There are a bunch of reasons why you might decide that running your own mail server is something you want to do. You have a lot of free time and enjoy spending a lot of time at the command line reading howto guides and installation manuals. Hopefully, you know you are running a mail server and don't have a Windows machine that's been turned into a spam zombie.

Ok, so that may not sound like good reasons. There are some real benefits, you can give yourself unlimited email aliases, give your friends and family easier-to-remember addresses, and set up mailing lists to keep in touch with people.

If you've got a linux server, Postfix is one of the more popular mail transports. One of the things about mail server jargon is that there are a number of lego blocks that go into the mail chain. I won't attempt to write a complete guide to setting up your server, instead I'll point you at some useful links that I found helpful, and to boot not horrendously diffult to install.

• Postfix takes care of receiving incoming mail and routing it to a local destination. I found the Postfix Anti-UCE Cheat Sheet useful for making sure I had configured the server correctly to make sure it is being used for good and not evil.
• Amavisd-new is a perl script for plugging in virus scanners and spam blocks into the delivery chain. I use Clam Anti-virus, a Free virus scanner, and Spamassassin, to protect users from unwanted or dangerous mail messages.
• Once you're system is running, you might find that you're looking at the mail log to make sure nothing is out of sorts. Download pflogsumm and schedule it to send you a report on how many messages are being delivered/sent/blocked and other useful metrics.

There's nothing like a co-worker making fun of your four and a half year old cell phone to emphasize that it might be time to upgrade. Truth it, I really don't use my cell phone for much and was pretty happy with it but tonight it seems that the display on finally died. Since I have two months left on my contract with Sprint, I'll probably wait until then to get a new phone and keep my existing number. Until then, I'd be curious to here anyone's experiences with providers in the Metro DC area and phone's you liked or hated.

Or how just chatting with Jason was just as likely to fix my PC.

After installing a new 200G hard drive in my main desktop this weekend, the OS-that-will-go-unamed was not happy. Now, normally I wouldn't care since up until very recently I was not using it at all but then came Warcraft and my subsequent addiction. I was hoping to play for a while, I hadn't played since before Christmas, but the PC was being very flaky. On load, the startup sound would get caught in a stuttering loop and trying to log in to the WoW servers would hang the machine.

So in good troubleshooting fashion, after complaining to Jason, I did 2 things which he suggested: I upgraded the BIOS to my Motherboard, and enabled 48-bit Large Block addressing. Presto, everything worked fine after that! Thanks, Jason.

I must say, this whole experience reminded me of why I prefer gaming on my console, less hassle and time spent fixing your hardware. Although, I can't blame the PC much since I did change the hardware around on it. I must also point out that my Debian linux partition handled the change without a hiccup.