The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (September 16 - September 30, 2020)
Wednesday September 16, 2020:
A little part numbers work in the morning. Trip to the bank, well almost. Navigator led us on a 100 mile side trip for nothing. Drove past three sites for Bank Of America in South Bend, Indiana, and they were all gone, not one left in South Bend. He hasn't learned yet to look them up on the BOA web site to see if they still exist. While we were there we tried Tire Rack for the small trailer tires, but no luck, as they don't seem to be interested in the small tire market. -- WiFi in the afternoon. Uploading current issue of the new MGA Parts List (got through gearbox and propshaft). Back to working on the numbers in the evening.
Thursday-Friday, September 17-18, 2020:
Some small progress on the MGA parts index, but have been suffering with an email problem every time I get onto WiFi to check email (even numbered days). Some spam operator has been sending out thousands of spam messages with my name and email address in the "From:" line, and I have been getting thousands of bounce messages for "undeliverable mail". 2000 on the 14th, 4000 on the 16th, 9600 on the 18th. Getting out of hand here. It took about 3 hours just to download from the mail server, filter the junk into the Trash box, delete the junk from the Trash box, and then delete the junk messages from the server. With all this interference I haven't been getting to the Bulletin Boards or responding to normal friendly email. Wasted an hour and a half on the phone with Tech Assist on Friday with no good results. Story was that an SPS rule (whatever that is) was set so email with my address in the From line could only be sent from my server, so this crap should be stopped within 24 to 48 hours. I'll believe it when I see it. Have to attend to this later.
Saturday-Sunday, September 19-20, 2020:
Today was the day for all hell to break loose, and the stuff hit the fan. 21,600 junk email bounce messages in 48 hours. This took four hours just to download, filter and delete the crap. While the computer was doing this, it was mostly tied up so I couldn't do anything else on line. So I called tech assist again and wasn't going to let go until they could figure it out and fix something. Poking around on the server revealed junk bounce messages pouring into my POP box at about 500 per hour. There were also some messages going out through the SMTP server, being sent from my account. Looks like someone had cracked my password and was using my email account to send thousands of spam messages.
 Now knowing what was going on, the fix was easy. we just changed my email password, and all incoming and outgoing email stopped immediately. Really? There is a limit of 500 outgoing messages per day, and I think 20 or 25 addresses limit in the To and BCC lines, so we surmised the hacker robot had figured this our and was running at the set limit. 500x25=12,500 outgoing spams daily, which could account for 10,000 bounce messages daily. After the fact, I wasn't too surprised at the volume of messages in and out, but I was surprised that it stopped instantly when the password was changed.
That sucked up all of my available 5-hours of WiFi time today with nothing else done, but at least it appears to be fixed so I can get back to my normal grunt work schedule.
Monday-Tuesday, September 21-22, 2020:
More grunt work got several more sections of the Twin Cam SPL transcribed into the part number index. Today I uploaded the new data, complete through Section "O", Instruments (Twin Cam). There are a few more smallish sections, no problem, but the Body section is huge, so it may take another week or so to finish. Light at the end of the tunnel is beckoning.
Wednesday-Thursday, September 23-24, 2020:
More progress on the parts list, complete thorough Page R.8 of the Twin Cam SPL (a little into the Body section). I think the email spam "undeliverable" messages problem has bee licked (maybe). It turned out some spammer had cracked my e-mail password and was sending huge amounts of spam through my mail server. Changing the password killed that instantly, but there will likely be some residuals for a few more days.
Friday-Saturday, September 25-26, 2020:
Parts number list is slow and tedious, but still moving along. Now finished through Page R.24 of the Twin Cam SPL. That's a little more than 1/2 of the way through the first 1/3 of the Body section. If that sounds a bit cryptic, it's because I broke the huge body section into 3 parts to be more manageable. -- Ordered a new pair of tires for the trailer today. Tentative delivery date October 5.
Sunday-Monday, September 27-28, 2020:
I pulled an all-nighter on the 26th. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea, but it did get some work done. Did another dozen pages of the Twin Cam SPL, now finished through page R-36 (and uploaded. -- The "undeliverable" spam message problem must be gone, as I have gotten back to a normal level of email, about 20 friendly messages and 20 spam messages, most of which are filtered directly into the Trash box. Good to be caught up with email and BBS an hour before closing time for a change. Maybe I can watch a little You-Tube.
Tuesday-Wednesday, September 29-30, 2020:
Still pushing the books, now finished through Twin Cam Body section page R.41, which is the end of my second division of the Body section. That's only 5 pages done in the past two days, but it included quite lot of error checking and re-formatting of hundreds of color descriptions to be more consistent for easier reading. We did made an extra 25 mile run for groceries, and stopped long enough to watch the Presidential debate.
Nice surprise on the front porch this morning, the new trailer tires arrived quicker than expected (Fed-X Ground), ordered Saturday evening from Georgia, arrived Wednesday morning in Indiana.
Clear sunny day on our way out to our WiFi stop we took the opportunity to get a picture of the late model MG
Midget we have been driving by for the past few weeks. The vehicle (machine) in the right foreground is a one-row corn picker. That one is so old we didn't even have one of those on the farm when we were buying used equipment in the early 1950's. Post-war, when we stopped picking corn by hand and bought a machine, it was a well used 2-row picker pulled by tractor and driven by PTO (Power Take-Off). I'd like to take a closer look at this one, but it may be chain driven from the ground wheels to be pulled by a horse (or mule).
Following the log poles a bit to the left there were also a pair of old Dodge trucks. The White one is a flat nose van, while the red one is a flat nose pick-up truck. These are 1960-1964 model range. I drove a Dodge van like that for one day in late 1968 when a friend borrowed one from a dealer used car lot for a test drive (never did buy it). In 1972 I bought a 1960 Ford Falcon window van (very similar design) which I drove regularly until 1976 when it got swapped for a 1974 Datsun Lil Hustler P/U truck (a wonderfully rugged little vehicle).
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