Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Site Connectivity Issues (Resolved?)

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So, the issues affecting access to the site yesterday seem to be fixed (I think). I’m still not sure what happened. I have access to three networks for testing connectivity to the site: my home network (Verizon Avenue DSL), my work network (PaeTec Communications), and my wireless phone network (AT&T 3G). The site stopped working on my home network some time yesterday and wasn’t working again until this morning.

What’s strange is that the site, the whole time, worked just fine from the work network (I logged in through the VPN) and my phone. Most of the rest of the Internet was working from home, so it was something about the unique combination of Verizon Avenue DSL and my web site.

My first inclination was that there was a problem with the Verizon DNS servers routing my connections to the wrong place. But I confirmed that all my connections were hitting the correct IP address. Just to be extra sure, I switched my home network to point to several non-Verizon public DNS servers and had the same problem with each, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a DNS problem.

All I can figure is that, for some reason, Dotster (my hosting provider) was actively blocking Verizon Avenue DSL connections, or Verizon Avenue DSL was actively blocking connections to Dotster. I’m not sure why either would do that, and neither tech support office has responded to my inquiries. Weird.

Let me know if you have any idea what might have been going on, or if you had any problem accessing the site (and what ISP you use to connect to the Internet). Thanks!

Feeling Cheery? Have Some Meat Juice!

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Melissa and I had dinner last night at a nearby Thai restaurant that we enjoy, and had to have a laugh at the drink menu. In fact, I just submitted this photo to the ever-hilarious English Fail Blog. I can’t decide which part I find more humorous: the twice-misspelled word ‘cherry’ (printed as ‘cheery’) or—the part I didn’t even notice until reviewing the photo at home—the ‘Coconut & Meat Juice’.

Regardless, I can’t harp on them too much. Their fried rice was excellent, and a fair argument can be made that the quality of English in the menu is inversely proportional to the quality and legitimacy of the food in ‘foreign’ food restaurants.

Update 7l27l2008: My picture was posted on the English Fail Blog! Woohoo!

Windows Mobile Software Roll-Call

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Since last summer, I’ve had an AT&T 8525 wireless phone. This phone, also known as the HTC TyTN HERM100 (say that three-times-fast) originally shipped with Windows Mobile 5, but an official ROM update ups it to Windows Mobile 6 Professional. I selected the 8525 as the lesser of many smartphone evils. At the time, the iPhone (which had just come out) did not support third-party software, Blackberrys had no reliable synchronization software available for Mac, Palm OS was hopelessly antiquated, and no Symbian smartphones were available through AT&T. Windows Mobile was my best choice at the time.

Today, with the iPhone supporting third-party software and Missing Sync available for Blackberrys, I might have selected a different phone. But this is what I have, and will continue to use until I’m eligible for a cheap upgrade in December. I can say, however, that my experience with Windows Mobile has been much like my experince with Windows on the desktop: it’s capable and powerful, but hobbled by reliability and usability problems. With smartphones across the industry upping their game, I’m unlikely to subject myself to Microsoft’s operating system again come December. Preliminarily, I’m looking at the iPhone, Blackberrys, Symbian, or—assuming they’re available in time—Android-based phones.

I can’t recommend Windows Mobile at this time. My phone shifted all my scheduled appointments by an hour when the time changed in the spring, periodically forgets to repeat my repeating tasks, and has a number of other goofy problems along those lines (mostly with simple PIM functions that even free Motorola phones can handle). But through the addition of various third-party products, the phone can be made pretty usable and, occasionally, even awesome.

Read more . . .

Telling the Truth is Islam Bashing?

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Amil Imani, an Iranian-American who’s family fled Iran after the 1979 radical revolution, writes about the reality of Islam in the world today. It continues to amaze me how little attention the media and general populations of Europe and North America pay to the threat of radical Islam. In the face of widespread Islamic violence and rioting that flares up periodically in Europe, and continuing acts of terrorism, we still laud it as a ‘religion of peace’ with which we earnestly expect to coexist.

While there are plenty of fine, peaceful, upstanding people who call themselves Muslim, the sad reality is that the religion as-a-whole is—as Imani so eloquently puts it—not multiculturalist, but mono-culturalist. It accepts no culture as valid except for the culture of Islam. It seeks to “ . . . terrorize the infidels. So wound their bodies and incapacitate them because they oppose Allah and His Apostle” (Qur’an 8:12).

Sooner or later, the threat must be confronted. The war brewing—a vicious clash of ‘western’ and Islamic values—cannot be prevented through diplomacy, or blind acceptance, or mincing our words for fear of ‘offending’ people. We must speak the truth, and we must prepare ourselves for the inevitable.

Santa Arrested in Sweatshop Sting Operation

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Santa Claus has been arrested in Hong Kong, China following an international sting operation investigating the jolly elf for involvement in a sweatshop cartel. A high-ranking Interpol official speaking to Off on a Tangent under conditions of anonymity stated that Claus, known worldwide for his annual distribution of Christmas gifts, enlisted the network of sweatshops several years ago to augment the production capacity of his North Pole toy-making factory and meet increasing demand from the world’s children.

Santa’s team of elves have been faced with difficulty keeping pace with the world’s consumerism over the last two decades. Cost-cutting measures have led to periodic elf strikes and other labor difficulties, including a 2004 investigation of unexplained elf illness by the North Poll Occupational Safety & Health Agency (NPOSHA) that remains unresolved.

“When we got into this business, it was wooden horses, fireman helmets, and plastic swords,” said Claus in a 2006 interview with BBC World News following a two-month-long elf strike. “If we are to remain competitive in this world of iPods and X-Boxes, we are going to need to work longer and harder. We may also need to outsource some of our toy production to non-elf factories around the world.”

According to officials in Hong Kong, Santa outsourced as much as 50 percent of his 2007 and 2008 toy production to a network of sweatshops in the Chinese countryside. These sweatshops, known for dangerous working conditions and the illicit employment of child labor, have recently become the subject of various crackdowns from Chinese and international law enforcement agencies.

Claus was unavailable for comment.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.