Who’s Filtering Your E-Mail?

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And why?

The other day I sent an e-mail message to one of my editors. Within seconds, the message was bounced back to me with this notice at the top:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at smtpauth22.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

<[redacted e-mail address]>:
[redacted IP address] does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [64.202.165.44] blocked using dnsbl.ahbl.org; GoDaddy – Continued hosting of FreeSpeechStore hate website on 72.167.250.55, ignoring abuse
Giving up on [redacted IP address].

My first thought was WTF?

I tried again and got the same result. Then I started researching. I discovered that www.ahbl.org is the domain name for the Abusive Hosts Blocking List (AHBL), an organization that apparently maintains a list of IP address it deems as abusive. The owner or manager of the site had decided that he/she didn’t like GoDaddy.com because it hosts the conservative “hate speech” site FreeSpeechStore. (And no, I won’t link to that drivel.) My editor’s ISP was evidently using AHBL to filter incoming mail.

I e-mailed AHBL the following message using my MobileMe e-mail address (since I assumed my e-mail account hosted at GoDaddy.com would be blocked):

Unfortunately, I host a non-abusive site and my main e-mail (not this one) is at GoDaddy.com. Your site is preventing my e-mail from reaching some destinations because of some link between GoDaddy.com and freespeechstore.com.

Do you really think this is fair to me and others in the same situation?

The response I got was surprising. Someone named Brielle Bruns wrote:

Unfortunately, your provider has stated to us that they will not enforce their Terms Of Service or Acceptable Use Policy. They are turning a blind eye to abuse and harassment, which is something we can no longer ignore.

To give you an idea of why we are taking this issue as seriously as we are, one of Mr Scoville contacted the local police department, fire department, child welfare, schools, etc of one of his victims, and claimed that he and his wife were molesting their children and others from the school.

Put yourself in the victim’s shoes, and then ask yourself weather or not you’d do whatever it took to prevent anyone else from being victimized by Mr Scoville.

I repeat: WTF? My response explained exactly how I felt about the situation:

I really don’t see why I need to be dragged into this.

I agree wholeheartedly that if what you say is true, this Scoville character is an asshole and a menace to society. But let’s look at this objectively on two fronts:

– One of the founding principles of this country is free speech. If Scoville wants to create a website full of hate speech, it is his right to do so. You’re attempting to censor him by acting as a third party filtering service. Seriously: what gives you the right?

– To punish him and (assumedly) GoDaddy.com, you’re punishing ME, an innocent bystander to this whole thing. Your failure to allow my message to be received by my editor directly interferes with my ability to submit work and invoices for that work. You are cutting into my ability to make a living. WTF?

I don’t care WHY you are taking this seriously. It’s none of your business — or mine. Let the police handle it — that’s what our tax dollars pay them to do.

I’ve issued a complaint to my editor and asked him to contact his ISP or system administrator — whoever is using your services. I’ll forward this message to him as well. You are stepping beyond your legal rights in this. I’m hoping my editor complains and your service is no longer utilized by his company or ISP.

The response I got back picked apart my e-mail message paragraph by paragraph, attempting to justify the site’s action against GoDaddy just because it hosts some wacko’s Web site. Honestly I didn’t even bother reading it. It was clear that Bruns was just as wacko as the person he/she was trying to harm — by harming people like me. Clearly, I was wasting my time communicating with this person.

So I wrote to the editor I’d been trying to contact, this time using my MobileMe account. I’d already updated him about what was going on. Now I decided to make a formal request:

I respectfully request that you ask your ISP or system administrator to stop using the services of Abusive Hosts Blocking Service. They are preventing me from communicating with you on my primary e-mail address, dragging us into some sort of war they have with GoDaddy.com, and simply do not care how much they inconvenience innocent bystanders.

The fact that your ISP or System Administrator utilizes a service that would do such a thing is unthinkable to me.

When I didn’t get a response, I followed it up with this:

Seriously…you need to do something about this. Whoever authorized use of this blocking organization is preventing me — and possibly your advertisers! — from contacting you. THIS IS DEFINITELY A PROBLEM ON YOUR END. Tell your ISP or System Administrator to shut that service off.

The woman who runs it is on some kind of holy crusade and she’s been very rude to me in our e-mail exchanges. I’ve lost an hour of my day troubleshooting this issue, only to be frustrated by her holier-than-thou attitude.

The day ended. The editor is back east, so I didn’t really expect immediate action. In the morning, however, I had the result I wanted. My editor wrote:

Thanks for letting me know what you’ve learned. I’ll be discussing it with my boss today and we’ll figure out what the next step will be.

I later was CCed on an e-mail message from my editor’s boss to the company’s ISP:

Below is a dialogue between one of our writers and someone named Brielle Bruns from an outfit called “The Summit Open Source Development Group” which seems to be at the root of our problem receiving some business critical e-mails from Godaddy based addresses.

In addition to blocking e-mails from our writer, I have had one of my attorneys e-mails blocked and missed an important deadline as a result. I have no idea how many e-mails have been blocked from our subscribers or [redacted] customers but I have to believe the number is sizable.

As far as any of my businesses are concerned, please IMMEDIATELY STOP using what ever “service” is being provided Brille Burns’ outfit. What ever dispute she or her group has with this Scottville guy, it nothing to do with us and her organization is negatively impacting our business and customers.

Please take care of this immediately.

I replied with a thank you message to my editor and his boss. The block was soon lifted and I could again begin using my regular e-mail address to communicate with my editor.

One of the subsequent messages flying back and forth between the parties included this comment:

PS: We just found this: from 2.5 years ago ref: “Brian J. Bruns convicted felon and owner of www.ahbl.org Abusive Hosts Blocking List AHBL” http://criminal-brian-j-bruns.blogspot.com/

The link is to a Blogger blog that purports to share documents about this person’s felony conviction and sexual deviations. (I still can’t believe the kind crap out there on the Web.) It looks pretty real, but I’m a skeptic on these things and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that it was Brin’s nemesis, Scoville, slinging dirt. Seriously: some people need to get a life.

When the hubbub had died down, I e-mailed the ISP representative. I had his e-mail address from the message initially to him that I was CCed on. I told him I was interested in blogging about this and asked a few questions. He replied that he’d have to ask his boss about some of the answers, but he did state the following:

I can tell you, though, in regards #3, we were using the service entirely for spam prevention. We use a number of different services for spam prevention, and had no knowledge of their political agenda. As soon as we found out what was going on with this service, which was, coincidentally, shortly before [redacted] e-mailed us, we stopped using this service. I am very sorry for the problems this caused, and we would never knowingly use a service that had a political agenda like this.

Which begs the questions:

  • What “service” is your ISP using to combat spam?
  • How many important, legitimate e-mail messages have you missed because of a situation like this?
  • What gives organizations the right to classify an IP address as abusive or harmful, regardless of who else might be using it via shared hosting or e-mail?

If you or your ISP is using AHBL, stop now. The company obviously has a political agenda that does not consider the negative aspects of its actions. Why would anyone use a company like this to filter e-mail? Wouldn’t you rather get a little spam than miss out on important communications from friends, family, and business associates? I would!

As for me, I’d already begun moving my Web sites and e-mail addresses away from GoDaddy.com — but for other, service-related reasons. They still have not provided a satisfactory explanation to me about what’s going on with the “hate site.” This just confirms that my switch to a new ISP was long overdue.

RV Living

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A quick look at my current RV living experience.

I’m back in Quincy, WA for the third consecutive year, gearing up for cherry drying season. On Saturday, when my first contract starts, I’ll be literally stuck here in town, waiting for it to rain so I can spring into action and fly for my clients. And if the weather stays the way it has been for the past week, I’ll be doing an awful lot of flying.

The previous two years, I lived in a 22-foot “hybrid” RV that included a hard-sided camper shell with a single slide out and two pop-up camper type beds. When I first bought this camper, I thought it would be perfect for this kind of mission. But I didn’t foresee the need to write three books in it or an excruciating back problem that would last a month. I realized that when you have to live in an RV for three to four months out of the year — with a parrot, no less — you’d better have a pretty damn comfortable RV.

So I bought what I considered to be “the perfect RV.” While I don’t really think it’s “perfect,” I still believe that it’s as close as I’m likely to get unless I have one built to my exact specifications — which is not an option. This RV has plenty of space, as well as comfortable places to sit. Best of all, I don’t have to work in the same space where I try to take my meals.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. @Miraz wanted to know more about my setup here, so let me go into that a bit.

The Campground

I’m living at the Colockum Ridge Golf Course. A weird thing about golf courses out here is that they often include a limited number of RV parking spaces. Colockum Ridge (formerly Quincy Golf Course), which is now owned and operated by the Port of Quincy, is one of those places. It has five or six full hookup sites — that means sites with water, electricity, and sewer hookups. The sites are not far from the main office, between a wide driveway area and a narrow path out to the golf course. One of the greens is about 50 yards from the last spot. The golf course also has a handful of water and electric only spots. Those are on the other side of the wide driveway, near a well-trafficked road.

For the first two years I was here, the monthly rate for a full hookup spot was $300. I thought that was a pretty good deal. The first year, all the full hookup spots were occupied by me and construction workers for a pair of data centers being built in Quincy. Last year, I was the only long term occupant. This year, in an effort to attract more long term occupants, they dropped the monthly rate to only $200. This is a steal. (Oddly, I was worried the rate might go up; never expected it to go down.) The only drawback to the lower rate is that they’ve apparently attracted the owner of a junky old trailer who seems to be using his site as a weekend getaway. (Sometimes a higher rate is good to keep the riffraff out.)

My RVAlthough the spots are small, they do have well-kept lawns. Parking is on a gravel spot that you need to back into; that gravel area is surrounded by railroad ties on three sides to keep it separate from the grass. The spots aren’t exactly level — as I found out this year — but they’re not far off. I surprised myself with my ability to get the trailer into the spot; it was the first time I’d every done any serious backing up and it didn’t take more than a few tries to get it into place.

There are a few drawbacks of living here:

  • They start tending to the grass not long after dawn. That means there are lawn mowers running as early as 5:30 AM. This doesn’t bother me because I’m usually awake by then.
  • Because the RV spots are near the office and the office is at the intersection of two major roads, traffic noise — especially trucks slowing down to make one of the stop signs — can be a bother. In my old camper, it actually kept me up at night. In my new one, I don’t hear much unless the windows are open.
  • Golf carts and the odd piece of maintenance equipment drive right past the back window of my RV all day long every day. Before I moved the trailer 2 feet forward to get the left wheels on blocks (for leveling), they’d be within arm’s reach of my back window. Now they’re 2 feet farther away.
  • The sites really are tiny — although I suppose they’re about the same as the standard RV parking lots selling themselves as RV parks or “campgrounds” these days. My front slide-out actually hangs over into the parking spot next to mine, which is on a weird angle. There’s nothing I can do about it.

But there’s plenty good about living here:

  • They allow me to have my mail delivered to their address. So I can get mail and packages delivered to me here. I’m also the one who collects the mail daily; apparently no one else ever checks it. The first time I checked it, the box was absolutely stuffed. The mail carrier must like me.
  • This year, I have a picnic table, which will come in handy (if it ever stops raining for more than a few hours) for using my new barbecue grill, eating out, and getting Alex the bird outside for a while.
  • After the RainI have some nice views. My “office” window looks out on an idyllic view of trees, a picnic table, and the golf course. There are also birds — primarily robins — digging in the grass for worms throughout the day. Soon they’ll bring their chicks.
  • My helicopter is parked at an ag strip right across the street. In fact, I can see it from my back window. That means I can hang out here until I’m called out to dry. Definitely beats sitting in the truck at an airport for hours, waiting for a call that might not come. An added bonus: watching the crop dusters fly by.
  • I can get wireless Internet that works just well enough to pay for it. (I’d be very happy if it worked reliably all the time.)
  • The golf course has a restaurant where I can get breakfast or lunch if I get too lazy to cook. It’s not a great restaurant, but I’m not complaining.
  • The golf course is only five miles from town, where there’s a supermarket, coin-op laundry, post office, and other conveniences.
  • The area, being a farming community, is relatively safe and secure, so I don’t have to worry about my personal safety or the security of my belongings. It’s unlikely, for example, that anyone will break into my truck or trailer or walk off with my barbecue grill.
  • The golf course is in the middle of a farmland grid, offering lots of easy bicycling for me to get exercise.
  • Yellow-Headed BlackbirdThe golf course is only a few miles away from the Quincy Lakes area, which offers hiking, fishing, camping, and wildlife photography opportunities. Over the past two years, I spent a lot of time with my camera at Quincy Lakes, photographing birds.

The more I stay here, the more I like it. I’m even thinking of blowing off an aerial photo gig in Nevada in August so I can spend another month here.

The RV

The RV is amazingly comfortable. Comparing it to my old RV is almost silly, but here are a few examples:

  • There is a ton of storage. Enough storage to put everything away and still have space for more. That includes inside storage for indoor things and underneath storage for outdoor things. I even have enough room to store the old muffler for my helicopter, which I need to get repaired so it’s available as a spare. (They cost $2K new.)
  • The kitchen area has counter space for my coffee maker and grinder and enough cabinet space to store all my food, pots and pans, and dishes. And it even has drawers for storing silverware, napkins, and utensils. The stove is self-lighting so I don’t need to have a lighter or matches handy all the time to use it. The sink is a decent size, too.
  • The table and chairs is a hell of a lot more comfortable than the booth I had in the old camper. And with lots of windows, its bright and airy.
  • The sofa may not be as comfortable as the one in front of our TV at home (which is the most comfortable sofa in the world), but it sure beats the sofa in our last trailer. And rather than covert into a short, narrow “bed” for guests, this one has a queen-sized air mattress that two can sleep on comfortably.
  • Alex's Cage in my RVThere’s a La-Z-Boy style rocker/recliner. (There were actually two, but we pulled one out to have room for Alex the Bird’s cage.) I never thought I’d like one, but I spend a lot of time in it. I sit here and blog or read in the morning with my coffee and sometimes do the same after I’ve covered Alex for the night. It’s right beside the big back window, so I can watch the world — or at least this part of it — go by.
  • The RV has not one, but two flat panel televisions. They’re kind of wasted on me — I don’t watch much TV so I don’t have a satellite receiver. But I can pick up about 6 channels, including Fox and PBS. The 32-inch TV in the main room has a DVD player, so I can watch my Netflix videos on something larger than my computer monitor.
  • My RV OfficeI have an “office.” It’s a slide out with a desk and room for a chair. I’ve got drawers and cabinets to store my office stuff, so there’s not a lot of junk lying around. I brought along my 24″ iMac so I have all the same computing capabilities I have at home. And I managed to bring my color laser printer (what was I thinking?) and store it out of sight in a cabinet. There’s even a spot for my scanner. The office area even has two windows that look out over the golf course.
  • The bedroom has a nice bed with a dresser and closet. So I can store all my clothes neatly and accessibly. There’s a window on either side of the bed. I can even walk around the bed. The only thing I wish it had was a night table or storage area for the kinds of things you like to keep beside you at night. (And yes, I will be buying a new mattress for it; the mattress it came with is a real piece of crap. Just not sure how I’m going to get it through the doorway by myself.)
  • The shower has enough hot water for me to take a shower without turning off the water during the wash cycle. Yes, I can bask under hot water for the entire time I’m in the shower. Like a normal person. In my old RV, it was typical to run out of hot water during a shower; in fact, when I camped at a campground with a shower facility, I used their shower. Those days are over.
  • The toilet has a food pedal for flushing. The old trailer had a hand lever. That meant I needed to bend over the toilet every time I wanted to flush. Gross. It’s simple things like this that really make a difference in your life.

So I’m not exactly suffering out here in Quincy, WA. Sure, it’s not as nice as the house my buddy Jim rented in Chelan last season when he had contracts up there, but it’s very pleasant. And unlike Jim, I don’t have to share my space with another pilot — or anyone else other than Alex the Bird.

In a way, it’s a bad thing that the RV is so comfortable and pleasant to live in. Combined with my relatively pleasant surroundings and cheap living costs, I feel that I’d rather stay here than go home. I never felt that way in the old RV — especially when the temperature started rising and the horrendously loud air conditioning couldn’t keep up. This is my home away from home and I’m really enjoying it.

My Electric Blanket

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A “blankie” for a grown woman?

Back in the winter of 1977, when I was 15 years old, my family relocated from northern New Jersey to Long Island, NY. We went from an old house built in 1901 to a much more modern home built in the late 1960s. But best of all, for the first time in my life, I had my own room.

Our arrival in Long Island was about a year before the energy crisis that would strike the country. To save energy (and money) — the house was heated with an oil furnace — my stepdad fitted the house with set-back thermostats that would automatically drop the heat to 62°F at night. To make sure we were all warm and comfy at night, my sister, brother, and I were issued electric blankets.

Clash of the Technologies

Clash of the technologies: the control for my 32-year-old electric blanket seems slightly out of place in this digital world.

If you’re not familiar with electric blankets, here’s how they work — or at least my understanding of them. They’re made with two layers of a synthetic fabric with a series of wires running up and down between the two layers. I assume the wires have some kind of heat emitting properties. At the bottom end is a socket for a plug. A control device plugs into the socket with a long wire — the idea is to put the control on your bedside table, so the wire is at least as long as a bed. Another wire plugs into a wall outlet. When you get into bed, you turn the blanket on and use the control to dial in a setting.

It must have worked, because I don’t recall being uncomfortable on cold winter nights — except, of course, those nights after an ice storm knocked out power for 11 days.

A few years later, when I moved onto my college campus, I brought the blanket with me. And I brought it with me when I got my first apartment. And when I moved into a new apartment with my future husband. And when we moved into our first house. And when we moved into our second house. And when I began spending summers in an RV in Central Washington State.

The blanket, which is now 32 years old, is with me on this trip. And I’m glad to have it.

When I first arrive in Quincy Washington at the end of May, it’s downright cold at night. RVs have three problems when it comes to heat:

  • They are generally poorly insulated so they can’t hold heat well. This RV is much better than my previous one, which had two tent walls.
  • Their heaters are unbelievably loud, consisting of a gas furnace and a loud blower that attempts to shoot hot air throughout the space.
  • Their heaters don’t evenly heat the space. Face it: what heater does?

The first season I was here in my old RV, I slept under a pile of blankets. No exaggeration — my first few weeks were spent on flannel sheets under every single blanket I’d brought with me. It was like sleeping between two mattresses. I still had to wear flannel pajama pants to keep warm.

I got a case of the smarts the next year and brought the old electric blanket with me. That made all the difference in the world.

Now all the instructions that come with these blankets tell you to make the blanket the top layer. But I usually sandwich the blanket between my top sheet and a lightweight comforter. As a result, I can set the blanket to “1” or “2” (on dial that goes to 10) and keep very warm.

The blanket is for a twin size bed and my bed in the RV is a queen. But the blanket covers the top pretty well. It makes for very cozy sleeping.

My big problem now is getting out of that nice warm bed in the morning.

Joy-Flying on a Saturday Afternoon

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It’s days like this when I feel very privileged.

I spent most of yesterday morning at my desk, editing videos I recorded the previous afternoon. It was boring, tedious work, made even more unpleasant by a stupid little nagging headache I’d had for more than 24 hours. In general, I was feeling under the weather and I couldn’t understand why. It was a nice day and I had most of the windows in my RV open for fresh air. Even Alex the Bird was behaving.

I worked on a book for a while, then decided I needed a break. I’d head into town and pick up a few groceries, along with an ice cream sundae. That would make me feel better.

The supermarket parking lot was unusually crowded. That’s when I realized it was Memorial Day Weekend. (One of the oddities of being a freelancer is being completely oblivious to things like weekends and holidays.) The parking lot was crowded and so was the store. I realized that many of the people shopping for their holiday weekend groceries were young people who were likely camped out at Crescent Bar.


View Quincy, WA in a larger map

Crescent Bar is a mostly manmade island extending down along the Columbia River just before it enters a gorge. There’s a campground, a few trailer parks, some condos, a golf course, boat ramps, and a cherry orchard (belonging to one of my clients) down there. On weekends, it’s a popular destination for water lovers.

Seeing these people filling their shopping carts with chips and salsa and hamburger buns gave me a brainstorm. Why not take a little flight down to the river and around Quincy Lakes? And maybe even past the Gorge Amphitheater? Hell, I was a helicopter pilot. I had a helicopter parked at an ag strip within sight of my RV. Why the hell wasn’t I flying it?

(For the record, one reason I wasn’t flying it is because it costs a fortune to fly and I’m not made of money — although too many people think I am. Still, occasionally I do need to treat myself to a flight that doesn’t have a “mission” attached to it. Today would be that day.)

So I drove back the RV, stowed my groceries, and hopped back in the truck. A while later, I was standing on the truck’s bed, gently pulling off the blade covers. After a quick preflight, I climbed on board, and started the engine. I did some paperwork while everything was warming up. Then I donned my headset, waved to the ag pilots who were hanging out by the office door, and took off.

Where I live in Quincy is a good 700 feet higher in elevation than the Columbia River. The river flows in a gorge carved out by massive ice age flooding. Quincy sits on a sort of shelf full of irrigated farmland; there’s another, higher shelf to the north covered with wheat fields. The area is fascinating from a geologic perspective. You can really appreciate it when you fly over and through it in a helicopter — which I’d done numerous times in the past two years. I like flying along the towering basalt cliffs and over the various formations formed by those floods.

I hooked up with the road and descended with it through a valley that dropped in steps down to the river. I was cruising at 110 knots. I slipped over the final step and descended down to about 200 feet over the river. There were lots of boats and jet skis speeding around. The campground was full. I circled a small island where some people were camped out, then sped off downriver.

Crescent Bar

I snapped this photo of the south end of Crescent Bar as I left the area. Quincy’s farmland is spread out on the shelf above the cliffs on the left side of this photo. (View a larger version in my photo gallery.)

Farther downriver, I swung to the east and climbed over the edge of the gorge. I sped over Dusty Lake, where Mike and I had gone hiking with Mike’s cousin Rick and his friend last year. A few fishermen stood on the southwest side of the lake and looked up at me as I zipped past. Then, dodging wires, I climbed back up to Quincy’s level and headed southwest. The Gorge Amphitheater was packed with cars, tents, and people. A show was going on. I kept my distance as I swooped past, then dropped behind the stage and headed back upriver over a rock shelf covered with ancient potholes. Then I was abeam Quincy Lakes again and chose another of the two flood-carved canyons to fly up.

Quincy Lakes

This is Ancient Lake, fed by a waterfall that, in turn, is fed by runoff irrigation water. Quincy’s farmland is spread out on the shelf beyond these cliffs. (View a larger version in my photo gallery.)

I zipped back over the farmland south of Quincy. I noticed that my GPS wasn’t working quite right — a restart was required to fix it — but I knew my way back to the ag strip without it. The ag pilots were just leaving when I touched down. I’d been out for just a half hour. My mood was considerably brightened and my headache was just about gone.

Because of a gusty little wind coming out of the west, flying wasn’t smooth enough to make the flight perfect, but it was good to get out and about. What I really like is flying on those windless mornings or afternoons, when the river is glassy, reflecting the cliffs and clouds. When it’s like that, I can fly low over the water and around the canyons in effortless control of the aircraft. That’s magic.

As you can see, I got two reasonably good photos of the area while I was flying. I used a Nikon Coolpix camera for these shots. Although I really don’t like the camera in general — it doesn’t seem to work as well as the Canon Powershots I had before it — it’s easy enough to use with one hand (my left) as I fly. I can’t really frame a shot — I literally point and shoot and hope for the best. On these shots, the light was low and soft enough to prevent glare through the cockpit bubble. I lucked out.

The Big Detour Map

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Annotated map to my most recent flight around the Cascades.

I wrote about my long flight around the Cascades here; this sectional chart shows the actual route with points of interest. You can click the map to get a larger view without the annotation letters.

Big Detour Map

A – Starting point in Auburn, WA, a suburb of Seattle.
B – The first canyon I attempted to fly though. I climbed above the clouds when I turned around to backtrack.
C – My first descent back below the clouds.
D – Where I hooked up with Route 12.
E – My big scare in the clouds. I was less than 5 miles from the pass.
F – The ridge I crossed to descend to the Columbia River Gorge area.
G – The Dalles, where I refueled.
H – Skirting around very low clouds.
I – Skirting around a restricted area.
J – Mattawa, where I had lunch with a friend.
K – Quincy, where the helicopter is based for my first contracts.

In the 3-1/2 hours I flew that day, I could have been 1/3 of the way back to Arizona.