OK, I lied. I just checked the logfiles and the bounces have stopped trickling in because the spam is no longer being sent with admin accounts as return addresses. Random From: headers are now being generated and we’re way past the 350,000 bounce mark…I just haven’t been seeing the actual email. Go figure.
On a side note, I stopped by 8 Albert St. this evening and spoke with Jim Todino and his “friend”. Both claim to have never heard of Robert. I’ll hash through the crap later.
The email floodgates have finally closed and the stream of bounce messages has dribbled to a slow trickle. 36 hours after the initial email, my mail server has finally gotten a breather. The damage? 3500 bounced emails for around 5000 invalid email addresses. Update: Completely incorrect…I just stopped getting bounces. Checking the logfiles reveals 390,000+ invalid addresses.
I’m not really sure what pisses me off more…the fact that Robert forged my mail servers to send spam or the fact that Robert forged my servers to send spam. Let me elaborate…
Ever since I got the first Dimensional Warp Generator email a few years ago, I’ve thought that the author was pretty cool. A few fries short of a Happy Meal, but cool. I guess you could say that I was a fan…so much so that I actually started reporting on the Dimensional Warp Generator.
But now I feel almost betrayed by Robert. He forged my domain to send out spam for anti-spam software. He subjected me to thousands of bounced email messages. He subjected me to hundreds of actual people sending me email flaming me and calling me an asshole because they assumed that I was the actual sender. He subjected me to a low scale denial of service attack as someone tried (and failed) to take my servers offline.
And he’s not returning my calls or emails.
The result of Robert’s actions don’t really bother me. My servers are stable. I’m thick-skinned and flames roll right off. My mail filters took care of the bounces and saved each and every one of them into an evidence folder. My logfiles were backed up and, again, moved to an forensics quarantine (both for Robert and whoever DOSed me).
But it still bothers me that Robert chose my domain. Feh.
It seems that other people Robert Todino has pissed off have done most of the work for me. I now have possible valid address that dates back to 1999 and has been used recently:
Robert Todino
8 Albert St.
Woburn, MA 01801
The above physical address is just over a mile from his fake Oak St. residence and the original Dimensional Warp Generator dropoff locations.
No big surprise here. After the time traveler pissed me off by sending out spam with inertramblings.com in the return address, I checked out the alleged mailing address from his whois info. Figures…4 Oak St. doesn’t exist in Woburn. Oak St. starts at five and goes up from there.
So, either Robert really lives in Woburn but just not at 4 Oak St., or all the reporters got it wrong and incorrectly listed Woburn as his town because it’s in his whois info. Ohwell…I have four possible phone numbers for Robert in the area so I’ll start digging.
Originally I was a fan of Robert because I was vaguely amused by the whole Dimensional Warp Generator thing. Now that I have around a thousand bounced emails sitting in my inbox he’s really pissed me off.
Just to let everyone know, I have absolutely nothing to do with the “STOP SPAM IN ITS TRACKS!” spam that was sent using inertramblings.com as its return address. It appears that Robert Todino (aka Bill Jones, aka Brian Appel, aka Bob White, aka John Miller) of Woburn, MA sent out the spam and forged my domain. For those of you keeping track, this is the Dimensional Warp Generator guy! So, we all can guess where he got my domain name from.
Either way, I’ve made attempts to contact him and convey my displeasure with the situation. Perhaps he’ll contact me and apologize. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Perhaps he’ll use my domain name again, in which case I’ll be pursuing legal action. After all, I work a mere 10 minutes from his house. I’m still contemplating whether I should stop by and give him a friendly “hello” this evening.
After reading all of the rave reviews, I decided to go see Kill Bill with my Father the other night. Absolutely amazing. Quentin has managed to accurately capture the feeling of, and make fun of, Japanese Anime and fight genres at the same time! Some of the scenes were dead on accurate to the culture and sent chills down my spine and then, two seconds later, gallons of fake blood were gushing in absolutely fake tongue-in-cheek Itchy and Scratchy fashion!
Although Pulp Fiction was right on the edge of being a dark comedy, Kill Bill dives directly into the comedic waters because the blood and gore is so far over the edge and in your face that it’s actually amusing. No attempts have been made to pretend that Kill Bill is a serious movie…it’s simply over the top Japanese Anime acted out with humans instead of animation, complete with Matrixesque wire work and Bullet Time.
With apologies to Paul Hatch…I always disliked this jingle.
When you tell one lie, it leads to another
So you tell two lies to cover each other
Then you tell three lies and, oh brother
You’re in trouble up to your ears!
So you tell four lies to try to protect you
Then you tell five lies so folks won’t suspect you
Then you tell six lies and you’ll collect
A life filled with worries and fears
‘Cause you can’t remember how many lies you’ve told
And half the things you say aren’t true
And sometime you’ll slip up, you’ll trip up and then
Whatever will become of you?
So you lie and lie without even trying
And each lie you tell will keep multiplying
‘Till the whole wide world will know you’re lying
Then you’ll be
Suspected
Detected
Rejected
Neglected
Disliked
And you should!
When you lie, you’re closing the door
On everything good
While randomly searching for comma splices I ran across the Guide to Grammar and Writing at Capital Community College. I’m an extremely concise technical writer, however, I’m also a self-taught high school dropout (see, a comma splice). Because of this I tend to write using my own personal set of rules that I’ve put together while reading technical manuals and other documentation sets.
I’ve finally gotten over my mental block of how text should look and have decided to start studying English again. Although I pride myself on my spelling I know I have a lot to relearn about grammar and syntax. I use technical grammar and syntax rules in everything I write and I’ve known for years that there are some places where that’s just not appropriate. Examples would be numbers (twenty-three students vs. 23 students), lists (one, two and three vs. one, two, and three), and other miscellaneous things that the average reader wouldn’t pick up on but many of my friends have commented on.
I’m also guilty of intentionally using inappropriate grammar for dramatic effect. Comma splices are my most used infraction. Inappropriate conjunctions. Verbless sentences? Ahem…
So, anyone who knows my writing style will start to see a change in my posts. I’ll be making an active attempt to immediately apply appropriate changes to my everyday journal entries and forum posts. Wish me luck.
