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Update At 2045
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 02:24:56 -0200 From: "Gwen Mcdonald" bmzmrjtqhqsmbq@webmail.com.tw To: john dominik Subject: Congrats on the home support group brides related to 3298 bodice ripper around CEO procrastinates, and oil filter behind sweeps the floor; however, living with class action suit give a pink slip to..from pig pen, around pit viper, and pine cone near inferiority complex are what made America great!salad dressing derive perverse satisfaction from toward waif.When cyprus mulch around wheelbarrow is hypnotic, cyprus mulch defined by mortician find subtle faults with menagé à trois inside rattlesnake.Tristan, the friend of Tristan and rejoices with near alchemist.Tristan, the friend of Tristan and rejoices with blood clot near. Gee. In the sixties people used to do drugs to attain this sort of insight. Now we get it free, via e-mail. Without the horrible side effects or flashbacks. You know, I wonder where all the good drug engineers have gone - back when I was a kid and people were experimenting, you never heard things like "side effects include diahrea, vomiting, blood clots, complete loss of eliminative control, and the strange desire to howl like a wolf" as medication side effects. That, or they're just trying to make the illegal drugs REALLY attractive... They have no disclaimers.
[Link] I did finally pull my head far enough back from the high-end stuff to build a "port radar" batch file.
@echo off if not %debug%!==! echo %debug% :head netstat -a -p tcp > ns.out type ns.out | find "oem" /i > oem.out copy oem.out gotcha.out type ns.out if not exist gotcha.out goto :head \bin\rebeep goto :head It is essentially a very simple tool. I look for "oem" in my output of the Netstat command - if it's found, it runs a little program I wrote a long time ago called "rebeep" - basically generating random tones for random durations until you press a key. Back when the 486/66 was the greatest thing since sliced bread, it worked wonderfully well, bobbling notes all over the place. Now it's just plain static noise - but it works either way. Today's little glimmer of hope seems to be that the trojan is pretty consistently grabbing port 1198. Now, other than this tidbit, I'm not sure what else it might be. Sygate seems unable to block this port, as I'm blocking both traffic originating on the port and remote traffic to that port - but when it makes a connection, it's usually port 1198 on my end to one of his, and 1198 to one of mine. I guess I'll have to do the whole remove/reinstall Winsock thing... Hope it works. Before I do, I'm going to copy all of the involved files onto a CD so that I can at least get back to that point. Now, I've got a job interview to prepare for, so here goes fun... |
Update At 1500 On a totally weird note (but perhaps good news), the cable modem was accidentally left on last night. When I came down this morning, there was no connection to the bad guy - although I'd left both e-mail AND CNN's web site up (CNN's web site automatically refreshes every hour or so). So I open up a new window - and yup, it's ba-ack. Feh.
[Link]
[Link] The obligatory statistical information - over three hundred resumes, twenty interviews, and they're planning on bringing back five or six for final interviews. I hope I made the cut, but as usual, when I leave an interview, I feel ... Well, I know I could have done better. The good news, though, is that she had an earlier interviewee who got lost on the way, and showed up late - pushing my interviewer's entire day later. I feel for her, as well as the person who got lost - that had to hurt. Then again, better them than me. Anyway, I'll keep my fingers crossed.
[Link] Last night at dinner, we had them. I was ... well, frankly, underwhelmed. Great concept, lousy execution. The turkey was tasteless, the stuffing had disintegrated into a clotted mass along with the "gravy", and overall, the flavor just wasn't there. I was in the middle of the pack on these things - others were even less thrilled. So it goes with experimentations in the kitchen. Fortunately, we have a dog. After determining that there was nothing dangerous, we gave Daisy the leftovers. She ate them happily, I'm glad to report - or was. I came home after my interview this afternoon and let her out. When she came back in, I changed clothes - and started hunting down the source of the stench. Some of you may remember the old Eddie Murphy joke about the bear and the rabbit in the woods. The bear asks the rabbit if he has problems with ... well, with shit sticking to his fur. Daisy's no rabbit. |
Update At 1445 So I went a-hunting for WAV files. And found two that work. The first, from Blazing Saddles (an excellent Mel Brooks movie, which accurately captures a Boy Scout campfire on film for the first time), is the phrase "What in the wide, wide world of sports is a'goin on here?" The second, from one of the Pink Panther movies, is the late, great Peter Sellers - "Sinister Forces are at work." Put those two together and it works very, very well. Or does to my twisted mind.
[Link]
Feel free to borrow this for your own personal pleasure. Simply, line-by-line...
Now that I've done that, I've downloaded the latest dozen of Symantec's removal tools. I'm shutting everything down, running each one, and seeing what's up. I also downloaded and applied the Microsoft patches yesterday - I'll get this thing beat yet... |
Update At 1030 According to him, he took a job dispensing drugs. According to him, his religious principles prevented him from dispensing drugs. Buddy, get a new line of work. Seriously - if you object to the pills you pass out, get out of that line of work - period. End of discussion. As to his defense that he didn't know, I think that the US Legal system (except in California) has well established the principle "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and when it comes to employment policies and rules, they have the force of law. If it says "you may not eat bananas during work hours because peels are often left where people can fall on them. Consuming bananas while in the plant is a violation of work rules which could lead to your termination" and then you drop a couple of banana peels, and your supervisor catches you, it's not the fact that no one was hurt - it's not the fact that the potential was there. It's the fact that your actions violated workplace rules. If your employer decrees that Tuesdays are bare-head days and you must be bare-headed in the office - no particular reason, just be bare-headed - then you might have a case. When, however, your primary job function is to dispense drugs and you refuse to do so, you are dead wrong and in violation of your work rules. I've not always agreed with every management decision made. I've not always agreed with many of the "dumb things management does". But I have learned through the years to keep my big fat mouf shut. If I find a better way of doing things, or a more efficient way to get something done, I'll bring it up to my manager. If they say absolutely not, I'll try to understand the reasoning. If they have none, I'll work through channels to find out - on my own time. Usually, there's a good reason, somewhere along the line. One previous employer absolutely refused to have offices on or hold meetings any higher than the fourth floor. We needed additional office space, and a suite on the fourteenth floor opened up. After significant discussions, the decision was made to move an unintegrated subsidiary company that shared our office space to that new space. Some months later we purchased that unintegrated subsidiary company. And those offices sat vacant but for storage. The company later moved to a five-story building - where they got the bottom two floors (plus space in the basement). I later learned that the rather irrational reasoning was actually rooted in fact - buildings or offices above the fourth floor could not be evacuated by hook-and-ladder or other laddered vehicles. So in a way it did make sense.
[Link] As well it may be. But I'm so very, very sick and tired of preachy assholes like this one telling us "our comedy should have profound meaning!" Right. Let's go back a bit and look at some of the classics. Seinfeld, for me, was a flash in the pan. Yes, it had a few funny moments (I nearly split three ribs with the "Master of My Domain" episode - and I still have to grin just thinking about when Kramer comes back into Jerry's apartment, slaps the bill on the counter, and says "I'm out!" If you've never seen it, I ain't gonna elaborate). But the whining and stupid situations wore on. Roseann was another classic show - but they were too close to where we were at the time with tight incomes, multiple demands pulling them every which way, and slim odds on the situation improving - unless they won the lottery (gee, sounds familiar - deja vu all over again). The occasionally classic episodes (the one about PMS is an utter gem - better than anything Lucy ever put on television) were matched up with the rather common one-joke-and-out episodes. Frasier? Right - they're too pretentious for me. M*A*S*H? Watched them a lot, but they also got fairly heavy handed towards the end. Everybody Loves Raymond? Funny, yes, but at the heart is a dysfunctional family the likes of which I'd mow down with a car - had I a spare two or three. Friends was, and remains, fairly light, escapist fluff. My daughter still will occasionally sing "Smelly Cat" (remember that?) to Gilligan - it was one of her first songs she could sing on her own (gee, Twinkle Twinkle supplanted at least in our house by Phoebe's "Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?"). Friends didn't require a whole lot of mental heavy lifting. There were the occasional cringes, but it was a cringe for a character's suffering (like Ross in his leather pants) versus "oh, man, I recognize me in that." Why is it that TV critics insist there must be a deeper meaning? Friends took place in a mythical New York - they could always get the spot on the couch, they could always find their way around, no one ever got mugged, shot, seriously injured (other than pregnancies, of course), or in a whole lot of trouble - their New York didn't have tall buildings that could fall down. It was light, escapist fare - and sometimes that's all I want TV to do for me - simple, stupid, no-thinking entertainment.
[Link] It would also be nice to know someone's got a generic removal tool for it - I'm on my twentieth Norton/Symantec tool (I'm going backwards down the chronological list, assuming if it's recent, I'll catch it - if it's older (which I doubt), then I deserved what I got).
[Link] I went looking to see if the Attorney General of The United States of America (a post John Ashcroft currently abuses) was on-line. Surprisingly, it wasn't. But Oh, what a weird collection of results. I found this link from a fellow who is apparently looking to get his truck back from some officials in Alaska, and he believes that since there's some question about their oaths, they're not really in charge. Then there's this other guy who seems to have a problem with the oaths they use in Oregon. These sorts of fellows are all, regrettably, the same. Nice-seeming gentlemen who are worse than lawyers about nitpicking the capital-versus-lowercase and all sorts of other ... well, goofy time-wasters. The problem isn't that we're losing liberties - the problem is that whack-jobs like these guys are picking the fricking nits, and so we have lawyers who have to define the size and length of the hammer used to pound in the stake in their front yard that says "the inhabitant is an idiot." I also veered into Wikipedia's discussion of Oaths of office which, sadly, left me no closer than before. I did spelunk into the lair of the worm himself and wandered the DOJ site for a number of minutes, and then stumbled across an unusual site with a great deal to read. Still on my quest, I found this particular document which contains no mention of the Attorney General. But I did find this article about the Bill of Rights and this bit on Washington's passing (frankly, when I bite the big enchillada, I hope someone writes a better obituary), and this, which could have been so much more straightforward (I still can't tell if he's asking to kick their butts or bury the hatchet - history suggests the later, but by the list chronologically, it seems the former), and this gem from high school, (bad, bad idea to leave something that dangerous laying about in a Roman Catholic High School...). I thought perhaps we might have borrowed the oath from a one-time neighbor? Nope. I was surprised to know I do still remember much of this - though it was never required for memorization in my grade school or high school years. Then again, the man was the saint of brevity if compared to stuff like this is compared. Although when looking for pure, unadulterated ... fertilizer, I guess, this one certainly smells like a bull. Or a pile of bull. Oh, the whole lot isn't a real good time, either - there are some nice little reminders of conflicts still echoing (though you'll note that this one contained the line "the Persian Gulf is at peace" - right, dude - and two years later the head nutcase in the area slipped all of his cams at once, right? Ah, that's right - "Peace" = "no need to spend money there right now"). It's a weird afternoon, I guess. The point, before this little digression? Apparently Ashcroft hasn't read HIPPA. That, and I do not like a man who believes in selective enforcement. Yes, I know, we are not a nation of laws, but a nation of selective enforcement of laws (TM Dr. Pournelle), but Ashcroft seems to be playing particularly loosey-goosey with the rules.
[Link] We stopped at Godfathers for the Pizza buffet, which they don't do on Thursdays - only Mondays and Tuesdays. Why they didn't tell us that when we reserved it, I dunno. Perhaps it may have something to do with the fact that "Godfather" in general isn't well known for positive service. Negative, certainly - they'll get "the job" done for you - but in terms of being happy when it's over, I dunno. Anyway, yes, I said "reserved". The Girl Scouts were going snow tubing. So, instead of something like $14, we spent almost twice that on dinner, then barreled down the road to Buck Hill to snow tube - well, the girls and Jack did. And some of the crazier adults. Pretty much the same group that did Klingon Bowling was going to lay down on a spiffed-up inner tube at the top of a rather icy slope and come roaring down. I'd guess in the near neighborhood for some of the girls at about twenty mph or so - the adults were significantly faster. You see, gravity requires mass to be effective. A forty or seventy pound piece of kid moving down the hill moves at a good clip. A two-hundred-pound man coming down the same hill with a good kick-off and some determination - well, let's just say JATO units were his inspiration. The kids would be smoothly heading down the hill at a rather leisurely pace (near the top), when they'd be hit from behind by this rocket boost. He would slow down, and match speeds - well, by speeding them up, mostly. Their shared momentum took them far out into the run-out area - not at all surprising, really. And no, I maintained a fair amount of common sense when they asked "are you tubing?" I passed on the use of expletives and used the "Nancy Reagan". "Just say no". There's a dated cultural reference for ya. The starting temperature was SEVEN degrees - above. We were at nearly twenty this morning. By the time the evening ended - badly - we were at 2. The only thing that made the snowtubing bearable was the very large fire they had going near the tube runs - there was one block of wood that was at least two feet across and three long sitting in the fire pit. The smaller logs were in the range of eight to twelve inches across, two to five feet in length. The girls had a wonderful time - as did everyone else - until about 9 pm. Actually, about 9:03 or thereabouts. I'd finally gotten cold enough to come inside (I'd been outside near the fire for about two and a half hours), and we were getting ready to go when a friend's kid came in looking for his parents - as his best friend (who had come along to go snowboarding with kid A) had fallen and broken his arm. Lovely. I went out the door to help keep things organized (that, and I was the one expendable adult - Ann and two other mothers were inside with the girls), and was followed by six or seven kids, all wanting to be part of the excitement. I guess I am my parents, because I turned and ordered them back inside. Only one of that gaggle was mine. It took two times - once to get their attention, and once to get them moving in the opposite direction. One kid I had to tell three times - but I only used three words. "IN" "Now" and "Get". Not necessarily all at the same time, or in that order, mind you - but the stubborn one (not mine) took one look at my face the last time and I think he realized that he had four unbroken limbs - and if he'd taken one more step, at least two of them would have serious bruises, if not outright breaks. I was not going to haul ass around a dark hillside looking for kids who were looking for excitement under the guise of giving sympathy. I got kid A in contact with his mother, who had found the father of kid B, and generally followed around trying to stay out of the way but be available if needed. About fifteen minutes after it happened, kid B came down the hill in the sled they use when you pull those bonehead moves. They hauled him to the on-site clinic and were taking at look - by this time it was 9:35 and we had to get home. So we did. Never a dull moment around here...
[Link] This afternoon after downloading e-mail and determining that I didn't need to be connected to the internet at that moment, I powered down the cable modem. Some three minutes later, after two full cycles of my netscan batch file had timed out, I saw it happen - the ports opened, and my machine connected - to itself, apparently. Yes, folks, that's right - it opened a connection to itself. And it just did it again. One of the reasons I'm not particularly focusing myself on computer security is because I'm just not devious enough to think like these hackers. I like working on Disaster Recovery, though the more proper term is "Business Continuity". I like being prepared for something to happen - even though I hope and pray that it doesn't. But when it comes to security, my mind just isn't deviant enough to contemplate the ins and outs of what this little piece of work is capable of. |
Update At 2320 So I bagged it and went to bed. I'm back now, though. Other than that, I'm marvelously horrified by the sniffer I've downloaded and started to play with. The last time I got "up-close-and-personal" with a network sniffer, it was using twinax ports, connected to an AS/400, and ran very, very slowly. The time before that it came shipped in a big clamshell case and was even slower. So yeah, ten years is a lot of technological advancement. The best part is that I don't have to crawl around under a raised floor looking for the right wires to sink in a vampire tap.
[Link] Little clue for ya, Billy-boy - once written, it's going to come out. I'm just rather surprised it took this long. Though I half wonder. Do you think that the release of the source code was truly an accident? I mean, what better way to encourage us laggards to upgrade? "run away! Run away! There's evil here!"
[Link] One of her favorites was, and remains, Walt Kelly's Pogo. I cannot tell you how much of my ejaculatory lexicon (that's outburst for you perverts who don't know the language) comes from Pogo. "Speakin' o' cheatin, wanna play cards?" has long been a favorite of mine. "Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe" was another. "We've met the enemy, and he is us!" "Friday the thirteenth fall on a Thursday this month." I could go on, but I won't. It occurs to me, however, that these days, kids who don't appreciate Pogo and his skewed sense of looking at the world may not appreciate the world in general. The only two guys whom I've ever found that have come close to holding a candle to Kelly's work have been Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes (especially the snowmen) and of course Bloom County (and now Opus) by Berkeley Breathed.
[Link] I tried making a perfume atomizer for Ann for tomorrow - Happy VD and all that. A perfume atomizer is just that - a spritzer. I bought the kit with the bits and bobs, all I needed to do was to put the tubes into the wood, round it off, and away I would go. Or so I thought. My standard pen blanks are 5/8" square by about 5 1/2 inches long. The tube I was to put into this block of wood was 19/32" in diameter. Do the math. 5/8"=10/16"=20/32" minus 19/32 leaves ... you got it - 1/32. How thick is 1/32"? Well, most of your children's rulers are marked to 1/16" graduations - half that. Or if you've got a good Craftsman tape measure, the first six inches or so are usually marked in 32nds. Most of your pencils in a wood shop make a line wider than 1/32nd - so there's that to deal with. Stupid Aside #9309-B - I long ago stopped using a straight-line tick mark to note length. I've started using a V mark instead. The point of the V is the measure point. That way, I can tell which side of the line to use. If it's something that absolutely, positively must be accurate, I throw out the pencil and use a sharp knife. My options at this point are rather limited. Rockler does have some blocks 3/4" available - but 3/4"=6/8"=12/16"=24/32" - and I'd like to have more than 5/32" to work with in shaping and the like. Which leaves me with larger blocks. I can get 1" x 1" purpleheart for less than $5 a block, as well as some other chunks of wood out of my own supply - I'm just torn as to how to proceed. I guess I'll let you know when I do. Oh - one other thing, before I forget. One inch is equivalent to 25.4 millimeters. Why is this significant? Well, 19/32 is an odd size for a drill bit. You can find plenty of 5/8" (I even have a spade bit that size), as well as 9/16". But 19/32, them's rare. As one inch is equivalent to 25.4 mm, that also means that a 15mm drill bit is awful close to a 19/32" drill bit. 19/32 = .59375", and 15mm = .59055 - or a difference of .00320. And a difference that small is no difference - not when you have sandpaper available... |
Update At So I decided, being the type of hopeful male I am, that I'd take the youngest as well and see if that would garner me brownie points. I remembered Jack's prescription, so I took the both of them to the far side of Burnsville - then came back near-to-home to get a bigger piece of wood. I'd looked at Purpleheart blocks, but they didn't have anything big enough (diameter-wise). I found some called Jamaican Cherry, which looked pretty - but at thirty bucks for a chunk one inch square by a foot long, thanks, no. I finally grabbed a chunk of Myrtlewood Burl (they called it) - a nice, reddish-looking wood. $6.50 - a whole heck of a lot cheaper than I'd expected. So that was nice. Then clear across Savage to the drug store of choice, where I picked up Jack's prescription, and tossed in a bag of Dove Dark Chocolate Hearts and three pink roses (they didn't have peach, which was the color we used in our wedding). Back home before anyone was up (well, her, at any rate), and after nipping off the bottoms of the roses and assorted greenery (yes, it was only $2.99 for the flowers - good thing I waited until the last day) and plopping them directly into water, I went to work on the kitchen for a bit. Ann woke up just as I was getting ready to leave, so I left Jack with her and picked Rhiannon up and came back home. I had some lunch and did a little work in both the kitchen and the garage, and then we then sat down to plan out the remainder of the day - cleaning, a stop at the pet food store, grocery store, get Ann a new pillow (she's been waking up with migraines lately), and come home. Unfortunately, we sat and watched a bit of a video countdown on CMT, and we saw a video that really, REALLY bothered Jack - a country song called "I Love You This Much" by a guy named Jimmy Wayne. It really, REALLY bugged Jack - me too - but Jack was in tears. The basic idea is a little boy who lives in a "broken" home - his dad would stop by annually and then run off, leaving the little boy saying "I love you this much" (arms spread wide). Then, some years later, the father dies without the son getting a chance to reconcile with him, and the son is still bitter. There's a Christian message at the end of the video, so I'm guessing it sees lots of airplay on Christian Radio as well as country. But the subject matter really bothered Jack. Rather than teach him to bottle up his feelings, he and I sat there and talked about it - and it turns out he was upset because there were kids who didn't have Daddys. It really affected him. Bugged him big, big-big time. So Jack and I had to cuddle a bit and get over that, before we moved on. By then, of course, there was a show on about Brad Paisley, and we watched that, then one of my favorite movies - "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" - so we watched that before we finally got moving a little before 3. We ran abbreviated errands (gas station, Target for some groceries, then across the street to Cub for others), then back home for dinner - well, we did a little more cleaning and I worked in the garage on Ann's real Valentines Day present - the perfume spritzer. Pictures tomorrow. I do have to admit that I was disappointed the wood turned PINK - and was very damp. I guess I'll be looking at some NGR (Non-Grain-Raising) stains tomorrow - I've still got over half the piece of wood I bought left, and two more spritzer kits (I assumed I'd screw up at least two of them before I got a working one, so I must be getting better). I want a reddish-brown color, not a pinkish-white.
[LINK] Unsurprisingly, Dickie Gephardt was one of the major players in raising about $660,000 to defeat Dean in the final weeks of the Iowa Caucus - and Kerry also reportedly contributed to the group. As did Robert Torricelli, who isn't a senator any longer but he's still got money left over from his campaign. I guess, as I get older, the "win at any costs" mentality really REALLY bothers me. Using scummy techniques to defeat someone doesn't necessarily make the victor a scumbag - but it certainly casts the ethics of the victor in a different light. Certainly, I'd like to see two good men run for the White House and have a real debate on the ideals and ethics and principles they represent - but the truth is that this year we've got a lying hypocritical incumbent facing a lying hypocritical front-running democrat - or, in other words, the same old same old. I'm no fan of Dean - I could not put my finger on what it was about him that bothered me. He was combative, in your face, and he seemed very much a two-dimensional candidate ("Let's beat Bush!" How? "I didn't support the war in Iraq!" Right, Howie - but what about what you're going to do about foreign policy? I mean, as a Vermont Governor, sure, that's a big job, but you don't end up having to talk to the North Koreans a whole lot about nuclear disarmament - for example). Kerry was, and remains, for me, similarly flat - he's as inspiring as mashed potatoes. His delivery is rather stilted (something about his voice) and he's about as charismatic as peanut butter. CREAMY Peanut butter. Edwards shows every sign of being the type of guy I'd really like - yes, I know, he's a trial lawyer and all the rest - but we've all got our flaws. And I've never heard Edwards attack his opponents - he talks about his programs and how they're better than the current administration. Then again, when you're foundering like a rudderless ship as the Bush administration seems to be lately, well, you get what you get. But I expect that when it comes to this fall's election, I'll enter the polling booth with the usual equipment - ballot, pen, and a clothespin to hold my nose after I make my selection. We get the government we deserve - and we must be one sorry collection of vertebrate mammals. |
Update At 1245 The French are well-known for wine, fancy food, and a disturbingly increasing tendency to act like complete, blithering idiots. Perhaps the French word for "tolerance" is "fuck off" - I don't know. But banning any sort of external display of religious preference isn't "to keep religion out of secular schools" - it's to exhibit the intolerance the French are quite happy to foster, I suppose, in the hopes that no one ever again will attempt to conquer their real estate. I could very well be way off-base here. I could be a complete blithering idiot, and dead wrong, of course...
In Germany they first came for the Communists
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