Part of Interstate 5 (I-5) in Sacramento is below ground level. And that part happens to be almost next to the Sacramento River, which means ground water problems. This “boat” section has been damaged enough by groundwater to require rebuilding. And the state Dept of Transportation decided to get it fixed fast, rather than over several months.

That required totally shutting down the freeway for 6-day periods to allow for 24-hour work.

I-5 is a major north-south freeway route. Lots of cars and trucks, not to mention the local commuters. Shutting it down is big news.

So the media got really excited. We all have to “Survive I-5”. Radio and TV warnings all the time, and a “Fix I-5” web site (www.fixi-5.com, if you are interested), with traffic cameras and warnings of apocalyptic commuting nightmares.

And the requisite media live cameras, breathless reporters, and more.

It is all starting to look like what happens when you kick an ant hill. Every media and publicist is scrambling this way and that. We all have to car pool. Or stagger our work hours. Or work from home. Or take mass transit. Or ride our bikes to work (yeah, a 30 mile ride each way).

So the northbound lanes closed Friday night. And all weekend hyper-reporters telling us that it’s going to be gridlock time.

Remember y2K? I had to be in the Y2K “emergency operations center” that New Years Eve. And it was quite boring. I left at 1230am, because nothing was happening.

Same with this “Survive I-5”. The usual backlogs, maybe a bit more. But no major commuter nightmare.

All those “media ants”scurrying this way and that.

Been working on a vbscript program that checks the update and anti-virus status of a group of computers, storing that info in a nice html file. Almost finished; testing takes about 10 minutes, since it talks to a whole ‘Class C’ IP address range.

And monitoring the anti-spam mail system. There’s a bit more spam that has slipped through our defenses, and it’s difficult to stop those. We’ve been pretty successful in spam filtering in the past.

Our users might be a bit spoiled, though. I get complaints if just a few (under 10) spams slip through each day.We’re blocking 94% of all messages (about 600K a day) as spam. That’s up a bit from the 90% a month ago. Still pretty impressive, though.

And still working on my latest secret money-making web site. Using some free (GPL) software, but there seems to be minimal support of one of the modules I need to use. I may have to delve deeper in the PHP code to fix things.

Here’s a starting point for some wasted time: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murphy .

Although some are funny, and most are true.

These might be appropriate for any weekend projects:

• Any tool dropped in a workshop will roll to the least accessable corner. Any object dropped on the way to the least accessable corner will land on your toe.
• Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought.

My addition to those: “Any project will require at least three trips to the hardware store.” I’ve been bit by that one several times.

As seen by my Home Depot bills.

A nice week off last week, the usual trip down to Oceanside. Good timing: the weather in the Central CA valley was in the 100’s, and the temps in Oceanside stayed around 70-75. Lots of relaxation; reading books on the balcony overlooking the pool and ocean beach. The usual surfing the ‘net (don’t do ocean surfing).

Oceanside is just outside the US Marine camp at Camp Pendleton. There is also a Navy base there. On Saturday, there was a “Navy Appreciation Day”. We were awakened at about 7am with a loud noise that sounded like an army of leaf blowers. It was a big Navy hovercraft that landed on the beach right next to the Oceanside Pier. Quite impressive (and loud).

But mostly a quiet time for relaxation. A bit of reflection on the events of the past year.

And a return to work, with some interesting remote computer forensics tasks and processes. But looking forward to a three-day weekend.

Friday is here! (Yay!) Today’s project list includes proving to another department that their firewall is blocking all their email we send them, and the problem is not our mail servers. Some more testing on McAfee AntiVirus installation and policy changes.

And another erosion of privacy rights by the US Customs and Border Protection guys. More info on my Security Dawg site www.securitydawg.com .

Weekend plans? More cleanup at the mother-in-law’s house, a minor almost-clog in the shower drain, and a nap or two.

I usually just delete these types of emails. But this made me chuckle (and since my wife sent it to me, I couldn’t just delete it):

Men Are Just Happier People — What do you expect from such simple creatures?

• Your last name stays put.
• The garage is all yours.
• Wedding plans take care of themselves.
• Chocolate is just another snack.
• You can be President.
• You can never be pregnant.
• You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park.
• Car mechanics tell you the truth
• The world is your urinal.
• You never have to drive to another gas station rest room because this one is just too icky.
• You don’t have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
• Same work, more pay.
• Wrinkles add character.
• Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100.
• People never stare at your chest when you’re talking to them.
• New shoes don’t cut, blister, or mangle your feet
• One mood all the time.
  Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
• You know stuff about tanks.
• A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
• You can open all your own jars.
• You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
• If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
• Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.
• Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
• Everything on your face stays its original color.
• The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
• You only have to shave your face and neck.
  You can play with toys all your life.
• One wallet and one color for all seasons.
• You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
• You can ‘do’ your nails with a pocket knife.
• You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.
• You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.

No wonder men are happier.

A big SQL injection attack against hundreds of thousands of web sites. Many government and commercial sites have been infected with code that will try to install a password stealing program just by visiting a web page.

It’s not clear if anti-virus programs will catch this one yet.

You can see the extent by doing a web search for “nihaorr1”. DO NOT VISIT ANY OF THOSE LINKS! Google search may be filtering the bad sites; they returned only about 48K. Yahoo search returned over 251K entries. Some are discussions about this vuln, but many are sites that have been infected with the malicious javascript.

This one is widespread. Internet Storm Center has info here: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4331 . “They have hit city websites, commercial sites and even government websites. This type of injection pretty much null and voids the concept of “trusted website”. or “safe sites”‘

Corporate types should be watching for traffic to that site. I found a few users at the office that may have been affected (and possibly infected).

Be careful out there!