
 folks who were denied address assignments by ARIN policies over the
 last 15 years? Denied them based on the fiction that ISPs didn't own
 IP addresses, that they were merely holding the addresses in trust for
 the public they serve. ...
 
 I dunno.  What was New York's responsibility in the 1790s to guys who
 didn't join the army because they had to stay home and take care of their
 widowed mother and six younger sisters?
 
 I wouldn't for a moment claim that IPv4 space was a way that was uniformly
 fair or wise or close to ideal.  But I don't think you're going to have
 much luck imposing fairness and wisdom retroactively on people who've
 already got the space.
 
 R's,
 John
 

Re: U.S. Plans Cyber Shield for Utilities, Companies

[Jimi Thompson]

ROFL 

You forgot E) Oversight by a committee and F) All of the above


On 7/7/10 9:14 PM, Jon Lewis jle...@lewis.org wrote:

 On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
 
 andrew.wallace wrote:
 Article:
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704545004575352983850463108.ht
 ml
 
 
 Why does it cost $100 million to install and configure OpenBSD on a
 bunch of old systems?
 
 A) it's being done for the government
 B) it's being done by a defense contractor
 C) regardless of what they install, somebody's got to manage it and be
 managed by multiple layers of managers
 D) other
 
 Pick three or more answers.
 
 --
   Jon Lewis   |  I route
   Senior Network Engineer |  therefore you are
   Atlantic Net|
 _ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_
 

RE: Contract negotiations advice?

[Jimi Thompson]

First thing is to be an educated consumer.  Know what going rates and sla s 
cost for a given service.  Also check the rep of the vendor.  I find that 
competitive bids work well.  Unless your a gov or something you dont have to 
take the lowest bid - take the best one.  

-Original Message-
From: Patrick Giagnocavo patr...@zill.net
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 10:32 AM
To: NANOG nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Contract negotiations advice?


I am dealing with a large telecom which purchased the small telecom I
signed a contract with.

Despite signing only 1 contract with them, the two racks, and the
bandwidth which feeds 1 rack (I connect privately to the second rack at
no charge) all have different termination dates.

How signing one contract resulted in 3 different end of term dates,
months apart, I can't quite figure out.

Can anyone point me to a mailing list or discussion forum containing
advice on dealing with such issues?  And the wider issue of negotiating
good rates with telecoms?

Cordially

Patrick Giagnocavo
patr...@zill.net

Re: Finding content in your job title

[Jimi Thompson]

On 3/31/10 8:14 PM, Jorge Amodio jmamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree with the misuse of the term Engineer in IT. I think it should only
 be used for the official protected title of civil engineer. Which I
 believe is a very respectable job. Sad but true, in IT too many people have
 some form of engineer in their job title but are almost totally clueless.
 
 [ X-Operational_Content = 0 ]
 
 Can't resist.
 
 When I read your message it brought back to my memory a nice guy that
 used to work for me eons ago, very clever, smart and hands-on, he had
 a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology.
 
 One day, we had some sort of outage and I found him in the computer
 room sitting in front of one of the racks with some routing gear, I
 still have that image in my memory he looked like he was doing some
 sort of group therapy with the routers, I couldn't resist and told him
 Hey Joey, Freud won't help you, get your butt off of the chair and
 follow the default procedure, power cycle the damn beast.
 
 There were also several folks with various degrees in Physics, experts
 on blowing up stuff.
 
 Again, IMHO, in this field a title may help or may provide others a
 relative idea where you fit in a large organization, or help the HR
 folks know how much to put on your paycheck or what kind of
 benefits/perks go associated with that level, but I still believe that
 substance is more important.
 
 Regards
 Jorge
 COOK
 Chief Old Operations Knucklehead
 

HAH!  My self chosen job title is Chief Pest, Annoyer of Developers, and
Destroyer of Misconceptions.  All in all, it's fairly accurate.  Among other
things I manage a team of developers, I often have to disabuse management of
some silly idea or other, and frequently have to play gladfly to enable
change.