Archive for category computers
How to speak SMTP?
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet, Uncategorized on December 10, 2011
Sometimes when you’re having trouble sending email and none of your troubleshooting has worked so far, you need to connect to your outgoing email server and speak the language to it that your email program speaks when it sends an email:
To test outgoing SMTP email, you first need to “base64 encode” these two things:
#1 – your full email address
#2 – your email password
SMTP authentication uses base64 encoding.
Here’s one tool to do that at:
http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/tools/base64encode/
Go ahead and do that for both the full email address and the email password and save the output.
Then open up a terminal or a command prompt on your computer.
+++Below is what you will type from it.
Anywhere it has words in all CAPS you will replace that with your domain name for example.
And you will press the Enter key after each line
NOTE also — the lines or words below that are inside of brackets []‘s are just instructions; you do not type those. But you type everything else. +++++++++++
telnet mail.DOMAIN.COM 25
ehlo DOMAIN.COM
auth login
[paste in your email address encoded in base64. Below is an example]
ZW1pbHlAY29tbMNuaXR5Y2h1cmZoZ3JvdXAuY29t
[paste in your password encoded in base64. Below is an example]
YmBzZAJhbCd=
mail from: YOURADDRESS@DOMAIN.COM
rcpt to: OTHERADDRESS@DOMAIN2.COM
data
From: YOURADDRESS@DOMAIN.COM
To: OTHERADDRESS@DOMAIN2.COM
Subject: test of SMTP
this is a test message
. [type a single dot and then press enter]
quit
+++ end of telnet commands +++
P.S. some outgoing servers will have you use a different port number such as 587 or 26. Above we used port 25.
geeks|programmers — How to convert from/to epoch dates
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet, Mac on April 26, 2011
If you use a Unix system(BSD,Linux,etc.), sometimes you’ll have log files that don’t create the timestamp in regular format such as Apr. 25, 2011 1:10pm but instead it saves the date as the number of seconds since midnight of January 1, 1970 (the date chosen after the fact for the beginning of the Unix epoch).
How to convert from epoch seconds to regular date?
If you’re on any of the BSD systems (such as Mac OS X or FreeBSD), run “date -r SECONDS” from a Terminal:
$ date -r 1302972510
Sat Apr 16 10:48:30 MDT 2011
If you’re using Linux, run “date -d @SECONDS” from a terminal — here’s an example:
$ date -d @1302972510
Sat Apr 16 10:48:30 MDT 2011
Convert from regular date to seconds?
On Linux, here’s an example:
$ date -d “Apr 25, 2011 12:12:12″ +%s
1303755132
For the BSD’s/OS X, here’s an example:
$ date -j -f ‘%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S’ ’2011-04-25 12:12:12′ +%s
1303755132
(I’ve had to look this up enough times over the years that I thought i’d finally publish it! 
)
it’s pretty much my favorite animal ever…
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Mac on March 2, 2011
Time for a little comedy break — name the movie if you know where the idea’s coming from!
source: unknown
LOL!
Good tutorial for those new to the web!
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet on January 6, 2011
http://www.20thingsilearned.com/
awesomeness is all i can say!
Customers say the darndest things… :)
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet, Uncategorized on December 31, 2010
A coworker just showed me this post:
http://notalwaysright.com/when-open-source-meets-closed-minds/3305
So yeah, NotAlwaysRight.com — lol, i now have to add it to my list of websites for a good laugh — add it next to Engrish.com
forget GoToMyPC, check out Mikogo!
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet on December 24, 2010
Many are familiar with remote desktop viewers that cost money such as GoToMyPC or Team Viewer. But Mikogo is free, even for commercial use.
It rocks, check it out — http://www.mikogo.com/ — it works for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.
Yes, you can go peer-to-peer with something like TightVNC but who wants to walk a newbie through configuring their router to port forward TCP port 5900? That’s no fun so that’s when I use Mikogo.
I’ve used it for a few years now and am very, very pleased with it. Only drawback is that it can be slow for someone that is on a little slower connection like the first levels of DSL access.
Other than that, it seriously rocks. One file to download and run; and from a Mac I can control somebody’s Windows computer and vice versa. Very smooth!
Faster tech support?! Do your part 1st! :)
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet on October 30, 2010
Hi, i’ve been doing computer software | website technical consulting|training|tech support for over 13 years now and want to share a few tips.
When you call for help with your computer or with your website/email, here’s what you can do to make the experience smoother:
- Be ready — Login to your account(s) before calling! For example, if you’re having trouble with your website, then make sure that you are logged in to your hosting company’s control panel or dashboard before you call. The biggest time waster for me is frequently waiting 1 to 2 minutes or sometimes even more for a customer to search for the password that they wrote down and then lost. It’s rude to call and then make the tech support person wait (as well as other customers that are waiting in the call queue.) So be logged into your control panel or dashboard BEFORE you call — then your call is shorter AND the people waiting in line behind you will thank you! P.S. If you can’t find your password look for the “forgot password” link on their website. They always have one!
- Call the same day of the problem. If you’re getting an error message when you send email or on your website, then the tech support person needs to look at the logs for it. Most companies will archive their logs files after 24 hours. Searching through the current day’s log file(s) is much faster than having to go to the archives, then find the appropriate day, and then unzip the archive before you can search through it.
- Have the details ready — were there any error messages that you need to type down or write down first so you can email it? Sometimes it’s easier to have you email it to us instead of being read a really long error message.
- (stay tuned, this is a work in progress! let me know what you think, thanks!)
keep track of security!!!
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet on July 21, 2010
Besides running a good anti-virus and anti-spyware/malware program(s), it’s also good to keep up to date on the latest security vulnerabilities and recommended patches.
I highly recommend the vulnerabilities database at SecurityFocus — http://www.securityfocus.com/vulnerabilities
It’s become even more important to me lately as I’ve helped both clients and customers with hacks to their WordPress or Joomla sites.
I highly recommend BugTraq also — but either subscribe to the daily digest or you might want to archive it to a 3rd party email storage account such as Gmail — because it can easily be a hundred or more emails per day. BugTraq is the oldest security reports and discussion list on the net. Very cool!
-Roger
P.S. Many software packages have their own security announcements email list or RSS feed — you definitely need to subscribe if you’re using their software!!! For example, check out Joomla Security Announcements.
Broadweave vs. Comcast pricing
Posted by Roger Brown in computers, Internet on May 27, 2009
Here are my initial thoughts after comparing the ease of finding prices on Comcast.com vs. Broadweave.com:
| Comcast.com | Broadweave.com |
|---|---|
| ease of finding standard prices(prices before any discounts!): pretty darn frustrating — all they’ll tell me is what the promotional price is and not what it gets increased to after 6 months or 12 months!!! | ease of finding standard prices(prices before any discounts!): it takes 3 clicks to get to their Standard Offerings price list. These are their regular prices BEFORE discounts. No gimmicks! And they don’t require me to enter my personal information before showing me the prices like Comcast hassles me to do. |
| Internet only; up to 16 mbps download speed = $74.99 — NOTE, i couldn’t find this price on their website, i had to contact one of their employees to get it — it took me about 15 minutes waiting before i got through to someone that would give me a straight answer on it — they first wanted to tell me the promotional price. | Internet only; up to 15 mbps download speed = $44.99* |
Dedicated line from home to the “head-end”? NO, only partway, can you say “bogus!” when everybody in your neighborhood uses Comcast at the same time in the evenings!!  | *Dedicated line from home to the “head-end”? YES! This means that Broadweave’s 15 is definitely faster than Comcast’s 16! A very important distinction!
|
Check back later for more comparison/contrasts. Some of the contrasts are very striking. Fiber optics is the way to go!
Give me a call at 801-356-1032 if you have any questions.
NOTE: I am not a direct employee of Broadweave. I am one of their direct sales contractors. I am also a consumer advocate and have been involved in some local whistle blower situations that you
can search web/newspaper archives for. In other words, I don’t tolerate anything less than the full truth — I cut through the nonsense gimmicky kind of stuff that too many corporate sales people do and give you the bottom line up front. I can give you an estimate of the all little municipal, state, and federal taxes that get added to your bill too.
Feel free to ask me a question here too.
Thanks!
Roger Brown
UPDATE: Feb 5, 2010
I no longer work for Broadweave since the merger with Veracity but I still believe they are the best in town. Most of the people in my neighborhood (South Provost, Deer Haven) have Comcast and since it’s shared amongst the neighborhood then sometimes it really drags. My current landlord wants to stay with Comcast though because he gets a military discount that is pretty sweet. Can’t wait to move to a place that has Veracity Networks!
shopping for computer equipment?
Posted by Roger Brown in computers on May 25, 2009
Here are two of my very favorite sites for finding out prices and reviews when I’m shopping for a new computer or computer equipment/accessories:
#1 — PriceScan — awesome site! I’ve been using it since about 1997:
http://pricescan.com/computer-hardware-software-supplies.html
#2 — CNET Reviews — another awesome site:
http://reviews.cnet.com