Thursday, August 11, 2011

Masha's Birthday and Computer Mysteries

Today was Masha's 8th birthday. Tanya picked a bouquet of lilies and of asters (??), we picked up Lena and headed to Andrei and Tanya's for ice cream and cake.  We gave Masha money for school clothes.  She is "growing like a weed" and needs new uniforms; girls wear dark dresses with white blouses, boys wear dark suits.  She used to be such an annoying, picky eater, you wanted to smack her.  the last three times at our place she has inhaled a big plate of real food - including meat potatoes and vegetables.  Suddenly she is hungry.  Which is good.  She can still tire out her Babushka in one day but she is maturing into a young lady, slowly but surely.

Monday is Tanya's birthday.  I will write different things about her than I wrote about Masha.

Internet problems again.  My People.Net contract costs $35 per month for "unlimited" use or 27 GB per month which ever comes first. Tanya's is $25 for 10 GB which is more than she would ever use.  Except last month over 2 days, one of which she was not home, her computer burned up 16 GB of internet.  Which cost her $75 as it gets expensive if you go over quota.  We took her computer into the shop to see if it had a bot virus or whatever it is called. They didn't find anything.  The People.Net rep took all the details and will contact HQ to get them to trace the sources and destination of the high traffic. Something fishy going on.

People.Net is a Russian/Ukrainian ISP. 3g wireless. I have two email addresses, one with a Saskatchewan carrier and one with a consulting company with which I am "Associated".  A Saskatchewan company with which I do some business uses something called Barracuda to sort spam.  Barracuda uses something called IP reputation, rather than examining the contents of the message for key words.  Apparently People.Net is in their bad books as it refused both my email addresses starting last month.  The email message telling you that you were bounced gives a link to solve the problem.  Right.  You write  nice explanation to accompany your request but it is all machine read so the message is actually ignored.  They pumped out a machine email to me the first time, indicating that they would get back to me.  Right.  It also said that you could reply to the message.  Right.

Fortunately the company's IT people were able to white list my email so communication was restored.  No thanks to Barracuda, who apparently could care less whose emails are blocked - they claim 95% accuracy.  Right.

5 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry for these troubles you're having. I have a darn good Internet provider except for the fact that, when I do need to call them with a problem, no one ever knows much about Apple computers, so I've been on the phone for well over an hour during which the tech and I both were trying to figure out what was going on.

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  2. Happy birthday, Masha, and Tanya too.

    Computers. Internet Service Providers. E-mail. Isn't life exciting? Too exciting for your likes, eh, BF?

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  3. Even when you complain, you use big words and make it sound like a presentation. I just cuss.

    I've almost got Tanya's card to the point where I can take it to the post office.

    I'd email a photo of it, but it sounds like it would put you over your quota.

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  4. Snowbrush, People.Net give good internet service in that it works. Just too many spammers use it as well and may even have used Tanya's computer. Most software is pirated and likely comes with built in viruses; who knows. One more reason to use legal stuff ALL the time.
    RB, I don't need excitement. I am retired. Hah. Right now with more work than I can handle. Some days boring mundane would be nice.
    BM, if I don't use a few big words now and then, people will ask what I did with the money my mother gave me for schooling. Looking forward to the hand made card. At least the postal service is usually dependable. S.L.O.W. but we do get mail.

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  5. Happy birthday to Masha from Donna and me. Checked the Live Traffic Feed and today I'm from Elrose. Sometimes it's Outlook or Rosetown. Curious!

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