It’s a slow Friday.

But I found a great article on an important issue – flatulence !

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/19/786305.aspx

As I get older, I find that some of the things I used to enjoy eating can cause intestinal distress, along with the accompanying uncomfortable discharges. So I found the article fascinating, along with the comments at the end.

Especially the one that proves that global warming is caused by flatulence.

So I recommend that you read the article.

And I’ll go take my medication now.

Did you get a bit more spam email this weekend than normal? I did at the office…and users complained a bit.

It was what I call a ‘zero-day spam attack’. It’s explained over in my “Security Dawg” blog here: http://www.securitydawg.com/2008/03/zero-day-spam-attack.html .

In the meantime, a bit of hand-holding for the users, who are probably spoiled by the overall effectiveness of the spam blocking at the office. We block about 500K (out of 550K) messages a day as spam. A few do get through, but overall we are quite effective at blocking spam.

Not as effective as Gmail, though. I hardly ever see spam in the “In” folder in my Gmail account. The above link explains my theory about that.

So, tomorrow is Leap Day.

Shouldn’t you have some special plans? A day off with the kids or spouse? A special road trip?

It should be something out of the ordinary. After all, it only happens once every four years.

Got plans?

Put up a cabinet for Pam’s scrapbook room today. Used some screw-in anchors, along with my fancy new level. Only required one trip to the hardware store, which is quite unusual.

While there, I got a quart of paint that matches the generic off-white walls around here. I went into the hall closet, and used a razor blade and chisel to gouge out a large square of the painted wallboard surface. I just cut deep enough to get the paint and the underlying paper covering of the wallboard. Put the sample in a baggie, and the paint guys at the local Lowe’s did their color-matching trick.

I then covered up the thin gouge with some repair stuff (it goes on pink, and dries to white). I’ll paint it later.

That whole project didn’t take long. I spent the rest of the day working on a new web site, and generally goofing around the ‘net.

The weather dweebs have been warning about a big storm tonight; wind and rain and snow. So far, not too impressive. But the weather dweebs are sure excited.

After a bit of work with the tech support guys, the world (at least, the company) is safe from improper web browsing. Turned out to be an authentication problem with the database. Even though the database was properly created, it didn’t have the right permissions for the user account that could read the database for the filtering sessions.

That only took two hours, with a bit less than an hour on hold. (Don’t you hate those “we’re really busy but keep hanging on” messages that repeat every two minutes, along with the generic music that also repeats every 90 seconds….)

An interesting sidelight of the web filtering software is the ability to determine how much time employees spend on the Innertubes. I can run a report of the top 500 users by their Innertubes time, assigning an hourly value of $30, and determine how much that web surfing is costing the company. Turned out to be a very large value.

Right now, we’re in a budget crunch. I figure that we could save a bunch of labor dollars by looking at employee’s browsing times. Say the employee is on the ‘net 2 hours a day. So the assumption is that the employee really does 6 hours of work each day. So that’s what they get paid for. A 20% reduction in labor costs would go a long way towards helping the budget crunch.

Of course, if they had supervisors who could manage their employees time and work output…

(He says while he posts this entry during working hours…)

This afternoon, the web filtering software stopped working. The service wouldn’t start, complaining about some sort of database error.

So I went through the process of creating a new database, and it the service still wouldn’t start. Tried that several times, no joy. Deleted the new databases, recreated them with different names, still no joy.

By this time it was 440pm, and a call to the tech support line went unanswered, as they close at 500pm. I tried several other tricks, but still no joy.

The database exists on the SQL server. The web filter server shows connections to the database (with a NETSTAT command), but the service still won’t start.

I’m toying with the idea of removing and reinstalling the web filter program. Or rebuilding the SQL server. But that won’t happen until tomorrow morning. I could do it from home, but too tired to go through the effort.

Besides, I want to see what the vendor tech support tries to do.

A quiet Heart day around here. After work, a bit of relaxing at home, then off to dinner at Pam’s favorite spot, at her request.

Pam’s off in the ‘scrap room’ playing with her scrap-toys, and I’m watching an old Glen Ford movie. And wandering around the ‘net as usual.

I did get some new content on Jason’s web site (www.jasonhellewell.com). Pam scanned a lot of the scrapbook pages she was working on, and I found a nice simple PHP script to display them. The image files had to be resized a bit (I use the XAT Image Optimizer programs; you’ll find them at www.xat.com). I set the width to 800px, and the result is quite readable on the screen.

And I posted a few new car crash pictures on www.carcrashpix.com . The site is somewhat experimental, but fun to goof around with.