Help! I've Been Kicked Off SDMB!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Or, Notes From A Message Board Nomad.

But Ed Zotti has nothing to do with this (as far as I know). The firewall at my work has blocked the SDMB. Not a big deal, right? Just visit the SDMB after work. The problem is that I’m always at work. So, I will pretty much only be visiting the SDMB in a lurking fashion late at night on the weekends from now on. In the meantime, I’ve found a couple other message boards to frequent:

Argue It! is a newer board that is strangely reminiscent of the SDMB. They allow posters to have avatars and post pictures within their threads. The speed of the board is good, but there are so many subcategories, and so few members, that a thread could stay on the front page for weeks without dropping off.

Clockwork Orange claims to have been around the longest of all message boards, despite their relative low number of members. It has political and MPSIMS type threads, but it is heavily weighted towards technology and gaming. For crying out loud, there is a link to post pictures of your computer, another thread dedicated to “hacking”, and an arcade link to play games while on the message board. They even post the high scores of each game in the members’ profiles.

Conceptual Guerilla is also a newer board, from what I gather. It is rare to see someone with over 500 posts on this board. Conceptual Guerilla is the creator of this board, and reigns over it like a dictator. By my opinion, s/he is confused on several political topics, but then again, maybe s/he is simply trolling for a reaction. This board has several Socialist and Communist leanings about it, just so you know, but that is evident as soon as you visit it for the first time.

Van’s BS Board is a more lighthearted board. It is as if one took MPSIMS and In My Humble Opinion, and expanded it across an entire message board.

SDMB will always be my home. But since I have been exiled by my firewall, you will find me dividing a majority of my time between the above message boards. Maybe I’ll see you there.

2

So your boss has blocked SDMB but not the others in your list? Why don’t you find out if he/she/it has a special beef with the best MB in the world? Is he/she/it afraid you might learn something? :wally

Is the alternate Doper hangout, the Fabulous Furry Forums of Fathom blocked, too?

3

Well a solution to this problem might be to do what I do at work (out of simple paranoia on my part)… and simply tunnel any traffic you want out to your home box over ssh, or utilize some sort of anonymous proxy service to get to sdmb such as anonymizer.com or a host of other services. :slight_smile:

4

Other Doper Niche Boards:
UnaBoard
NIFSTD - (will redirect when the freakin’ servers get fixed*)
G’Dope
NADS

*I can’t even access the Bug Base to report the frequent nonconnections. Bear with me, it’ll be up and normal soon enough I guess… (stupid server upgrade!)

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The boards at Ship of Fools for all those of even the vaguest ecclesiastical bent. Debate can be intensely stimulating.

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The boards at Ship of Fools for all those of even the vaguest ecclesiastical bent. Lots of intense debate.

7

Ironically, Anonymizer.com is also blocked by my workplace’s proxy. And, the user priviledges are so locked down, I cannot install their toolbar. Believe me, I’ve pinged it every way, and twice on Sunday. They must have it blocked by URL, not IP address. But, I will try again on Monday, just to be sure. In the meantime, you can find me over at those other message boards.

The problem is that my IT Department is in Chicago. I am in Pittsburgh. To confuse things, my username is Chicago Faucet. I can’t necessarily call up and say, “Hey, I like getting paid to surf on the Internet, and wasting company time. Please unblock SDMB.”

8

Tell 'em you need SDMB for your work. For research. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

9

I suspect that’s deliberate not ironic :slight_smile:

When you say ‘blocked by URL’ do you mean http://anonymizer.com doesn’t work but http://168.143.113.10 does? Am I, or rather, in what way, am I being stupid? :slight_smile:

I really doubt it’ll work but you could make the case that you want to browse at lunchtime.

10

I have been having a similar problem. Apparently someone changed the security settings at my workplace and I now get a notice telling me that Symantec has determined that the number of questionable words has exceeded the allowable number.

I can usually read GQ and GD threads without tripping the alarm. MPISMS and IMHO are a crap shoot. The Pit is off limits all together. It is driving me crazy because I have an irrational urge to yell at the people who throw a gratuitous swear word in their posts.

The smart thing to do would be to just hold off on my SDMB visits until I got home. I have chosen the more foolish path of tripping Symantec’s sensors a couple of dozen times a day and hoping no one notices.

11

I’m not sure which is showing up on their “Forbidden Tree Of Knowledge” list, but neither gets through. So, it has to be both. Pinging is unreachable, and HTTP gets me a nasty slap of a message from the IT department. The message is a message written in blood, splattered across my screen: “Forbidden”.

Actually, this may be a nice, cold, wake up for me. I have work elsewhere to perform. Good deeds to accomplish. Here at the SDMB I have become lazy and I have let my guard down. I have succumbed to the comfy chairs, and gotten used to enjoying the savory coffee that is served. It is time to grab my kitana and walk barefoot into the snow.

Oh yeah, my copy of *Kill Bill * is late.