Saturday, March 15, 2003

One-on-Onechat WHOIS

Hmmm, interesting, looks like the whois information for one-on-onechat has been changed again (here's the information from 15 months ago and the original entry from 20 months ago). Since I still get e-mails whenever these folks send out a bulk mail campaign, I figure it only prudent to keep listing their information every time it changes. My opinion is that if you're legit, then you have nothing to hide and you should be listing proper contact information in your WHOIS record.:

------------------------------------------------------------
Organization:
very incorporated
dusty trousers
888 8th st
cloud 8, md 88888
US
Phone: 8888888888
Email: revangst@excite.com

Registrar Name....: Register.com
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com

Domain Name: ONE-ON-ONECHAT.COM

Created on..............: Wed, Jul 11, 2001
Expires on..............: Fri, Jul 11, 2003
Record last updated on..: Wed, Mar 13, 2002

Administrative Contact:
very incorporated
dusty trousers
888 8th st
cloud 8, md 88888
US
Phone: 8888888888
Email: revangst@excite.com

Technical Contact:
very incorporated
dusty trousers
888 8th st
cloud 8, md 88888
US
Phone: 8888888888
Email: revangst@excite.com

Zone Contact:
very incorporated
dusty trousers
888 8th st
cloud 8, md 88888
US
Phone: 8888888888
Email: revangst@excite.com

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.MEDIASERVE.NET 209.85.120.115
NS2.MEDIASERVE.NET 206.83.162.214

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 11:52 AM

Tales from the Spam Crypt

I'm getting reports that one-on-onechat may have a second (or third?) web address (granted, this report is 3 months out of data, but I've been busy, really!).

------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 19:40:18 -0800 (PST)
From: "jimmy"
Subject: More Questions on fake personals site

Mighty Hand, check this out if you will...

I responded to a personals ad on yahoo, figured she was too good to be true, but "what the heck" I said, "why not", I can block the profile if it's a faker. Five days later I get an email back that seems pretty normal untill the end when she says she uses a site she calls www.safedates.net as a way of getting to talk to people safely. I think, hmmmmm, so I keep reading only to find that she's not had much luck with the personals, she's been accused of being a porn site, but since I seem real to just give her a call via this site. So I go to it only to find it looks very suspicious (no other info besides a pretty picture and some basic stats). They also accept all major credit cards at 3.95/min. I looked for more info on it and not much comes up. Then I see it is part of "one-on-onechat" so I searched that and found you. Just thought you may like to know that it looks like they have a new name. Too bad, she seemed good on paper;)

------------------------------------------------------------
Demon Internet DIG Tool
previous posting about DNS querying

Well, trying to use DIG on safedates.net results in zero records being returned. Apparently, mediaserve.net has their DNS server configured so that it won't return zone information to the 'general public'. This is rather suspicious, and seems to be a "what are you trying to hide" flag in my book. In fact, their website is non-existent as all I got back were the opening and closing HTML tag. So I went with plan B, which was to tracert www.safedates.net (which resolves to 66.240.177.79). Interesting what that final IP address identified as, ne? BTW, www.safedates.net is "temporarily offline" now.

Well, actually, just because two web domains resolve to the same IP address doesn't actually make them twins. You see, web servers are able to handle multiple domains hosted on a single server by looking at the URL request and returning the files for the proper domain.

------------------------------------------------------------
17 101 ms 101 ms 101 ms border1.ge3-1-bbnet1.ext1a.lax.pnap.net [216.52.255.31]
18 102 ms 104 ms 101 ms broadspire-2.border1.ext1a.lax.pnap.net [63.251.209.66]
19 110 ms 103 ms 104 ms xxxcoeds.com [66.240.177.79]

------------------------------------------------------------
Doing the same with www.one-on-onechats.com leads to similar results, but a slightly different IP address. So, while the web sites aren't identical, it's possible that they're both hosted at the same server farm. Even more interesting is that www.one-on-onechat.com is also "temporarily offline" (identical message as the safedates.net site, redirects to http://66.240.179.34/).

------------------------------------------------------------
17 101 ms 102 ms 101 ms border1.ge4-1-bbnet2.ext1a.lax.pnap.net [216.52.255.95]
18 102 ms 102 ms 101 ms broadspire-2.border1.ext1a.lax.pnap.net [63.251.209.66]
19 104 ms 102 ms 103 ms one-on-onechat.com [66.240.177.145]

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 11:40 AM

EQ - Crash to Desktop

I'm still crashing to desktop in EQ. I could be sitting there doing nothing (all alone in the corner of a zone), or in the middle of a battle, or typing a message and suddenly I'm at the desktop screen. It's rather annoying, especially if I'm trying to solo (risky) or end up as the main tank in a group. I can go for 3 hours without a LD, or I'll crash every 3 minutes. Dropping the CPU temp to 45C hasn't helped at all, so now I've installed WinXP since my Asus motherboard isn't HCL'd for Windows 2000.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 11:04 AM

Darla's Back

... also known as "stupid spam message of the day". Her user name is still darla1972, which is kind of odd that they haven't changed that yet, because I'm sure there are now dozens of links in google to thar particular name. Looking through the google search results, I'm not the only one who finds the antics annoying... (I also get e-mails from folks who have spotted another darla1972 spam e-mail). The best one that I've seen so far is Work in Progress who also parsed apart the e-mail, the social engineering, and also attempted to figure out who's behind the scheme.

------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 10:26:23 GMT
From: "Darla23"
Subject: wuphonsreach,whats up

I think you answered my ad longtime ago if it was not you I am sorry.
If it was I could not answer you because my Eudora died and I could not get it to work but my friend
got the emails address out for me ..:)
I hope it was you and you are still interested, as I realize lots of time has past.
I really don't know where to start ....
Maybe you can tell me little more about yourself since I lost your first email ,
what you look like,age,and are you still looking ?
If you are interested learning more about me, I have a profile at :

http://www.freematchads.com/

I am NOT a Porn Chick ..:-)
I just chose it because you don't have to pay,
And they allow any pictures I want .:).
Oh yea , My username is darla1972 .
Don't really know what else to say for now I hope this is the right address .
Let me know if you are interested, And I hope you don't run when you see my picture :-)

Bye ..... D

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 11:02 AM

Friday, March 14, 2003

DVD Burning Troubles

Still haven't gotten any DVD-R media to work (despite many previous attempts, but the Veritas RecordNow works well with DVD-RW and DVD+RW media recorded in DVD-ROM format. I'll get a coaster about 1/4 or 1/3 of the time, which means I just erase the DVD-RW/DVD+RW media and re-record the disk. Plus, I figured out where to change the volume name, so things are working well enough for the moment. I'm currently taking a lot of older CDs and packing them onto fewer DVD-RWs, then filing the CDs away on a spare spindle that I have.

For planning purposes, 4450Mb seems to be the capacity limit, although lots of small files (>25,000) may mean you should plan on only fitting 4300Mb onto the platter.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 3:48 PM

PCMark2002 Benchmarks

Finally got the new server up and running using the Promise SuperTrak SX6000 PCI card. This sweet card lets you chain together up to (6) ATA/100 drives into a RAID5 (or RAID0) configuration, plus uses ECC PC133 memory for cache (I dropped a 128Mb stick in). I took (6) 75Gb drives and put them in a RAID5 configuration with (1) hot-spare drive and now have a server with about 275Gb of user storage. (Don't think I'll be filling that up any time soon, although I have managed to fill 50 or 60 Gb.)

I re-ran the benchmark scores because I was curious as to what kind of performance boost I'd get from the RAID5 array. The CPU/Memory numbers may be a bit skewed as a result of installing a slower 8Mb AGP video card instead of the GeForce2 MX 400 64Mb AGP that was in there. I also had to get rid of a bad stick of memory.

old score
Athlon 1Ghz
768Mb PC133
mirrored 7200rpm IBM DeskStar ATA/100 HDs
CPU: 2500 MEM: 2000 HDD: 575

new score
Athlon 1Ghz
640Mb PC133
raid-5 7200 IBM DeskStar ATA/100 HDs
CPU: 2550 MEM: 1875 HDD: 690

Mmmmm, not bad, the RAID5 system gives me a decent boost over the old RAID1 setup (20%).

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 3:40 PM

Heatwave

I guess the AMD AthlonXP 2600+ gets flaky around 50-52C. I've been having horrible trouble with EQ crashing to the desktop at odd times (and BSOD'ing about 1 in 20) for the past 2 weeks that I've been trying to get back into EQ. My case temp was consistently 38-40C and the stock AMD CPU heatsink (aluminum, probably a 15-20 cfm fan that came with the CPU) was keeping the processor around 50-52C. I had also added a chassis exhaust fan (quiet, 27 cfm, 21 dB) to help with sucking the heat out of the case.

Dropped a copper heatsink with a 35 cfm fan in (oy, 45dB is a good bit noisier too) and case temp is now 40-42C (due to increased air movement) while CPU temp is now down to 46-48C. Apparently, 4-6C is just enough to keep the AMD chip stable.

If that's not enough, I'm going to have to switch from the desktop case that I'm using to a large tower where there is more room, or add in a slot cooler in my 3.5" external bay to try and move just a bit more air through the case. (Tower cases result in cooler temps simply due to the fact that the components aren't all smashed together.)

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 12:29 PM

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

EQ - After a Bit of a Hiatus

So, while I wait for patch #2 from Maxis for SimCity 4 and patch #1 for MOO3 from QuickSilver, I'm back to playing EverQuest again. (Hey, the accounts are still paid up for another 12 months, may as well get in and muck with the toons.)

One of the things I'm doing this time to avoid burnout is that I've completely stripped Corish (my 54 cleric) of all gear so that I'm not asked to play him. Plus, selling off his gear (or redistributing it to my other toons) will allow me to finally upgrade Sorish's (my troll SK) gear. Sorish's upgrades are something like 20k plat for armor, plus however much it takes to purchase the cultural armor pieces (could be another 20-30k).

On an enjoyable note, Sorish dinged 49 on Saturday and is already 50 (dinged last night). Since getting to level 50 was my end-of-this-week goal... I guess I'll have to try for 51 by Friday.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 10:41 AM