So, I'm sitting here in the living room of our cottage rental (quite nice). What's better? I show up and my slick wireless network detector lights up before I'm in the house. SID=Motorola and no password -- sweet. It's fast and convenient and free.

So, I hop online and surf the web, but then I try to ssh somewhere and I find that they are blocking all ports but 80, 443, and 25. So, port blocking is really annoying, but WTF?! would you leave 25 open. What are they saying, I can't ssh somewhere (or check my mail via IMAP or POP3), but I can spam the world? Beyond stupid.

Turns out that my PPTP-based VPN works like a charm and the connectivity is good to the office, so life is fine. But why a provider would block ports and not block port 25 is just beyond my comprehension. Sad.