Digital Choke Daynotes |
What's a Daynote?"Daynotes" are daily (usually) journal entries of interesting happening and discussions. They are not 'blogs', which are often just a collection of links to other information (although we do include links occasionally). Daynotes are much more interesting (we hope). These "Digital Choke Daynotes" were inspired by the collection of daily journals of the "Daynotes Gang" (see sites at .com, .net), a collection of daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. If you have comments, send us an email. A bit more about me is here. You might also enjoy our little story about the death of the 'net. |
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Seems that my personal ISP (not the fine folks that host this place) is having problems. A Denial of Service attack is in place against SureWest.net since Sunday morning. It's taking them quite a while to fix it; they are not done yet. I have connectivity, but DNS (domain name services) is not working. So I can't get to sites based on their name. And, as of this morning, they have not estimate of when they will be fully operational.
But, there are other ways. Unsecured (or purposly opened) wireless networks are available. Limited connectivity, but passable.
Whoops...fergot to change the month yesterday. All better now.
And back to work...which is where this post is coming from (on my break, just in case you are interested). The denial of service against SureWest (my ISP) was still going on late last night, and probably into this morning. It may be getting better, though. I got my email connection to them working, so now I can respond to those "You won the lottery" messages. (Not!)
There are some interesting blogs about the Katrina mess. One is the 'interdictor', the blog of some tech guys at a big ISP in downtown New Orleans here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor.
Another I just found today is a blog from the Houston Astrodome here at http://blogs.chron.com/domeblog ). Excellent info...and it would appear that the people in charge there know what they are doing. (As opposed to the apparent lack of people in charge in New Orleans.)
Both blogs suffer from the same malady...last post is on top, so you have to read backwards. Don't you think it would be easy for the blogging software guys to figure out a button that would rearrange entries in date/time order (like it is here)? Just flip a bit in the display of the entries database.
There you go...another 'million dollar idea', just yours for the asking!
And you might want to go to http://www.noaa.gov . There is a lot of satellite images of the destruction and flooding, along with a clickable map that you can use to drill down to specific neighborhoods to see the damage from the air.
Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) now has 'fresh' satellite images of New Orleans. There is some cloud cover on the images that I saw. But the resolution looks quite good. At the closest level, you can clearly see the damage to the Superdome. You can see vehicles on the freeways, but it's not as good as what the spy guys get, I'd bet. The NOAA site is another good place to go for detailed images and info about specific areas.
On the security front: check your credit card statements carefully. From the folks at Kapersky Labs (anti-virus company):
"Over the last couple of weeks more people are reporting charges of $9.95 to their credit cards - for no reason whatsoever. About a year ago we saw a similar trend and now it has been picked up again.
"The scammers hope that because the amount of money is so small, the charge will go unnoticed. They're also using names which closely resemble real company names to make the charges look (at first glance) more legitimate. "
It's probable that such charges are a precursor to financial fraud / identity theft / fraudulent charges against credit card accounts. Keep a close watch on your bank/credit card statements and activity, and don't forget to shred before throwing things away.
SureWest (my personal ISP) is back on-line after their denial of service attack. So I've got regular connectivity at home now.
Tonight will be busy. Our local church ward is putting together some 'disaster hygeine kits' tonight (actually, it's a week-long project, but the big push is tonight). They will be shipped to disaster victims all around the world, including people affected by Katrina. The church has already sent more than 16 semi trucks to the area, to be distributed wherever needed (not just church-related areas/needs). I'll be home late tonight.
Then tomorrow, a short drive (er, 10 hours) to Salt Lake City (UT) for a nephew's wedding on Friday. Should be able to post from there (don't want to disappoint my three regular readers), as well as keep in touch with the "Interweb".
... more later ...
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