March 11th 2005: First input of the year. Not that I haven't had a lot of things happen to the computers on the network and some others that exist in other places. In the last couple of days, I have had problems with explorer.exe and could find no answer in Microsoft's Support pages. I tried defragging and this showed some odd files. So, I ran chkdsk, as it is called, and discovered some errors. Now things are back to normal. Funny that the drives are giving grief, but then I remembered that I have had to forcibly reboot hanged programmes lately.

What one can do with minimum resources: I have a volunteer job that has a room in the UNA-C offices locally. We share with Unifem, and they had an old IBM 300PL PIII 500 lying on its side. 'Want that?' I asked. I was told that it was unreliable. So, they would discover if it could be discarded. Eventually, it was. I carried it home in two trips, because they included a free, good quality 17"monitor. Started it up to discover it had a 6GB drive running Windows 98. No wonder it wouldn't work: FAT16, indeed. It had three 64MB DIMMS so I thought it would take Win2K Server. And it has, with almost rock like solidity on NTFS. It's now the fastest machine on my network. Not that it does anything except act as a test bed for learning PHP, Apache and MySQL of one particular variety. Another variety of the same software suite exists on an adjacent machine. One has to turn off IIS on the servers if one wants to learn the proper form for the Apache framework. So, when the fit takes me, I can practice what I slowly learn.

Among other things is that I have been helping out a friend on a new site (http://rpmmusicweekly.ca). Fun and games for this non-profit enterprise. Helping others with their computers, too. Some for pocket change. The thing is, if one runs MS operating systems, then one has the option to run their anti-spyware and anti-worm software. It works. And, as I keep telling people, keep up with the updates, and install them. It's for your own safety.

To return to the WKOW (UN What kind of World) volunteer job. That old PI 233MHz box would only work after I had, like the PIII above, removed Win98 and installed Win2KPro SP4 on a 6GB hard disk that I donated. Again, NTFS used. After a while someone, and I don't know who, screwed up the OS and/or the hard disk so that the machine was inoperable. So, I removed the hard disk, took it home, and ran SpinRite (Gibson Research) on it for a day or more until it was renovated. It now works as if new, even if the machine is grinding along. As usual, the processor fan needs renewing. I just hope the promise of a refurbished, later and improved machine will be used to replace this dinosaur.

April 21st 2005: Expunged my cell of AT PI boxes lately. Then, in a fit of wastefulness, bought a second-hand Compaq ProLiant 800 Server. This has five SCSI drives, three in a dynamic RAID 5 allocation. Two of the SCSI drives were in the old machine previously named Gloucester on my network. There is also 576MB of ECC RAM, and two 600MHz PIII processors. I had inserted a winmodem, but this took too many resources, for some unknown reason. It worked at first and then stalled forever on downloading the latest version of Acrobat. And, anyway, I should never have wasted my money on one. Subsequently, I found USB drivers for my old US Robotics 56k Fax Modem, and they work. (Mind you, having the modem incorrectly identified on itself did not help.) This enables me to use the modem on any machine with a USB port, and, specifically, for the ProLiant on its serial connection. However, just like the winmodem, I can connect, but cannot surf or ping or do anything past the gateway at the ISP. What needs to be done perhaps, is to find Winternals software that might work. They have some excellent diagnostic tools, but I would really like to buy there serious tools: money, money, money.

The gifs below are of the normally working machine, Cornwall, and of the non-working machine, Gloucester (the ProLiant). Another machine, Rutland, has an old US Robotics Sportster installed, in the same configuration as Cornwall. Again, that has given no grief when accessing the web through its modem, and it has two NICs, just like the others.
I have installed Win2k Server SP4 on Cornwall, with AD working as a GC. The ProLiant is an Advanced Server, with AD and is the PDC. Note that I am still not gainfully employed, and the consequent lack of high speed connectivity is highly frustrating. Not that I haven't helped many people out with their own computer problems, but this one really bugs me, since I have spent hours trying to fix whatever may be at fault.
Click each image to view:
This is both ipconfig and print route from the good machine, Cornwall:
This is Gloucester's ipconfig: and print route: .
Frankly, I don't see anything significantly different. Do you? Except that I have noticed a difference in the routing tables. I put the problem on Mark Minasi's Forum, specifically in the IP Routing section under Default Gateway, etc heading. I wonder how long it will be before it's fixed.

On another note, I have a Promise Technology Ultra 100 Tx 2. This I installed on Cornwall because a PII can't take drives larger than 31GB. However, I removed it immediately because although I followed the instructions implicitly, the box wouldn't start up correctly. Not only that, the drives were inaccessible to the system. Uninstalling, replacing the drives how they were, gave me not a problem on a restart: drives were as I had had them set up originally.

Yet more: two of my three Trinitron-tubed Dell 21" monitors have gasped their last. I acquired a Compaq P110 as replacement for one of them. Fairly good, but a little faded. I am told that the Dell monitors often end up like this, because of cheap power units. Pathetic, really, especially since the ProLiant, named Gloucester, is using my original TVM 15" monitor. That object is two decades old, almost.

Now, having been to the Minasi site and been advised that there were too many default gateways, I removed what seemed proper, and also disabled the Internet NIC on Gloucester. There is still no improvement. Can connect, cannot surf. These are the details:
Gloucester ipconfig and ping on the left, print route to the right
Now, I had indeed tried this previously: disabling the NIC, and that had done no good then and it hasn't now. So, whatever the problem is, it is not too many default gateways, since Cornwall, the machine on which I am typing these words on the page on this site (ie we are connected), works without worrying what gateways or ports are open. Well, it seems to be like that, hein?

And these two more gifs, which show that, when I re-enabled the Internet NIC on Gloucester, Cornwall was unreachable. Then, after I had pinged Gloucester from Cornwall through the ethernet network, the 10.10.10.xx private stuff, Gloucester could, in return, ping Cornwall back but only over the DHCP connection: Something wicked this way comes, especially because I am now receiving messages about my Internet NICs having an unplugged cable every five minutes or so. What? What? What? That must be the previously rearranged setup on the NetGear RT 314 (to do with default gateways). Must redo that and see if it changes anything on Gloucester. Cured the disconnections, but basic problem remains.

April 22nd 2005: Well, just past midnight. Changed the sound card, no better. Changed the COM port, no better. Uninstalled AD and then DNS, no change. Ran SP4, no change. Connected as easily as before, downloads one page, stalls thereafter, always. So, what allows the modem to work, because I can see it sending packets, but it's not receiving any. Bloody strange, given that the other box, same modem, works without a problem. Having two processors a problem? I notice that the lights for the RAID array are on when the modem is connected. Is that significant? At this stage it could be my ancestors calling from the ether. Or, the fact that I recently ran afoul of my estranged wife, and our ill-begotten child. Well, any credulous fool can prognosticate unwisely.

This problem is really strange. Identical set up on each computer for the modem. One works, and pings and tracerts easily managed. On the other, the modem is flashing, the connection is good, and yet cannot ping past the gateway on the ISP end, or reach either of the stated DNS servers. TCP/IP is correct on Gloucester, because local pinging works. Releasing the DHCP NIC enables pinging over the private network. Renewing affects tracert and pinging, so it's something to do with the set up on Gloucester, but what it is escapes me.

Note that removing the DHCP NIC, or disabling it, or switching the NICs, does NOT cure the problem. Gloucester is fine on the private network, using TCP/IP, but is stuck at the ISP gateway, seemingly forever.

April 23rd 2005: The packet rate for the modem when checking status is diametrically opposite between the two machines. On the working box, the receiving rate far exceeds transmission. On Gloucester, the slow, slow, slow receiving box, the rate is clearly opposite. What is holding the receiving back? I can't determine the problem with Network Monitor, since that itself drops frames. TCP/IP frame size or other technicality is the source of the problem? Perhaps.

April 27th 2005: Out damned spot, and other phrases. Gloucester has not been able to download anything but one page. Routing and Remote Access shows that the connection is unknown, is non-operational and doesn't allow TCP connections: as if I didn't know that. Here are two gifs of the dial-up status and the appropriate RRAS visuals:
 
It seems as if TCP/IP is wrong for this connection, well of course, but how is it so? Basically, it's the connects that are failing, and the inability to ping past the gateway is why. But, what is the cause? Nothing I have done can cure this. The NICs are working, especially now that the "Web" Netelligent has been given a fixed address.

May 2nd 2005: Given up for the moment on trying to gain internet access for Gloucester. Have, on the other hand, played around with Active Directory, since it is still in mixed mode, with the introduction of an old PI, an IBM 350 Personal Computer, that has 128MB of SIMMs. It, when I re-installed Win98SE, because it couldn't take Win2kPro, could see the network, but the machines on the network couldn't see it. This was finally corrected with both the AD client installation, and a rename of the machine. Because it had been a Win2k box for a short time, AD had had a NetBios problem with the naming/OS combination. Renaming the machine, and deleting the account from AD Users and Computers eventually fixed the problem. I have an old USB 3Com NIC, that only works with Win98, so that will go on the DHCP end of things, attached to the Nexland Pro400 internet router, that I picked up for CA$10.

June 18th 2005: It has been an odd week. I had gone to NetNation's site to check on what my friend George has a plan for at http://rpmmusicweekly.ca and, just because I could, I checked what is now offered for my own pair, hosted by them in Vancouver. What I discovered led me to approach NetNation to have changes made. This site should be, according to my calculations, some 40% cheaper and double in MB, if I were to pay the charges for their current offering for ProWin, which is what my plan is called.

Equally, it seemed that my other site, Power Linux, had been changed by so much that I wouldn't need it at this time, and it would be better to have their Pro Linux offering. This would still be 800MB cf 500MB and 40% of the current monthly cost.

Both sites would have other associated improvements.

Unfortunately, nothing runs smoothly, does it? Firstly, the changes to http://mattoid.com were such that my main email was deleted. That was eventually cured when I learnt about the different email programme requirements. But then, and don't forget this company primarily exists to host web sites, I couldn't open mine. Nothing I tried worked. I discovered, by going to the updated management pages, that FrontPage server extensions were apparently not installed. I was eventually told that they were broken. Another snafu was that the subwebs disappeared. I suddenly realised that they had been changed to folders and it took some time to replace the main one that I needed.

Now, my opinion is this: if it is a Windows server, and it was, previously running under Windows 2000, and I had had the server extensions installed by them several years ago, then it should have been an automatic decision to verify everything was normal after the upgrade. This had not apparently been done, and certain parts of the old options are unfinished for the new version at this time.

What it means is that I have had to download my entire site, and there is something strange going on that is causing very slow publishing from the new Windows Server 2003 machine that my site is now hosted on. Luckily, FP 2002 has the ability to restart if one cancels the publishing at any time. Date stamps and such-like details. So far I have probably downloaded about 35% of my site. Other things that I have done, like download 9.1MB of software from the Microsoft Update site only took a short time, even on my 45kps connection.

And now to talk about http://mattoid.ca: the billing people have been kind enough to downgrade my plan. But, although the cost has been improved, it's now far cheaper, the site itself is smaller and the management system is still the old one. I had thought, etc., as my emails to NetNation have indicated (and see below), that I would be given what their advertisements tell one to expect.

What I have just proved to myself, by saving this page, and then beginning the FP publishing to this computer, is that some files always have to be saved again. Well, it asks about that, and then it begins to download those pages one has newly created or edited. When that has been done, it continues with the needed "corrections" to my site. At one stage yesterday, FP stalled when it told me that it couldn't publish because the file was altered by me!! Well, what it said was that my username and password (which is what allows me to log on to this network) was the owner of the file, and therefore it couldn't continue. The download immediately terminated. It necessitated a reboot to fix this botheration.

Another thing is the error produced by publishing from the new system, on their Windows 2003 server. Every time I do that I receive this error, and I don't know why, because I have checked and it should not happen:

Now to compare: I connected, through their Live Chat software, to SoftCom, Toronto, who host http://mattoid.net, and discovered that I could change/upgrade my plan immediately, through their/my management page. I did, and increased my site size from 150MB to 1.5GB for the same price. Not only that, but my emails did not change (admittedly stayed on the existing mail programme), and I have other new software options there, new things to play with. The upgrade took effect immediately, which I proved by logging out and back in.

And yet I am still waiting to hear from NetNation about the problems with .ca and .com. One is astonished, is not one!

Here are the emails that I sent yesterday evening to NetNation, to support and to billing:
First one:

Second one:

Late Saturday evening, early Sunday, and so far no response: NetNation professes 24/7 support. Yet Hark! on Sunday morning, 19th., I received an email apology from Support which included a request to contact Sales, which I have done (including referencing this page).

Below are two paragraphs that are shown on the NetNation Products and Services page. At times I have received excellent service, but the "improvements" indicated below that have been incorporated into my .com site make me wonder what the advertised boasts are based upon:

Shared Hosting
All shared hosting plans now come with Unlimited Bandwidth*, and include our 24x7 award-winning live technical support, free web builder, a sophisticated web-based control panel, and the CleanMail anti-virus and anti SPAM system. Find out why 300,000 customers host with us.

E-mail Services
Do you need more email accounts with your own domain name? No problem. NetNation’s E-mail Plans give you the extra accounts you need to send and receive email from your own domain.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Raphael's Fornarina: this lady is someone that he is now thought to have secretly married. The Pope would not have been amused, as the story relates.

June 22nd., 2005: Late last night I uploaded http://mattoid.ca from my computer to a temporary URL related to the upgrade of my ProLinux hosting service. This morning I uploaded the subwebs related to that site. The reason is that NetNation has allowed me to join my two domains on the same, new management package, and they are very similar now to each other. Both have 800MB space allotments, and the same mail software and so forth. Isn't that nice. Obvious difference of OS, but that's by choice.

Finally, assuming the upgrade completes smoothly and everything goes well with the necessary changes in Outlook messaging (and at least I have had the experience of the new system with http://mattoid.com) then the two free months that I have received is a nice bonus. Squeaky wheel, I suppose.

I spoke this morning on the phone to Support, and told them that I had uploaded .ca to the temporary URL, and that they can now transfer my site to the new server. At 17:38 EST this had not been done. On the other side, I find that there is some latency at this end, to the Cyberus boxes, when I tracert to either site I host with NetNation. This might be part of the problem, given that opening and uploading a few files just now to .com took a long time. I do hope that this problem disappears soon. Perhaps is a word I would rather not use.

June 24th., 2005: Today, the upgrade of .ca starts, and my emails have been corrected, at both ends. So, given that the .com downloads eventually ended after the total of around two weeks of wait, wait and wait. Time to cost out a faster connection, which I do think is possible, now that these two domains hosted by NetNation have been made much cheaper to rent.

June 28th., 2005: Still no go. Here is a page showing recent emails, showing the history with this http://mattoid.ca problem. I can receive emails from the new email setup, obviously nothing to do with what, one wonders? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

June 29th., 2005: Today are the final and 3rd place games for the FIFA Confederations Cup. So, I'm watching the games as I do this. First, the 21"Compaq P110 monitor I bought recently has died. So, I moved down the ADi 17" from another machine, and that's because it will run at 1600x1200. Done that and then in compensation, http://mattoid.ca opened in FrontPage this morning. So, I created a page and updated its link, and decided to publish. Fat chance, because I received this error message:

Click on it to read it. So, will have to hunt Microsoft to see if it's recognised, or is it a result of the broken extensions snafu? And, therefore? Well, the cure was the second option on this page: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;892747.

Well, now, I was able to publish mattoid.ca and it took only a short time, relative to what had happened with the first download of mattoid.com subsequent to the recent NetNation changes. Clearly, the corruption of the files that purportedly caused the error was not at this end, because publishing always worked prior to the changes. The failure of the extensions was at NetNation. But now, with luck, all of this should be a thing of the past, at least until my requirements change again. What a thought!

So, a feeling of relief. Mattoid.com on Windows seems to have a different set of files to download/update each time it is published. And, the log files sometimes indicate that they have failed to complete, says FP2002, whatever that means, and sometimes not, when it stays quiet. Except that, generally, changes that I have made to files are shown on the NetNation site and in my home computer folder view. There is a fundamental difference between the two sites hosted by NetNation, which I shall have to take care to educate myself about: Windows v Linux.

June 30th., 2005: Not perfect yet: I deleted the web services folder files that mentioned mattoid.com. That did not prevent this error message from occurring:


This is a file with today's date, and should have been copied without a problem? Of course, having to find out what errors mean is not always easy. Gloucester still unable to connect to the internet. The second-hand Compaq P110 monitor failing on restart, and I will have to find two monitors now to fill the void. At least the ADi works, although the image fades after a while, although not by much. Usable, in any case, and at 1600x1200 the print is certainly small but visible to me.

July 6th., 2005: Well, things are getting better for the two sites. Had a good chat with Support and cleared up matters about file and folder structure differences with mattoid.com. Today, have deleted folders on the published (down to my computer) folder, because they were not deleted automatically by the FP2002 programme. When opening, through NetNation Account Manager, the web tool FTP, I discovered that I could not delete any files/folders outside the www folder. Strange, and NetNation did that for me. It seems that everything should work properly, and I still don't have to use www in front of the usual URLs for either of my domains hosted at NetNation. Here, at NetNation on the Windows 2003 server, is seen the folder structure shown by the FTP client:

Clearly there are, other than administrative folders, no _underscored folders outside the www folder shown. And, their equivalents have also been deleted from the home computer drive. The folders shown in the gif above are not revealed by FP2002 when the site is opened. This is presumably part of the upgrading done by NetNation: that was confirmed in an email I received from NetNation (having told them I couldn't delete files outside www (above)).

July 20th., 2005: Things have been better with the sites, except that I have not been able to open a subweb which is the test bed for RPM Music Weekly: this is a gif of the FP2002 error which I always receive, even if NetNation tell me that they can open it without a problem:

NetNation state that this is a 'lock' file and shouldn't cause a problem. Well, it does, and what the hell are file permissions when at both ends of the internet the relevant authorisations must have been correctly set up?

Here is what was posted on mattoid.ca on a page that I could edit, until today, July 22nd., when I could paste this here, which shows that at last the .com site can be edited/altered:

Web Problems: July 21st., 2005: FrontPage 2002 problems: Could not, recently, open http://mattoid.com/RPM_MusicWeekly, a subweb, because of a service lock error. NetNation were advised and have told me that it was being looked at.
Today, could not open http://mattoid.com the main domain, although was accessible through the Internet. That was after I received the same error in FP2002 for the subweb.
This is the error message, the details follow:

What I have also discovered is that the server extensions are broken for mattoid.com since the hit counter on http://mattoid.com/entrance.htm is not working.

Now, the strangest thing: I have FP2002 open on my computer, with the local copy of a web. I then went to recent files, and thought I should try to open the file listed below. It did, but in the local web. Normally, the actual website would open. When I immediately tried to open mattoid.com, it again failed with the error shown above. What the hell is going on?

I am completely fed up with the series of problems that have been going on, and have mainly been listed on this page and the link shown below. Rats, rats, rats. It is time to think seriously of following up my threats to move my sites to another hosting company.

If growth shown by NetNation has affected their ability to control changes, and otherwise implement them correctly, then what steps are being done to effect a remedy? After all, I asked that names should be given in emails to me by the Support staff. This is not done and I wonder why. Do the management team have records of what was done and by whom?

The usual problems/news page is found here:  http://mattoid.com/data/Life/TimeLine/time_line_2005.htm

July 22nd., 2003: This is becoming serious, and is a sign that the support system at NetNation is in disarray. Why, two days after reporting this, can I not open my main site? The error shown in the gifs above continually appears. Yesterday, and again last night, and again this morning.

If this is what is happening with my site, how many others have the same problems. This inefficiency, the errors, and the two weeks that it took to download the site after the upgrade are signs that support staff is not being trained properly, or is having problems that were not expected with upgrades and other changes. This is happening only with MS 2003 Server machines, because my other upgrade, http://mattoid.ca at first had problems, but has settled down, as this page shows, since it is available for me to edit on this site. Downloading is fine with only a couple of issues relating to saving of themes and other MS documents.

Again, I can open the TimeLine page given above in this FP2002 web (mattoid.ca) that is open for editing on my machine at my home. All the illustrations are shown that are on the page. I cannot save it, of course.

Here is the error and the line I had entered and tried to save:

The July 22nd., 2005 line is what I entered, and the FP error is shown, which allies with the ones shown above.

End of posting of latest information and an indication that things have improved. The subweb can be opened, too, which was the beginning of the last bunch of snafus.
The last thing is that publishing to my computer has not, repeat not, required the slow, totally frustrating download of the whole site as had to be done previously.

August 6th., 2005: One wonders why both NetNation and SoftCom (mattoid.net) never inform their customers when drastic improvements, nearly always associated with much reduced costs, arrive.

It would seem to me that this is tantamount to gouging. I have been traversing the web determining comparative costs for web hosting. Lots of companies seemingly have cheaper options. What is not clear, immediately, is whether they have efficiency, good equipment and customer support, and appropriate software for anyone's needs for the given prices.

That is why I will not make a quick decision on moving my sites. I have not been happy with the responses to my emails, and the last, which elicited a phone call to me, did not result in any answer referring to my request for cost reductions. Do they think that the squeaky wheel has been oiled? Not just yet.

August 9th., 2005: Apropos the gouging comment above, I have been thinking about demanding a refund. Would NetNation ever have informed me that things were cheaper? Perhaps discover a legal opinion?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

August 20th., 2005: Now to relax somewhat. Have moved over both mattoid.com and mattoid.ca to SoftCom, or MyHosting, or however they wish themselves to be named. Easy enough, and much cheaper, and with a lot more space, including three 500MB free Linux, based on Debian, subwebs to play with. That will take time to research, but the options are nice and include MySQL, PHP, Apache, etc.

August 23rd., 2005: Mostly uploaded my old stuff; noting that the pages do not look exactly like they used to because FP2002 won't include how you had your pages when it uploads to a new site. Whatever, that will slowly, slowly be corrected. Now:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I had an email from a Convergys staff member about a week or so ago, and now that I have stopped laughing, I'll show you what he said. This is from someone who has not yet determined what their lawyer asked me to remove, simply a page that had staff information. I had forgotten about that, and the lawyer, somewhere in Ottawa (although I cannot find the old email (I do remember the details) to find his name and company, except that it may have been a telephone call), had told me that that was all that they were concerned about. What price free speech? The number of people who have left Ottawa's Convergys company would fill the country's military requirement. The number of people who have told me that Convergys is a poor company to work for is significant. So, here cometh the email:

      Paul, I am writing to you as a follow-up from prior communications from our legal council regarding the inappropriate use of my name on your personal website <mattoid.com>. It was my belief that such references were eliminated a few years back, however it appears that is not the case.
Either you failed to ensure it was removed, hidden, or otherwise unavailable, or have reactivated it, and it now appears at the following address... http://www.mattoid.com/data/Odds/Detritus.htm
Rather than have you receive communications from our lawyers once again, or the legal actioning of this matter, I am politely asking that you remove this document from your website entirely so that such mistakes are eliminated in the future.
Thank you, and I look forward to your cooperation on this matter. Please confirm with me via email once this has occurred.
B***e W******t

Now then, it isn't there, hasn't been for a while, but it is around somewhere for those that would like to know. And, I refuse to contact someone who writes to me in such a familiar manner. I demand to be referred to as Sir, or Mister, or Esquire to clowns such as these. Not that I will bother communicating. Can't be bothered with incompetents. This person is purportedly a professional and is a member of OHRPA, not that they seem to have an adequate disciplinary committee.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To return to other things: my Compaq ProLiant 800 is working better now that I finally obtained two brackets from Retro Computers. These pieces were used to place the boot up SCSI drive up near its adapter. The two second hand SCSI drives I had held in reserve are now installed. One of the older drives, on the Adaptec 2940U/UW was removed and placed in another machine, Oxford. Its place was taken by a 10k drive, twice its size, running off one of the two Symbios 875XSJD built-in adapters. Another drive was added to the RAID5 array, so that I now have a 25% cushion and not 33% using three drives. Much better, and more storage.

As I mentioned, I took the spare SCSI drive and put it in Oxford. By playing with Partition Magic and other stuff, this Win2kPro box now has a better arrangement of drives and works somewhat smoother, too.

September 16th., 2005: On September 1st., I received this email:

  back to the top