The Time Sink

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

...and you wonder how these things progress? It started with that blasted throw-away motherboard from work. It went into the new case well enough, but my guess that it was hosed became reality. Okay, A-B out the board and the processor. Stop. Good idea, but not quite yet. Easier to throw the processor into the Linux testbed and I can do that anytime. ...anytime I can find the flipping manual for the jumpers. It was right there; right over my shoulder where I tossed it. Now, which way was I facing when I put that board in that case??? Oh. It seems I've straightened up since then. Straightened up the stacks that fell over. Uh-oh. Ever seen a kid shuffle cards on the carpet? That's how my stack straightening goes...

Okay, I don't need that mobo anyway; I need a firewall and that donated P-75 will work just fine. Turns out there's an ASUS board in there and we tend to get along. Hokay: board, memory, find a junk video card, NIC, FDD... Anything else? Oh yeah; HDD. Sheesh, that old board won't recognize anything much; do I have a 1.3 or so hanging around? Sure. Wait; how about that ATA66 card? Then I could hang a bunch of drives in there (lots of real estate) and use it as a file server also! Wait. First things first: make a firewall. KISS! Then mess it up with too much stuff.

Then there's the two SCSI boards IT tossed the other week. Maybe I could put one of those in and see if those SCSI CDROMs on the shelf still work... Nope. KISS. But what about the wireless card? That would belong in a network firewall box, no? NO! KISS.

Results as of Sunday evening: one KISS box. Well, it turns out the HDD had Corel Linux on it and I had to play for a while. Sheesh. Next step: off to the Linux Router Project to see if I've learned enough to understand what all those penguinish words mean. Details later; film at 2300.

I spent the day trying to catch up on all the things I got behind on last week. The craziness continued unabated, but for the most part seemed to swirl around, not through our office. ...other than the abuse of our poor 600 series HP inkjet: it was being used to print fifty copies of three pages of the artwork Janeen did last week. I have to say, it managed okay; it just took all day and the traffic in and out to check on it was a bother.

I did manage to get all the fires put out from Friday and I checked for smoke before I left and didn't see any<g>; but I suspect that when I get in today, they'll be a tendril or two wafting up from the pile.

Oh, the new feature? We'll I'd heard that perhaps Significant Special People were having trouble emailing their complaints about web page design to Mr. Fixed Font, so I thought I'm make it simpler for readers. Can't find Tom's hidden email link? Just drop by The Time Sink and click on through. No problem; glad to be of service.

Time out for a little update on the family and homestead: We met with the surgeon yesterday and scheduled Shelley in to be de-gallbladdered on Monday afternoon. She (the surgeon) is going to try the outpatient laparoscopy route rather than the Big Cut, but is reserving that option. She's also reserving the right to keep Shelley overnight if the anesthesia gives Shelley's MS any problems. While surgery is not our first choice, all the feedback we've solicited points toward a 'do it now or do it as an emergency' option. Shelley seems to be handling it okay; she had me come home from work early today to parent while she took off to have her hair cut. Wouldn't want those tresses to look tacky under that cap...

We should have the deck poured for the pool Thursday +/-. Should; we'll have to wait and see. The glitch with the brick has been resolved: the concrete crew can tie the entire pool and deck area together to our satisfaction. The wait will come if they cannot pull from jobs already in the queue; we lost our slot when the Great Brick Crisis reared it's head. All in all, we're on track for water maybe as early as next Wednesday.

...and the bid package at the jobsite is off to the bindery. One or two rabbits pulled from hats, duffle bags and UPS and we seem to be in good shape to submit on time. Considering the time frame we had to work under, I think we've done one heck of a job.

Let's hit the links today! ...just the front nine; we can manage the back nine later:

Remember those wackos I mentioned a while back who were cracking and hacking "Internet Appliances"? Well, they're still going strong and they've added the Websurfer to their list. Next up: Mailstation. I have to admit I'm waiting for the local Circuit City to get the I-Opener back in stock. For the bucks, I'd have to look hard at it as a firewall unit; and I do like working with hardware.

In the pure silliness department, we have two of these singing mounted bass at the office; the gang delights in setting the motion sensor active and placing it on someone's desk. You have to see it to believe it; the tail flaps and the head swings a full ninety degrees to sing at you head on. Going fast at your local Long's Drug stores on the west coast.

In Linux matters, TechRepublic has a very nice overview for newbies on how to install from source. A little brief, but they do discuss tars and gzips and makefile. Not too bad as a starting point.

Ditto the help files here for the Linux Router Project. While PMFirewall is a cool one shot solution (Dave likes it a lot), if you need custom configurability, the LRP is designed to let you roll your own. One catch: not much help for newbies. This guy started with that premise and has pretty much detailed the steps that derailed me the other night. If I'm not working on pool landscaping after class on Saturday, this is what I'll be playing with.

Linux silliness here. ...and you thought Linuxen weren't into this stuff... Please do not pass this link along to Brian. ...and certainly not after "the club statement" <g>.

The word "deranged" popped up the other day. ...in the header of an email sent my way. ...referencing me. Thank you.

Here we go again. A Melissa-like gem that shows up with a subject such as "I love you". Dave's spent the morning with his can of Raid; Chris found info at http://www.securitywatch.com/. Both the Symantec and Network Associates sites appear to be swamped as of 0930(PDT).

...and sometimes things can turn out all right. Dave was the first into the back channel yesterday with the news on the "iloveyou" worm. I passed his info and a follow-up from Dr. K onward to my local head geek and the sysadmin where I teach on Saturdays. Based on the information available, they notified their users. Locally we had zero hits and are looking to stay alert for the variants. At the college, things were a little different. I'll let Jill tell her story (minor editing to remove names):

To: 'Bowman, Dan'
Subject: RE: Follow-up on LL virus

I'm sure glad you told me about this virus. No more did I get the word out than "someone" executed the file and promptly sent itself to everyone in her address book. Thank goodness "some" people choose to read my emails first so the infection on our end was isolated to that one machine. Anyway the "execuTOR" got it from someone at the main campus. I called and I've been informed by our Sr. Sys Admin that it is running rampant throughout the main frame... lions and tigers and bears.. Oh MY!!!

She followed up with some effusive thanks which I hereby pass along to Dave and the others who provided follow-ups during the day.

Three-thousand, three-hundred and forty-five. ...plus registry entries. That's the number of files Norton and I stripped out of a machine at the Saturday job site.

It all started innocently enough; Jill emailed and asked if I could help her out. Seems she was headed to Texas (on vacation; not getting out of Dodge. Uh, wait a minute?) and had missed one little, teeny, tiny thing when she'd cleaned up the near miss on Thursday: there's one or two machines that have multiple users. Friday AM, one of the part-timers logged into a "cleared" machine and set off the Love Bug. Not bad though; Jill had removed the ability for the machines to 'see' the global address list. Things stopped cold because the user didn't maintain a contacts pst or a PAB. But she knew she was hosed and called Jill. NP; Dan's there on Saturday anyway. Pretty please and a bottle of MGD Lite in a long neck (or six)? Deal.

...and I was stuck anyway; it's the machine I use. ...loaded with WordPerfect. ...and my files. ...and all my templates and macros. Sheesh.

So a lot of work before I could get to work. Fortunately, my other instructor usually handles the testing while I crank out certificates and paperwork. It just took a little longer than normal. I downloaded the latest from Symantec and the program jumped right on things. ...in DOS mode. At about the sixty or so mark of (D)elete, (C)ontinue, I shined that action and rebooted to allow the automated version to run. ...and run it did; frankly, I didn't believe the numbers being generated. Sixty thousand files (WT...?) and 3345 hits.

Heads up if you're relying on your anti-virus software to do it all: Norton didn't get the registry changes. ...and the file size on the rewrites was 18K (Win98 machine). I'd emailed myself (and brought hard-copy) of both Dave's and Tom's routines, so things went well from there. But 3345 files? Sheesh.

Saturday turned out okay for my students. While I was playing wonder tech and printing out all the legal stuff, Lee was shoving pairs of soon-to-be EMTs into testing situations and monitoring the results. We use EMTs and ex-students to proctor our tests and as victims to be evaluated. They've been there and done that; that helps provide valid feedback to the students being tested.

Things went well; two incompletes due to job interviews scheduled at the same time as our test and several students who need to finish up their observation time. The good news for them is that they now have Saturdays free <G>.

I tried out a new 'victim' this semester; I had Daniel come along with me. Lee paired him up with a fire-fighter proctor and had Daniel playact he'd fallen while blading. From what I heard, he was a natural. His only difficulty came when he had to endure the endless time it took me to finish up my paperwork. Still, he'll be back next semester; he found out we serve doughnuts.