SPAM from qumasoft?

Some agressive SPAM filters take it upon themselves to decide that e-mail from the qumasoft.com domain is SPAM. I note this for a couple of reasons.

I don't send SPAM. I do publish the newsletter once a month, but that's to a fully opt-in list... and that's the only bulk e-mail that originates from the qumasoft.com domain. There are spammers out there who hijack the qumasoft.com domain in their fake e-mail header so that lazy SPAM filters will erroneously conclude that the e-mail originated from qumasoft.com. The bottom line is that there are some folks out there to whom I cannot send e-mail from qumasoft.com.

This is a nuisance, since I have to use an alternate e-mail account for that correspondance. As a result, that correspondance doesn't get filed properly. In addition, since I don't monitor those e-mail accounts with anywhere near the regularity that I monitor the qumasoft.com accounts, folks think that I may be ignoring them.

If you send e-mail to me, and haven't gotten a response, this may be the reason. In almost all cases, I'll respond to e-mail within 24 hours. If you haven't received a reply within that timeframe, please check to see that your SPAM filter is not blocking the qumasoft.com domain.

UPDATE: One other thing -- if you send me e-mail without "QVCS" included somewhere in the subject line, or without "QVCS" included somewhere in the body of the e-mail, the e-mail will likely go into my own junk mail folder, and get treated here as SPAM. When sending me any kind of correspondance, please put include "QVCS" in the subject line.

Stumble Upon

My brother pointed me to a fun surfing plugin called Stumble Upon. You can read the pitch yourself. It's a great way to take a break from work. Some of the non-technical sites that I've discovered as a result:

Squashed Philosophers -- a sort of Cliff's Notes condensation of all the great philosophers.

Pictures of Pennies  -- an collection of pictures of what some undergraduate civil engineering student did with stacks of pennies.

Hurricane Wilma

Hurricane Wilma knocked out power at the hosting site for qumasoft.com. Obviously (you're reading this), things are now back on-line. Verio (Quma's hosting provider) has some facilities in Boca Raton, Florida. They lost power mid-morning yesterday, and only got things restored earlier this morning. I'm not happy about the outage, but I guess I can understand the problems of having a category 2 hurricane pass directly over your location. They are currently running on backup generators, so things remain a little fragile. Hopefully, utility power will be restored before they run out of fuel.

Back from Hawaii

We're back from a 3 week Hawaiian vacation. I'm happy to be back, but not as happy as I thought I might be. Hawaii is nice... but you eventually run out of the capacity to appreciate the wonders of a tropical paradise.

I'm not enough the world traveler to know how Hawaii compares with other tropical destinations, but for us, it's a good fit, and a pleasant diversion.

We visited the 4 main islands. First Oahu, then Kuaui, the Big Island (Hawaii), and finished up on Maui. Each island has its own distinct character, so to recommend one over the other is difficult because it depends on what kind of experience you're going for.

In any case, Quma efforts were on the back burner during the trip. I was able to keep up with e-mail, thanks to staying in places that had Internet access, and when that wasn't available, falling back to the use of my Verizon wireless data card -- which worked great.

All our flights were on time, and we never lost luggage. Budget car rentals worked well for us; I cannot recommend Alamo -- it took over an hour to get our car on Maui.

Gas prices are much higher than here in Maryland. In Hana (on Maui), we paid $4.20/gallon, elsewhere we paid from $3.20 to $3.79/gallon. Prices here are around $2.80/gallon.