perkonis

Alright, enough is enough. I expect spam. I expect odd spam. I even expect lots of odd spam. But enough with the tramadol for dogs links.

Seriously. Tramadol for dogs. Hundreds of them each day. Day after day.

I don’t think I get a lot of dogs reading this. Maybe I do. After all, on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog and Google Reader is pretty easy to use. Even if I do have a large canine readership, I somehow doubt that a high percentage of them are canine junkies and/or have a credit card to order more smack. Even if they did, how much of that stuff could the average junkie dog go through?

Spam is spam is spam. I try to stay on top of it, but some days it’s difficult.

To help me keep the crap comments out of here (and I don’t mean mine, thank you very much) I have been using the Akismet and Simple Trackback Validator plugins and blocking the worst offenders in my .htaccess file.

It works well, but that’s a lot of work. Unbeknownst to me, I could have just gotten some “protection” against the spammers…

/cue Godfather theme

Anikrichard | anlikivanna.80@mail.ru | wwwwww.com | IP: 72.9.235.218
hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 454528835 or write me tedirectory(at)yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

Not Spam — Sep 5, 11:31 AM — [ View Post ]

Hopefully I won’t receive a horses head in my inbox for declining this gracious offer.

As a consolation prize, I would like to present the award for Dumbest Comment of the Year. This will also be in the running for Dumbest Comment Ever.

Lucky me. I got to do a clean install of XP sp2 today. All told, including Windows updates, it took me just shy of 4 hours. Yeah, 4 hours just to install an OS.

The initial install appeared to go OK, but on first boot I found that Windows hadn’t recognized my sound card, video card, wifi, modem, and network card. 0 for 3 on the networking front. Fortunately I had another computer sitting here that would connect to the internet and a thumb drive. Woohoo! Sneakernet! That’s progress for you.

Then I got to start on the updates. All 107 of them. SP3 would be nice to have some day. And I haven’t even gotten to installing software yet.

All told, that’s 4 pieces of hardware not recognized, 1 Windows Genuine Disadvantage installed, 107 updates, and 11 reboots.

Yet people seem to think installing Linux is difficult.

It started innocently enough. A quick text message reminding me that I hadn’t paid my cell phone bill. Oops. No problem, I pay nearly almost all my bills online so I’ll just head over to Sprint’s site and give them some jack. Quick and easy, right?

Wrong.

My first inkling that this wasn’t going to be quick and painless came when I couldn’t log in. Sorry, wrong credentials. Thanks for playing.

Ok, I keep a list of my usernames and passwords in my head where they routinely become corrupted. So I hit the “Forgot password” link only to be told that my username doesn’t exist. Hmmm, that’s not right. The next logical step was to hit the “Forgot username” link and give it my email address. Ah, I do exist (Good to know) and would receive an email with my username shortly.

Apparently in Sprint terms shortly means about 45 minutes at which time I received a stunningly brilliant message… (more…)

I’ve had to sit through hours of conference calls before. I have yet to encounter one that actually gave me any knowledge. In fact, I’m pretty sure they actually render whole sections of my brain useless for hours afterward.

I’ve also had to sit through web conferences. Theses usually cause me to consider the Amish lifestyle. Plowing fields or web conference. Tough call there.

And then there’s Powerpoint. The ultimate force of evil to have been released upon the Earth. Sitting through a Powerpoint presentation usually causes me to wish for death. I don’t generally care if it’s me or the presenter, I just want the pain to stop.

Today I had an experience that I’m reasonably certain violates some aspect of the Geneva Convention.

Somehow, someone got the bright idea to combine a conference call with a web conference all for the sole purpose of watching a Powerpoint presentation. Not just any Powerpoint either. It was one I had already seen twice.

Now there was a productive way to spend 2 hours of my life.

ec-o-nom-ics - noun

1.(used with a singular verb) the science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of humankind.

red-neck-o-nom-ics - noun

1.(used with Red Man and/or PBR) the science that deals wih getting a good deal on something even when it isn’t

I got to see Redneckonomics in action earlier. I pulled into the gas station to fill up and found a ridiculously long line waiting for gas. This may not seem weird if you didn’t know that I live pretty close to the Middle of Nowhere (I think I have neighbors with a purple dog.) and there aren’t exactly a whole lot of people around. This line at the gas station would have accounted for a fairly sizeable chunk of this towns population.

Except they weren’t from ’round here.

They were from Podunk, the somewhat larger Redneck Enclave about 10 miles away.

It turns out that gas in Podunk was selling from $3.15 a gallon whereas gas in the Middle of Nowhere was only $2.99 and the rednecks had gotten word of it. Once one of them got word, it spread through the redneckosphere (which is kind of like the blogosphere except it uses CB radios) like wildfire and they all set out on a journey out to the middle of nowhere so they could fill up with cheap gas. And be in my way which may be the bigger issue.

Now, rednecks aren’t exactly the most “green” people on the planet. There wasn’t a line of Camrys and Priuses (Priii?) at the pump. Any god fearing redneck worth his weight in Skoal knows you have to have a four wheel drive. A big four wheel drive.

Canyonero big.

And Canyoneros need cheap gas.

The kind of cheap gas you can only get by embarking on a 20 mile journey.

So let’s do the math here. I didn’t do any scientific survey, but from casual observation it seemed that the average fill up was 20 gallons. Now 20 gallons at a saving of $0.16 per gallon gives us a net savings of $3.20. I have no idea what the equivalent of $3.20 is in PBR. Probably a keg.

Oh, I think I see a small error in our calculations. Joe Redneck had to drive his Canyonero all the way from Podunk. If you recall, Podunk is 10 miles away making that a 20 mile round trip. I’ll bet a Canyonero can get 20 miles per gallon on a good day. So he used 1 gallon to make the trip. I’ll be generous and assume he somehow managed to use a gallon that cost $2.99. So we deduct that $2.99 from the $3.20 “savings” and find out that Joe Redneck just spent a half hour of his time to save 21 cents.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

That’s Redneckonomics 101 in a nutshell. The advanced class is Redneckonomics 201 - Saving more by going to Wal Mart every single day.

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.