July 28, 2003

To paraphrase Jimmy Carter, my basement waterproofing project was "an incomplete success". 

I challenged the universe, and it responded by dumping more rain in 24 hours than we've seen in that amount of time in over a hundred years. My basement flooded, but I was able to fix everything with a wet/dry vac.

My wife and I were watching the news that night and saw people being rescued from their houses in boats. Overall, we got off pretty easy.

The thing is, if you dig a hole in the ground and put cement around it you call it a well. If you put a house on top of it you call it a basement. A basement will get wet, eventually. Not much you can do about it unless you line your house like a swimming pool.

On the bright side last night it rained like crazy but my basement remained dry as a bone. So it seems that I actually did something, which makes me feel pretty good. That was an awful lot of work to be completely useless.

But, much like a local police department that realizes it needs the FBI I've decided it's time to call in the experts. I'll be getting estimates from the waterproofing folks as to what I need to do.

Stay tuned.

July 25, 2003

A few years ago a female friend of mine was telling me that she got a tattoo, so I asked to see it.

She told me she couldn't show it to me because it was on her rear end.

"So", I asked, "you can pay money to a perfect stranger to stick needles in your ass and inject ink under your skin....but you're embarrassed to show the results to your friend?"

I still don't get it.

July 22, 2003

I had an interesting incident today. A consultant was hooked up to our network to do some work for a customer of ours. I asked what firewalls, etc. she was running since some of them can interfere with network operations; she said she wasn't running any.

If you've read this page at all you would know that's a "bad thing"; see the May 23rd entry. I ask if her computer is secure against intrusion, she has no idea.

Do you mind if I try a few quick security checks, I ask? No problem, she says.

I figure I'll try something really simple. If she's on the network then NetBIOS is available, since she has no firewall. So I decide to check the administrative share & see if I can guess her password.

Imagine my surprise when I was suddenly able to see the contents of her C: drive.

For you non-techies out there let me give the Reader's Digest version: In Windows 2000 you can have "local machine" users, and you can have "Domain" users (if your system is connected to a domain). The local Administrator is NOT the same user as the domain Administrator. When the Win2K machine was set up, it was set up without a password (not an uncommon practice). Since the machine I was using to check her machine was a training machine I was logged in as Administrator, with no password. Since the user/password name matched it let me in. I was able to check her hard drive at will.

I've known this particular consultant for a long time; I was showing her some of the things someone could do (checking cookies and the like). Then I did a search for *.jpg files. When some files showed up on the search with an "XXX" label, she freaked.

My oh my....so here I am, one of the biggest letches in the universe, and I have the voyeuristic opportunity of a lifetime. She's telling me "You can't look at those! You can't look at those!" and I'm thinking, "Sure I can. They're one mouse click away." I ask her how quickly she thinks she can make it into the other room and disconnect her computer before I download all the pictures.....she's REALLY nervous at this point.  (If she was thinking clearly she would have realized she didn't have to run into the other room, she could have just yanked my network cord out of the wall & bought herself a few minutes).

At that point I figure I've messed with her enough. Her face is bright red and she's very, very nervous. (She later told me she doesn't remember being nervous, just laughing a lot. Wish I had a digital camera at the time it was happening).

I tell her I won't look at the pictures, and tell her how to secure her system. She starts heading to the other room and says "Do you promise you won't look?"

With some people their word is more binding than titanium chains, and I try to be such a person. I told her "I already said that."

I told my wife about the incident later, she said "I knew you wouldn't look." The consultant told me the same thing.

That's bothered me for a while. Not the fact that they think I'm a nice guy (overall, I suppose I am).... but the fact that I've become so damn predictable.

Then again, there's always the cached pictures on the search computer. And, technically, those are COPIES of the pictures, not the actual pictures......

...I'm kidding, of course. When I give my word I go with the spirit of the agreement, not the letter.

But if, by some chance, the consultant actually reads my page & recognizes herself I probably just gave her a pretty good rush.

July 21, 2003

I spent this weekend at the handle end of a shovel, digging and churning dirt while my neighbor used a backhoe to dig an 8 foot deep trench around my house. I then put tar & 6 mil thick plastic around the house, cleaned the gutters, and moved & repaired what drain tile was left.

All this was done because I was sick of getting 3 inches of water in my basement every time in rained.

When we finished up Sunday night (and trust me when I tell you it was a HUGE project to get all this done in 2 days) the sky looked threatening. I pointed to the sky and said, "BRING IT ON!"

So I'd like to apologize to all of you that have been flooded for the past 2 days. It's all my fault.

hee hee....but my basement is dry.
 

July 15, 2003

I have to use Microsoft products in my office environment. Unlike a lot of zealots out there I don't have a problem with them; yes, they're memory heavy and the code is far too bulky. But they work, by and large. And they allow me to communicate with everyone else that I need to communicate with.

But...I wish it was easier to turn off their "helpful" features. Most times I don't want Word to number my items for me, or to give me little bullet points. I can handle that.

But most of all...I don't need Outlook telling me hat attachments are safe, and which ones aren't. Yes, there is a registry hack that allows me to get those extensions, but why (oh WHY?) do I have to go into the registry to do anything?

I know it's not a coding issue. In Citrix, if I want to change the port I can run a single line from the DOS prompt and change the port. In Terminal Services, it's a registry hack.

Registries are an idea that I hope will go away really soon.

July 10, 2003

My boss got a new phone a few days ago. (Where does he get those wonderful toys?) It's the top of the line model, one of those that has the digital camera, video recorder, sound, phone, web browsing and probably a GPS for all I know.

I had to set it up for him, transferring all his contacts from the old phone into the new one and getting the e-mail and whatnot set up correctly. It's an interesting device.

I work with a lot of women, I always have. I get along very well with some of them. There are times when we'll make remarks to one another that are all in good fun, but I certainly wouldn't want those comments to become public knowledge. And there are time when I'll be goofing off with my male coworkers, but some of the things that are said and/or done aren't the type of things you'll see on this web page.

While I was messing with my bosses phone (bet you were wondering how I was going to tie the above together) I thought about that, and about the loss of privacy that technology is heralding. It is possible to find out just about anything on anyone from the Internet. Surveillance camera's are common place now; web cams can be purchased for as little as $10. Cell phones are owned by just about everyone that's on the move, and now they have camera's and digital sound built into them.

How often do you notice someone's cell phone? They're so common they become part of the background. What happens if someone decides to start using them to take pictures of people in bathroom stalls, or in the changing room at a gym?

Privacy is becoming more and more difficult to obtain. I'm not screaming hysterically from the hilltops, just pointing out something that should be obvious to a lot of folks.  More and more a mans home isn't just his castle, it's his last bastion of privacy.

July 8, 2003

Back from my July 4th vacation; I've been on customer site for several days and haven't had a chance to update. Now that I'm back home it looks like I'll be spending the night sucking water out of my basement, and pushing up the priority of digging around my house to waterproof the thing.

Very recently the Supreme Court ruled that laws banning sodomy were unconstitutional; in effect they stated that gay sex is legal. (Not strictly gay sex; some states defined sodomy as anal or oral intercourse even with the same sex, even if you were married). Strom Thurmond died on the day this was announced, which cause my irony meter to go off the scale.

I've heard that several states have mentioned that they will draft laws that will get around the wording of the Supreme Court. Um, guys....save your time (and our tax dollars!) The Supreme Court has ruled. There's a reason it's called the Supreme Court; it decides what is constitutional. And it has spoken. It would take a constitutional amendment to change it.

So let me save you some headache and a lot of legal fees, you states who are considering such a law: Get into the 21st Century and realize that gays are human, just like you and me. They meet, they date, and they fall in love...with all the trappings and eventual outcomes of any relationship.

They never should have needed the Supreme Court to tell them they could do this. It is their right, the same as it is my right to love my wife.

June 27, 2003

Today I had a meeting with my company's new graphics designer, the outside contractor that will be taking over our the page. Fine by me; as the incredibly artistic layout & design of this web page can attest my talents lie elsewhere.

My boss and another manager  were in the meeting as well; I had just been called in to give the technical perspective of accessing the web site.

The designer and I chatted for a bit and I asked him for his card; it read "Peter Zale Paradesign".  I looked at his card and said "Peter Zale? The one who writes the web comic strip, Helen of the Internet?" (aren't hyperlinks cool?)

He got a huge grin on his face and said "Yeah, that's me!"

I guess artists enjoy being recognized for their work. I've read the strip for quite some time, but never knew that he was from around here. In thinking about it I also recall saying "write" the comic strip, as opposed to "draw". If it were in the newspapers I'm certain I would have said "draw"; but that's something for me to think about later.

The meeting went very smooth after that. I had to set him up on a few things & needed to do it from my work computer.  I was able to show him that his page was a bookmark on my Favorites list.

But the best part was watching how my boss and the manager quickly became bit players in the discussion. The two techies were talking and they simply didn't understand the language.

As it should be. :-)