eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 02:02am on 2005-01-28

I went downstairs to do laundry and found a rather large puddle in the basement, along with signs that it had recently been much larger. *grumble* I can't see any indication of leaks from my own pipes, and the last time this happened it turned out to be a burst pipe next door and water coming under the wall from their basement, so I wonder if that's happened again. A week or so ago I left some water in a shallow plastic tray in the basement so that I could check every so often and make sure the temperature hadn't actually gotten below freezing down there; it's been liquid every time I've looked.

But the water in the pipes is cold enough that the laundry detergent didn't dissolve completely. There was a chunk of it (it started as powder) when I removed the clothes. I've discarded the chunk and am rinsing the clothes again.


I just got a fake-eBay phishing spam that was good enough for Procmail to actually sort it into my mail-from-eBay folder, which is unusual. But the fact that it was a big ol' ugly HTML message was still a Bright Loud Warning Clue, since eBay sends me plaintext messages on those rare occasions when it has anything to say to me. (It's not like I've been bidding on anything recently, but once in a while policy change announcements show up.) Hey, one more reason to insist that businesses send me plaintext email -- phishers generally rely on hiding the destination URL of a link by making the link text say something innocuous, such as:

<a href="http://203.109.100.33/mumble"> http://scgi.ebay.com/mumble</a>
(and yes, that is the IP address the phisher tried to redirect me to, though I filed off the directory and parameters). To do that, they pretty much have to send an HTML message and hope the victim doesn't look at the source. That trick doesn't work with a plaintext message: the user's mail client (or in my case, telnet client) might recognize a URL and make it clickable, but it's going to go where it looks like it's going[*].

Since I use a non-HTML-aware mail client (SunOS: /usr/bin/mailx, Linux: /bin/mail), when I open an HTML message the source is what I see regardless.

([*] Unless a previous message that contained an executable has altered C:\WinNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts -- or whatever the path is on your system -- to make "ebay.com" point to the wrong place. And yeah, I specified a Windows path because I'm assuming nobody would read mail like that on a Unix/Linux/OS X machine while logged in as root. Right? [fierce scowl] Right??)


That "gee I feel crappy but my head isn't splitting so I'm not sure whether it's migraine-related or not" feeling I'd been having Tuesday (and Wednesday)? Well late Thursday afternoon (whether that's "today" or "yesterday" is up to you, your sleep cycle, and your time zone) it turned into "Athena is using my skull to re-enact her birth". [expletive]ing OUCH[*]. Some drugs and a few hours in bed helped a lot -- I pried my eyes open long enough to post that rabbit-hole entry -- but it's coming back now. :-( So I may or may not get around to answering recent comments.

It answers the question anyhow, I guess.

([*] It's the armour that makes it really bad, you know.)


And in other news, I chickened out and decided not to eat the cupcake. But I wrapped it in plastic and tossed it into the freezer in case I change my mind later.

And in more adorable news, Perrine is hiding under the bags and foam again.

There are 5 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] hunterkirk.livejournal.com at 07:12am on 2005-01-28
Sorry to hear about the water build up. I don't know the lay out but do you have a set up in which you can put a sump pump. That fix most of my flood issues. If you can see the pipes and have shut off's for each line tracking down a leak shouldn't be that hard, either feel for vibration of move water in the pipe or listen.

Sorry about your headache, whatever it is, I hope you are well soon.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 07:05pm on 2005-02-01
I can see most of the pipes in the basement, except where they go behind the washing machine. The only spots the water could be coming from that also had pipes going to them were the washing machine and the toilet (and the toilet is at a low spot in the floor, so if the water did come through the wall, it'd collect there anyhow -- the washing machine is against the same wall).

Question: if the leak were in fact in one of my pipes, it wouldn't mysteriously stop again without intervention, would it?
 
posted by [identity profile] hunterkirk.livejournal.com at 11:11pm on 2005-02-01
Well, the pipes most likely are not the problem. But I do know the drains can be. If the wax seal under the tolent isn't working properly that can create a leak every time it is flushed, cracks the the drain pipe on the washing machine can also cause a on/off leak. Lastly if you have a drain in the floor or the main drain from your house is partly blocked (roots, partly broken pipe) this can cause a slowing of the water draining from your home. As such a basement level tolent could back flow is the valume of the water exceeds the drain rate.
 
posted by [identity profile] thette.livejournal.com at 05:02pm on 2005-01-28
You should hear [livejournal.com profile] kjn swear about some programs for Mac (OS X) that requires the *user* to be logged in as an administrator.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 07:07pm on 2005-02-01
Oy vey! I'd heard enough complaints about stuff under Windows that required Administrator access, but I'd have thought OS X wouldn't suffer from that.

Bad ports of Classic apps by people who don't understand SUID, or something even more broken than that?

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