If you know what a checksum is, you’ll appreciate this. Heck, if you know what a Kilobyte is, you might like this… I’m at work tonight updating our server with an End Of Year patch and to do so I have to go through a few steps before the update can actually be started.

First I have to download an executable file that will generate another file when it’s double clicked. It simply extracts this big file onto the server which we can then use by typing in a line or three in the AIX (another type of Unix) screen. It runs through all this hub-bub after that and finishes and we reboot the server and everything’s good…

Well, when I got the exe file and ran it, it just sat there. It locked up within 2 seconds and generated a 30,000 KB file on the server, but I had to do an End Task to get out of the extraction process. It didn’t seem right to me, so I called support and they said, “Well, it looks like it’s all there. The file is about the right size so go ahead and take down the system and run the upgrade job.”

Of course it failed… I called them back and they had me download the exe file one more time and run it. He was watching over the network (remotely dialed in) and he said that within 2 seconds of me running the file the size of the extracted file was 30,000 KB, but the checksum kept changing.

A checksum is a command that checks the exact bit count (the smallest denominator of “size”) to make sure it’s exactly right. He said that even though it was locked up on my end the checksum kept changing so he knew there was SOMETHING going on, though the file size never changed from 30,000 KB.

We discussed my options which included trying again tomorrow night when after about almost 20 minutes it finished! The darn thing finished extracting. He checked it again and it was perfect. So now I’m finishing the upgrade! Woo HOO!

It sounds like a really bad B Movie, but it was real! I’m not sure where the problem started, but one by one all six branches of the credit union started calling and telling us that they can’t print anything. So we started looking at the print queues to see what was up.

Then they all called back and said they can’t get into “XP” (the name of the proprietary software used by a bunch of credit unions to handle member accounts).

We called XP about it, and they remotely attached to our system and started installing patches and then they called us and said, “Well, it looks like everything’s frozen so we’re gonna reboot your network.” We said, “Ok… Nobody can do anything anyway, so how long with THAT take?” John said, “A few minutes.”

It actually took a few minutes to do what he wanted, but man… What an afternoon! That’s my first catastrophic failure to deal with and it all went pretty ok, sort of, I guess… Everything was up and running by the time I left, but it was MAD for a couple of hours this afternoon.

Plus I woke up at 2:30 in the morning last night and tossed and turned for an hour trying to get back to sleep, and decided about 4 am that I give up… I got up and checked my email and surfed the net for a while, took the trash out around 5:30, jumped in the shower and went to work 20 minutes early – and stayed an hour late to make sure everything was ok…

What a day…

As the great punk band, The Cramps, once said, “I can’t hardly stand it.” Of course they were NOT talking about computers, but it applies here as well…

I hate it when I’m messing around on hacker web sites playing with software I KNOW has viruses and trojans and spyware attached to it and I infect my own computer so badly that I have to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall Windows from scratch. But I hate it even worse when I’m using legitimate software and it hoses my system and I have to reinstall Windows from scratch…

Norton Ghost is a blessing and a curse. It’s mostly a curse right now because it’s hosed not one, but TWO, count them – 2! – computers for me recently. And I know how to use it. I’ve used it before, so it’s not a big mystery. Heck, it’s not even that difficult to use! It just makes a back up of the computer so you can reinstall everything real fast if something does go wrong. The problem has been that on my last two attempts it’s hosed the MBR.

The MBR is the “Master Boot Record” for all those who don’t work with computers on a daily basis. The MBR makes your computer boot into Windows. The MBR is the 0 (zero) sector on the Hard Drive that says, “Ok. Now that the power is on, it’s ok to read the rest of the hard drive and start Windows.” If the MBR gets messed up, you’re as good as hosed… I’m hosed…

I can’t hardly stand it…

I tried to make a backup image (a ghost) of a computer at work on Thursday and Friday and it hosed the system! It won’t boot into the Ghost program to make a backup, and it won’t boot into Windows either. It hosed the MBR. Today I installed some security software (the firewall called Zone Alarm, and a “cleaner” tool that cleans up the registry, the temp directory, past history files etc.), then tried to run the Ghost image on my laptop. Of course it hosed it.

I tried everything to fix it. I think I hosed it by trying to back up the boot partition that Linux installed when I dual-booted the computer. I tried to do a “repair” from the Windows install disk and do a “fixmbr” but it didn’t work… I even went so far as to try to take the hard drive out so I didn’t lose a bunch of stuff, but Dell isn’t as forgiving on the laptops as they are on the desktops. Their desktop computers are EASY to get into and work on, but the laptop had somewhere around 2 dozen screws holding the thing together and once I had them all out, it still wouldn’t come apart… I finally gave up and re-partitioned the disk and I’m reinstalling Windows…

I can’t hardly stand it… I lost some stuff, but not a ton of it. That’s some consolation I guess.

Over the past couple of years I’ve migrated between Mozilla Foundation’s Thunderbird email client, to Yahoo mail, to Google’s Gmail, back to Thunderbird and now my last two jobs (TV Guide and now OCCU) I’ve used MS Outlook via an Exchange server. They all have their good points, and I have to say I really think Outlook has some great features making it a contender for best email client out there, but there are a few seemingly little things that keep it out of the top spot in my opinion. Primarily it’s spam filtering capability. It stinks.

All the others I’ve used provide relatively good spam filtering, Thunderbird’s being best of all. It runs fast, it learns quickly, and rarely gets it wrong. Gmail is right behind T-bird, but it doesn’t learn very quickly and you have to mark as spam the same emails over and over… Yahoo’s spam filter works great – until you reach it’s limit of 500 email filters – which can happen in a couple of weeks! That is, the last time I really used Yahoo mail you reached a limit of 500, then the oldest filters got knocked off the bottom as new ones were added to the top. It’s a less than perfect solution, and I hope they modify it to filter unlimited amounts of spam.

Using Outlook outside of a corporate environment is a little different. When it’s connecting to a POP or IMAP email account you can’t rely on a spam filtering service for which the company is footing the bill to filter your spam, so you have to do it yourself. Outlook is last on this list because it’s the worst at filtering the junk mail clogging the arteries of the internet. First of all the definition file you can obtain from Microsoft is lousy and seemingly does nothing to stop the inflow. Second, if you get 10 emails and 8 are spam, you have to mark each one as spam one at a time and it takes numerous mouse clicks to accomplish the task. In comparison, Thunderbird offers the user the chance to highlight all 8 spams and then just tap the “J” key on the keyboard. Spam has been filtered and logged!

Another shortcoming of Outlook is the “Junk Mail Options” menu where you can tell the software that email from the people in your address book and anyone else you specify are NOT spam – everything else IS spam. This should be the be-all-and-end-all of spam filters… You won’t get it if you tell Outlook to NOT let it through that impenetrable brick wall. But it doesn’t work… It still lets all the same spam through into the inbox. Why hasn’t MS fixed THAT one with their patch Tuesday plan?

But because I like the other features of Outlook – the built-in features like Calendar, Tasks, Notes etc. – I have searched for a 3rd party spam filter to work alongside Outlook to improve it. I think I’ve found it, but I’m not 100% sure yet. I’ve only used it for a few days. It’s called “SpamBayes” and it’s free through Sourceforge. The “Bayes” part of the name comes from the name of the algorithm used to determine if it’s spam or not (Bayesian). I’m not sure how it works exactly, and I think it’s the same technology used by the Thunderbird client, so it’s doing a pretty good job of filtering, though I’ve had to tell it that a LOT of my email that it’s filtered is NOT spam. It runs a bit slow too, but it works. At least it looks like it’s working… I’ll post a progress report in a few days time.

It’s 3:25 am Sunday morning as I write this. I’m sitting at work with a co-worker and we’re upgrading the software and database and web servers. I’ve been here for over 12 hours now, and he’s been here for more than 15.

***

Now it’s 5:43 am and we’ve finished with the main bulk of the installation. The only thing left to do is update the client computers and that will take place AFTER breakfast.

UPDATE: It’s now 8:15 and we’ll be going home soon. Mission accomplished with aplomb. Only a few job streams left to run, and we’ll roll the database to tomorrow’s date. Then we’re going home.

UPDATE 2: It’s 10:15 and I’m home. I’m going to bed now to dream of Unix screens… Yawn!

Can you believe it? This is NOT a work of art, well yes it is, but it’s also an actual computer from my office that’s just been decommissioned. This is incredible stuff. There’s a black “saddle” that was created to hold all this stuff. The computer would be dialed into remotely and was connected to the TV screens in the lobby. All programming was done this way. Now we’ve got satellite to handle everything, but you gotta love this workmanship. The keyboard, phone modem and other components were all double-sticky taped to the saddle, and the saddle was glued to the computer case.

Notice the screwdriver connected to the back. You can see it hanging from the circular silver thing on the right hand side. You can pull the screwdriver out, adjust whatever needs adjusting, and then it draws itself back in like a tape measure in the hands of a seasoned – um, tape-measure-using guy… I also like the converter that the phone line plugs into – which is converted into a serial port!

The hum-dinger though is the cell phone, and I use that term VERY loosely. It’s actually a hand set, as you can see the cord coming from the back of it to the modem on the side. The other people in the office are fighting over who gets to use the phone.

In the end, this fine piece of computing history will be displayed in our office as a work of art. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Strangely though when I called the company about this computer they told me we had TWO of them! I’ll get the other one the next time at the branch office where it’s located. I can’t believe it – TWO of them! We could start a museum of technological dinosaurs with this stuff! Cool.

I haven’t updated my blog recently but that’s mostly because I’ve been busy lately. I’m loving work more and more. The more responsibility I want to bite off, the more I’m being given. Today I participated with the System Administrator in a conference call with a company that we are considering to host our web site when our current contract is up. It’s awfully fun asking, “Have your customers ever had their web sites hacked?” It’s a fair question though, and it has to be asked along with all the other questions about security.

I’ve also had the pleasure of updating the daily checklist which is 2 pages for Saturday’s and 4+ pages for weekdays. This checklist is used extensively to ensure nothing is forgotten during the day. It hadn’t been updated though in several years because the people who had been using it knew it by heart, so they simply checked off the items that had been accomplished and never updated the list when changes were made. They knew how to do it after all! Well, I had to learn their system, THEN I went in and updated it to match the actual steps we take today.

I found that we were using 56K modems for two processes and proposed and udpated those systems so we’re fully integrated with current HTTPS standards for all our services now. That was something that saved us from 10 to 20 minutes a day. It’s so frustrating when you have to fight a modem. I don’t know how many people still have modems out there, but if you do, please update. Your life will be less stressful!

I help with the web site pretty extensively. I do desktop support. I’m compiling a list of our vendors and contract terms. I’m using free software I found at Microsoft.com to audit all our computers to make sure they are current and secure. The System Admin purchased 5 new servers and we’re buying around 75-90 new desktops, we’re upgrading our phone system, and ummmmm….. Jeez. Every time I look in a new drawer, or open a door I haven’t opened it seems like there’s something to do. I call it job security! I’m learning so much and loving every minute of it.

I think what I like most is the fact I bring to the table about 50% of what’s needed for the job, and I’m learning the other 50%. At TV Guide I felt like I had a mountain to climb and I brought little or nothing into the situation to help – other than the fact I was willing to learn and had a decent background of computer skills. I knew very little of what I needed to know though so it was an uphill climb from the start. I think OCCU is definitely a better fit for me though. So I’m happy. So there!

Sacha Baron Cohen is making people mad as Borat, the idiot reporter from Kazakhstan. Cohen does this a lot. His interview of Donald Trump when he played Ali G was a bit of genius. He leads people on in a variety of roles he has created and people fall for it because in most cases they take themselves too seriously. Sam Donaldson fell for it and he had no problem playing the fool.

…Donaldson told ABC News, “I was got; I was had, but so what?”

That’s a great way to view the situation. Donaldson is able to laugh at himself. I wish more people could do that. I remember years ago when the animated TV series came out called “The PJ’s” about a project in the big city where a variety of stereotypes lived and mingled. The main character was voiced by Eddie Murphy and I thought the show was funny, but it was visciously attacked by the leaders of the black community for, well stereotyping… The show didn’t last long, but I still thought it was pretty funny.

Getting back to Borat though, and how the leaders of Kazakhstan are upset that it makes their country look like a bunch of hillbillies in eastern Russia – GET OVER YOURSELVES! Laugh at yourselves. Laugh at Borat. He’s fictional. Do the Simpson’s make white people in America look GOOD??? That’s one of the best shows on TV and it’s been around for 20+ years! I can’t wait until I’m old and infirm and I see an episode I’ve never seen before! It will be rebroadcast for generations and I can’t wait.

Let’s laugh at ourselves more often! Thank goodness someone else besides Sam Donaldson can!

I haven’t done much searching of the so-called “nfo” sites to verify this story, but this is pretty darn funny if you ask me. A hacked and fully working version of Windows Vista has been leaked on the internet months before MS is supposed to release it for real… That cracks me up bad. Either someone from inside MS is leaking it, MS is leaking it on purpose, or someone hacked MS and is leaking it. Which do you believe? I honestly do NOT believe the security measures introduced into Vista are going to be much of a problem for the hacking community based on the history of MS’s earlier work.

If you’re not sure who is in this picture, it’s Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand in 1984. That’s about the same time the Reagan administration was supplying him with all the WMD’s we supposedly invaded Iraq to find… Democrats may not be perfect, but please don’t elect bloodthirsty Republicrats on Tuesday!