Digital Choke Daynotes

Smokin!

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Still lots of fires around California, along with a high pressure area sitting over the state. The result is winds from the north driving all that smoke into the valley. Air quality is pretty bad; the morning sun is really orange from all the smoke. And temps in the 100's don't make things any better.

Over 1700 fires in the state, but down to 330 active fires. Here's a good map of most of the fires in the state: http://www.oes.ca.gov/WebPage/oeswebsite.nsf/InteractiveMap?readForm . Another map here http://www.fire.ca.gov/downloads/incidents/StatewideFireMap_070708_PM.pdf .

So it's inside for me. Although I don't have any allergies, I have noticed a bit of throat irritation from the smoke.

We drove back from Utah on Sunday. There is still a lot of smoke in the mountains, up to the 6000 foot level. You can't see across Donner Lake from the freeway, normally a really pretty view of the lake and surrounding mountains. Visibility at the 4000 foot level was about 5 miles. At the Sacramento valley floor level, Sunday visibility in the evening was about 10 miles.

And it doesn't appear there will be any relief soon. Temps are projected at 100-108 degrees (F) through the weekend. Because of the smoke layer, the overnight temps aren't getting below about 75. We normally open the windows at night to get a bit of breeze and to save on AC costs. Not this week. We set the thermostat at 83 degrees at night, and keep the bedroom ceiling fan going.

This next month's electric bill will be quite impressive.

More Fires and Less Smoke

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:32:00 +0000

The "virus wars" at the office have calmed down. Forcing (via centralized management) full scans every three hours has removed most infections. Some 'isolated pockets of resistance' are being found and resolved.

Had a nice visit with Pam's sister and Mom (here from Houston) on Sunday. BBQ steaks for all, then brownies and ice cream. Small portions for me all around as part of the simple diet plan.

And the smoke from the more than 1200 fires around here is starting to clear a bit, thanks to a nice breeze from the ocean through the SF Bay area. Smoke has cleared to about the 2000 foot level. Actually saw the coastal mountains (about 90 miles west) on our walk last night. Still lots of fires out there, though.

Sun = 246
Mon = 245
Tue = 245

Still Smoking

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:21:00 +0000

The air around here is still filled with smoke from all of the fires around here. Visibility on the way home was 3-5 miles.

The CalFire guys have a Google map of many of the fires in the state here http://www.oes.ca.gov/WebPage/oeswebsite.nsf/OpenBranchContent/29AB11FAF23F909388257466006452B7?OpenDocument . Zoom in a bit, and you can see some of the 800+ fires that are burning now.

The weather dweebs say that the smoke will be here for several days. And some dry lightening storms this weekend are not a good thing.

Today: 265.

Computer Sickness

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Virus infection at work has taken most of my time. A lot of scanning and testing to determine the fix.

As to the source, probably inconsistant security policies is all I can talk about. But perhaps this will be an incentive to fix those policies.

Today: 255.

Smoke Gets In My Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Over the weekend, there was a 'dry' thunderstorm that moved through the area (Northern California). Lots of dry lightening strikes, no rain.

The result was over 400 lightening-caused fires in the mountains north and east of here. Along with a few more grass fires and some more fires in the coastal area.

And the result of that is a bit of smoke in the air. Although we are getting a small breeze (our 'air conditioning that cools off the nights), the temps here were about 100 on Friday/Saturday, cooling a bit to the mid/upper 90's today. Not enough breeze to dissipate the smoke, though.

Hence the title.

Still working on the weight. This morning: 265.

Round is a Shape

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:13:00 +0000

...which is what I say when I figure that I am out of shape.

I weigh myself every day. (Yeah, I know.) And the weight has been creeping up. I'm finding that my legs (particularly my knees) are sometimes a bit stiff and sore as I walk or get up from a chair. And my pants are too tight.

I'm not really happy about all of this. But I am essentially lazy, so haven't taken a whole lot of steps (literally) to rectify the situation.

But I have a plan. And I hope to stick to it.

1) I need to move a bit more. At work, I am usually sitting down at the desk. Not much movement other than fingers on the keyboard or moving the mouse around. So I wrote a silly little vbscript program that pops up a message every 20 minutes to get me to do some simple stretching and moving. I compiled it, and put it in my Startup group.

2) I need to eat less. I've always had the habit of cleaning my plate at meals. Part of my upbringing. And I usually find that by the time I push away from the table, I am really too full. So this part of the plan has to do with smaller portions. One spoonful of each dinner item. Put it on a smaller plate. And eat slowly.

3) Related to that, is snacking. I don't snack much during the day, but will have one snack in the evening. New rule: no snacks after 7:00pm. Water is OK.

4) More water during the day. Two benefits, I think. First: more water is good for you. And second: more water equals more trips to that little room to get rid of all that extra water.

5) More posting here -- every day. Each post will include the morning's weight from the scale. That's what the number is down there.

We'll see how all this works.

267

Oil Drilling and Brain-Dense Congress Critters

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:19:00 +0000

One of the places I visit daily is here http://blogs.indystar.com/varvelblog , a daily blog of a editorial cartoonist.

This one made me chuckle http://blogs.indystar.com/varvelblog/archives/2008/06/stubborn.html , until I sadly realized how true it is.

I think that refusing to allow drilling of known domestic oil sources (and not allowing investigations of probably sources) is really stupid. Our congresscritters debate about carbon credits and complain about the price of gas, but don't allow drilling on coastal waters.

And then China is going to drill in the waters off of Cuba, while we don't allow drilling off of the Florida coast.

Just the Usual, Thanks

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:20:00 +0000

Nothing too exciting. At the office, fighting the usual spam wars. The amount of spam that has made it through the filters has increased in the past few days. Users are getting quite excitable, since they have been a bit spoiled by the 94% blocking rate that I am able to maintain. The blocking rate has dropped a few percentage points, and the volume of incoming mail has increased to about 700,000 messages a day. So have been doing some tweaking to get things back to normal.

Weather here is heating up a bit; temps in the 90's, and some windy days yesterday and today. That has caused fire problems around the area. Grass fires next to freeways getting into some houses, causing some damage.

But no rain, flooding, and houses floating down the river. That's no fun.

Some of that is happening in Minnesota, home of fellow Daynoter John Dominick. Haven't heard from him in a while; hope all is well. Not that I can complain about other peoples lack up news, given the erraticness around here.

The Interstate is Closed - Please Ride Your Bike To Work

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Part of Interstate 5 (I-5) in Sacramento is below ground level. And that part happens to be almost next to the Sacramento River, which means ground water problems. This "boat" section has been damaged enough by groundwater to require rebuilding. And the state Dept of Transportation decided to get it fixed fast, rather than over several months.

That required totally shutting down the freeway for 6-day periods to allow for 24-hour work.

I-5 is a major north-south freeway route. Lots of cars and trucks, not to mention the local commuters. Shutting it down is big news.

So the media got really excited. We all have to "Survive I-5". Radio and TV warnings all the time, and a "Fix I-5" web site (www.fixi-5.com, if you are interested), with traffic cameras and warnings of apocalyptic commuting nightmares.

And the requisite media live cameras, breathless reporters, and more.

It is all starting to look like what happens when you kick an ant hill. Every media and publicist is scrambling this way and that. We all have to car pool. Or stagger our work hours. Or work from home. Or take mass transit. Or ride our bikes to work (yeah, a 30 mile ride each way).

So the northbound lanes closed Friday night. And all weekend hyper-reporters telling us that it's going to be gridlock time.

Remember y2K? I had to be in the Y2K "emergency operations center" that New Years Eve. And it was quite boring. I left at 1230am, because nothing was happening.

Same with this "Survive I-5". The usual backlogs, maybe a bit more. But no major commuter nightmare.

All those "media ants"scurrying this way and that.

Scripts and Spam and Web Site Income

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:31:00 +0000

Been working on a vbscript program that checks the update and anti-virus status of a group of computers, storing that info in a nice html file. Almost finished; testing takes about 10 minutes, since it talks to a whole 'Class C' IP address range.

And monitoring the anti-spam mail system. There's a bit more spam that has slipped through our defenses, and it's difficult to stop those. We've been pretty successful in spam filtering in the past.

Our users might be a bit spoiled, though. I get complaints if just a few (under 10) spams slip through each day.We're blocking 94% of all messages (about 600K a day) as spam. That's up a bit from the 90% a month ago. Still pretty impressive, though.

And still working on my latest secret money-making web site. Using some free (GPL) software, but there seems to be minimal support of one of the modules I need to use. I may have to delve deeper in the PHP code to fix things.

Murphy's Law

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:03:00 +0000

Here's a starting point for some wasted time: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murphy .

Although some are funny, and most are true.

These might be appropriate for any weekend projects:

Any tool dropped in a workshop will roll to the least accessable corner. Any object dropped on the way to the least accessable corner will land on your toe.
Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought.

My addition to those: "Any project will require at least three trips to the hardware store." I've been bit by that one several times.

As seen by my Home Depot bills.

Back in the Saddle

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:07:00 +0000

A nice week off last week, the usual trip down to Oceanside. Good timing: the weather in the Central CA valley was in the 100's, and the temps in Oceanside stayed around 70-75. Lots of relaxation; reading books on the balcony overlooking the pool and ocean beach. The usual surfing the 'net (don't do ocean surfing).

Oceanside is just outside the US Marine camp at Camp Pendleton. There is also a Navy base there. On Saturday, there was a "Navy Appreciation Day". We were awakened at about 7am with a loud noise that sounded like an army of leaf blowers. It was a big Navy hovercraft that landed on the beach right next to the Oceanside Pier. Quite impressive (and loud).

But mostly a quiet time for relaxation. A bit of reflection on the events of the past year.

And a return to work, with some interesting remote computer forensics tasks and processes. But looking forward to a three-day weekend.

Friday Means More Mail Monitoring and Less Privacy

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:55:00 +0000

Friday is here! (Yay!) Today's project list includes proving to another department that their firewall is blocking all their email we send them, and the problem is not our mail servers. Some more testing on McAfee AntiVirus installation and policy changes.

And another erosion of privacy rights by the US Customs and Border Protection guys. More info on my Security Dawg site www.securitydawg.com .

Weekend plans? More cleanup at the mother-in-law's house, a minor almost-clog in the shower drain, and a nap or two.

Why Men Are Never Depressed

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:10:00 +0000

I usually just delete these types of emails. But this made me chuckle (and since my wife sent it to me, I couldn't just delete it):

Why Men are Never Depressed

Men Are Just Happier People -- What do you expect from such simple creatures?

Your last name stays put.
The garage is all yours.
Wedding plans take care of themselves.
Chocolate is just another snack.
You can be President.
You can never be pregnant.
You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park.
Car mechanics tell you the truth
The world is your urinal.
You never have to drive to another gas station rest room because this one is just too icky.
You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
Same work, more pay.
Wrinkles add character.
Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100.
People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet
One mood all the time.
Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
You know stuff about tanks.
A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.
Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
Everything on your face stays its original color.
The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
You only have to shave your face and neck.
You can play with toys all your life.
One wallet and one color for all seasons.
You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife.
You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.
You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.

No wonder men are happier.

SQL Injections Cause Drive-By Attacks

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:16:00 +0000

A big SQL injection attack against hundreds of thousands of web sites. Many government and commercial sites have been infected with code that will try to install a password stealing program just by visiting a web page.

It's not clear if anti-virus programs will catch this one yet.

You can see the extent by doing a web search for "nihaorr1". DO NOT VISIT ANY OF THOSE LINKS! Google search may be filtering the bad sites; they returned only about 48K. Yahoo search returned over 251K entries. Some are discussions about this vuln, but many are sites that have been infected with the malicious javascript.

This one is widespread. Internet Storm Center has info here: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4331 . "They have hit city websites, commercial sites and even government websites. This type of injection pretty much null and voids the concept of "trusted website". or "safe sites"'

Corporate types should be watching for traffic to that site. I found a few users at the office that may have been affected (and possibly infected).

Be careful out there!

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:49:00 +0000

(Note: an older post that never got posted.)

CNN has a new revenue source: t-shirts with CNN headlines. You can create your own with a URL like this:

http://www.cnn.com/tshirt/?headline=Information%20Security%20knows%20where%20you%20go!&date=1208742566000&hash=e6019d52c9d91cc8eb4e077d85751edc&return_uri=http://www.cnn.com/video/%23/video/world/2008/04/20/thatcher.prince.william.chopper.itn

Just replace the text between the "headline=" and "&date". Space characters are the "%20" values. There seems to be a limit to the number of characters. And it doesn't work without the return_uri value. I never have liked creating links with parameter values in them. Too easy to hack the values.

Like in this story, where the Oklahoma state database of criminals can be easily hacked to add the name of your choosing to their database. I believe it's been fixed, but one of the stories is here from the guy that found it http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Oklahoma-Leaks-Tens-of-Thousands-of-Social-Security-Numbers,-Other-Sensitive-Data.aspx .

As for the CNN T-Shirt page, I don't think it would be too difficult for someone to create thier own form page that would have an input field for the T-shirt text, then creates the URL for the CNN t-shirt. Don't know if you could actually order said T-shirt.

Perhaps Slightly Less WebSensenseless

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:14:00 +0000

Some progress in the email wars, where large messages were killing my mail servers. It seems that the large files were being stored in a temp folder which was not excluded from real-time virus scanning. No indication in the SurfControl (Websense) docs that this was happening. But it was causing much intermittent consternation as mail would get backlogged. When you process over 600,000 messages a day, you can get a pretty impressive six-figure backlog in short order.

So, I have applied their recommended workaround. Some more testing to see if that fixes that particular problem. It took about a week's worth of daily tech support phone calls (each call over an hour), and lots of file transfers to determine this one.

And my rant on their user forums did get the attention of the support manager. Although they are discontinuing the forums to concentrate on email and phone support only. No sharing of information (or complaints) by end users in a message forum.

Not out of the woods yet, though. Several other major problems with the SurfControl (now Websense) products that are making it difficult to stay with that product. Those problems still need to be resolved.

For a bit of fun, head over to my other place www.securitydawg.com . You'll find that I am easily amused.

Email Irritation Gets Attention

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:28:00 +0000

Mail filtering software still takes much of my time. Two of the mail servers yesterday got 'stuck' in the same manner as before. It appeared to happen Sunday morning, and I wasn't able to get to it until that evening. That irriated a few people, but our company doesn't have 24/7 support (even though the IT dept has asked for funding for that). Most people assume that email is instantaneous, and get irritated when email doesn't get delivered this very minute.

The interesting thing is that I left a comment about the apparent reduced support at the vendor's site. And then I got a call from the support department's boss. After introducing himself, he did the standard 'break the ice' greeting of 'how are you today?".

To which I answered "irritated".

I think that was a bit unexpected.

The upshot is that he has assigned my four open cases (one from February, two are several weeks old, and the new one that I mentioned today) to his 'third-level' support guy. He (or she) is supposed to call tomorrow. We'll see if there is any progress.

In the meantime, I am investigating alternatives.

Mail Filtering Support Woes

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:32:00 +0000

Spent most of the day trying to figure out email problems. And they are mostly caused by our mail filter vendor (Websense, who bought SurfControl). Support for this product, even though we pay mid-5 figures a year for what they call 'priority support', is woefully inadequate. You would think that for that price, we'd get better response. All an email gets is an automated response, but no response from the tech support staff.

Well, sometimes you'll get a response after two weeks that says something like "we're assuming this matter is closed, since we haven't heard from you about this issue in a while". But even an immediate response to that is met with silence.

Even though our support contract doesn't end until December, I am seriously considering moving to another solution for our email and web filtering. I actually should have pulled that trigger before the last renewal.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:33:00 +0000

Today is the day that you don't want to believe what you read on the Innertubes ... more than usual.

You'll find lots of allegedly humorous pages trying to fool you. And lots of emails that contain links to malware.

So, be careful out there.

Now, please excuse me while I do a backup to my WORN drive (Write Once, Read Never). Can't be too careful.

Electric Car

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:32:00 +0000

This is why electric cars don't sell very well.

(Actual picture, no photo editing tricks. Seen in Sacramento CA in front of the State of California EPA building, 3/27/08)

Scripts and Spam and Web Site Income

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:31:00 +0000

Slow Friday - But Fun Fart Facts Abound!

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:41:00 +0000

It's a slow Friday.

But I found a great article on an important issue - flatulence !

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/19/786305.aspx

As I get older, I find that some of the things I used to enjoy eating can cause intestinal distress, along with the accompanying uncomfortable discharges. So I found the article fascinating, along with the comments at the end.

Especially the one that proves that global warming is caused by flatulence.

So I recommend that you read the article.

And I'll go take my medication now.

Spam-a-Lot Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:16:00 +0000

Did you get a bit more spam email this weekend than normal? I did at the office...and users complained a bit.

It was what I call a 'zero-day spam attack'. It's explained over in my "Security Dawg" blog here: http://www.securitydawg.com/2008/03/zero-day-spam-attack.html .

In the meantime, a bit of hand-holding for the users, who are probably spoiled by the overall effectiveness of the spam blocking at the office. We block about 500K (out of 550K) messages a day as spam. A few do get through, but overall we are quite effective at blocking spam.

Not as effective as Gmail, though. I hardly ever see spam in the "In" folder in my Gmail account. The above link explains my theory about that.

Leap Day

noreply@blogger.com (Rick) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:39:00 +0000

So, tomorrow is Leap Day.

Shouldn't you have some special plans? A day off with the kids or spouse? A special road trip?

It should be something out of the ordinary. After all, it only happens once every four years.

Got plans?