medrud.com
Who and why
Since registering this second-level domain name in
1997, my main interest has always been to have an
@medrud.com mailing address. You know...domain names:
The vanity plate of the '90s.
In fact, medrud.com was originally hosted by
SuperNet for email only. I switched to Advanced Web
Creations in 1998 when I found that they offered more
POPs for less money, with all this web space as icing on
the cake.
medrud.org and .net are still available, but my
plan has never been to monopolize the .com. You might
be amazed at how few Medruds are regulars on the
internet, and only one other Medrud has expressed an
interest in the domain name to date. Eventually that is
bound to change.
My long term plan has always been host medrud.com
myself, but the economics just aren't there yet.
I'm pretty sure that I can do as well as the
previous hosts in terms of reliability. Unfortunately,
the cost of keeping a dedicated PC running 24/7 (with
plenty of spares) is well in excess of the $227/yr that
I'm paying AWC these days. Plus, US West gets an
additional $240/yr for the requisite static IP address.
This is too bad, because the incremental cost of
hosting 100 @medrud.coms over 1 would be small--not to
mention breaking free of the increasingly smaller file
attachment size limits that so many ISP impose these
days.
So here's the situation now: I get plenty of web
space (100MB) as part of the AWC deal, so if you are a
Medrud and would like to use some of it for a personal
site, you are quite welcome. Unless the traffic is
significant, there is no incremental cost to me.
Besides, posting stuff for other Medruds would be a
great way to stay in touch with the rest of the clan.
If you wanted to have more immediate control over
the content, I could always just put up a link from
medrud.com to the personal web space you no doubt get
from your own ISP.
As to the @medrud.com email addresses: A hand full
of mailboxes come with along with the AWC account, but
I've already given them out to my immediate family in
Colorado.
AWC gets $12/yr for each additional box and if you
didn't mind paying, you could go that route. There is
no way to break the billing out, so I would have to
handle the fees.
These mailboxes can be regular POP accounts that
you retrieve mail from (just like your normally do with
your own ISP), or they can automatically forward mail to
any existing email address.
At $12/yr, it would take a good handful of
additional @medrud.coms to tip the economic scales, so
AWC is probably the hot setup for now. Regardless, I am
always up for hearing about other schemes that would
serve the email needs of us Medruds--like if someone
else had demonstrably reliable computing resources up
full time anyway and a static IP.
Mark J. Medrud, 04MR00
UPDATE:
4DVision.net is medrud.com's new web host. 4DV's
service is cheaper and in many ways, better. (Cheap
enough that hosting medrud.com myself makes even less
sense now.)
medrud.com now has more of everything except raw
web space. (50MB now instead of 100MB, but then that's
still lots.) Mainly, there are now several spare
@medrud.com email boxes available.
I offer eight of these spares free to Medruds who
would like to have an @medrud.com email address. (The
fine print: 1) First come, first served. 2) This offer
is good for as long as there is not a significant
incremental cost to me. 3) If these spares run out,
additional accounts should be available for a small
fee.)
There are two different ways to do this.
1) Forwarding: The @medrud.com account can be set
up to automatically forward to whatever email address
you normally use. This is by far the simplest. As soon
as I set it up at 4DV.net, any email sent to your
@medrud.com address shows up in your regular email.
Nothing else needs to change in the way you get your
email. (Though you might want to change the return
address to your new @medrud.com if your email program is
able.)
2) A separate POP account: Many email programs can
receive mail from more than one email account. Your
outgoing mail is sent via your ISP's SMTP server as
always. Your email program is set up to collect
incoming mail from both your ISP's regular POP server
and the medrud.com POP server whenever you check your
mail. (Changing the settings in your email program is
fairly painless.)
In either case, you will be able to send and
receive email from anywhere in the world with your
@medrud.com email password and any regular web browser
by visiting http://webmail.medrud.com. (Of course, this
means that you will need to choose a "strong" password--
no birthdates, children's names or anything else easily
guessed.)
FYI: A few online services, most notably AOL and
MSN, are not true ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
AOL uses their own entirely custom mail system. It is
quite possible to use an AOL connection to receive email
from an independent POP such as medrud.com, but mail has
to go out through AOL's software. In the case of MSN,
they bend the internet's mail standards badly enough
that using anything but their own mail programs
(Outlook, MSN Messenger) a struggle. If you connect to
the internet through AOL or MSN, you are probably best
served by email forwarding.
These names are already in use:
med ("Med", "Butch", Nelder Medrud, Jr.)
mariagnes (Wife of Nelder, Jr.)
mark (Me, son of Nelder, Jr.)
mjmedrud (Also me, as the primary 4DV.net account)
bethadams (Sweetheart of Mark)
david (Son of Nelder, Jr.)
amy (Mother of Erik)
sarah (Daughter of David)
erik (Son of David)
Mark J. Medrud, 25AP02
(home)