Digital Choke Daynotes

Daynotes	a daily journal of our activity	Send us email
Digital Choke	an action that is sometimes needed for your computer; also a short techno-story available here.

Sunday, August 3, 2003

I've gotten a few comments about the latest report up there ("Email: not absolutely positively delivered"). They raise some interesting points, which I have been thinking about since then. I want to comment on them, but that will have to wait until later this week. It's been a busy day, and it's a bit late. If you want to comment on it, just use the mailbox icon.

I spent some time on the office computer trying to make some CD's of all the pictures from the digital camera. I usually use "Nero Burning Rom", but it was misbehaving. The "Roxio CD Creator" program was also being irritating, so I may need to reinstall them. But first, I'll need to find the serial numbers of the programs. They are probably in a box.

Pam bought some Lucky Charms last week because it had the "CandyLand" CD on it. She thought it would be fun for our granddaughter (Joelle, 3) when she comes over each week. So I installed it on the office computer. And had several problems with it. It insisted on changing the screen resolution to 640x480 (permanently). And it took several minutes to load (after installing it). And then it caused an error of some sort. It wasn't worth the effort, so it was quickly uninstalled.

A busy week coming up at work. And it's getting late here.

Monday, August 4, 2003

Interesting developments in the area of computer security. I was looking at Jerry Pournelle's site, and he had a reference to why you need to be very careful with the protection of your computer. Look at this (it will open up a new window; I'll wait).

:A man has been cleared of child porn charges, after investigators found that an Internet attacker was responsible for the presence of illicit images on his PC."

Then I ran across this next story at the "Register". Here's the first paragraph. Go read that (another new window; and I'll wait again).

"A US appeals court last week gave tacit approval to the use of Trojan horse viruses as a tool in investigating crimes on the Net. "

The combination of the two stories got me thinking. I sent this email to Jerry Pournelle, who sometimes posts my thoughts.

Let's see: someone (the 'hacker', not me) sends out a virus to a newsgroup disguised as child porn. Somone else downloads it, opens it, and the virus puts a back door into the system. Then the 'hacker' uses the back door to get into that computer, looking for child porn. Some is found, so the 'hacker' alerts the police, who arrest the virus victim.

Now, change that paragraph a bit. The hacker doesn't find anything, so the hacker sends a child porn file to the hacked computer. Then the police are called, the virus victim is arrested.

And another change: the hacker targets anyone (including "Aunt Millie"). They get the bad file, then the police are called.

And another change: substitute a disgruntled husband/wife/jilted lover. Now, nobody is safe.

All of the above would be 'legal' under the court ruling (Note: I am not a lawyer.)

Remember the mantra......

Now, think about all of that. And go get your computer up to date. And if you are on a network, show it to your boss and your network guys. If your company doesn't have a good security policy and guidelines, then your company might be in trouble. (A good place to start is at www.sans.org. They have some sample security policies, and lots of information in their "Reading Room".)

And the "mantra"? "Update anti-virus. Update operating system. Never open attachments." Repeat three time. What I tell you three times is true.

Tuesday, August 5, 2003

"There is nothing to see here." -- Zork I

Wednesday, August 6, 2003

"There is nothing to see here." -- Zork I

Thursday, August 7, 2003

This week has gone by fast. Not without problems and challenges, though.

Tuesday on the way home from work (which was just the usual stuff), the heart started doing it's "let's beat fast and irregular" thing. You two regulars might recall that I get these atrial fibrillation episodes from time to time. They used to happen about every 6-10 weeks, but have been 1-3 weeks lately. I've adjusted the medications (under doctor's supervision, of course). We did try to go higher with the Sotalol (a beta-blocker), but that was causing a bit of light-headedness and low-grade headaches, since it seemed to slow my resting heart rate into the 45-55 range. So we backed off a bit, and it takes a while to stabilize.

The afib episodes don't seem to have any particular pattern to when they start. I can be watching TV, working, driving, working outside, or anything, and an episode might start. It doesn't seem to be related to food. And I am not one to get stressed out over things, so that doesn't seem to be the reason either.

But, when an episode happens, the only thing I can do is to relax and wait for the heart rate to 'convert' back to normal. In the meantime, it is quite tiring. When the heart rate is in the 130+ range for a period of time, it's like exercising without moving. It takes anywhere from 6-24 hours to convert. Tuesday, it started at about 5pm, and lasted until about 9am the next morning. So I stayed home from work, and just relaxed during the day. Did the couch potato thing, and also surfed the 'net with the laptop. But didn't have enough energy or motivation to do much else, including writing a post here.

But I was back at work today, with meetings in the morning and catching up in the afternoon.

One of the things that I read on the abcnews.com site is that the "six degrees of separation" theory also seems to work on the Internet. That's the one where one person can get to another totally unknown person with about six people in between.

And then I was reading John Dominick's Daynotes pages. He is very talented with computers, including Linux, Windows, Novell, Mac, enterprise software development, customer support, and more. But, through no fault of his own, has been out of work for about a year. He lives in Minnesota (St. Cloud, I think). And although his technical talents would be an exceptional asset for any company, he's having a hard time finding a 'gig', even after sending out over 1000 well-crafted and customized resumes.

So, here's where you can help. Send an email to your technical friends. Tell them that there is an excellent network administrator available in the St. Cloud Savage, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. And ask them if they will forward his resume link to someone in a company that is located in that area, a company that is looking for a great network administrator. If you don't know anyone in St. Cloud Minneapolis, then send it to someone that might have contacts there. Ask them to move the message along about six steps, and we should be able to find someone that can get John a job. He is very highly skilled, very customer oriented, and will work his hiney off to do the job. Here's the link to his resume: http://jdominik.rearviewmirror.org/current_resume.html . He's highly recommended.

Friday, August 8, 2003

John Dominik wrote me a short note to correct his place of residence. It is in "Savage, which is a southwestern suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota". So I made the correction to yesterday's post. It's 10pm here, and in Savage, it is 70 degrees with 78% humidity, no wind. Here in Sacramento, it's a nice cool 73 degrees (with 53% humidity), with a 5-10mph breeze blowing in from the San Francisco area (our evening outside air conditioner is working). He seems to like the place, but would like it even better with gainful employment. So get those 'six degrees' working.

Had a productive day at work today. I set up a HP/Compaq server rack, then installed 5 servers and a keyboard/monitor into it. That took all of the morning, and part of the afternoon. It's not terribly hard, just time-consuming. It takes a while to get all the cables tied down nice and neatly. But it looks nice, if I say so myself.

Three of the servers are for the reconfiguration of our mail system. (The fourth will be moved from it's current location.) We're setting up two Sendmail servers for the front-end, which will do all the virus checking and block mail from the spam 'black list'. Then the other two servers will be in charge of checking the mail for spam, using the SurfControl product. Once the mail gets through those two servers, it will be passed along to our internal mail servers. Outgoing mail will take the reverse path. The configuration of two parallel mail systems will help our throughput quite a bit; we process about 50,000 messages a day. And I hope that it will catch a bit more spam in the process.

After work, we went and picked up the two grandchildren. My daughter and her husband are celebrating their 6th anniversary by going up into the mountains at the family cabin near Lake Tahoe, CA/NV. We'll be keeping them until they return on Sunday. So we'll be a bit busy with them.

Tomorrow, the DirecTV guy comes to install the new dish. We had the service at the old house, and really enjoyed it. It just took a while to get it scheduled here (our fault, with vacations and other things going on). Then it's off to Nevada City/Grass Valley (about an hour north of here) for the county fair. It's in a nice mountain setting, and is quite enjoyable. So we have a busy weekend planned.

Saturday, August 9, 2003

"There is nothing to see here." -- Zork I

Digital Choke Daynotes