Digital Choke Daynotes

A busy weekend, which partly explains the lack of posts.

Saturday started out late (I slept in, while Pam went to work). After the usual breakfast of "Two Scoops!", I started a vacuum attack. SInce the vacuum was downstairs, that's where I started. Then I went up the stairs (with the hand attachment), and did the entire upstairs. That took quite a while, but was needed.

Then, after a short break, I went outside and planted the rest of the ground cover that I purchased the previous weekend. All the plantings are still surviving, although there was some evidence of snail munching. Said evidence was the snail shells, as part of their munching was the snail bait that I've sprinkled around all the plants.

It was lunch by then, so a quick "Easy Mac" took care of that problem. Then I started on the tile floors downstairs. We have one of those tile vacuum-scrubbers, which works fairly good at the surface dirt, although it doesn't do anything for the slightly dirt-stained grout. I still need to figure out how to get the grout clean. I suspect it will take a good grout cleaner (that seems sort of obvious), and then a resealing of the floor. That's an all-day job. But the scrubber got the floor cleaner, and the effort was much appreciated by Pam.

I also cleaned a couple of windows, including the sliding glass doors that had various kid-level paw prints. Later that evening, after it had cooled down a bit, I finished picking up the back yard patio, and hosed off the dirty spots.

Sunday was the usual church in the morning, then family in the afternoon and evening. We get home from our services about 5:15p (they start at 2:00), and the rest of the family was already there. Jason had arrived earlier, and was sitting out in the back yard with his wireless laptop. Stacy got home shortly afterwards, and brought out hers so Jason could make some CD's of her pictures, and copy his original music tracks to a CD for her computer. So I came home to a family that was computing together while the grandkids were playing with their toys.

We had a nice dinner of BBQ spare ribs, which home-made peach pie and berry pie for dessert, along with much gabbing. The grandkids had a bath (they like the big tub in the master bath), and got into their new pajamas (Pam went shopping a bit yesterday after her work stint). Liam (2 1/4) had new Spiderman pajamas, and Joelle (4 1/2) had some princess ones. (As usual, I got the bill.)

But, a fine weekend overall.

A note on the Windows XP/SP2 update. As you may have determined, MS is rolling out the update gradually. They expect 100 million downloads, so are limiting access at the moment. The first to get it will be those that have automatic Windows Update configured. But all of you are ready, right?

Another morning post, to make up for lack of one last evening. I've been sucked into the "Lost City" (Clive Cussler) book. Like all his books, they aren't very deep (well, maybe they are, since they usually deal with something happening in the ocean), but they are mildly entertaining. The other alternative was watching "The Prince and Me", a definite "click flick", which Pam and Stacy decided to watch. So I sat in the recliner in the family room reading, while they watched the movie.

There was one mildly entertaining part in the movie: the "Riding Lawn Mower Race". Dirt track, hay bales, and riding lawnmowers that can go up to 50 mph. Evidently, quite popular in the 'states'. Part of the movie is set in Minnesota, so John Dominik is probably aware of the group. There are apparently chapters of the United States Lawn Mower Racing Association all over the place. You can get more information than you probably wanted about this at their web site www.letsmow.com . The national finals will be Labor Day weekend (Sept 4-5) in Mansfield, Ohio. You may want to make your travel plans now to avoid the rush.

On the Windows XP Service Patch 2 front, you extreme techies may already know that the full download (274MB) is available on Microsoft's TechWeb area. Some good technical information about there. The big download is to let the network dweebs do some testing and prepare installation scripts and processes.

Since we have a fairly big 'pipe' at work, I got the download and burned a couple of CD's of it. I'll give one to my daughter Christine, who is stuck on dial-up at the moment. I also installed it on a copy of WinXP that I put in a vmWare partition. No problems found there, seemed to work quite well. Some are saying that making a copy of the full download to give to your dial-up friends might be a good idea.

If you want to make an XP-SP2 CD from your existing XP CD, some instructions are here.

For home users, you can wait until Windows Update gives it to you. That download will be much smaller. The Microsoft security site (www.microsoft.com/protect) will walk you through the process of setting up your computer for automatic updates.

The Internet Storm Center (SANS) site has a page with comments from some end-user experiences that have installed the patch. Most are reporting no problems with the install. There are some that report problems, but I think that you shouldn't let those few negative experiences dissuade you from installing the patch at home when Automatic Updates gets it. On the corporate level, you may want to proceed a bit slower, especially if you have some non-mainstream applications. At work, the network guys are testing it out first before we roll it out to our users (via the Microsoft Software Update Server).

So, the advice is:

• Home users: get configured for automatic updates. If you have a dial-up, set the automatic updates to happen late at night to let the download happen while you sleep. Alternately, get a copy of the full update and burn it to a CD and take that home. But waiting for the automatic update is OK.
• Business/corporate users: let your network support guys guide you. They should be looking at the Microsoft TechNet site for the detailed information of how XP/SP2 is different, including things that won't work like before. Since a business site should be more protected against attacks, the update can wait a bit until the network guys have had a chance to test it out.
• Web developers: if you are doing tricky things on your site, look at the TechNet articles for guidance.
• Laptop users: if you use your corporate laptop at home, then the update might be a higher priority. But, you only use the laptop at home for business stuff, right?

On the "Phishing Test" scores, Peter T reports a score of 9. Which means that only smart people are reading this stuff. Yeah, I'll stick with that theory.

Two posts in one day! Impressive, eh?

This is a short one to alert you to the latest report: "Phishing for Fun and Profit". Hope you find it interesting. Comments invited, just use the mailbox icon.

I made some changes to the "Phishing for Fun and Profit" page. I added another page that shows a login page from a 'bank'. When you sign in, you are shown another page where you can enter your credit card information, including PIN number. Send that away, then sit back and watch your account balance rapidly decline.

On another subject, I finished the first draft of the "Home Computer Checklist". I've been thinking about such a checklist for a while. The simple version is:

• Enable Windows Update
• Enable a firewall (and test it)
• Install and keep current an Anti-Virus program
• Run anti-spyware on a regular basis

Then I saw a checklist at SecurityFocus. It was a good start on a more extensive list, and a way to document your personal system. (I have a notebook at home with some important settings, like IP addresses and passwords. And yes, it is kept in a secure place.)

I took their idea and expanded on it. I changed many of the links to related information, and added quite a few new items. Take a look at the result, then send comments or suggestions for improvement. I think such a checklist would be quite useful for the less geeky among us.

Thursday afternoon was the 'company picnic'. So we met the kids and grandkids at the park, had chicken breast sandwiches and hot dogs and chips and sodas, topped off with ice cream for dessert.

Then we went to "FairyTale Town" (no, it's a kid's place). It has lots of things from children's books, and is quite fun for the under-10 crowd. Then across the street to the zoo. After that, we went to "FunderLand", which has rides for the under-10 crowd. We had a good time, and the weather wasn't too hot (it only got to 95F).

This weekend started out with Pam going to work, and I stayed home and did a bit of cleaning and vacuuming. Then I started watching the Olympics, with some short naps during the whole thing.

I did get the XP SP2 update on Stacy's laptop from CD. Took about 40 minutes for the whole process, and things just worked. Also did a quick Office update, and updated her anti-virus. She'll be leaving for school in a couple of weeks, so wanted to get that done before she left.

There are some complaints from the uber-geeks about SP2. And we are doing a bit of testing of SP2 at work before we push it out. But it is recommended, especially for home users. Make sure your family and friends get the update installed.

... more later ...
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