and she’s got little feet just so
and she mutters to herself lost lullabies when she’s tired
and leans against me with laughter, slides across my back
and she makes up words for what i am and who i can be
and during the quiet times, she whispers instructions to her little friends
and puts them here and there, telling them their stories
and i believe in her, i believe in this place
and i believe in the magic of life
i believe in the magic of my child
Fake MX SPAM Trick
Fake MX records can work like greylisting and often much faster. It doesn’t require the installation of new software. What you do is add a fake highest and lowest MX record. Normail email will retry but spammers often don’t. This is especially true of virus infected windows zombie spam. Here’s an example MX configuration.
fake0.domain.com 10
realmx.domain.com 20
fake1.domain.com 30
The fake records can either be undefined or can point to dead IP addresses or to real IP addresses with port 25 closed. On the lowest numbered MX be sure it’s pointed to a closed port because if you just use a temporary error then Qmail, which is not RFC compatible, will never move up to the next MX record.
The reason for the fake lowest MX record is that where most email is delivered. Real servers will get the error and retry the middle MX and deliver the email with only a few seconds delay. Zombie spam will just move on to the next victim. No good email is lost but a huge amount of spam never makes it into the system at all. This not only reduces spam but also reduces system load as SA doesn’t have to process any of this.
Email is supposed to be sent to the lowest numbered MX record first with the higher MX records being backup servers. Spammers often with try the highest MX record first thinking that the backup servers have less spam filtering than the main email server. They try the highest MX record and then never come back. So I set my highest MX record to point to an IP address that always returns a temporary “Come Back Later” error.
A real email will retry and get through. But the spammer will just go away. This trick saves having to process about 25,000 messages a day on my server.
Optionally you can add a lot of fake MX records on the top side. Additional fake MX records on the lowest numbers end will cause some additional delay, but on the high end there’s no penalty. The reason for additional higher MX records is if spammers start trying random MX records then this give them more dead MX records to try.
fake0.domain.com 10
realmx.domain.com 20
fake1.domain.com 30
fake2.domain.com 40
fake3.domain.com 50
fake4.domain.com 60
fake5.domain.com 70
c’mon c’mon
anger and spittle, the chance of everything, of nights split open like pomegranates, of lightning fast and so easily slow, of streets yawning the horizon just before daybreak, of drink upon drink, of steering wheels and jumped corners.
and you were the friend in the need, in such demand and you made me feel cool, like we owned the night with each drink. and we broke things, we broke open ourselves and we laughed, heckled every demon back into it’s corner. we were princes and we were to be feared and loved and reviled and envied.
how i miss drinking with you, losing myself, losing the hours to the night. how i miss the possibility that this is all that was.
how to: vlc stream from pc to dreambox
On the PC:
1. Place a new bat-file (e.g. ‘makestream.bat’) on your desktop with the following (this is one single command):
“%ProgramFiles%\VideoLan\VLC\vlc” -vvv %1 :sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp2v,vb=3072,scale=1,acode c=mp2a,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ts,dst=”X:
sweet little one, you’ve turned three on me
birthday girl today you’ve rounded a corner where suddenly everything is different and while on the surface of things it all appears the same, some intangible mark has been crossed and you are all things suddenly to me. suddenly bigger, suddenly clearer, suddenly smarter, suddenly kinder.
at one point i saw you get into the toy car your grandfather bought you next to your cousin and you both looked at each other and without saying a word, something passed between you and you each nodded and smiled and looked ahead through an imaginary window.
everyday, suddenly, everything is different now.
are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
the looking glass, the seeing glass, i no longer see you, some distant memory of a thought of a fragment of a voice through a muffled wall in the dark just before sleep.
i remember the staircase, bounding down it, two at a time, i could not wait to get out. i belonged out there man, in the streets, in the day, the night, anywhere like some stray animal that did not want to find a home. roaming, hunting, looking for play, looking for more room to move around.
and when i remember it’s as if it’s through the eyes of someone else, i’ve possessed some body, neither boy nor man, something ageless or imagined, or perhaps a bit of both, all of both. an imagined past that still lives within me. oh, how squandered that little bit of freedom. how truly beautiful.
A little too soon
He placed the muzzle underneath his chin. It felt comfortable there, snug. A good fit, a good place to light up the night, turn the town red. A little too comfortable actually and frankly a little too soon. He had other business to look forward to. He put the gun down, put his head in his hands, staring at it some more.
How much longer would he need to think about it, muster the courage to go ahead and just do it? How much more would he have to tolerate their smugness? Dante did not mind people smarter than him, actually admired those who were. But they weren’t, they weren’t enough and it grated on his nerves. But soon, soon it would change and he would end it, their taunting and his suffering. All in one fell swoop, like a cannonball through a set of precisely placed pins.
And he knew where each one was and going to be. He’d get to them all and pay his final respects.
they’re a little slured, but they’re there
and she’s she there, everywhere, all the time. the words coming out of her mouth, half formed, not lazy exactly, just too new, struggling. she used to spend a lot of time pointing, one delicate finger shot out in a direction that should have been obvious.
most of the time i think i frustrate her because it should be all so suddenly obvious when it isn’t.
but now words and make believe. she’s into the fairy tale princesses now. i alternate being the Duke from Cinderella, the Huntsman from Snow White and, even Snow White herself. and she plays the witch, or the prince, or as expected Cinderella.
and lately, weddings. she’s married my wife at least seven times a day, and me another handful. she never officiates, but she’ll hold the rabbit figurine that acts as the priest. she likes setting up the stage and then watching, correcting us when we go wrong, but doesn’t mind if ad-lib the scene. as long as it works apparently.
so she’s either going to be a director of some sorts, or just one very bossy individual.
she says, “6 weeks 4 days…”
and i am ravaged, she clicks around the mouse, right there, toying with it, moving under the screen, along the sonogram’s image. she says it like she’s disappointed, fidgets with her glasses, like she expected more, like we were wasting her time.
“come back again 2 weeks from now…”, frowning, “you know, so we can track the development, before I send you for bloodwork.”
and then it all freezes, like some pause button’s been pressed and my wife sits there with a thin piece cheap of tissue covering her legs, looking at the doctor like she knows as well, how hopeless this all is.
then it starts up again, and the doctor presses another button, snaps off a tongue of a black and white image from the machine, turns to us, grins and sighs, “congratulations…”
and she says something about meeting her in her office after my wife gets dressed and I’m looking at the image of yet one more child that we are hoping for. I know I saw its heart beating this time. I know I saw it as I put my finger on where I believed it to be.
i seem to have written this
in order to forget it. but writing it brings it back. just the thought of it, here on the page, perhaps this too will not turn out well.
she’s reading books on pregnancy and only reads the appendices of failures, of statistical nightmares, the cold hard numbering of it all, cross referencing age with history with circumstance. she digs herself deeper.
our daughter knows nothing of this. she plays with dolls while we debate how informed should we really be.
i compare notes secretely, in the dead of night, i don’t want her to know, i don’t want to know-know (but i have to know, i have to be ready) and i pour over website over website. faqs, blogs, doctors, mid-wives, support groups. i’m getting sucked in: i’m asking her, everyday now, how are you feeling? any cramps? any bleeding? etc, etc.
but during the day i think nothing of it. i think nothing. i play legos with our daughter. we play out Cinderella and Snow White, exchanging roles, 2, 3 times a day. i tie her hair back as she eats, to keep it out of her food. we watch tv, we nap together. and in my dreams, with our little one on my chest, i find some rest, i find some hope, i dare to dream of another one, of some other one, maybe another one.
at least one more, please. at least one more.