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.

I often come across strange things on the Internet.

I found a site today that I hadn’t seen before.  It’s quite a nice site and takes an interesting approach to site listings –

http://www.gimmedat.ie/

What really intrigues me about it is their ‘Top 5 Sites this Week’.

There, right at the top is Head Rambles!

And what is intriguing about that?

Well, I don’t think Head Rambles was ever submitted to that directory.

They don’t seem to list blogs.

If you do a search within the site, Head Rambles isn’t to be found.

And finally, where did they get the little logo?  I never made it.

I’m not complaining.  In fact I like the logo and am flattered.

I’d like to know how it came about though…