Note the plural.

The fun started with the relocation of the Hunter Regalia II (which was here when we moved in) from the living room to the office.

As an aside, when we moved in, while the fan itself was in good shape, the paper shades and the phenolic shade retaining rings had seen much better days. Jeanie and I shopped around looking for replacement shades, but this particular fan uses a very unusual shade and we couldn't find a replacement that had the same mounting arrangement. The shades have a top washer style mount like you would normally see on the shade for a table lamp. Unfortunately, instead of the normal small hole that goes over the mounting screw and is secured by a finial, these shades use a large holed washer that goes over the threaded exterior of a candelabra bulb socket and is held in place by the phenolic shade retaining ring.

Since we couldn't find any replacements, after a fair amount of searching, we found the parts list for the fan on Hunter Fan's web site Support Center. We gave the nice folks at hunter a call to inquire as to how we would go about purchasing replacement shades. Imagine our surprise (and delight) when the the support specialist informed us that Hunter would be providing replacement shades free of charge!

I then installed our new Hunter St. Lucia in the living room. The fan has carved cherry leaf shaped blades. They make the fan very attractive, but made balancing the blades a bit challenging. Because of the relief of the carving, the blade balancing gizmo was too small to fit on the blades. I didn't want to force it on and damage the blade, so I used a plier to widen the portion that fits over the blade. Unfortunately, the margin of error between too tight and too lose was too small, and the gizmo went flying off a couple of times before I finally got the blades more of less balanced. One I got the blades balanced, I was a little concerned that the blades would cause the fan to perform poorly, but it works really well.

The last fan installation of the weekend was the installation of an Aged Bronze Baja Harbor Breeze fan with a 3 Light Aged Bronze Baja Light Kit. The fan and light kit are very pretty, but I am very disappointed in the amount of air that the fan moves. Jeanie really likes the look of the fan, and while she would prefer more airflow, feels that is enough to justify keeping the fan, so I guess we will.

I had had great hopes for finishing getting the office squared away and maybe even starting on the garage, but, I guess those projects will have to wait for another weekend.

For as low as 2.5 cents per minutes, OneSuite.com lets you call anywhere in the continental US at anytime! You can even save more on international calls! It's so easy, just sign up here: https://www.onesuite.com/023203119/suitetreat and we'll both get 20 minutes for FREE!

Yes, I know, shameless commercialism on my personal blog. Yeah, yeah. The bottom line is that it really is a good long distance service.

It is pre-paid, so you have control over your spending, and it has this really cool feature called ZIPDial which allows you to make calls from home (or any three numbers that you designate) without having to enter a PIN. Yes, you do still have to first dial an access number (either one of lots of local numbers, or a toll-free number if you live in the boonies like us) but, after a short time, that becomes second nature. Of course, you can also make calls from any phone, just like you would with a phone card.

They also have some really good international calling rates.

We don't make enough LD calls to justify one of the unlimited minutes / fixed monthly fee deals, and this sure beats paying standard LD rates.

Cowboy: "Hey, cool dog. Mind if I speak to him?"
Rancher: "This dog don't talk!"
Cowboy: "Hey dog, how's it going?"
Dog: "Doin alright"
Rancher: (Extreme look of shock)
Cowboy: "Is this your owner? (pointing at rancher)"
Dog: "Yep."
Cowboy: "How's he treat you?"
Dog: "Real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food, and takes me to the lake once a week to play."
Rancher: (Look of disbelief)
Cowboy: "Mind if I talk to your horse?"
Rancher: "Horses don't talk!"
Cowboy: "Hey horse, how's it going?"
Horse: "Cool"
Rancher: (An even wilder look of shock)
Cowboy: "Is this your owner?" (Pointing at rancher)
Horse: "Yep."
Cowboy: "How's he treat you?"
Horse: "Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly, brushes me down often, and keeps me in the barn to protect me from the elements."
Rancher: (Total look of amazement)
Cowboy: "Mind if I talk to your SHEEP?"
Rancher: (Stuttering, and hardly able to talk)...."Th-Th-Them sheep ain't nothing but liars!"

The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of this bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by constantly saying polite words, playing soft music, and anything he could think of to set a good example but nothing worked.

Finally, John got fed up and he yelled at the parrot. And, the bird yelled back. John shook the parrot, and the bird got angrier and ruder. Eventually, in a moment of desperation, John put the bird in the refrigerator freezer.

For a few minutes, John heard the bird squawk and kick and scream... then suddenly there was quiet. Not a peep for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt the bird, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arm and said, "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I am truly sorry, and I will do everything to correct my poor behavior."

John was astonished at the bird's change of attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, "May I ask what the chicken did?"

Her 9 year old son comes home unexpectedly, sees them and hides in the bedroom closet to watch. The woman's husband also comes home. She puts her lover in the closet, not realizing that the little boy is in there already.

The little boy says, "Dark in here."
The man says, "Yes, it is."
Boy -"I have a baseball."
Man - "That's nice."
Boy - "Want to buy it?"
Man - "No, thanks."
Boy - "My dad's outside."
Man -"OK, how much?"
Boy - "$250"

In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the lover are in the closet together.

Boy - "Dark in here."
Man - "Yes, it is."
Boy - "I have a baseball glove."
The lover remembering the last time, asks the boy, "How much?"
Boy - "$750"
Man - "Fine."

A few days later, the father says to the boy, "Grab your glove, let's go outside and have a game of catch."
The boy says, "I can't, I sold my baseball and my glove."
The father asks, "How much did you sell them for?"
Boy -"$1,000"

The father says, "That's terrible to overcharge your friends like that... that is way more than those two things cost. I'm going to take you to church and make you confess."

They go to the church and the father makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and he closes the door.

The boy says, "Dark in here."

The priest says, "Don't start that BS again...."

I used some horrible language this week and feel absolutely terrible about it.

When did you use this awful language? asks the elder.

Well, I was golfing and hit an incredible drive that looked like it was going to go over 280 yards, but it struck a phone line that is hanging over the fairway and fell straight down to the ground after going only about 100 yards.

Is that when you swore?

No, Mother, says the nun. After that, a squirrel ran out of the bushes and grabbed my ball in its mouth and began to run away.

Is that when you swore? asks the Mother Superior again.

Well, no. says the nun. You see, as the squirrel was running, an eagle came down out of the sky, grabbed the squirrel in his talons and began to fly away!

Is THAT when you swore? asks the amazed elder nun.

No, not yet. As the eagle carried the squirrel away in its claws, it flew near the green and the squirrel dropped my ball.

Did you swear THEN? asked Mother Superior, becoming impatient.

No, because the ball fell on a big rock, bounced over the sand trap, rolled onto the green, and stopped about six inches from the hole.

The two nuns were silent for a moment.

Then Mother Superior sighed and said, "You missed the friggin putt, didn't you?"

Took me a few days to even figure out that it wasn't working, but fortunately only took me about an hour to fix.

Long story short was that I had forgotten that I had to update my sendmail.cf to change the SMART_HOST from adelphia to bellsouth.

Of course, after I made the change, it still didn't work. When I checked the maillog on the server, I saw that I was receiving an error. Checking my mail on the server, I saw that I was getting the following error (note - user@domain.com is substituted for the actual email address which appeared in the message):

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----

(reason: 550 relaying mail to witsdom.com is not allowed)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx01.mail.bellsouth.net.:
>>> RCPT To:
<<< 550 relaying mail to witsdom.com is not allowed
550 5.1.1 ... User unknown

The solution turned out to be fairly simple. I had to change the following line in sendmail.mc and remake the sendmail.cf file with the command referenced at the top of the file.

define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.bellsouth.net')dnl

to

define(`SMART_HOST',`[mail.jax.bellsouth.net]')dnl

the key was the inclusion of the square brackets around the host name, not the addition of the .jax The .jax was just for bonus points.

The answer came from the following thread on webservertalk.com.

The pertinent portion is excerpted here.

> ***the bounce:
>
> The original message was received at Mon, 29 Mar 2004 07:32:42 -0500
> from localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]
>
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
>
> (reason: 550 .net 022: Your current IP address is not allowed to relay
> to
> us.army.mil Solution: Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.)
>
> ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> ... while talking to mx00.mail.bellsouth.net.:
><<< 550 .net 022: Your current IP address is not allowed to relay to
> us.army.mil
> Solution: Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.
> 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
><<< 503 No recipients specified

So do what it says, use BellSouth's _outgoing_ mail relay (NOT their MX).
If you are attempting to do this, but are misdirected due to MX for the
relay name, put the relay name in square brackets [smtp.bellsouth.net] or
whatever, so the MX will be ignored. Even if that requires
authentication, sendmail or postfix can act as SMTP AUTH client.

Well, it took some doing, but I finally got everything configured and working.

I had to make a number of Linux configuration changes because the new gateway/router uses a different default IP than the Linksys router I had previously used:

Using netconf, I had to change the DNS addresses and the gateway address. The DNS threw me for a loop. I assumed that I had to use the raw DNS addresses as shown on the 2WIRE summary screen. But, when I tried that, a number of services would take forever loading from boot, and then fail with an error to the effect that they couldn't get the IP address for the server. I also couldn't get out to the internet. The solution turned out to be configuring the primary DNS address as the gateway's address: 192.168.1.254

After I got the DNS and gateway configured, I could get out, but I couldn't get in. I thought that the problem was related to how I configured the applications in the 2WIRE's firewall screen, but the problem turned out to be a stale default route entry on the Linux server. I discovered this using the netstat command with the -nr option (netstat -nr) which shows the routing table. I was able to correct the problem by deleting the route using the command "route del default" and then adding the correct default route using the command "route add default gw 192.168.1.254"

Finally, in order to keep my dynamic DNS entries current on ZoneClient, I had to rewrite the cron script which checks/updates the external IP address. The script lives in the cron.hourly directory (which causes it to run hourly - imagine that!). Since the script that I use - zoneclient.py - doesn't directly support the 2WIRE router, I used the -r option to use the web IP detection feature, which worked great. Here's the script:

/usr/local/bin/zoneclient.py -v -l -d /usr/local/bin -r http://192.168.1.254/broadband/index.html my ZoneClient user name my ZoneClient password my list of domains, separated by commas

As a super bonus reward, I also was given the super secret BellSouth 2WIRE direct support line phone number, which is 877-263-2421. The extremely nice tech also gave me a super secret hidden options page for the gateway: http://192.168.1.254/mdc which has all kinds of nifty logs and other stuff.