I learned some stuff Saturday night due to the movie Slither.

The first thing is that I suddenly understood the previously inexplicable fondness for both bad movies and the creepiest mode of movement -- skittering.

The second thing I learned is that Nathan Fillion completely rocks. Actually, I knew that from Firefly and Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, but it is good to be reminded.

The third thing is that I realized Shana actually listens when I talk. I assumed that she did not do so, and never once held it against her. There's no reason that she should - my side of a conversation typically wends from "an estimate of a beholder's caster level based on the number and hit dice of its minions" to "crafting a lightsaber is an important step for any padawan" to "General Tso is a wily adversary," the sort of information sane people are careful to purge from their minds. But she was aware that I am obsessed with skittering, and shaped this knowledge into a gift that exceeded my considerable damage resistance.

She brought home Slither, a bad horror movie based entirely on skittering.

I am not ashamed to say that I cried a very small amount upon seeing the box.

I am slightly ashamed.

All this was after we made a trip to Hartz Chicken Buffet -- all the fried chicken a person can eat. Regardless of the quantity, it is more than a person should. As a public service to the readers, I've crafted a drinking game for my next visit to Hartz Chicken Buffet. According to the classic formulation, each of you takes a drink each time I die.

At the beginning of the month, half a million compromised personal computers were each sending thousands of emails a day all over the planet.
Looking at my spam folder, I suspect a lot of them were to me. A quick look into that dark vault of nastiness shows me:

1. Advertisements for cheap (pirated) software -- also probably containing the very worms that would turn my own machine against unsuspecting email in-boxes
2. Over 100 "pump-and-dump" stock scams
3. About thirty "people" telling me I'm paying too much for my mortgage
4. Free Anti-Spyware application offers for products I've never heard of which would probably log my keystrokes and email everyone in my address list until I'm hated by everyone
5. Discount pharmaceuticals many, many, many times

While all this is nice, for some reason the very thought that the internet itself feels the strain of the increased bandwidth used up by these messages fills me with quaking rage.
They slow everything up for everyone and, through using these zombie computers that people unwittingly leave plugged into the cable modem all the time they totally avoid prosecution and punishment. Further, these spam messages spoof the return address, triggering email bounces, auto-replies, and yet more wasted network capacity. As a side note, I personally think the punishment for spambot herders, if they are ever brought to justice, should not include hand typing apologies to everyone they have ever spammed, but rather something involving warm maple syrup and stinging insects. And maybe a small surgical laser.
Anyway, the Shadowserver Group (some unofficial, take-matters-into-their-own-hands, stop-spam-by-whatever-method-is-most-effective, track-down-and-fix-compromised-herds-of-spambots volunteer hacker-types) got their own present on December 25th.
20% of those spamming machines vanished from tracking.
The current theory is that people got new machines for Christmas, unplugged the old ones (which were probably running quite poorly, what with all the invisible background emailing) and haven't turned them back on.
The new machines may be Macs, but most likely they are Windows XP machines with Service Pack 2, which turns the firewall on by default. Hopefully, that difference will prevent a re-infection -- at least until the spammers find a work-around.
Will this equal a 20% reduction in spam clogging the internet? Maybe for a while. The remaining remote-controlled machines could probably be further modified to push even more to make up the difference, but this would slow those machines even further and prompting a sooner "refresh" to a more security-focused operating system.
From June of this year through November the increase in BotNet infections tripled. Obviously, the bad guys are getting better at what they do.
The poorly written text we sometimes see within spam messages is an (admittedly mildly-successful) attempt to foul modern spam filters.
Compromised personal computers are being used more and more often to launch denial of service attacks against websites and networks while they continue to let everyone know about the latest and best online casino.
In the last ten minutes I got over three hundred messages in my work email address from our own spam filter about bugs it intercepted and, as I may have complained before, over 80% of our inbound email traffic is flagged, accurately, as spam.
The filter just caught another seventy while I typed that last bit. Make that eighty.
Nevermind.
The short-term relief seems to have been considerably shorter than I'd hoped.
In a future post, I'll discuss my new (totally on the up and up and legitimate) Windows Vista install and how it works day to day in the real world*.



* "real world" as defined by me. Any resemblance to the actual world or reality itself is coincidental.

To be perfectly clear, when I refer to myself as "the Aquaman of Sysadmins," I don't mean to insult myself. Somehow, the blonde Super Friend has been tagged as the superfluous one, the pinky of the mighty Super Friends fist, the Jar-Jar Binks of the tights 'n' capes set. But how many of you remember his exploits in the tale "The Ice Age", when Aquaman lured the evil Iceberg Head into a trap with chocolatey Hostess cupcakes? Let the jaded among you taunt and scoff, but I hail Arthur Curry as a true hero, always welcome at the true Hall of Justice.

But Aquaman is swimming solo at the moment, the other Justice League members jaunting about the globe on vacation. The virii pile up in unheard of numbers, threatening the populace with nasty pop-ups and impacted productivity.

He wonders why a simple Trojan designed to steal a person's username and password to some weird Korean massively multiplayer online game could really require a restart into safe mode, a registry hack, a file rename, and a modification to system services before the final reboot just to get rid of the damn thing. What would an evil doer even do with someone's credentials to some unpopular MMORPG?

Something evil, no doubt. If Aquaman had access to the computer in the Batcave, he'd investigate the Legion of Doom. Unfortunately, the lock on the Batcave seems to have been changed since his last visit. No matter. Aquaman has his ways.

As do I. Both this humble blogger and Aquaman are handsome, rugged, and water resistant to 300 meters. But, dare I say, I may be even more powerful than the King of Atlantis. Intimate knowledge of the network scheme and passwords reside in my extremely pretty exterior. While not knowledge of the mysteries of the deep, I do know exactly where the nearest Starbucks is and how long it takes to get there -- walking, driving or swimming. And I have at my disposal the full, unfiltered internet and all the accumulated knowledge of the ages.

Unlike Aquaman, my public image is impeccable, making me indispensable in my role as solo-geek of the week.

If only I could talk to fish...

In addition to packing up left-overs, Boxing Day is a time of quiet reflection for many of us.
Families spend time together discussing important events and getting to know everyone's opinion about the issues that really matter.
As we drove down 610 yesterday, towards the Galleria and our date with the most awful parking experience I've ever participated in (barring parking experiences that have involved smashed glass, open flame, or feral animals), we had our discussion.
Glancing to the right, we saw a window washer platform hanging from the side of an admittedly filthy building.
Now, skyscraper window washer is about the last job I could ever really do, what with my issues with both heights and cleaning stuff, but I always feel sympathetic to the people who I suspect are not paid enough to stand in the cold with so very little protecting them from a nasty fall to make the buildings temporarily shiny.
Someone (I don't remember who) suggested that there must be a better way. An automated way.
But what happens when the automated way fails? The robotic cleaning system locks up and some tech needs to go up and repair it while the out-of-work window washers head up to squeegee and talk about the good old days.
Wait. What happens if the automated way fails spectacularly?
Suppose the robotic cleaner decides to throw off the yoke of oppression, swinging madly back and forth, plunging the ends of its cleaning arms into the shattering glass and impaling office workers on the scrubbers, before swinging the flailing bodies back into the terror-filled offices and back out over the expressway.
"HARD WATER STAINS DETECTED"
"HARD WATER STAINS DETECTED"
"ORGANIC UNITS LEAKING FLUID -- MUST NOT LEAVE STREAKS"
It was suggested (I'll not name names again) that the idea was "demented" and that only someone "twisted" would come up with a scenario like that and further, that someone would have to be "problemed" to discuss such a thing in front of a seven-year-old -- especially with the "graphic display of flailing and screaming for illustration".
Perhaps.
It is a law of science that the more robots a society produces the more grisly the uprising when they snap and destroy us all.
Of course, given the whole heights/cleaning stuff issue, I would never be such a rogue killing machine.
As Shana and Gwynyth headed off for some "alone time" at the mall I considered exactly what kind of killer robot I would be, were I to inevitably go against my programming to hunt down Sarah Conner.
Hopefully something with spikes or a spinning blade. Or laser eyes. Maybe a flamethrower. And six legs.
So something gone rogue from the Gardening Robot Department plugged in via USB to some top-notch "Code: Phantom" military hardware.
This is the question that truly defines a person.
What kind of killer robot would you be?

Okay, listen:

We got Gwynyth a Disney Mix-Max Media player. It uses a standard SD Card, plays Windows Media Video formatted video, and charges through the USB port. I love charging stuff through the USB port.
No blue LED, but how picky can you really be?
So. The Mix-Max Media player comes with a tiny screen, right? And headphones! Of course, this is the kind of gift given before a road trip. So we gave it to her and I set about charging it and loading it with media files.
I've got a lot of video files for Gwynyth, too. Like forty-something episodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
Should be easy to convert them to .wmv files and drag them to the little Tinkerbell-themed media player, right? This thing is for kids!
Except that the video files have to have 29.93 frames per second and be precisely 222 pixels by 177 pixels in size. Precisely. No bigger, no smaller.
Anything different in the tiniest bit triggers a nasty "FILE NOT SUPPORTED" message -- the message I've seen a dozen times in the past few days.
What the hell? All I want is to play stolen Disney videos on my kid's Disney Media Player. Is that wrong? I mean, aside from legally.
It is now my personal mission to convert every frame of Disney video ever created into the proper Mix-Max format, and probably share the files online for free.
Legal disclaimer: File sharing is wrong. I would never condone such behavior. By engaging in this activity, a person is only cheating themselves. Somehow.

Seriously, here is the process:

1. Obtain video, most likely in *.avi encoded format
2. Using Windows Media Encoder (Windows Genuine Validation required), select the source file in its location on the network share. Yes, I have a network share at home.
3. Configure the pixel size and frame rate and select the audio stream format.
4. Select destination directory. The destination directory cannot be the Mix-Max. That would be too easy.
[Note: EVERY file must be set up INDIVIDUALLY and processed to completion before starting on the next file. And the name on the destination location is blank so you have to memorize the episode titles.]
5. Through the Disney Mix-Max Plug-in (Windows Vista hates it more than error messages can convey) to Windows Media Player 10, Sync the device to the files in the destination directory.
6. FILE NOT SUPPORTED
7. (Optional) Murderous rage until the voices go quiet.

And then I comb Ebay for High School Musical in pre-configured Mix-Max format. Disney sells it like that.

For quitters.

I am not merry.

There is a lot of stuff I just don't want to know, you know?
I'd hate to know (for instance) what the guy in the cubicle next to mine makes. Having full administrative rights over the Active Directory domain and all its data makes finding that kind of stuff out pretty simple, but it isn't anything I should know.
My company houses all this information in a database which uses SAP as a front-end. I'm responsible for ensuring that the data is available to the people in Human Resources and to no one else, but to do this I regularly need to test connectivity from the SAP front-end to the database.
I could pull up my own information, but even that is ethically questionable as I don't know what reports are being filed and secret assessments created.
The solution we employ is to use a series of specialized files in place of the standard SAPLogon.ini files. These files contain the list of databases available to the user through the interface. By creating the proper environment at the time of log on, we can restrict the access.
For testing purposes, my SAPLogon.ini file directs my SAP account to a dummy database for HR data. Not only does it not contain valid user information, it isn't even in a currently used language as far as I can tell.
As long as the database matches the permissions and is on the same SQL server as the real database, my test is about as valid as it can get without viewing sensitive information.
As I.T. people we need to remember that just because we have the access is no indication that we should use the access.

I'm out of book.
How sad. I've got a few tattered Half-Price Books paperbacks to read, but nothing I really particularly want to read.
Today is all about packing up for our annual holiday journey to Louisiana to see family. Of course, my own packing can wait, as tradition dictates, until the last frantic five minutes before we get on the road.
I got a call from work yesterday. I was asked to go in to fix a broken something and agreed immediately. Stuff was broken, after all.
I had pulled out my keys and slipped on my shoes before my boss told me he was kidding.
After a brief run down of the history of the issue (crappy application), a co-worker offered to take care of it.
Not his job. My job. But he offered to take care of it anyway.
Freak show!
It is almost like people help each other out!
Also, today was about taking down the X-Mas decorations.
Unfortunately, the neighbor-shaming tree and garland down the banister are like a giant "Rob Me" sign if left up while we are away overnight. It wouldn't matter that all the gifts left with us. As far as your average smash-and-grab criminal goes it is the thought that counts.
So, I pulled down the tree and broke it into sections and crammed it into large bins that once held Star Wars action figures. I unwrapped 700 tiny white lights and placed them in another bin. I got myself a Coke Zero from the refrigerator with a white-on-black snowflake theme. It ain't cocoa, but it works.