This is Not the Last Post

Today is the last workday of the year for a lot of people, and this morning I am pondering the question of exactly how much work will actually be done today in comparison to any given day in the fall. Productivity usually slows to a crawl at times like these as folks are waiting for the long weekend or a road trip. Not me; I've got plans to start the new year off right: I'm doing nothing different from any other day in 2006. No road trip or family visiting, no fireworks or banging pots & pans at midnight. No plans.

That's not to say I'll be working more than anyone else today, however. My work depends much on the needs of the people in my office. If they have no questions for me, I have to find my own projects to keep busy. Half the office is still on leave for the holidays, and I finished a large project last week, so I'll be reading today.

So if this is the last time you'll be in your office (or whatever you call it), enjoy it, because it's the last time you'll set foot in there until next year.

I really need to get better material.

Borrrrrrring

Okay, so maybe I'm back for a couple more times before January 1st. I've just finished re-creating a document that I lost on a flash drive (physical loss, not corruption or stupidity) that is 32 pages long, has 21 screen captures, and 4459 words. It was slightly aggravating, but it is done and has been improved upon greatly. I'm just sorry I can't publish it in the public domain due to some copyright restrictions for the images I captured.

It is an instructional document for my team to aid them in setting up each of their Linksys Wireless Broadband Routers. Everyone seemed to like the first and second editions, even the boss. He started passing it out to the Education and Training unit, and you know what they had to say?

"The page numbers are wrong."

I got "This is very professional" from several folks, and "This helped a lot!" from others, but from a unit that had no other clue about how to set up the device, I get "The page numbers are wrong."

So it's no accident that the page numbering is perfect this time, the font has changed, and all illustrations now have a reference number. It was created in Microsoft Word 2003 and will now stay that way in case I lose this new flash drive (I had previously published it in PDF and had no way else to freely convert that file back to Word to recover it.)

I realize you don't care about any of that, but I'm glad it's all out in the open. In other news:

I've been reading the archives from a year ago and I've got to say that I'm amazed at my promises I never kept, like reading all those books. I "vowed" to read them all, and I probably could have if I'd taken the time away from the computer and desk. I'm even busier now but take more time to read since my desktop PC stays dormant much of the time. I've taken to do more of my learning at work, since that is what I'm paid to do - to know. So time at home is more well-spent, I'm more relaxed, patience is more abundant, and I can get out of bed easier (could be these new meds) to write and read for hours before work.

I think a good ultimate goal would be to have a new MacBook Pro by the end of the year, but there is absolutely no way I'll promise something like that. I'd gladly give up my chance at a MacBook Pro to move to Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, or Arizona this year. I'd even take California for the right company.

But like I said (and I encourage everyone to do the same), I'm going to rock steady this year and continue my solid progression toward success, without the huge promises and false hope. I'm not going to lose any weight, buy a new car, or do any of that crazy talk. I'm just going to keep my flash drive close to me at all times, be prompt for work and school, and see where I am this time next year.

Resolve 2007?

I've been thinking lately about what I said last year I'd do this year, and I've come to the conclusion that new years' resolutions are overrated. With that, I've decided that all I want to do in 2007 is the same thing I did in 2006, and that is to simply rock steady.

I know I'll not get out of Georgia very soon as Beth and I must finish large milestones in our educational and financial goals, so we'll simply keep doing what we're doing, and aim for cool stuff rather than resolve to do something. Beth came up with a novel idea: we are probably going to budget enough time and money for me to take one certification exam every quarter. With that, I'll probably schedule the test and have to "shit or get off the pot." For something that I've wanted to do and half-assed for several years now, I certainly don't want to have wasted my time and energy.

But that's about it. We'll keep schooling and doing projects on the house, and when the time is right we'll move on to better things. But there is no absolute resolution, and there never was. Think about it: with all that going on (house-buying, daughter-raising, parents moving, sibling relocation, software projects failing and driving 15,000 miles on the job) how could anyone try to read the unread books in my library and blog every day? That's just ridiculous.

So among my peers and their resolutions to lose weight, get better jobs, get more, spend more, and save the world, I'm going to opt out and pick up a book.

Have a fantastic new year.

Stuffed with Cotton, they Must Be

I sat down to check mail this morning and felt like staying a while. It's comfortable in this office; no one to divert my attention this week. Just me and this little Mac right now, with a cup of coffee. And my ears are ringing.

It took me a minute to figure it out, but I finally realized why this office is so much more comfortable and quiet since yesterday. It's because last night before I went to bed I shut down my PC. It is still off. I hear the clock on the wall and beyond the sound of my typing, it is the loudest thing in the room.

Inside my PC there are four fans. One inside the power supply, two on the back of the case, and one mounted to the processor heat sink. Once one of them collects enough dust, it gets a little off-balance and so begins the first vibrations. Downhill from there.

I can't imagine how much power the entire system uses, either. Connected to the system are myriad devices, including a flatbed scanner, 320GB external hard drive, my iPod, amplified 3-piece speaker set, two printers, and two 19-inch LCD monitors. Everything is on top of my desk and blares right in my face. All of it is off at the moment. Just the sound of a clock powered by 1 AA battery.

How long will it be before I have to turn it back on?



Update: Probably not long, because that 320GB HDD is inaccessible to the Mac due to the drive's format (NTFS), which, I am guessing, is not supported by Mac OS X 10.2.8. Here I go again...

Speed Bump Number One

Okay. First gripe about my new Mac: iTunes.

The very program that warmed me up to the company told me that I cannot continue using the iTunes store unless I upgrade the iTunes program to a later version. Very well; one always wants the latest version. After downloading version 7.0.2 and beginning the installation, I am notified that I cannot install this version of iTunes on my current version of Mac OS X.

And I wonder why. It works on Windows, doesn't it? And XP is definitely older than OS X 10.2.8. After some investigation, I come to one conclusion:

It's going to cost me $129 to listen to the music I already paid for. iTunes will open and operate (I currently have the pre-installed version 4.9) but I can't authorize this computer so that I can play the music I purchased at the iTunes store (previously, with another computer.) So as I see it, the only solution is to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4, which, as I said before, is $129.

On second look, it's $138.99. I don't have a DVD drive, so I'll have to get the CD-ROM version for an extra $9.99.

I really don't mean to put this thing down. Maybe I'll get past that part and see what every Mac user likes so much about it. My use is still very limited and I have been using Windows for 15 years. It all takes time.

Getting My Mac On

Beth's out of town this week and I've got the house to myself. I've been cleaning, mostly, but I got this new (well, relatively new) iBook G3 and am having a time with it.

The fact that I've not used a Mac since about 1987 has a bit to do with my apprehension, and the absence of the context menu. I've told hundreds of people, "When in doubt, right click." I have repeatedly found myself in doubt with no way out, but I have resolved each issue fairly quickly.

Take for instance that aged Apple logo. Once I found it, I couldn't figure out how to save the picture to my computer. In any graphical web browser I've used, I simply have right-clicked the image (Windows and Linux) and selected "Save Image As..." or something very similar to perform this task. Not on this Mac. There is no right-click. I tried holding the button down, looking for a "copy image" function in the menus, and then it occurred to me: just drag the damn picture to the desktop, Ben. And it worked. Silly me.

But there are others yet. I still can't find my Home and End keys. I am a keyboard shortcut warrior; it's part of being lazy. I think it's why I like the UNIX/Linux terminal so much - very little physical effort. Having to move that mouse and click those buttons just to advance the cursor to the end of the line is ridiculous.

But truth be told, I like this thing. It's old (2003 iBook G3, OS X 10.2.8), but it's quiet, cool to the touch, and doesn't have any vents on the bottom. I'm blogging from bed this morning, without the worry of blocking an air vent and burning my thighs. I think I'm going to try to upgrade the OS to 10.4 soon because 10.2 doesn't support the current version of iTunes or WPA WiFi security. I'm learning new stuff every day, and I think I might keep it.

It's About Time (for Nothing)

Well folks, it's here. Windows Vista will be released to corporate customers and OEM distributors today. As of this morning, Dell is still offering a free upgrade to Vista if claimed by March 31, 2007. I would begin looking for the pre-loaded Vista systems next week.

As one would expect, Microsoft finally decided on early 2007 to release Vista, but couldn't resist the temptation to get it on the street in some form for Christmas. Just like the PS3 craze, the Xbox 360 last year (plenty to go around this time), and the new Elmo that says your name. Of course, in this case Microsoft will have no shortage of Vista licenses for the OEM folks, and Dell can push out thousands of computers in a day, so don't get in a hurry.

I said more than a year ago that I'd start saving my money and order the first Vista system from Dell, but I have since changed my mind. I previewed the Release Candidate (RC1) on my home system and did not see an immediate benefit. Drivers for only one printer was included, and support for the cheap one (a DeskJet 825C) would never be seen. I'd just have to buy another one.

I couldn't move the Deskbar (Windows' answer to Google Desktop) to the other monitor. So there it was, stuck on the right side of the left monitor, smack in the middle of the entire display.

The current pricing scheme is going to cost too much for home builders. The answer to this, my friends, is Ubuntu.

And the proposed (final?) licensing scheme totally sucks. I haven't read it, but according to reports, I can buy a license off the shelf and install Vista on one machine. If I build another computer to replace the first one, I can install Vista on that second machine, so long as I remove it from the first. After that, I'm screwed. No more re-installations. That means if the motherboard takes a crap in the second machine, I have to buy Vista again.

I think I've decided to get a MacBook Pro, and keep my home-built XP/Ubuntu dual-booting desktop. If my customers want to know how to use something in Vista, I'm sure there's a good book about all that's new, and that doesn't cost nearly as much as a new computer. I'm not sure as to how many questions I might get anyway. With any luck the question of the year will be "How do I go about switching to Linux?"

Update: I was wrong about the OEM suppliers. Only the corporate edition is out today; all home users still have to wait until January 30. The Zune issue is probably still on the table.

America's Responsibility

My Political Science final consisted of a short essay to answer this question:

What is America's responsibility to our fellow man, and should we use American foreign policy and intervene in world events?

I hope I answered the question, but this is mostly my feelings. Here we go:

America’s first and foremost responsibility is right here, inside our borders. It lies with the homeless on our streets, the struggling entrepreneur, and the single mother. America should be very concerned with all of its citizens and their well-being. This includes the care, supervision, and education of our children, the number of people in prison and just how they got there (beyond the guilty verdict and into the why), the affordability of our food, the quality of our health care, and the future of our energy.

Our responsibility does extend, though, past the green acres of the territories of the United States and beyond those with the proper paperwork. Just as every individual has a social responsibility to the other people around him, the United States has the implied task, as the richest nation in the world, to care for the unprotected. The women and children in Darfur who are mercilessly beaten, raped, murdered, and mutilated on a regular basis are in dire need of help from any nation with the means to do so. Before the genocide, these people did nothing but live happily surviving with each other.

We do belong out in the world as good Samaritans, but only as such. Only to protect and help the vulnerable should we be there. Not to reform their government and oppress the people; only to keep them alive and productive, and give them hope. To let them live as they wish, in safety, comfort, and freedom as a people. The developed nations should step in, stop the killing, provide for their own mens of education and well-being, and leave the people to their own accord.

Our assistance to the people in these troubled countries is a measure of the United States' own success and heightened solidarity in our national security. To quote Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope, “Globalization makes our economy, our health, and our security all captive to events on the other side of the world. And no other nation on earth has a greater capacity to shape that global system, or to build consensus around a new set of international rules that expand the zones of freedom, personal safety, and economic well-being. Like or not, if we want to make America more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure.” Obama, p. 304

Politicians tend to believe that if we don't help these countries in need, our world inside these borders, where our homes and friends are, could crumble. If we leave alone the civil wars, brewing terrorism, crumbling economies, and radical genocide, evil will spread throughout Earth and destroy what freedoms we have made for ourselves at home. Senator Obama also quoted President Kennedy in his inaugural address, supporting this claim: “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required – not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” Obama, p.314

So if we want to help the world, one country at a time, we should. Nobody likes to be oppressed or tortured, or to lose loved ones based on the radical beliefs of another. There is a standard of simple, uninterrupted life that we can help sustain, and it is our duty as humans to take that part. The flow of global society depends on good ideas, especially those that help the masses, and the United States and its allies should never miss a chance to make one real.


Reference: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

The Inland North?

I always copy things that Scott does.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I can't imagine how we sound the same, especially since he's from Iowa and I'm from South Georgia. As long as he doesn't say "eh" all the time (he now hails from Minnesota), we'll get along fine.

Dynamic Image Generator

Type in your phrase and it will put it below the old classic Quaker Oats "Ha Ha" man. Great for pranks or just funny pictures in general.

I'm surprised I have never used digg.com until yesterday. Man, I'm behind the times.



read more | digg story

Evil Twin

This is a new one. I never thought of placing a wireless access point near another commercially-available one and giving it the same name. This one's pretty tricky.

When the unsuspecting user (a clueless wealthy person in many cases) logs on to the fake AP, the attacker goes to work, undetected. The victim drinks his coffee and checks his stock portfolio, assuming that everything is safe.

Education is a big thing. Equally important is the energy level needed for the user to care about whether the connection is secure. Many people just don't know how to be safe, and when told don't take the time to follow directions. This must be taught or we'll see many more stories like this for years and years. Until they learn.

read more | digg story

49times.com

I own a new site: 49times.com.

Don't expect an answer to "What is the significance of 49 times?"

I just thought of it and decided to find out if anyone had registered the name. No one had, so I did.

And it's now a wiki. It is driven by the same engine that drives Wikipedia, so I feel comfortable in its existence at least. There is absolutely no purpose as of yet and I doubt it will ever grow. So go there and write something - we can all at least try. I expect to create a forum for my own interests, and maybe folks can join me. It doesn't have to be as serious as wikipedia, so maybe we can live a little.

I expect comedy, idea sharing, how-to's, and other things related to exploring and learning. Go now.

And if you're in the mood for some really good humor, get a glimpse of what Microsoft would do if they bought Firefox: www.msfirefox.com

I Know my Public IP Address. Can You Find Yours?

I finished a cool little script yesterday and I am quite proud of myself, even though there's one part I just completely took for granted, hacked at it and made it work. But it does.

At home I have what's called a dynamic IP address, as most residential customers do. This means that one's public IP address can change depending on the ISP's needs and the customer's usage. If you leave your modem off for a week, you are almost guaranteed to be issued a different IP address than the one you had before.

I often like to get back to my systems at home for whatever reason (eventually I'll be able to turn the lights on and off remotely - a few work now). To do this I need the IP address that my ISP has given me. Knowing that it could change, I needed some way to know what it had changed to. Therein begins the logic: I know that one can go to www.whatismyip.com and see their public IP address. I also know that I can write a program in Perl to surf the web and look for stuff. I put the two together and employed my 10-year-old Compaq to run the program every day.

It actually sends it to my Gmail address, which is then filtered, tagged, and archived automatically. I don't have to delete the message every day - I can find the latest message in an instant, and access is mine.

The finished file looks like:

#!/usr/bin/perl

#Title: IP Sender
#Author: Ben Rehberg
#Version History:
#02/14/2006 Creation
#
#11/20/2006 Finally got that regular expression right
#  to extract the IP from the web page.  Done.
#
#########PROGRAM DESCRIPTION###########################
#
#I want this script to check whatismyip.com every
#morning and e-mail me with the address.



#variables and settings################################
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,
$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=localtime(time);
$mon+=1;
$year+=1900;
my $date="$mon"."/"."$mday"."/"."$year";
my $url = 'http://www.whatismyip.com';
my @recipients = ('spaminator@benrehberg.com',
'daily_crap@techpickle.org');

#begin program code#####################################

use LWP::Simple;
my $content = get $url;
die "Couldn't get $url" unless defined $content;

$ip = "I can't find it.";

if ($content =~ m/(([0-2]?\d{1,2}\.){3}[0-2]?\d{1,2})/){
$ip = $1;
}
#print $ip;
#print $content;
#print $date;

require Mail::Send;
$msg = new Mail::Send Subject=>"Your IP Address for ".$date;
$msg->to(@recipients);
$fh = $msg->open;
print $fh "Your IP Address this morning is ".$ip;
$fh->close;

So there it is. Feel free to copy this and use it for yourself. I provide no warranty and assume you know what you're doing if you choose to take it. Be advised that you will have to install the Mail::Send and LWP::Simple modules in order for this to work. The LWP library was already installed on my system, but I had to get Mail::Send from CPAN. Just follow the link and the instructions.

Questions? Feel free to comment with them or e-mail me.

Update: I forgot to tell you that you must drop this file in /etc/cron.daily so the system will run it on a schedule. Also make sure you make the file executable (chmod 755).

Filibuster

Ever since the mention of a filibuster back when John Roberts was appointed, I've wondered just exactly what a filibuster is. I heard the term once in high school and it seemed fun to say. And with my overwhelming interest in today's politics, I never got around to looking it up anywhere. I did, however, come across a good explanation in Senator Obama's book today on page 80:

The constitution makes no mention of the filibuster; it is a Senate rule, one that dates back to the very first Congress. The basic idea is simple: Because all Senate business is conducted by unanimous consent, any senator can bring proceedings to a halt by exercising his right to unlimited debate and refusing to move on to the next order of business. In other words, he can talk. For as long as he wants. He can talk about the substance of a pending bill, or about the motion to call the pending bill. He can choose to read the entire seven-hundred-page defense authorization bill, line by line, into the record, or relate aspects of the bill to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the flight of the hummingbird, or the Atlanta phone book. So long as he or like-minded colleagues are willing to stay on the floor and talk, everything else has to wait - which gives each senator an enormous amount of leverage, and a determined minority effective veto power over any piece of legislation.

Now we know what a filibuster is. You're welcome.


                

Automated Horticulture

Beth and I kill plants. It's what we do, what we've always done. In Colorado they fell to the cat. When we got to Georgia and left some potted plants outside, even with the rain and good sunshine they still wilted and proved our investment in them unwise.

When my grandmother died there were enough houseplants delivered to start a small nursery. I ended up with two of them, and we only water them when we notice that the leaves are pointing down. There's no other way we'll remember.

I got Vol. 8 of Make magazine (really cool, by the way) a few days ago and finally found something in it that 1. I could use, 2. I can afford to build, and 3. I have time to do. I shopped for and built the prototype today. I guess I could tell you what it does:

It automatically waters the houseplants every day. It's a simple system (mechanically, anyway) that displaces air in a bottle and forces water out, through tubes and on to the plants. The air is forced in to the bottle by an aquarium air pump and the pump itself is turned on and off with X10 controllers.

So the pump can be operated by a PC interface or by handheld remote. I haven't gotten to the PC interface yet; my CM17A X10 PC interface device crapped out and I'm waiting on another one to be delivered. I will then probably be using HeyU on Fedora Core 6 installed on my wonderful 8-year-old Compaq Presario 5155. It's my utility machine on one leg, but it does a fine job of running scheduled tasks. If there are any more advancements on this project, I'll be sure to post them.



                

MS Word: Hidden Text

This is a short article on using the hidden text feature of Microsoft Word. I will be using Word 2003 for my examples. Now, everyone (we hope) knows that one can just open Word and begin typing to create a document. Only that much is given.

My secretary, Amber¹, has typed a letter to Jim Morrison (the new one) who wants to build a studio near the Okefenokee Swamp in South Georgia². She created two versions: one with the text I directed, and one with a long paragraph in the middle telling Mr. Morrison how glad the Southerners are that he has chosen South Georgia as his recording home. Amber wrote it hoping I would choose her version to send the music star. She only had to type one document:


She printed that one, and selected the paragraph that she knew was inevitably bound for deletion:



With that text selected, she simply used the keyboard combination Ctrl+Shift+H and the text was hidden:



Amber printed that one as well, and submitted them to me for review. This saved her quite a bit of time as she only had to type one document.

To show the hidden text, Amber uses the Show/Hide button on the standard toolbar. If that button is not shown, it means that it hasn't been used in a while and has been hidden to show the other, more commonly used buttons. At the right end of the toolbar, there's a symbol to show these hidden buttons:



Anyway, that button will toggle showing the hidden characters. Not only does it show the hidden text, but all non-printing characters such as spaces, tabs, and newlines. This is particularly useful in editing documents and aligning text with margins and such:



I hope you have found this tutorial somewhat entertaining and educational. Since I can't regurgitate the latest news, I'll resort to thinking up small bits like this from time to time.

<sub>1. I neither have a secretary, nor do I know anyone named Amber.
2. I made this all up.</sub>

Web Science

Techdirt reported the other day about The Guardian taking Tim Berners-Lee's quotes from an interview out of context to make something sound more interesting for its readers. I found a NYTimes article that was actually more believable. That one talked also about a field of study that interests me and I had no idea it existed or was emerging. From the article:

Web science is related to another emerging interdisciplinary field called services science. This is the study of how to use computing, collaborative networks and knowledge in disciplines ranging from economics to anthropology to lift productivity and develop new products in the services sector, which represents about three-fourths of the United States economy. Services science research is being supported by technology companies like I.B.M., Accenture and Hewlett-Packard, and by the National Science Foundation.

I would like to know more about this "services science." It sounds a bit like what I already do.

Oh, and if you take the words from the inventor of the World Wide Web, twist them, and publish it on your website, expect to hear from him on that same medium.

Good Comedy is Scarce

I read this joke today at Comedy Central, and it's the best clean one I've heard in years:

Turtles and Picnics and a Minor Tragedy

Three turtles, Joe, Steve, and Poncho, decide to go on a picnic. Joe packs the picnic basket with cookies, bottled sodas, and sandwiches. The trouble is, the picnic site is 10 miles away, so the turtles take 10 whole days to get there.

By the time they do arrive, everyone's whipped and hungry. Joe takes the stuff out of the basket, one by one. He takes out the sodas and realizes that they forgot to bring a bottle opener. Joe & Steve beg Poncho to turn back home and retrieve it, but Poncho flatly refuses, knowing that they'll eat everything by the time he gets back.

Somehow, after about two hours, the turtles manage to convince Poncho to go, swearing on their great-grand turtles' graves that they won't touch the food. So, Poncho sets off down the road, slow and steady.

Twenty days pass, but no Poncho. Joe and Steve are hungry and puzzled, but a promise is a promise. Another day passes, and still no Poncho, but a promise is a promise. After three more days pass without Poncho in sight, Steve starts getting restless. "I NEED FOOD!" he says with a hint of dementia in his voice.

"NO!" Joe retorts. "We promised."

Five more days pass. Joe realizes that Poncho probably skipped out to the Burger King down the road, so the two turtles weakly lift the lid, get a sandwich, and open their mouths to eat. But then, right at that instant, Poncho pops out behind a rock.

"Just for that, I'm not going."

Isn't that fantastic? What one expects sometimes is completely different.

Breakin' Out

Those boxes publishers stick in long magazine articles with catchy sentences to make you read it,

And then my leg fell off!

I've heard, are called "breakouts." Those boxes are easy to display with CSS, rather than creating an image with the text in it. It's really only a div element that has its own margins, padding, background, text, and font properties. It can float right or left or take up the whole column (for those articles with thin columns).

In your CSS document, create an entry something like the following:

#breakout_left{
  width:200px;
  text-align:left;
  font-size:14pt;
  font-weight:bold;
  line-height:1em;
  background:#cccccc;
  float:left;
  margin-right:20px;
  margin-top:20px;
  margin-bottom:20px;
  padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
}

This defines the div element as a section that will expand vertically (down) and have the properties you give it. If you don't like the background color, change it. If the font is too big, just make it smaller. Anything can be adjusted in the breakout this way; if one were just to create an image to display, there would not be nearly this much flexibility. With Blogger, you must use the "Edit HTML" mode:

Just create a div element such as the following:

<div id="breakout_left">Some text in the breakout!</div>

and it will follow the styles set in your style sheet. For those of you who know CSS, this is a simple concept. I don't claim to know CSS (I get very tired at browser compatibility) but when I was approached with this "breakout" task I knew just what to do. I hate images. Google doesn't index the

If the font is too big, just make it smaller.

text inside an image (yet). It's better to have the site more dynamic anyway, and accessible to programatic alteration.

If we changed this site to include DHTML or even AJAX later, it would be easier to change these breakouts with easy commands rather than manual manipulation. This is the way of the web. Tutorials on CSS are available here, here, and here. More available through Google.

Just Read This a Minute Ago

It's no big secret that my favorite musical artist is John Mayer, and I don't mean to get off my tech-babbling here, but John's blog is a place I visit at least once a week and his writing never ceases to inspire me to think:

CHANGE

I've been thinking about something lately.

Imagine this:

You're on an airplane, sleeping with your head against the window, your heart set on being home this time three hours from now. All of a sudden, something goes very wrong. The plane stops moving across the air and instead starts falling through it. The lights are flickering and the movie is skipping. The plane dips hundreds of feet in seconds, and the yellow cups fall from the ceiling. They're a brighter shade of yellow than you remember, because unlike the demonstration, these cups have never been handled before. "Flight attendants take your seats now", you hear, the pilot's voice trembling over a cacophony of alert tones. You get that smell in the bridge of your nose like you've just been hit with a football. That's what the fear smells like. The plane is going down.

Four more drastic drops in under a minute. People are crying. For all the folklore about how your life flashes before your eyes, you're remarkably fixed on one vision - your parents. They're sleeping at this very moment, in a bedroom so quiet they can hear the clock in the kitchen. And you can see them, clear as can be. You wish you could see a playground or a first kiss, but all you can see is your parents sleeping. Huh. Well, that's that.

Several long minutes go by. Then, all at once, the lights come back on and the plane somehow rights itself. Some people cheer, but most people cry harder. The plane lands about an hour later, and as soon as you feel that touch down - hell, even when you were within 50 feet of the ground and could still technically survive a fall - you realize that however you brokered the deal between you and God worked; you've just been granted life in overtime.

Here's the question: what do you change? Whom do you call that you haven't spoken to in years? Whom do you realize has been toxic to your heart and drop with surprising ease? What trips do you cancel, and what trips do you book? What can't you be bothered with anymore? What's the new you like?


Think about that, and then ask one more question. Why not just change it all right now?

(Working on it...)

POSTED BY JOHN MAYER AT 04:48 AM FROM SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

This will stay here until I get a nasty letter from John or his people regarding copyright issues. The link to his post is here. I take no credit in writing that and feel that my own readers may enjoy it.

Even though he's quite a wealthy man, he still is pretty damn down-to-earth. He's an exceptionally talented person and still gives credit where credit is due (and does so publicly). That is admirable even in the smallest and most critical of eyes.

Pulling the Shades

I was reading a security blog today and came across an issue that I have always been on one side of until now. Now (I think) I get Microsoft's manner of operating. It's an issue about access to the Windows kernel (the core of the operating system) and how Microsoft doesn't want to let anyone see it, not even McAfee or Symantec to help protect it. I can somewhat agree with Microsoft now. That post actually had a point. It's just that Microsoft never presented it that way because it would make them look like less of a team player. Note to vendors: they never really cared anyway.

I don't have all the technical or legal expertise to go into this, but one trivial thought helped everything make sense: if the kernel is locked down, why would you need security programs to get inside it to protect it from malware when the malware has become less of a problem by locking down the kernel? Now I'm confused - did that make sense? Is that a derivative of a Catch-22?

If that theory holds true, Windows could become as seemingly secure as the Mac OS just by becoming proprietary (so to speak). It's all relative, though.

I must say, however, that I hate Vista so far, and it has a lot to do with HP.

Perfect Situation Required

Network World reported yesterday that a new Windows XP attack has been proven to disable Windows Firewall. More details are here. Very interesting - how do they do that? Isn't Windows Firewall fairly robust, just as powerful as Symantec's and McAfee's software firewalls?
Actually it pretty much is, especially since you don't have to pay for it. Now let me get a show of hands:

1. How many of you know what ICS is as it relates to Microsoft Windows?

2. How many of you even knew that Windows could share its Internet connection with other computers directly?

3. How many of you actually use Internet Connection Sharing in your home or small office?

The vulnerability is in Internet Connection Sharing, wherein a bad packet sent to the target can "trip-up" ICS (svchost.exe) which is tied to Windows Firewall. When svchost.exe is halted, the firewall goes down. I expect to hear about an update in the near future from Microsoft correcting this issue.

This attack requires the attacker to be on the same network with the target machine. It also requires that the computer under attack have ICS enabled, not have any other software firewall running, and it is not behind a NAT router. If this is you, please call me for a consultation immediately and have your checkbook at the ready.

My point is that almost no one is vulnerable to this new attack that brings down Windows firewall, and those who are indeed vulnerable probably don't have any information on their system worth stealing. Most computer-savvy users are usually behind a router of some sort, especially if they use a wireless router at home. As cheap as they are, I might just give a few away at my debut Internet security course. No one should be without at least some sort of security hardware these days.

Yes, There Were Issues

The last post (October 30) was actually written on the 28th. I just couldn't publish it. I kept getting "There were errors," and the errors varied from an unresolvable host (benrehberg.com) to session timeouts while talking to my servers.

There is a special way to handle yourself at these times: you wait. There is nothing else you can do, so you just save that text and try again later - usually the next day everything is fine.

We had problems all week. For a couple of days I couldn't publish.

Last night, though, everything seemed even faster than before, and publishing went very well (you may have noticed). Above my Gmail list this morning I saw a headline titled "About those Blogger Outages..." and I knew there had to be trouble. I clicked and read. Turns out that Blogger isn't fully Google-ized yet, but when they get there we Blogger users can all enjoy the same flawless operation we experience nearly everywhere else on Google. I can't wait.

Loving It

I am really digging Firefox 2.0. The power in South Georgia blinks at least once per week, at which point my computer shuts down without my knowledge. I hate that. I always have at least five programs running and five tabs open in Firefox, and I can't ever remember what the hell I was looking at when the power turned off.

But when I got up this morning, I reset the clock on the microwave, prepared a cup of coffee, and stormed into my office. I'd been working on a website and had all the needed files open as I was crafting my latest (which, by the way, is not working in IE), and now there was silence. No computer fans running; just my two monitors sitting there with orange lights, as if to tell me it wasn't their fault. I shrugged my shoulders and pressed the power button on my PC.

Windows XP Pro booted fine, just like it always does. Network drives mounted, Folding@Home started to run, the FTP server started, and the system settled in. I started Firefox to check Gmail - this is what I always do - but a box appeared:



I couldn't believe it! I never would have thought to have a browser automatically save the open tabs for this purpose! I simply clicked "Restore Session" and the browser opened up with exactly what I had open last night when I went to bed. I must say that this is wonderful. I have a home page with many useful links on it (accessible here), but there are many sites I was visiting at the time which I don't believe I would have found again.

I highly recommend Firefox for anyone.

One Benefit of Ignoring Spell Check

Yes, folks, that's right. I have found one benefit of a person ignoring spell check. Take the following spam message:

Subject: Enquiry

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to write you this mail and even when it might come to you as a surprise.I hope you find it of interest.

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Magnus Denis and I am a staff of an Auditing and Risk Management Firm, here in Spain, I should like to usethis means to ask your assistance in moving some fund over to your country.I have, in the course of my duties come in contact with a good amount of money that have been inactive for some years now and careful investigation proved the original depositor of the fund had died some years back and all attempts to reach the supposed beneficiary of the deposit were fruitless and before it is forfeited to the state, I decided to move it.

After legal consultation, I have concretized modalities for a secured way that would guarantee a perfect transaction. But be most assured that for your help and partnership you will get a good percentage of the total sum. It is important to let you know that fifty percent of the rest will be invested over there under your anagement. For a negotiable period of time and we will open a fruitful dialog to that effect.

I look forward to our working closely in practically seeing this transaction come to a perfect and successful end. For effective communication, please kindly include in your reply, your complete Names, Address, Occupation, Age and most especially your contact number and I will contact you as soon as I get your reply.

I look forward to hearing from you and I express my gratitude for your patience.

Kindly reply to:magnus_denis@k.ro

Magnus Denis

Right off the bat we know it's spam, simply because someone with this much money would absolutely have to know how to spell "inquiry," or at least be doubtful about its spelling. This is a scam related to another, much older scam that had something to do with a fellow in Nigeria. If you get this message in your e-mail, please delete it without getting greedy and losing your retirement.

Busy Day

No questions, please - this is what I do.

Reverse Broadband

I got curious today about the upload/download speed here at the office because I heard that the new Internet Security Routers (ISR) were slowing down traffic at all of the sites.



Too bad I didn't run a speed test before they installed it today. This is interesting, though. I have never seen the upload speed at ten times the download speed.

There is really no way to be accurate here, though. We have around 100-120 machines on the network, and probably several users streaming audio from some website. We also have many computers using a terminal emulator connected to a mainframe in Atlanta, querying data constantly.

But I applaud the I.T. folks for finally going to private addressing. Up until last month, every computer in every office that was connected to the network had a publicly-routable IP address. Very dangerous if you ask me. We're busting at the seams with sensitive data; there is a constant high probability that we could have a very similar incident the VA had earlier this year, or a network break-in like NASA had several years ago.

Of course, everyone is subject to the vulnerabilities of social engineering. I encourage everyone to read the interesting (if not also true) stories in Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security. I wonder if our Information Security Manager has read it.

Firefox 2.0 Released Tomorrow

An exciting day tomorrow as Mozilla announces Firefox 2.0. Just a week after the release of IE7, Firefox's latest hits the streets and offers much the same protection as Microsoft's browser. I highly recommend Mozilla products because they work and they're free.

If you're a PocketPC user, try Minimo, a Mozilla browser for the Windows Mobile platform.

If you're on the go, try Mobile Firefox, a browser designed to run directly from a flash drive and save all your history and temporary files to that same removable disk, enhancing your privacy on the road. That one's also handy for browsing on a friend's laptop or home computer for a few minutes to check on the daily porn.

Then, for a real challenge, find a version of IE that you can carry in your pocket.

If you're reading this on or after October 24, 2006, get Firefox 2.0 here.

Richard Stallman and GPLv3

I'd heard of Richard Stallman before, but never really looked into it. Seems that he's stirring up some really good stew lately.

For those of you who don't know, Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). This group oversees the General Public License under which most free software is distributed. If you need to know more about Dick, consult Wikipedia.

A little trivia: the TiVo runs Linux. The source code to the TiVo software, in accordance with the GPL, is available free of charge, but TiVo says it's illegal to alter the code and then run it on their hardware. Perfectly fine. The license only covers the software. Stallman's GPL, version 3, suggests that anyone should be able to do anything they want with the TiVo, and other devices which depend on Linux and other open-source code. Therein lies the problem. If the GPL makes the hardware basically open-source, who's gonna buy another TiVo when the kid down the street can build you one in 30 minutes out of spare parts?

This would drive TiVo and the others to move to a closed-source structure, slamming the door in nerds' faces. It will also cost many companies a lot of money, namely Red Hat, TiVo, and Novell. You might ask: “Why do you care?”

I care because, well, I don't know. This just struck me as a bit weird. Daniel Lyons in this Forbes article was pretty hard on Stallman, making several references to radical behavior and likening the FSF to jihadists. I think Lyons and Stallman are having issues, though. Who knows? The public may not see a thing. It just may be slightly more expensive or a bit longer wait to get Grandma using Linux. That's what bites.

Microsoft Streets & Trips

I got the very latest version of Microsoft Streets & Trips yesterday and installed it. Everything went fine and it doesn't look too much different from S&T 2006; we just assume that everything is more up-to-date. There were no major updates; still no voice interaction.

I went to put the box on the shelf next to the others when I happened to notice the points of interest (and the number of them) listed on the box. I made the comparison. So I decided to use Google Documents & Spreadsheets to collaborate with my colleague and compare the difference between the versions. From the 2005 to 2007 versions, there are 88,998 fewer restaurants listed. I think that is significant in some way. It may just be more accurate (that would be significantly better), or it could just be that places have closed or no one's interested in listing themselves with whatever service Microsoft uses to get them into the program (which would be - you guessed it - significantly worse).

So here's a link to the spreadsheet (publicly viewable). At the time of writing we didn't have the data in for the 2006 version, but my colleague is probably looking for the box.

And yes, I realize that this post has a very limited audience.

You Get a LInE, I'll 6et a PoLe, We'll Go D0wn to the Phishin' Hol3

I was taking a look at my spam this evening when I noticed a mail from Bank of America. Hmmm... I thought. What possibly could make Gmail think that this was spam?

The first line gave it away:

Your Online Banking is Blocked

---

We recently reviewed your account, and suspect that your Bank of America account may have been accessed by an unauthorized third party. Protecting the security of your account is our primary concern. Therefore, as a preventative measure, we have temporarily limited access to sensitive account features.

To restore your account access, we need you to confirm your identity, to do so we need you to follow the link below and proceed to confirm your information:

http://sitekey.bankofamerica.com.signon.do.onlinesecureserver.us

Tank you for your patience as we work together to protect your account.

Sincerely,
Bank of America Customer Service

*Important*
Please update your records on or before 48 hours, a failure to update your records will result in a temporal hold on your funds.

---

Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender
© 2006 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

These people are very stupid, and yet I'm sure that there were some people today who were dumb enough to click on that link and enter their account information. Two things:

Bank of America (or any banking institution) no longer puts direct links to the signon page in their e-mails to customers, or anyone. They all tell you to go to the site and sign in, manual-like.

Professional correspondence from a company that does billions of dollars worth of business will not replace the word "temporary" with "temporal," or say "Tank you for your patience...."

Okay, three things. I just noticed that it was not even sent to the e-mail address I have on file with the bank.

Please be careful with e-mail messages. If you have any sort of question about a peice of correspondence telling you that there's trouble with your account and your identity needs to be verified, just pick up the phone or go to the bank yourself. Those are the only ways to be sure.

Sweep the leg, people.

How to do the signature thingy:

I use the Blogger engine for publishing. That interface has a "template" feature where I can put in crap that shows up in every post without me having to explicitly place it there. So I decided to put my little signature at the bottom of every post.

That signature is only a .jpg image I created with my tablet PC and Windows Journal. I just wrote my name, copied the handwriting as an image, and saved it. It now sits on my web server and every blog post simply calls that image with the <img> tag.

You don't have to have a tablet or a digitizer. I did a signature for e-mails when I used Outlook at my last job. I signed my name on a peice of super-bright paper and scanned it in. Easy as pie.

Just get the image and put it at the bottom of every post. The only problem you'll have is matching the background at your blog.

He's a Star Now

How much did he get paid for this?

The $53 Camera is Fantastic

Walking the Dog

Oct 8, 2006 - 42 Photos

We went for a walk today and I made sure to take the camera along. It was a nice cool day and we all enjoyed ourselves for the majority of it.

Ffocee

Anika tries her best to say the word "coffee," but it just won't come out right. The result is hilarious, but can prove dangerous come Monday morning at daycare.