perkonis

I’ve been tagged by Jeff at My View of the World. This meme is to list the magazines I read. It’s going to be a pretty short list since I don’t read much in the dead tree editions any more.

I read Racer and whatever other magazine Haymarket slips in there once in a while. They usually throw me a copy of Indycar a couple of times a year. Sometimes I can manage to snag a few issues of Wired from my dad’s house. That’s about it for magazines.

I’m going to tag Spinchange, Digidave, and Rae.

Well, I finally decided to get off my lazy butt and finish that BS I started on about 20 years ago. Better late than never right? With my work schedule and travel, family, and my ill-conceived plan to remodel a 100+ year old home (if you ever get the urge to remodel an old Victorian home while living in it, pick up a 2×4 and beat yourself in the head until the urge passes) there was no way I could take classes in a traditional college setting. So then I discovered this interweb thingy and figured I might get some use out of it. So online classes it is.
So far it’s been a better experience than I had anticipated. The level of interaction between students using an online forum seems to lend itself well to interaction. But then again, this is only week one so I’ll reserve judgment for the time being. In the rush to get started in this round of classes, my transcripts from Purdue haven’t found there way to UoP yet because I’m once again taking a 100 level writing course. Either that or someone in admissions has read this blog and figured I needed all the help I could get.
And in my spare time, I picked up a nice stack of books as Barnes & Noble the other day to study for an MCSE on Server 2003. I think I need my head examined.

Just when I thought I was winning the security battle, along come the users. Even worse, upper management type users.
I finally convinced the powers that be that 123456789 was most definitely not a secure admin password for the server. And first_name/last_name were not good credentials for user logons. You laugh because you think I’m kidding. I’m not.
I figured the best way to win this battle was to take a preemptive strike. I waited until everyone was out of the office leaving me with no adult supervision. Then I struck. I changed passwords on everything that looked like it needed a new password. Which was everything but the coffee pot (I still can’t get the darned thing to run Linux). And I made them as long and as complex as I could make them. Upper case, lower case, alpha, numeric, special characters, 12-20 characters, the works. I’m not pretending that strong passwords are a cure all for security, but it’s the most obvious (and easiest) place to start. And previously our practices were ridiculous.
I figured a good way to keep track of them was to type up a spreadsheet and store it in a hidden TrueCrypt volume on my hard drive. I encrypted that and protected it with a 20 character alpha numeric special character password. I was pretty pleased with the result figuring it was pretty safe there.
Then the big bosses came back.
So I gave them a printed copy of all the passwords with instructions to keep them locked in a safe place. I explained that they would not need that info unless I were hit by a bus. Two of them took that to heart. Out of three. After all my efforts, I found one of them writing all the usernames, passwords, and URLs in his frikin day planner!!! WTF? Maybe I should open our WAP and broadcast the admin password as the SSID. Or just tape my key to the front door.

It’s definitely been a good week. This week alone I won the UK Lottery, the Italian National Lottery, the EU Lottery and had offers from not one, but two Nigerian princes to take money out of the country. After all that good fortune I had to turn down the offer I got yesterday to work from home cashing checks for a company in the UK. Who needs their 10% when I just won half the lotteries on the planet.
I wonder if I can buy my own island nation on eBay?

If a turtle loses it’s shell, is it naked or homeless?