On Our Own

Shana has gone for the weekend. While we have hopes that she will return, Gwynyth and I are doing our best to maintain some semblance of normalcy and dignity.
Of course, neither of those traits is dominant in our genetic makeup.
Last night Gwynyth stayed up past her bedtime watching a vampire movie with me, if Twilight can be considered a vampire movie.
I picked up Underworld: Rise of the Lycans for later this weekend just to make sure we have vampires totally covered.
I asked Gwynyth what she'd like me to cook for dinner last night and she replied that I should "cook" something from somewhere that has decent ice cream. She is well aware that my cooking is different than Shana's cooking in that my cooking involves yelling into a metal-shrouded microphone from within my car.
Before this evening's activities begin, Gwynyth will clean her room. We discussed this while I made her lunch this morning. Last night she "made her lunch" but I discovered only a single bag of Cheetos in her lunch bag this morning.
Whenever Shana leaves town, we get a little crazy.
Without her calming influence we tend to take on projects which are well past our abilities to complete and make messes which are outside our abilities to clean without separate, complicated projects which are again well past our abilities to complete.
In less than 24 hours, everything has been removed from under the sink and the water no longer works in the kitchen.
Or the bathroom on that side of the house.
Or (I suspect) the sprinkler system.
But I have everything under control.
If one defines "under control" as "holy crap what do I do what do I do?". Which is a perfectly reasonable definition as far as I'm concerned.
Side note: My particular disorder, which involves a compulsive need to hand-wash whenever I've touched something like plumbing under the sink, when combined with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder and a non-functional kitchen sink, can result in some delightfully slapstick moments of flailing and running which Gwynyth is desperately trying to capture using the Apple iPhoto camera.
It is safe to assume that by Sunday afternoon we will likely be entirely feral creatures, hissing and snapping at each other, living in fear of the light and unable to communicate with each other or non-modified humans in any method which does not primarily consist of grunting and pointing.
We have been through this, but never without a support structure of friends willing to leave food on the front porch and call to work our communication skills.
Shana, if you are reading this, um, everything's under control. Situation normal.
Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you.
How are you?

Spreading Illness

My co-worker has a head cold. Possibly it is just allergies. Either way, he's pretty miserable.
Yesterday I suggested that it is probably Swine Flu, a comment that yielded more laughter than I thought it merited.
Anyway, after that had died down, I told my sick co-worker that Encyclopedia Dramatica had an entry up for Swine Flu pretty immediately which listed symptoms including "causes people to get perma-banned IRL".

"IRL?" he asked.

"In Real Life," I offered.

"Encyclopedia Dramatica?"

"That's 4chan's Wikipedia."

"4chan?"

"They make most if not all of the memes on the interwebs."

"Memes?"

"Um, like a goofy internet joke. Like Rickrolling. And lolcats."

"Rickrolling?"

"Sending someone to the YouTube video for Never Gonna Give You Up instead of basically anything else."

"Lolcat?"

"Are you serious? 'I can has cheeseburger?' 'I has a flavor?' 'Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate?'"

"This is awesome. It's like you are speaking a different language."

"All your base are belong to us?"

"What?"

"I can't believe I just explained rickrolling to the last person on the planet who might actually fall for it."

I sent him a list of half a dozen links or so in the hopes of being able to better communicate in the future.
Fostering better internal team communication is a vital part of the security process, after all.
This morning he looked a little more ragged than he had yesterday. It was not related to his ongoing Swine Flu issues.

"I looked up from one of the pages you sent me to and noticed it was 1am. That didn't stop me from reading, but I did notice."

"Then my work here is done."

Monday

After closely reading reviews for the new science fiction epic, I have decided to not go and see it.
There is no mention of lightsabers anywhere. There are no references to pithy Jedi wisdom. No reviewer has awkwardly flopped sentence structure around like Yoda.
I can only conclude that this latest Star Wars movie is about as far from the original as possible without using Jar Jar Binks.
Not. Interested.
After last week, I'm pretty sure I'd fall asleep as soon as the lights in the theatre dim anyway.
I just submitted a time sheet to my agency with seventy-one hours on it.
As I'm sure I've complained about, not all of it was related to our audit.
The audit stuff kicked off on Thursday with some meetings.
On Friday we were scheduled to begin submitting scan data at 1pm, but the pre-scan meeting ran until after 5pm and the post-meeting scan ran until 8pm. I got home at about 1am Saturday.
I was probably supposed to work last night, but I couldn't bring myself to check.
Especially not with a fresh copy of The Ruins demanding to be watched.
I like Belize. I've always wanted to go. When a horror movie set against the backdrop of ancient Mayan ruins fails to dim a person's desire to visit, it may have failed.
While I know the "official" sequel to Donnie Darko is S. Darko, I prefer to think that The Ruins picks up right after to tell the story of what happened to Donnie's girlfriend. Of course, there is also 30 years in between the stories and the girlfriend hasn't aged that much, but I can write that off to creative storytelling in Hollywood.
I also correctly identified that character as the one who survives when she asked to remain in the resort reading and then put on her glasses. These are the hallmarks of "the one who lives" in horror movies.
What I did not foresee was nature of the monster involved. If I had, I would not have picked up the movie at all. I promise.
It was enough to make me begin to haunt spoiler sites in order to know what I'm getting into before starting the process of watching a movie.
Thus, I can tell you that Star Trek is not reported to have scenes revolving around the political machinations of powerful Sith lords or fumbling Jedi flirtation. Therefore: No sale.
This week my plans include . . . Um . . . More audit stuff. This process is a pretty massive pain so far. I plan to console myself by having solid gold toilets installed at the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng World Headquarters.
According to my hours, those are overdue.

Revenge

"This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is about to expire . . . "
I get two calls a day from these guys. A lot of people get these calls.
I've requested to be removed from the list multiple times and it hasn't worked.
I've been told that the database for that is having issues and to bear with them while their system glitch burns up my cell minutes every day.
If you punch the codes to talk to a person, they refuse to give you a call back number.
Here, internet, is their number:
(949) 475-9500
(800) 499-5711
If you've been bothered by them, I recommend calling them and offering to sell them a warranty on their computer system. I've done it half a dozen times today and will continue to until I get bored with it or they give me the access to fix their database issue (which I suspect is related to the fact that they don't actually have a do-not-call database).
If you have a modem, I recommend configuring the 800 number as your dial-in number and setting it to "unlimited retries".

Things Come Up

Another dead-on perfect image for the blog!
Excuse me for a moment while I pat myself vigorously on the back.

As you can see by the diagram provided, we had some slight system malfunction/uprising at the beginning of the week which resulted in my having spent about 27 hours on the clock this week when I arrived at my desk this morning.
In all that time, I did no audit prep work at all and the auditors are here today.
I've got more overtime scheduled over the next few days to manage that effort but I'm also hoping to wedge a nap in there somewhere.
My co-worker was out yesterday with a possible kidney stone. He returned to work today with percocet which he refuses to share. I thought we were trying to have a team in here, but I guess that was just my misconception.
I even tried reminding him that management specifically told us that they wanted a pain-free audit this year. There is no more efficient way to ensure that, in my opinion, than through the distribution of prescription strength medications specifically designed to alleviate discomfort.
Anyway, stuff was broken and I needed to spend an insane amount of time at the office fixing it or at home ignoring my family while I'm logged in at work barking into my cellphone about how long it has been since I slept.
The official answer to our technical issue from the vendor was a resounding "I don't know, what do you think it is?" which was possibly even less helpful than it sounds.
Okay.
Audit stuff.
I've got three days of work to cram into the time before lunch.
Can it be done? Sure.
Can it be done without the users experiencing quite a bit of pain? No, since I swiped the bottle of percocet when my co-worker hobbled to the restroom and I'm not sharing.
Time to unplug my desk phone and start making some progress.

Security is a Button Press Away

Sometimes I completely fail at picking an image for a post. This is not one of those times.
Seeing as how our big damn government audit (BDGA) is underway, I thought I'd take a moment to share a little bit about the methodology involved in looking at a computer and declaring it "horrible" or "adequate".
There is a giant building somewhere. I imagine it is gray with long vertical windows which are perpetually dark. Deep within this vault-like structure is a room with a couple of Windows XP workstations and possibly a Windows 2000 server with a database on it.
Tending to these machines is a small group of nerds. I use that term with affection. On some level, these are my people. On another level, they are only there day after day in the interest of getting a check. Come to think of it, they are my people on that level as well.
Their job is never-ending. Their responsibility is to develop a check for every existing security vulnerability and add that check to an executable program. This is stored on a "Gold Disk" which is distributed to companies with an interest in also getting checks from the government.
When this CD is inserted into a computer and run, it produces a complete listing of every security issue up until about a month ago. This disk is constantly updated.
When we are advised of new requirements in security, we analyze the systems and determine applicability, then schedule testing for the changes we think are necessary to bring us back into compliance.
This is a time-consuming process which involves interaction with our users. Thankfully, all user interaction is handled by a separate entity, the Testing Coordinator.
Anyway, one day a copy of this disk was given to Management.
He noticed that there was an additional button at the top of the main screen. "Remediate" the button read.
"Why aren't the security guys just hitting that button? Why do they even waste time with the "scan" button at all? One button remediation is the key to our compliance issues forever."
There is indeed a "remediate" button. And pressing that button will put in place on the effected machine every setting on the disk.
And so it was proclaimed that a script would be written to deliver the payload of the "remediate" button to a group of computers. It was not proclaimed to me, or I'd have giggled a lot while carrying out the directive.
The reason we don't use the "remediate" button . . . The reason no one uses it . . . Is that it works too well. Every setting. Every security option. No exceptions. No exclusions.
The immediate effect is that user logons are disabled, since allowing people to log in to a computer is certainly a compromise of security.
Remote administration is disabled, since that, too is an issue.
Permissions are set on the file system disallowing remote connections and locking out everyone but the local administrator. That account is automatically renamed to something else and the password is changed - Also in the name of security.
A number of other settings take effect before the system is too locked down for the script to continue to run.
The end result, in this case, is that every computer touched by the "remediate" button script was instantly only part of the infrastructure as decoration.
They all needed to be formatted and re-installed before they could be used again.
There is a button for "scan" and there is a button for "remediate". There is no button for "holy crap undo undo!"
Manually reviewing the security findings with the use of this disk is part of the job.
Using the "remediate" button on the computers of people who annoy me is just a bonus.

May the Fourth

. . . Be with you.
It's Star Wars Day, officially.
Hot on the heels of Free Comic Book Day.
Thanks to everyone who thought to send a card. You guys are the best. With the holiday itself being wedged between the release of Wolverine and Star Trek, this whole time of year has taken on a feel of its very own.
Ancient people believed that the border between the realm of the living and that of the dead grew thin at the end of October and the beginning of May. This allowed ready commune with the spirit world at Halloween and May Day. It also created a secondary market for marshmallow peeps in spookier shapes, but that must be considered a side-effect.
This time of year, for geeks, is a lot like that.
Strange arcane energies are welling up from some dark basement of dorkiness to infuse the realm with Vulcan hand gesturing and long, drawn out debates about the fall of Anakin Skywalker.
As you can probably imagine, my very bones ache with the delicious not-pain of it.
Of course, it is starting to look like I'll be spending all of this coming week wedged up at work, hacking away at system settings and making registry information all line up like the government expects.
I'm cool with that.
I've got a ready supply of soda and almost unlimited access to action figures and companions who share my interests in speculative fiction.
This job requires an obsessive compulsive drive to make spreadsheets from different sources identical and an ability to multi-task into discussions of Klingon philosophy and Jedi platitudes. I, um, have that.
I'll Tweet as I'm able and post when time permits (which has a pretty good shot at being a lot, since I'll likely spend most of my time waiting, anyway).
Keep it geeky, internets.