As readers of Head Rambles will know, I am in the process of relinquishing my VPS as I am shutting down my business, and that is a tad expensive to host a couple of sites.

While I am having great fun trying to break my new server [successfully, I might add] I still have all my old accounts sitting on the VPS, waiting to be moved.  This should happen at any time, but in the meantime I have this dreaded feeling that I am still responsible for them, despite all the emails saying I had quit at the end of last month.

I received a mail last night from a client.  They were having trouble with their mail, and for once they gave a detailed analysis of the problem [which beats the hell out of “I can’t send mail – fix it please”].  It took me two seconds to Google the error report they sent – an Outlook problem.

I was delighted to receive that mail.  It reminded me why I am getting out of the business. 

While some clients had genuine problems, the majority seemed to think that it was perfectly acceptable to fire me an email at eight in the evening rather than go to the trouble of seeing what the problem really was, and whether it was my problem at all.

Having just moved servers to a new and completely unfamiliar control panel, I am having a lot of problems of my own.  When something goes wrong, I try to fix it myself.  If I can’t do that, I search the Internet to see if anyone is having similar problems.  If that fails, I go to my last resort – the Blacknight support team.  They are exceptionally helpful there and will go out of their way to explain things.  However, they do not want their time wasted with trivial complaints and queries and I respect that.

I replied to my client.  I sent a mail pointedly saying that I had found the answer straight away with a simple search.  I also politely reminded them that I have shut up shop.  I finished off with a chatty note about my retirement and how I was looking forward to peace and quiet with no one mailing me with trivial problems late in the evening.

I wonder if they got the hint?

I have been asked quite a few times why I am shutting down my business.

The general assumption is that I have gone bust, or that business has dried up.  They are natural enough assumptions given the times that are in it.  Neither in fact are is the case.

In the last few months I have turned down a lot of work.  One contract I was offered would have been worth a considerable amount to me, running into the tens of thousands, but I turned it down?

Why?

If I had taken on the job, it would have entailed endless meetings, countless emails all demanding my attention, deadlines and months of work, probably running to ten to twelve hours a day.  I would have been lucky to have had a break at weekends and I would have been mentally and physically drained.

How do I know all this?

I did a major contract for the same company a few years ago [they are a subsidiary of O2], and it was very successful.  However, during the build period I experienced all of the above.  The contract was for an extremely complex site, involving a virtual private network, allowing distributors connect to a database at head office, and for real time data transfer which previously had entailed phone calls, faxes and a lot of missed business.

They approached me again, but this time it was to re design the existing system and to expand it to include a vast new array of products.

I declined.

The money would have been very nice.  There is no denying that.  However, I am getting on a bit and my time is more important to me than money.

Aside from all that, another aspect of the business that has been getting me down for some time is the irritating phone calls and e-mails.  These invariable involve mail, whether it is a complaint about spam or the inability to connect to the mail server.

Spam is a fact of life.  However, my clients don’t seem to realise this, and they spend their time complaining to me that they are getting so much.  I would say that 70% of mails and phone calls are about spam, and they just can’t seem to grasp that I have no control whatsoever.  I have installed spam filters, and all forms on all sites have stringent coding to prevent abuse.

My ultimate ambition is to be able to get up in the morning, secure in the knowledge that any phonecall I get will be from a friend, and any email will be a pleasant read.

I am going to miss the income.  A lot of luxuries will have to be curtailed.

But there is a lot more to life than money.

I see Himself has been having a side swipe at my clients.

Maybe not the best of business ideas, but I doubt that they read his rants, so hopefully no damage will be done.

There have been a number of complaints from clients who have been unable to send mails from their accounts.  As they share a mail server with others who have no problems, this led to some investigations.

All these clients complained of the same symptoms – they were able to receive mail, but were unable to send any except via the web interface.  In each case, their mail client configuration was correct.  If I set myself up an account on their domains I was able to send with no problems.  So what was the cause?

I did some sleuthing and found the problem.

In each case, their local IP had ended up on a spam blacklist, Spamhause seem to be one of the major ‘offenders’ here.  The latter seem to be very enthusiastic in their efforts which is fair enough but it does lead to problems.

One client in particular consistently fails to send mails. 

His IP address is listed on Spamhause who claim his PC contains malicious software.  We checked the PC rigorously and found it to be clean.  His is the only device using that connection.

As his ISP provides dynamic addressing, I checked the other IP addresses in the block.  All were blacklisted on Spamhause, therefore reconnecting to obtain a different IP wasn’t going to work.

I contacted the ISP and explained the situation.  They claimed it was the mail server that was blocked.  I told them it was my server and assured them that not only was it clean but that it did not appear on any blacklist.  They finally conceded that it was their addresses that were at fault.  They maintained that it was up to my client to contact Spamhause.

Now, we have a bit of a conundrum here.

If my client gets his IP cleared, his connection is going to fail the next time he gets a new address. 

The ISP maintain they can’t clear the addresses, as they cannot give any guarantee that the equipment using those addresses is clean.

Presumably the cause of this mess is that one of the ISP’s clients has an infected machine and each time he is allocated a new address, Spamhause blocks it, until all the IP addresses in the range are blacklisted.

It is one of the lesser known side effects of viruses and spam and it is damned irritating.