Digital Choke Daynotes

 Tuesday, September 20, 2005       mail    link   the story

I had meant to put this up yesterday, in honor of "International Talk Like a Pirate Day".

There be reports o' new Bagle viruses makin' t' rounds. T' AntiVirus guys be releasin' updates today ahead o' schedule. T' usual advices: be careful with email and attached files. Thar be bad swashbucklers about!"

(for non-pirates: "There are reports of new Bagle viruses making the rounds. The AntiVirus guys are releasing updates today ahead of schedule. The usual advices: be careful with email and attached files. There be bad pirates about!")

Avast, Ya lily livered scurvy dog!

Not sure if this story is true. But it's worth posting anyhow.

EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH

I never dreamed that slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential
neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous!

Little did I suspect.

I was on Brice Street - a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and
slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out
from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me.

It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when
it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no
time to brake or avoid it — it was that close. I hate to run over animals,
and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger
to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact.

Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of
themselves!

Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on
his hind legs and facing my oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his
beady little eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he
screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, “Banzai!”
or maybe, “Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!” The leap was nothing short
of spectacular… He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and
impacted me squarely in the chest. Instantly, he set upon me. If I did not
know better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along
for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a
frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer
riding gloves, and jeans this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry
little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a
T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet
residential street, and in the fight of his life with a squirrel.

And losing…

I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed
to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the
left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the
throw.

That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there. It
really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the
pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have
headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary
squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel.

This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with
the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an
amazing impact, he landed squarely on my BACK and resumed his rather
antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my
left glove with him! The situation was not improved. Not improved at all.

His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled,
to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having
one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back
unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the
throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one
result.

TORQUE.

This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it.
The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement.

The squirrel screamed in anger.

The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy.

I screamed in, well, I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in
jeans, a slightly squirrel-torn t-shirt, wearing only one leather glove and
roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential
street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back.

The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder.

With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the
handlebars and try to get control of the bike.

This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did
not want to crash into somebody’s tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had
not yet figured out how to release the throttle… my brain was just simply
overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect
against the massive power of the big cruiser.

About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient
attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI
attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my
full-face helmet with me.

As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite
sure my screaming changed intensity.

It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed
out (since I was not bothering wi th shifting at the moment), so her front
end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in
jeans, a very raggedly torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove,
roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy
squirrel’s tail sticking out of the mostly closed full-face helmet. By now,
the screams are probably getting a little hoarse.

Finally I got the upper hand … I managed to grab his tail again, pulled
him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This
time it worked … sort-of.

Spectacularly sort-of ..so to speak.

Picture a new scene.

You are a cop.

You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and
parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man
on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn T-shirt
flapping in the breeze, and wearing only one leather glove, moving at
probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and
with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your
police car.

I heard screams.

They weren’t mine…

I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front
wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a
cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street.

I would have returned to ‘fess up’ (and to get my glove back). I really
would have.

Really…

Except for two things.

First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned
about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the
patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his
back, doing a crab walk into somebody’s front yard, quickly moving away
from the car. The cop who had been in the driver’s sea t was standing in the
street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car.

So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to “let the
professionals handle it” anyway.

That was one thing. The other?

Well, I could clearly see shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery
from the back seat. But I could also swear I saw the squirrel in the back
window, shaking his little fist at me.

That is one dangerous squirrel.

And now he has a patrol car.

A somewhat shredded patrol car .. but it was all his.

I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn
off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood.

Be careful out there!

 Wednesday, September 21, 2005       mail    link   the story

Today's security warnings:

1) There's been an increase in the number of new Bagle virus variants. The infected message usually contains a ZIP file (most commonly called PRICE.ZIP); inside the ZIP is an executable that will turn your computer into a 'bot', controllable by the evil spammer. With that bot worm, the evil spammer can use the computer as a mail relay to send out spam, or harvest personal/financial information on that computer.

Corporate users should ensure that their mail system blocks any message with an executable. Anti-virus updates are being continually updated (the AV company F-Protect put out 11 updates in one day), but the number of variants ensures that the AV companies continue to play "catch-up" with their detection updates. All users should be very cautious about attachments, and never open executable attachments (set your computer to show file extensions in Explorer, Tools, View).

I trapped one of the new Bagel's late yesterday. It was a 'zero-day', since McAfee didn't detect it until today's update. It was caught by our work email filter, since we block all executables, even those in zip files. And we also block uncompressable zip files, since they often contain viruses. That policy has protected us against new evil attachments.

2) For World of Warcraft users, The Register reports that "When Blizzard introduced the God of Blood - Hakkar to his mates - in a new World of Warcraft scenario called Zul'Gurub, little did it know it was summoning up the online equivalent of Ebola or AIDS. According to a posting on WoW fansite Shacknews, anyone who ends up in a fusticuffs-style confrontation with Hakkar will be attacked with a magic spell called Corrupted Blood. It's a nasty one. There's little the victim can do to resist it, and it should do sufficient damage to wipe them out." ... "the contagion continues to spread from non-player characters to non-player character and anyone else entering the game."

Link to the story is here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/21/wow_virtual_plague

I don't play computers games. Mostly because I don't have the coordination skills to work the buttons. I did use to play Zork, however. I was often eaten by a grue.

3) Finally, Firefox/Mozilla users should be updating to current versions. There is an exploit for FF 1.06 that will allow a web site to infect your computer. That exploit seems to affect only FF on Linux OS systems, but there are other 'critical' updates that affect all users. Look for the red arrow in the upper right corner of the FF window to get the update to version 1.07. (In my opinion -- that little red arrow is a very obscure indication of the need to update. Users should get a warning box when an update is available each time FF starts.)

Note that there are some reports that claim that FireFox users are becoming more of a target for viruses than before. The link is here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/21/linux_firefox_security_bug , among other places.)

That's something that I've been saying for a long time. The evil guys are out there, and they will attempt attacks on your computer. You can't ignore updates, no matter what operating system or browser you are using.

Be careful out there...in the real and virtual world.

 Thursday, September 22, 2005       mail    link   the story

Well, the Sacramento Monarchs (ladies pro basketball) won the WNBA champoinship Tuesday night. I don't follow sports that much, but it appears that others in this fine town do.

So, the lovely mayor and her gang decided on a City celebration for yesterday afternoon. Their plan was a short parade around the park across the street from City Hall, along with speeches, etc, etc. The event required closure of the main streets. And they planned on the celebration starting at 4:30pm, right during the 'get out of town rush hour'.

A short geography lesson for you. The main drag for commuters is I-5 (north/south). There are on-ramps at I and P Streets (they are both one-way westbound to the freeway). Three lanes of traffic on both streets.

And these are the lanes they would be closing for the celebration.

So, lots of people, all the local TV stations and their satellite trucks, the vans from the local radio stations, and various citizens of our fine town. All competing with the usual traffic trying to get out of town at the end of the work day.

We got an advance alert via email. Most of the fine employees in our area decided to 'get out of Dodge' early enough to beat all that extra traffic. I planned on leaving about 4:00pm. My exit route would only take me across I street, so I would avoid most of the traffic trying to get to I-5.

So, Pam and I (we commute together, since we both work downtown, almost within the same block) got into the car about 4:30pm. I started up the car, and experienced a "Dominik" (Note to the three non-regular readers: John Dominik, once of my favorite "Daynotes", often has difficulties with his vehicles.). Some medium loud clattering from the engine area. The engine was running smoothly, so it wasn't that.

I popped the hood, and the noise seemed to be coming from the water pump area. It wasn't leaking very much, so we drove out of the garage to the Goodyear auto center, which is conveniently located across the street from the parking garage.

A quick look by the guys there confirmed the dying water pump (big clue: the puddle under the car). The car (1998 Toyota Camry) has about 170K miles, and the only major expense so far has been the timing belt. So, although it looks to be a bit under $500 to replace, the car has been running well enough to lessen the pain.

Although I have enough mechanical knowlege to do it myself, I had looked at the procedure before. It requires removing the right-front tire, some cowling, timing belt and cover, and probably much knuclebusting. There are just some things that are best left to the pros. They can do it in half a day. It would have taken me two days, with bloodied knuckles and strained muscles. And probably several trips to the auto parts store.

So, we left the car at the shop, and walked a block to the light rail station. Pam called her mother to meet us at the 'end of the line'.

Did I mention all the traffic? The light rail train shares the roadway with some of that car traffic, so it was about 30 minutes late. Once on the train, things moved nicely. I even got to sit down about half-way through the 20-minute ride.

Then a wait at the "end of the line" for Pam's mother to find the place. She's in her 70's, and had some challenges following directions. Good thing she has a cell phone (although the image of her driving while talking on the cell phone could be scary). After several calls, she finally got to where we were waiting, and we headed on home (I drove).

As a reward, we cooked some steaks on the "barbie". While out there, I noticed one of the trees in the back yard has gotten infested with aphids. All that sticky stuff all over the leaves, and a good trail of ants that are apparently the local 'aphid cowboys'. So, after dinner, I took the hose and sprayed the tree to dislodge them a bit, and put out some 'ant food' for the ants. A few more sprays may fix the problem, but may resort to some chemical treatments this weekend. (The local university garden site said that once you get the aphids off the leaves, they usually aren't able to climb back up.) I may also get some 'tanglefoot' (sticky stuff you put on the trunk) to keep the critters off the tree.

This morning's commute wasn't bad. We went in our little Ford Ranger truck, and the car will be ready this afternoon. I'll leave early enough that the traffic won't be too bad, since I won't be able to use the car-pool lanes.

Although traffic is not normally as bad as it is in Houston. Witness these three pictures I grabbed off the Houston traffic cam site (you can probably fine worse pictures on the various news sites):

Notice that only half of the freeway has cars. I suspect that's unusual for the freeways around there. If you took the worst traffic day in your area, multiplied it by 10, Houston is still worse.

So....what emergency supplies do you have in your car? Gas tank mostly full? Got some flashlights, extra water, toilet paper, snacks?