Getting into the swing...

This first day (or half day, actually) without Drew was manageable. Weather moved in during the late afternoon, with thunder audible inside the store. At 5:55 pm, the lights went out and it was simply a good thing I had brought a flashlight to the store with me, the better to take a look under the store's safe for a set screw that had fallen out of the handle to the thing.

Fortunately, I'd already closed out the cash registers, so it was with a happy heart that I locked the front door 5 minutes early and scampered out the back, headed for home.

Once home, which had also been hit by the outage, I noted that my UPS really isn't (onegin was off) and then turned to the paintball gun and supplies that Drew had lent to me so I could get an idea of what powers his latest passion. Assembly was fairly simple: the paintballs go in the hopper in the top and the CO₂ bottle screws on under the rear grip.

Firing the device is intuitive and I was surprised at how loud the report was (I could hear it echo in the distance). On the other hand, I've seen Drew's bruises, so I have some small appreciation for how fast the balls travel out the barrel. I'm not at all sure this is my cup of tea; the physical exertion that goes along with this kind of entertainment is for people in much better shape than I.

The power outage lasted for about an hour and a half, and while I was scanning some local frequencies on my modded Alinco 2-m rig, I learned that "the word" (i.e., rumor) was that the outage extended at least as far south as Taos, which covers a fair piece of real estate. It got well and truly dark, and I even started to gather some wood for an old-fashioned campfire in our back yard (nothing combustible there unless I drag it over), but then I saw the lights go on to the east, and figured we'd have our power back soon, and went inside to await developments.

I should have roasted some marshmallows.

Completely independent of the power outage, suddenly the crm program on onegin started to throw errors (logged by procmail) and my inboxes (personal and work) started to soak up spam. I've mailed a note to the crm mailing list, which I hope actually gets posted to the list because even though I've asked to join the list, becoming a member is no a cakewalk. FWIW, my message read:

I installed crm114 the other day and got it working. Trained it. It's filtering like a champ.

Suddenly, today for no reason, crm stopped working. Here's what my procmail log looks like when things work:

procmail: Locking ".crm.lock"
procmail: Executing "/usr/bin/crm,-u,/home/alex/crm114,mailfilter.crm"
procmail: [xxx] Tue Mar 23 08:09:14 2004
procmail: Unlocking ".crm.lock"

Suddenly, I get this:

procmail: Locking ".crm.lock"
procmail: Executing "/usr/bin/crm,-u,/home/alex/crm114,mailfilter.crm"
procmail: [xxx] Tue Mar 23 08:19:24 2004
procmail: Program failure (-25) of "/usr/bin/crm"
procmail: Rescue of unfiltered data succeeded
procmail: Unlocking ".crm.lock"

I've found a reference on the Web that states one should have a procmail recipe along the lines of:

:0 e
{ EXITCODE=75 }

immediately following the recipe that invokes crm, but I'm still trying to figure out why this is a good idea (I'm thinking 75 is going to mean something to procmail?)

In any event, things get complicated by the fact that there was a power outage in the area about 9 hours later (and I found out my UPS... isn't).

What might be causing the failure? TIA.

(I'm open to suggestions from any kind reader here, as well.)

Talking about spam, a recent item on Slashdot notes that some enterprising cretins folks are coming up with ways to spam people via SMS messaging, so that they get offers for The Usual Crap™ on their cell phones. One might easily argue that this definitively and aggressively crosses the line, since it forces recipients to spend cell minutes to read these messages (or more likely, delete without reading), which is not going to be tolerated very well, especially by people whose minutes are limited.

On the other hand, all efforts so far to regulate faxes and "normal" spam don't seem to have made much headway. Indeed, the recent CANSPAM Act passed by that permanent criminal class called the US Congress seems to have greased the hinges of the proverbial floodgates. (I wish I'd been the first with that "permanent criminal class" crack, but I wasn't, see: S. Clemens, aka "Mark Twain.")

I would conservatively estimate that the junk faxes we've gotten at the store have cost a roll or two of fax film, or about $40, per year (not much, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, but a paraphrase of Everett Dirksen's famous remark about "real money" comes to mind, here)

Dinner tonight was... out of a can. Horrid. Tasteless. By candlelight and not enjoyable at all. We must do better tomorrow.

Time to get some rest.

Cheers...