Digital Choke Daynotes

 Sunday, October 10, 2004       mail    link

First off, if you haven't already, go to Simple Steps for Safe Computing. If you follow those instructions, your computing experience will be more safe. It's what I have done at home here, and I have been protected from computer problems. After you have done it for your computer, share the link with your family and friends so that they will also be protected.

As proof of one of our recommendations, I present this information (a copy of what I sent to Dr. Jerry Pournelle; posted here for your information):

I note this report: which tells of "unsubscribe, and get a worm" techniques used by spammers/hackers. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6208701/ .

"In some cases, the link simply aims potential victims at an executable file -- a Trojan horse program sitting in a hidden location on the Internet. In others, slightly more elaborate techniques are used to inject code onto a machine after it is directed to a Web site."

As mentioned in my message to you (which you posted at the end of your Thursday mail section), clicking on links in emails can (will) cause problems.

Best practice: just delete and move on. And get those updates installed.

Christopher Reeves will always be Superman. Not just in the movies, but in his determination to beat his unfortunate paralysis. The man was tough, but always positive.

And, 29 years ago today, I was lucky to be married to Pamela Kent. Probably the best decision I have made. Even though our first night of the honeymoon started out with this. One of our favorite wedding reception pictures includes it.

 Tuesday, October 12, 2004       mail    link

It's the 2nd Tuesday of the month; time for the monthly Microsoft Updates. Several important issues, including some additional problems with the handling of graphics images in Excel and Visio. An overview of the updates are here http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-10-12 ; patch details are in two places:

• Windows Update information: http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/200410_windows.mspx
• Office Update information: http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/200410_office.mspx

Note that one of these updates is for Excel (it's related to handling graphic images), so you will need to go to the Office Update site manually to get that update. Office updates are not yet available via Windows Update.

When you look at the Windows update information, you'll notice that only one of the updates is needed if you have already installed XP SP2.

And a note to any Linux users prone to exclaim (with glee, usually) about the non-vulnerability of Linux programs...you've also have some updating to do. My mailings from bugtraq@securityfocus.com indicate many Linux updates in the past month. You should also go to your operating system update site and get your updates packages.

Pam and I watched "The Day After Tomorrow" tonight (not much on regular TV or the various DirecTV channels). Fairly good movie (two out of four stars). Interesting visual effects, a bit of a preachy message, some stretching of reality, but watchable.

Still working with the slow program startup problem on my laptop. If the wireless card (Orinoco Gold) is installed and running, there is a 1-2 minute delay before any program will start. If I pull out the wireless card, the program will start right up. It doesn't matter what program is started, the delay is still there with the wireless card installed.

I've looked carefully at the running processes. I installed the latest wireless card drivers. I've looked at the startup processes. And I have uninstalled some unused programs.

It acts like there is some process that is looking at network resources, like there was a network drive in a PATH statement (which is only pointing to actual folders on the C drive). Still quite puzzling. I may need to do a fresh install of everything, but there is quite a bit of preparation for that so that I save all the important doc files and various program settings. And there are a couple of other programs that I might uninstall before I start all over.

Dan Seto noticed that there are now updated "Power Toys" for Windows XP. I grabbed the ClearType font optimizer program. It worked quite well; the screen seems much clearer. You'll find the Power Toys at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx .

 Thursday, October 14, 2004       mail    link

I got a couple of suggestions about my problem with programs starting slowly. The problem only happens when I am connected to my home wireless network. If I start a program, it takes 1-2 minutes before the program actually loads. There is no disk activity. If I start the same program when the network card (PCMCIA) card is removed, the program will start normally. If I start a program with the card installed, then pull the card out, the program will immediately start to load (you can see the disk light). And it doesn't matter what program I start, the delay is still there with the NIC installed.

Once the program starts, everything works normally. I can load web pages without delays. I can send something to the network printer without delays.

So it would appear that when the NIC is active, there is something delaying the loading of the program. My first suspicion is that there is some network traffic happening. There are no network drives loaded. The only network device active is the printer, and it's not the default printer. (And I have uninstalled that network printer, and the problem persists.)

Brian Bilbrey wrote and suggested that I check out the NIC card configuration. I've got an Orinoco Gold card, so I grabbed the latest client and driver software, and installed both. With the client software, I looked at every possible setting, and there wasn't anything I saw that had to do with timeouts.

Peter Thomas wrote and suggested that I get a bit 'geeky' and do a bit of network packet capturing. I wandered over to the Microsoft site and grabbed the XP Windows Support Tools. One of the tools in there is 'netcap', which is a network traffic capturing program. It's pretty simple to use from a DOS prompt, and captures the traffic quite easily. But there is no packet analysis tool.

So that's the next step. Ethereal seems to be the best tool (for Windows), but it's getting late, so I'll try downloading and installing it tomorrow.

It was quite smoky today. There are three major wildfires in the Sacramento (CA) area. There's one west of here in the 'wine country' area called the "Rumsey" fire. That one has been burning for several days in some rough terrain. Yesterday, a new one started east of here up Highway 50 (that's the road from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe). It's still burning today; it's right next to the highway so they have it closed down. You can still get up to Lake Tahoe, but you have to take one of the back road highways to get there. (This time of year, that drive would be pretty with the fall foliage in the Sierra Nevada mountains -- although it doesn't compare to east coast foliage.)

Then a third one cropped up today, also in the Sierras. Between all the fires, the air is quite smoky. There is quite a bit of smoke in the air, so much that the sun was mostly obscured, giving the day a burnt umber color. Most of the day, the sun was barely visible as an orange ball.

NOAA has some satellite images of this area. Choose from the low-res (61K) or high-res (280K) version. This picture (high-res) shows the extent of the smoke throughout the valley. Lots of smoke hanging around in the valley. (The satellite image page is here.) And the USDA Forest Service Active Fires mapping system is here; you can zoom into a mapping of the fire areas. Interesting application, but it doesn't show the boundaries of the fires. Another mapping site is here; it gets a bit more detail. And another fire info site here; it has current information, but no maps. Haven't found a site that shows that fire boundary information yet.

The forecast for tomorrow is for more smoke in the air; the weekend should bring some winds that will help clear out the air.

 Saturday, October 16, 2004       mail    link

The weather has changed, possible storm rolling in. That resulted in cooler weather today, with a good breeze. And that got rid of a lot of the smoke in the air.

The usual weekend stuff around here. Pam went to work for a half day. I cleaned the carpet downstairs, so it looks a lot better. Hosed off the patio furniture; lots of dust and smoke particles there.

And I found a good Windows-based network sniffer and analyzer - Packetyzer for Windows. Pretty easy to use, knows how to talk to the network card, and has a nice interface for capturing and looking at network packets.

A quick look at the packets during a program startup with the NIC card installed showed some traffic trying to get to the work network. Since I am not connected to the work network, it looks like that might be the cause of the delay in starting the program. So the next step is to figure out why that is happening. That will be a good task for tomorrow.

The kids/grandkids stopped by for a quick visit tonight in lieu of their usual Sunday visit. So we watched (with the grandkids) some "Dora the Explorer", had a bath, and got into their new pajamas. Christine and Jared got a bit of time to go out without the kids. They went to the new "Maggie Moos", a new ice cream parlor in the neighborhood. They came back with a positive reports, so I guess Pam and I will have to try it out.