Verizon voicemail backdoor

Verizon seems to be a lot more stingy with letting customers check their voicemail without incurring airtime charges. The landline access numbers are apparently often called "backdoor" numbers. There are many people out there trying to maintain lists of backdoor numbers, but for Verizon they are mostly disconnected.

The best list was found here: He apparently actually tries the numbers and edited out the chaff from the list that is at the other sites.

http://www.bridog.net/cellular/voicemail.txt

The access number for the DC area, BTW, is 301 802 6245

windows updater stuck at "preparing to download"

Still in the middle of trying to fix this. Many hits on Google, I am not the only one who has this problem. The fact that XP sp3 is mentioned in many hits probably means that the problem is with this update in particular. One link indicated that the best thing might be to install SP3 separately; I have a vauge memory that I had the same problem with SP2. Here's the SP3 link, although it's not as good as I thought it was: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-706018.html

One link indicated that it might be a failed update (likely in my case), and a tool called "Belarc Advisor" can be used to find and remove the failed update. That link was: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic105237.html. I'm trying it out now, this seems like a very powerful program. Note: no failed updates found.

Several other links referenced common advice apparently stemming from M$ Knowledge base articles. This one forum dissected that advice particularly well: http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/13061-1.html

This forum thread implicates a problem with M$ .NET 1.1, which it seems is what I have (no, I'm up to 2.0). It also provides a little bit of detail about Updater's dependence on activeX, which I've somehow crippled on this machine in some way: http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=31205

how to stuff data right down a cgi-bin script's throat

The web page URL is just a /index.cgi, with a form to change the content but the URL doesn't change.

The answer to crafting a URL for the page I want is to look at the source for the form, find the name-value pair and add that onto the end of the URL thusly: /index.cgi?name=value. It took several tries to find the name, and to remember to use the question mark. Websites that led me to the answer were:

This is the head of about 4 linked pages that explain CGI in a lot more detail, and had the answer but I didn't get it: http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/PERL/node227.html

This site is very directly worded, and gave the clue that I should read the FORM source for tags labeled INPUT, SELECT, or TEXTAREA (for my case it was SELECT) to get the name of the name-value pair.http://jmarshall.com/easy/cgi/

For the format of passing the name-value pairs (ironically, a gsfc website having almost nothing to do with CGI tutorials): http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/idl_html_help/Passing_NameValue_Pairs_in_a_URL.html

Where ring terminals come from

It turns out that ring terminals and other crimp lugs are made by tyco. The model name is plasti-grip.

Here is an application note for the tooling:
http://ecommas.tycoelectronics.com/commerce/DocumentDelivery/DDEController?Action=showdoc&DocId=Specification+Or+Standard%7F114-2161%7FA%7Fpdf%7FEnglish%7FENG_SS_114-2161_A.pdf

Here is the root of the search tree for the tyco model number:

http://www.tycoelectronics.com/catalog/feat/en/s/10334?BML=10000-P