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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Let's see if I can catch up.
Last weekend, Pam and I went up to the cabin at Strawberry (CA, about 20 minutes up highway 50 before Lake Tahoe) to celebrate our 30th anniversary. That was quite relaxing. No TV (although we did watch a few DVD's), no Interweb, lots of reading books, and a short trip into Lake Tahoe. The weather was really nice: a bit cool, so we had to fire up the wood stove evenings and mornings, and sweaters during the day.
I had planned to 'close up' the cabin that weekend, since I didn't think anyone else would be using it the rest of the year. That involves draining the water pipes and water heater, and putting out the 'custom mouse food'. But Pam's mother decided to come up for a short day trip after we left, so I'll get to make another trip up there to do that later.
On the way home Sunday morning (late morning), we stopped by Apple Hill. This is an area just outside Placerville CA ("Old Hangtown") that has lots of apple farms where you can get fresh apples and other fruit. It's a big tourist draw, so the traffic can get a bit dense. Some places also have craft booths.
One person was creating paintings by just using spray paint. His paintings were mostly space-oriented: space landscapes, skys, etc. It was interesting to watch his techniques of creating those pictures with just spray cans of paint. He could do one in about ten minutes, and sells them for $25 each.
We picked up a small box of red and golden delicious apples, which are quite tasty. Then on home, where we managed to bypass a bad accident on the freeway near home by taking some back roads.
Monday was the actual anniversary. I got some nice flowers for her delivered to the office. Our big present to each other will be the trip to Maui next month. Pam found a condo (apartment) on the fronting right on the beach. There is a 'lanai' (porch area) for each apartment that looks over the beach and ocean area. Quite nice; we're looking forward to that.
At work, I've been gathering some tools for performing remote audits of Windows computers. There are some interesting forensic tools out there that allow you to get a lot of information out of a remote computer. I'm modifying the tools and processes a bit; they are a collection of command line tools in a batch file. That's been my major focus this week.
There's also a minor update to the mail filtering servers scheduled for this weekend. I'll be able to do that from home, though, through a VPN connection. We have dual mail servers, so my work won't affect any mail delivery, with any luck. The servers are running Windows Server 2003, SurfControl Email Filter/SMTP, with logging to a separate SQL server. The SurfControl filtering software works quite well; the initial setup and tweaking of all the filtering rules takes a bit of effort, but once in place, spam/offensive mail is effectively filtered.
On the security front, the monthly Microsoft updates are out. Of course, all my personal systems are set up for automatic updates. Most of the corporate systems are also set up for automatic updates, so that reduces our exposure to those problems.
And, for a bit of time wasting ... er, knowledge to gain:
Everything you wanted to know about shoelaces is here: http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/index.htm . You'll be able to learn the "World's Faster Shoelace Knot", and the "Secure Shoelace Knot" (good for parents of small children). And info on how to lace your shoes, optimum shoelace lengths for different lacing patterns (including formulas and a calculator), and how to fix those broken shoelace tips. (Did you know that the tips of the shoelace are called "aglets" ?)
Happy Friday the 13th!
I spent most of the day doing some research on various forensic tools. I've got a bit of reading and practicing to do. But I also need to get a good external hard drive for drive image storage. Most of the more complete tools (Helix, Auditors's Tool Kit) want to work off of an image, rather than the computer hard drive. Which is understandable: to do computer forensics properly, you need to work with a read-only copy. And to really do it correctly, you have to be as careful as the CSI guys, with chain of custody, proper techniques and documentation, and how to properly present the information.
The Internet Storm Center (here) says that there is already an exploit out there for the MS05-051 patch released this week. As they say, "patch yesterday" -- especially if you venture to the darker side of the Interweb.
Got this from Bruce Schneier, big-time security guy (a daily stop on my Interweb rounds):
Now you too can play airline security. Daniel Solove tried to play with one, and found it wanting. But don't let that sourpuss dissuade you; it's a great Christmas gift.
Start hinting now, Christmas isn't that far away.
And here's an interesting article from The Register with pictures of all the interesting things you can find with Google Earth: "Google Earth: the black helicopters have landed" .
... more later ...
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