October | 2003 | mashby

Month / October 2003

October 2, 2003

SpamPal Saved My Life

SPAM This year has been the worst year for SPAM. I have been under a deluge of SPAM this year like you wouldn’t believe. I’m talking hundreds of e-mail a day pouring into my in boxes to the point that using my e-mail was next to impossible. You may be saying to yourself, “Just delete them, that’s what I do”, and believe me I tried. But when I’m getting 500 a day it’s just too much to handle. Even if you’re just deleting them, you still have to scan the title and address to see if it’s someone you know. When the Sobig virus hit this summer, I got so many virus e-mails and so many false positive replies from servers that I threw up my hands and said uncle! 😐

From everything I heard and read, SpamAssassin is the best server-side solution out there. Although it may be great, I haven’t yet figured out all there is to install and configure it. I’m working on it, but I’m just not there yet and I needed something NOW. I tried a couple of programs, including Ella for Microsoft Outlook, but none of them worked that well and most needed training. What I really wanted was SpamAssassin for the desktop and lucky for me I found it.

October 1, 2003

I Want My MythTV!

MythTV Logo I watch too much TV as it is, but I have been wanting a Tivo for well over a year now. Calvin Parker, of Calivn’s Palm FAQ, turned me onto them, but I’ve simply never taken the plunge and bought one. I like to think it’s the $12.95 monthly service fees that have kept me from buying one, but in reality I think it’s the fear that I’ll never get up from the couch. 🙂

Now that I’ve dipped my toe in the Linux pond, I’m now considering putting together my own Linux box and rolling my own Tivo. Thanks to a Wired article on the subject, I’m considering attempting to install MythTV, which is an OpenSource project that allows you to setup your own digital video recorder. I read this article back in June, but it wasn’t until I saw the Hush Silent Mini-ITX PC that I started giving it some serious thought. There’s a plethora of Mini-ITX cases out there, with all sorts of options and bells and whistles. What appealed to me about the Hush is that is already pre-configured and it’s super quiet, which is perfect if you’re going to have it in your living room.