Sunday, April 25, 2004

Let's start with a short security update. As you recall from last week, there are several current threats. There are several exploits that are aimed against the problems fixed with the April updates from Microsoft. Some of them are a bit serious, so updates are important. There is increased scanning of the ports (connection) that are related to the problem with secure sites (those "https" places where you enter confidential information like payment stuff or your bank site). That means that hackers are looking for places that are vulnerable.

I suspect that the major places (banks and big shopping places like Amazon) already have protections in place. But there may be some smaller places on the 'net that don't have dedicated security staff, so they might be more vulnerable. And your "Aunt Minnie" type -- someone in your family that is a computer beginner -- also needs to be reminded to do the updates. They are just as vulnerable as the big guys.

If you have a high-speed connection (DSL or cable modem), and you plug a new fresh-out-of-the-box computer onto that line, you can expect that the computer will be scanned within one-half hour, or less. And then that user gets their on-line banking going, and hasn't done the updates. It is very possible that they will be hacked without their knowledge.

So you need to send a message to your "Aunt Minnie" and help them get protected. And send them regular information about good computing practices. Try to keep things as non-technical as possible. Point them to the Microsoft security site (www.microsoft.com/security).

On the home front, there was a noisy crowd here for dinner. Christine came with her children (Liam is 2, Joelle is 4), Jason (son, 22), and Stacy (19, home from college for a week) were joined by Pam's mother. Pam fixed a nice dinner of Honey-Baked ham, a giant bowl of potato salad, corn on the cob, homemade rolls, and fruit salad. It was quite good, and provided plenty of leftovers to send home with Jason and Christine.

It gets a bit noisy with the two grandkids, and then all the women talking in the kitchen, but it is a 'joyful noise'. Although it is nice when they all leave (except Stacy), and things quiet down.

Tomorrow is a day off. Pam and Stacy and I are heading over to Sonoma (I think) to take in a few historical places. They decided that would be a good place to go. And there is this factory outlet center in Vacaville that is conveniently on the way home. How much you want to bet we stop there?

Monday, April 26, 2004

Since we were taking the day off, we didn't have to get up at 5:00am, our usual wake-up (at least our 'get-up') time. Although the cell phone rang about 6:30am. The cell phone was downstairs, I was upstairs. Since I'm using that number for people that want to buy my late father-in-law's tractor and trailer and other tools (links here), I needed to answer it.

At least, that's what I thought in my foggy state.

So, the phone rings, Pam pokes me, and I jump out of bed to rush downstairs to answer it before they hang up. I can tell you that it is an interesting experience to run down the stairs before your eyes and muscles have awakened to their full potential. Luckily, I didn't loose my footing, but still didn't get to the phone in time. But they did leave a message. Actually, I think that people shouldn't be calling that early, but it could have also been a call from work about the mail server (or the latest viruses).

But, I really shouldn't try running down the stairs before my eyes focus. And the legs didn't have a whole lot of coordination yet, either.

So, we slept in a bit more, then Pam and Stacy went off to a doctor's appointment, while I got up and had breakfast (the usual Raisin Bran -- "two scoops") while reading the paper. (Note: today's Wall Street Journal had a "Technology" section that talked about viruses, spyware, and other stuff. Interesting...you should try to grab a copy of it. The WSJ has a web site, but their content is subscription only.)

When they returned from the appointment, we went on our 'field trip'. We drove down to Sonoma (a bit over an hour away, in the famous California wine country), and had lunch in under the trees in the park in the City. Then we toured the Sonoma mission (dating from the 1700's; the one in Sonoma was the northern-most mission built in California). Then we drove over to General Vallejo's ranch estate to look at that. (Gen Vallejo was the 'main man' in charge of the Sonoma area during the time that California was part of Mexican territory.)

It was a bit hot, with temps in the 90's (F) today, but the old buildings, with thick walls made out of adobe, are quite cool. And the air conditioning in the car worked quite well.

On the way back, we stopped at the "Cherry Place" (on Highway 12, I think, between Interstate 80 and Sonoma), which used to be a great place to get cherry juice, which I find quite tasty when cold. (Even though we were in prime wine country, we don't use the stuff.) But, alas, they store is a shell of it's former self. There was no cold cherry juice to be found. So (as Jerry Pournelle would say), an "onion" for them.

The most surprising part of the trip is the place that we didn't go. That's right, contrary to my expectations, there wasn't a visit to the massive "factory store" complex that we passed by -- twice. So, perhaps you could have taken that bet that was mentioned at the end of yesterday's post. (Note to Brian C - don't buy any lottery tickets this week, since you were also fooled as I was.)

It was quite puzzling. Two prime shopping people in the car (Pam and Stacy), and neither one wanted to stop at the Factory Outlets. Go figure!

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

I was playing around with some PHP code, with the result of a new box up there at the top of the page (and aslo the page bottom) that contains an list of prior week's posts. It's not very fancy, but it seems to work. And I even understand how it works (sort of).

Although I have done a bit of other programming (dBase/Clipper, which may indicate how long ago that was), I am just starting to get into PHP code. As usual, I am learning it by looking at other PHP code that I found on the 'net. That's how I learned how to do Cold Fusion code, along with a class to help out a bit. And it's also how I learned to do HTML code.

If you are interested in HTML code, you can just do a "view, source" of an interesting page, then look at the source code (the commands behind the page) along with a reference to the various HTML commands. You can find that reference in lots of places. One of them is "WebMonkey", and there are many others. That site has short tutorials on different languages, written for the beginner and above.

So, my link up there calls a page that has some basic HTML code (the header and footer tables), and a short blurb of PHP code that gets a list of files in a specific directory. It then takes that list and builds the <a href> code that makes the link work. I did have to manually exclude some other files that are actually in those directories.

But, now you can easily jump to a specific week of drivel. You might find it very useful in case you are having trouble going to sleep.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

I decided to make a minor change to the "Prior Weeks" PHP code. It now shows only the week-starting-date (in the format of "yyyy-mm-dd"), without the file extension. I think it's a bit easier to read. The next thing is to sort the files in reverse order. There are some 'sort' functions in PHP that I will use, after looking them up in the manual (you remember "RTFM", don't you?). Then the next thing I might try is an automatic display of the date/time of this file. Then I won't have to remember to put the day up there in that box (next to "Latest"). It's probably quite easy to do; I'd bet that Brian B could do one in his sleep.

At work, several meetings. Another project on my plate; this one I can talk about. There is a perceived need for an FTP server at work. At least, when you ask anyone if an FTP server would be a good idea, they all say "Yes".

Although and FTP server itself is pretty easy to set up, you really want to have a secure one. You don't want anyone to be able to upload any type or quantity of files anonymously, otherwise you quickly end up with a "warez" server.

I envision it to work like this:

• Someone needs to send me a file.
• I click on a link on a page, and fill out a form (name, email address of the person that needs to send me a file, a description, perhaps some other stuff).
• When I hit the 'submit' button, a process creates a temp folder on the FTP server, assigns rights to me and the file sender, and sends a message to me and the file sender. The message contains a link that they can click on, which will upload the file.
• The file is checked for viruses, of course, then if it's OK, another process sends me (the recipient) an email message that the file has arrived. That email contains a link to the file, and then I can download the file.

If I need to send a file to the outside, a similar process would be followed. And another automatic process would delete the file after it is downloaded, or after a fixed number of days.

I suspect that there is some system out there that would do that. We'd probably even pay for a commercial product that has all the features that we need. The whole intent is to have a secure way to transfer files.

So, I get to be the 'project manager' of this thing. The first step is to determine if there is really an actual need for this, or if it is just a 'that would be nice' kind of thing. And I'll have to do a bit of research on programs that we could use. Google will be my friend for that process. But if anyone has a good idea, click on the mailbox icon to send me the info.

On tomorrow's list is some work on the email filter server to get it stabilized a bit. And a few other projects. It will probably be a busy day.

Thursday, April 29, 2004

There have been some reports of the Microsoft MS04-011 patch causing problems on some computers. (Although not having the patch will cause more problems.) According to this Microsoft Knowledgebase Article 841382, if you have certain drivers (Ipsecw2k.sys, Imcide.sys, or Dlttape.sys) on your computer, the restart after installing the patch may lock up the computer. It's caused by those drivers not loading successfully, so Windows keeps trying to load them, getting stuck in a loop. It seems to affect the Nortel Network VPN client installed with the IPSec Policy Agent set to manual or automatic startup, although other drivers might cause a problem. The Article tells you how to workaround the problem. It appears to be a problem with those drivers.

We've updated quite a few systems, and haven't seen this issue at our place. So I still recommend installing the updates, since there are worms out there trying to get into systems without the MS04-011 patch installed. And if they find one, the worm can do anything to the system.

I spent a bit of time with the Network Security Toolkit. It's a Linux system on a bootable disk with several network scanning/analysis programs. The complete operating system is on the CD, so you can boot off the CD and run the tools without affecting the operating system on your hard disk. It does use a bit of space on the hard drive for some temp files.

I only spent a short time with it, but it looks like a good addition for my arsenal of network security toolbox. I'll need to spend some more time with it

We had dinner with the family gang tonight at Mel's DriveIn, Stacy will be leaving Saturday (at "oh-dark-thirty"), so it was good to get together with the family one more time. Then we came home and walked over to the park, where the grandkids had a good time. It wasn't as warm today as last weekend, just in the high 80's, and it cooled off nicely in the evening.

Friday, April 30, 2004

Gotta love Fridays, especially when you are at the end of the Friday, rather than the beginning. But even the beginning is good, because it's close to the end.

Well....that was strange.

I spent a bit of time with the mail server, just checking things out. It seems to be working a bit better, but we still need to get the service patch installed. It's not vital, I just think it will stabilize things a bit.

I also got some reports scheduled for the web monitoring server. That server has a rather large database of information; the data really needs to be on a separate SQL server (that's in the plan) so that reporting will happen a bit faster (along with more efficient web blocking). The reports put a bit of strain on the server, so it's better to run them overnight, or on the weekend.

Tomorrow will be a long day, starting with getting Stacy to the airport by 5am. Then we'll make a stop at the local Home Depot (or Lowe's; they are only two blocks apart). I need to get a few plastic pipe fittings, and some flowers and ground cover for the back yard. I am meeting a guy (his name is actually "Guy") mid-morning to take another look at the tractor. I also need to replace the back brakes on the Camry (you faithful readers -- yes, both of you -- might recall that I did the front brakes last weekend). And then there are the flowers to plant.

So a busy day is planned for tomorrow. But I am sure that I'll be able to find time for a nap.

... more later ...
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