Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Modules 1 & 2 Self Test

Well - first time out I only got a 55. Ouch.
Next time I got an 85 but there was a computer glitch and it doesn't show as my best score.
Third time lucky - I got 95% with only the "WS-FTP, Bulletproof FTP and Fetch enable the transferring of files between computers and are examples of separate stand alone programs otherwise known collectively as ...?" question wrong. Still not sure what that is but will ask on the message boards when the time comes.

Module 2 - Tasks

EMAIL TASKS
1. I searched Lycos for myself - there's another Heather Mann in Boulder which I could tell only because the phone number was wrong. To find the email address I would have to register. On Yahoo I found my sisters address and phone number but for further information I would have to pay. I couldn't find either of our email addresses - but I thought it would be confusing if you were looking for someone and their name appears 17 times - do you just keep trying until you get a response from the person you're looking for?

Reading further down the module I see we don't need to go through and answer all of the tutorial stuff in here- good thing as it was going to be tedious :)

I'm not sure where the information about where the email came from is. But you can tell from the address a few things. If, for instance, it ends in .au chances are they are in Australia (although not necessarily as I still use my .au address but live in the us). The organization they belong to may also be included as the domain, or you can tell that they are using a free address with webmail such as www.hdmann0903@hotmail.com .

If you need further information than looking at the Internet Headers (in Message Options in Outlook). The Internet Headers for an email I recieved today look like this...

Return-Path:
X-Original-To: heather@mann.com.au
Delivered-To: m4457776@randymail-mx2.dreamhost.com
Received: from mail.batteries4less.com (mail.batteries4less.com [64.151.119.251])
by randymail-mx2.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DBBF613BB75
for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:45:31 -0800 (PST)
Received: from localhost (cbw.batteries4less.com [127.0.0.1])
by mail.batteries4less.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E42F2860103
for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:45:29 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <20061129434498532@batteries4less.com>
From: "Cellphone Battery Warehouse"
To: "Heather Mann"
Subject: Your Order from Cellphone Battery Warehouse
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:45:29 -0800 (PST)

2. CC/BCC/REPLY ALL
Generally CC is for when you want to keep someone else informed of a communication but which is not for them to participate in directly
BCC is the same as CC but you don't want anyone else to know that they are recieveing the information
REPLY ALL is when you want your response to be sent to everyone the original email was sent to. (USE SPARINGLY)

3. ATTACHMENTS
You can send an attachment as a pdf which anyone with the free adobereader can view.

4. FILTERS
I have lots of spam/junkmail rules which keep my inbox nice and clean. At the moment I don't have any filters set up but when I was working I had emails from people in particular departments go into those folders, and emails from important people highlighted in different colours.

5. EMAIL STRUCTURE
  • I have my folders separated out into:
  • people for family and friends
  • Travel folder with emails from planning different holidays
  • Renovations folder as we've been renovating our house and have lots of emails from people
  • Internet Studies
  • Purchases
  • Bills
  • Misc. - everything else
  • I often have temporary folders when I'm working on a project.
I sort things out this way as I find it easy to keep track and it's what I'm used to.

LISTS

I had a quick look at Yahoo groups and found a scrapbooking one for my mum. I had a look through but didn't see anything I want to devote time to reading.

*****COME BACK****
  • What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?
  • Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?

NEWSGROUPS -
I went to newzbot and looked for an Amazing Race newsgroup and after a few go's figured out I needed to search for amazing.race. I found this process slow and difficult - and the two newsgroups for this had no information. Searching for LOST (which I don't watch) produced better results - although I find this type of communication rather difficult and primitive in computer life. Also, you have to know what the newsgroup is called that you're looking for - kind of useless really (at least for me - and I may be missing the point)

Usenet.org seems to just be links to other pages - and mostly advertising. The links to Usenet servers required payment for access.

Dmoz.org had links to newsgroup lists which were easier to find newsgroups on but the information was sketchy at best

So, I resorted to Google Groups - which keeps all of the usenet groups as well and low and behold, there was alt.tv.amazing-race which is quite an active group. So, I'll keep an eye on it for a few days and then post.

********COME BACK************

ICQ
I downloaded and installed ICQ without incident. I'm always amazed at how much information people will post about themselves.
My ICQ number is 489772401 - I guess I'll have to wait until others get to this module to chat with them. I use MSN all the time which looks to be similar.
I tried searching for advanced netstudies but got an error. Request cannot be processed. Will try again later ******COME BACK ****************
It does seem as though everyone is using MSN for chat - and that's definitly the standard for people in this course. I've talked to Greg about Trillian which he uses and likes very much and lets you talk to people on any of the chat programs which is cool..

IRQ - I'm pretty sure I read that we should skip this but can't find the post. Will have to ask some others.
Anyway, I downloaded it and started to figure out how to connect etc. but decided I would wait until some others are around to do this with. Seems very laborious though. *****COME BACK***

Module 2.2

LISTS
  • Nothing really new here for me.
NEWSGROUPS
  • Same thing - nothing new.
CHAT & MESSAGING
  • Nothing new - although I was surprised that voice and video was not included in this space

Module 2.1

I have 17 people coming for Christmas so I'm trying to get ahead of the game...

EMAIL
  • I liked the information on Subject headings and have already used one of the suggestions. (URGENT: Information needed)
  • I thought it was good information to indicate whether a response is required or not
  • I liked the repeating information back differently to show comprehension
  • I didn't realise that attachments are encoded/decoded
  • I thought the inclusion of text idea could be useful - although it may encourage people to not read the full attachment.
  • It says you shouldn't run .exe files which arrive via email unless you are certain of its source - I find this a bit misleading as one may receive a self propegating email from someone they know who doesn't know that their computer sent it.
  • Never heard of annotating email - I use outlook which apparantly doesn't have this.
  • I do keep copies of outgoing mail generally and am very adept at finding what I am looking for so I don't generally copy myself unless I need to take some action.
I thought there was useful information in this section - although a lot of it was information I already knew. I do think the writing style of these notes is great - in reading I am seeing things in a different light which is fantastic.

Module 1

TELNET - The first time I tried this the server was down so I only got a blank screen. Today I logged right on and completed the task in no time. I haven't received the email yet but understand that can take a while.

FTP - I use FTP all the time so this was easy. The answer is Capitalization.

TRACEROUTE - Fairly straightforward - as noted by other students on the message board the last three digits are different but as the Subnet mask is correct we know we're at the Curtin site.

Tracing route to curtin.edu.au [134.7.134.47]...

hop rtt rtt rtt ip address domain name
1 1 0 1 70.84.211.97 61.d3.5446.static.theplanet.com
2 1 0 0 70.84.160.130 vl1.dsr02.dllstx5.theplanet.com
3 0 0 0 70.85.127.109 po52.dsr02.dllstx3.theplanet.com
4 0 0 0 70.87.253.17 et3-2.ibr03.dllstx3.theplanet.com
5 0 0 0 208.172.139.129 dcr2-ge-4-0-0.dallas.savvis.net
6 1 0 1 208.172.131.86 bhr2-pos-4-0.fortworthda1.savvis.net
7 2 2 2 208.173.178.134
8 2 2 2 208.173.178.134
9 2 1 1 144.232.11.218 sl-bb21-fw-14-0.sprintlink.net
10 32 2 31 144.232.20.131 sl-bb22-ana-12-0.sprintlink.net
11 32 31 32 144.232.20.131 sl-bb22-ana-12-0.sprintlink.net
12 32 32 32 144.232.1.30 sl-gw28-ana-0-0.sprintlink.net
13 32 46 32 144.232.1.30 sl-gw28-ana-0-0.sprintlink.net
14 197 197 47 144.223.30.26 sl-aarne-3-0.sprintlink.net
15 209 209 209 202.158.194.33 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au
16 209 218 209 202.158.194.33 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au
17 245 245 247 202.158.194.5 so-0-1-0.bb1.a.per.aarnet.net.au
18 246 246 245 202.158.198.178 gigabitethernet0.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au
19 246 246 246 202.158.198.186 gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au
20 246 247 247 202.158.198.186 gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au
21 246 246 247 134.7.250.18
22 246 245 245 134.7.134.47 prodweb2.curtin.edu.au

Trace complete

All in all I thought this was pretty simple - I guess having experience with all of these concepts makes it much easier.

I thought the information on Identity and Location was interesting. We use ip filters on our mail server to stop email from unwanted people - I had never thought about this as actually identifying real people - strange but true.

Getting Acquainted

I've spent quite a lot of time reading all of the introduction posts and looking through the weekly work and assignments. So far I'm feeling pretty confident as I'm reasonably computer savvy and usually pick new things up quickly. Everyone seems nice and helpful so I think it's going to be a fun term :)

I've managed to get this blog up and running and have added a few people to my fellow classmates list but still need to look through all the posts to make sure I have everyone - oh, and I guess I should add mine there too!

Welcome!

Hi - This is my first ever Blog - and my first ever Post! Woo Hoo!

I was going to do a website for my Net11 work but it seemed like it would be much more sociable - and simpler to do this blog. I also thought it was more in the spirit of learning to try something new :)

Looking forward to working with all you Net11ers.

Heather