Category: Office Tech

Here is how things are looking on the denial-of-service attack (previous blog article) on VOIP.MS, my favorite VOIP service provider.  Continue reading “The latest on the VOIP denial-of-service attack”

Some years ago our law firm migrated away from every old-fashioned landline telephone provider that we used to use, and we moved everything about our telephone service to a Canadian VOIP telephone company called VOIP.MS.  I have blogged frequently about my satisfaction generally with the use of VOIP rather than older ways of getting telephone service, and I have blogged frequently about my satisfaction in particular with this company as a provider of such services.

Which then leads to a sense of wonder and frustration to see that somebody has chosen to bring a denial-of-service attack against the VOIP.MS company, and has asked that a bitcoin ransom be paid for the DDOS attack to cease.  (See Ars Technica article.)  This has led to various disruptions in service for many of the 80,000 or so customers of VOIP.MS, some of which (as for my firm) have been intermittent and some of which (for some customers) have been pretty much continuous.

What can a customer do about this, if anything?  Continue reading “Dealing with a VOIP denial-of-service attack”

The 50-ampere circuit breaker shown in the photograph at right is a very cleverly designed device called a “quad two-pole common-trip” circuit breaker.  It is actually four circuit breakers that have been squeezed into the physical space that would normally house two circuit breakers.  The two circuit breakers in the middle are mechanically linked by a cylindrical bar so that if one of them trips, they both turn off.  The outer two circuit breakers are linked by a stainless steel frame that, remarkably, accomplishes the same “common trip” function for the outer two breakers.  Why, today’s blog article asks, is this circuit breaker nearly impossible to find right now in September of 2021? Continue reading “A hard-to-get circuit breaker”

A colleague of mine was wrestling with a homework problem that had been given to her schoolchild:

Jan has 35 teaspoons of chocolate cocoa mix and 45 teaspoons of french vanilla cocoa mix.   She wants to put the same amount of mix into each jar, and she only wants one flavor of mix in each jar.  She wants to fill as many jars as possible.  how many jars of french vanilla cocoa mix will Jan fill?

Continue reading “Thinking more about problem solving”

A recent column in the New York Times started with a math word problem, which I will oversimplify slightly here:

Sarah takes six hours to paint a fence, and John takes twelve hours to paint the same fence.  How long will it take them to paint the same fence if they work together?

One thing that is really fun about this problem, I think, is that it turns out this is exactly like asking “what resistance do you get if you put a six-ohm resistor and a twelve-ohm resistor in parallel?” Continue reading “Thinking about problem solving”

Here is an example of a poorly designed shower control valve. Continue reading “Well designed and poorly designed shower control valves”

The other day I was baffled to hear a report from a friend who had recently purchased something called a Ranger EV. (A Ranger EV is an electrically powered ATV, shown at right.)  My friend described that she found she has no choice but to charge her Ranger EV outdoors, because if she charges it in her garage, it sets off her carbon monoxide detectors.  She is thinking about purchasing one of those new Ford F-150 Lightning EVs and was worried whether this means she would have to charge it outdoors too.

As I say, I was baffled by this.  Eventually I figured out what was probably going on.   Continue reading “Charging electric ATV indoors triggers carbon monoxide detectors?”

(Update:  our listserv server got migrated on about November 5, 2023 from an old IP address of 162.255.116.157 to a new IP address of 66.29.132.148.  As of November 10, 2023, the UCEProtect-Network lists both of our dedicated IP addresses 63.250.38.181 and 66.29.132.148 in its UCEPROTECTL3 category.)

Yesterday our firm came face-to-face with one of the ways that email system administrators fight spam — a very interesting guilt-by-association system called UCEProtect-Network.  This system collects spam reports and carries out a “cluster analysis” (Wikipedia article), aggregating the reports by groups of IP addresses from which the spam emails originated.  The practical result is that everybody who uses Microsoft to host their inbound email has stopped receiving any email from our firm (“oppedahl.com”) or from our listservs (“oppedahl-lists.com”).  This is not because either of our IP addresses has ever been the source of spam (neither IP address has ever been a source of spam) but because other IP addresses that are “nearby” to our IP addresses have been the source of spam.  Continue reading “Fighting spam email — guilt by association”

For decades now, we all have gotten used to the idea that of course our computer or any other small consumer electronic device should not be plugged directly into an electrical outlet but should be instead be plugged into a surge protection power strip which is in turn plugged into the electrical outlet.  We do this because for decades now we have had hammered into our brains that all sorts of bad things like lightning can somehow enter our electrical wires and if we fail to use a surge protection power strip, the bad things will travel through the electrical wires into our computers and other consumer electronic devices and damage them.  

This blog article tells you that now “whole-house” surge protection is a thing.  Yes if you don’t mind throwing money at the problem, you can add an extra layer of protection from electrical surges at the place where your electrical power enters your house, and it protects the whole house.  Not only is this a thing, but the 2020 national electrical code actually requires this kind of protection in newly constructed homes.  I’ll talk about this kind of protection in this blog article. Continue reading “Whole-house surge protection”

In seven years writing this blog, I have not spoken about social or political issues.  Now I speak.  President Biden is right.  “We cannot be complicit.  We have to speak out.”

There is no place for hate against Asian-Americans.  There is no place for hate against people because of the color of their skin.  There is no place for hate against people because of their religion, or because of their non-belief.  There is no place for hate against people because of the country they came from or the country their ancestors came from.

My daily world is the world of intellectual property.  One of the oldest international agreements relating to intellectual property is the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, a treaty that was adopted exactly 138 years ago on March 20, 1883.  One of the purposes of the Paris Convention was to bring an end to laws and policies by which some nations had treated people from other nations poorly in the particular areas of obtaining patent protection, trademark protection, and design protection. 

The treaty is composed of thirty numbered Articles, the first of which names and defines the treaty.  Most of the numbered articles are rather dry legal language spelling out procedures for (for example) filing a first patent application in a first country, and a second patent application in a second country, and linking the two patent applications together in a particular way.  The dry Articles start at Article 3 and continue to Article 30.

Which brings us to Article 2 of this treaty that was adopted exactly 138 years ago.  The drafters of this treaty, after doing the throat-clearing of Article 1, and before proceeding with the dry legalize of Articles 3 through 30, wrote Article 2:

Nationals of any country of the Union shall, as regards the protection of industrial property, enjoy in all the other countries of the Union the advantages that their respective laws now grant, or may hereafter grant, to nationals; all without prejudice to the rights specially provided for by this Convention. Consequently, they shall have the same protection as the latter, and the same legal remedy against any infringement of their rights, provided that the conditions and formalities imposed upon nationals are complied with.

Translated into plain language, this says:

[So far as applying for patents and registering trademarks and protecting designs is concerned,] we promise to treat people from other countries as well as we would treat people from our own country.

Among the first countries to join this treaty were Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, France, Guatemala, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.  Each of these countries promised to treat nationals of other countries as well as they would treat their own nationals (in the specific area of patents, trademarks, and design protection).  In the years that have passed since then, 160 more countries have joined this treaty and have made this promise to treat nationals of other countries as well as they would treat their own nationals, in this area.  

I was not there to see it in 1883 but I’d guess the roomful of people who negotiated the language of that treaty included few if any women and few if any people of color.  Having said this, you can see that on this narrow question of of treating people from other countries the way you would want people from your own country to be treated, they got the right answer.

Now it is 2021 and we see things that happen in the world around us.  Hate against Asian-American people.  Hate against people because of the color of their skin.  Hate against people because of their religion, or because of their non-belief.  Hate against people because of the country they came from, or because of the country their ancestors came from. 

Every one of us must speak out.

If you have a platform that permits you to speak, please use your platform to speak.

If a march or gathering happens near you to support Asian-Americans, or other groups that are targets of hate these days, please join the march or the gathering.

There are many ways that each of us can communicate our support to those around us.  We must communicate our support.