2003-07-11 · 06:33

Free Delta food

Spam from Delta today:

Delta recognizes that as airline travel has changed, so have our customers’ lifestyles and preferences when on the go. What hasn’t changed is your need to save time at the airport. That’s why we are pleased to announce that we will begin testing a new in-flight food program, offering restaurant-quality food to customers onboard select U.S. flights.

Riiight. If Delta really cared about helping me save time at the airport, there are lots of things they could do– starting with bringing back their redcoats– but this ain’t one of them.
What follows in their note is a description of their new pay-for-food program, brought to us by the Atlanta Bread Company (good) and Gate Gourmet, their current catering provider (not so good). They’ll also be pimping Fritos, Harry & David stuff, and various Nabisco products. Note that this doesn’t save me any time, since every airport in America has vending machines and newsstands that dispense the same fat-filled greasy partially dehydrogenated goodness. he best part is that PMs eat free, just like in the old days:

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2003-07-09 · 15:12

Now hiring?

We interrupt our regular security discussions to bring you this news bulletin: America’s health insurance situation sucks. While I can’t reform it on my own, I can ask you loyal readers to help find a full-time job for a smart, experienced programmer who just happens to need insurance for his ill son. Brad Choate, legendary MT plugin guy, is even offering a reward: a free Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube. Details here, or Brad’s original post here.

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Filed under General Stuff, Musings

2003-07-09 · 13:40

Find this man a job, win a console

Brad Choate has an interesting contest running: find a job for one of his friends and win a free Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube. The friend, Ron Pacheco, is the father of Thomas, a boy about my son David’s age. Except, unfortunately, that Thomas has cancer. Ron was laid off from his job and needs a new one to keep insurance coverage in force. I’d hire him (his resume is excellent), but we need people full-time in Seattle, not Connecticut. So, I’m posting this here in the hope that some random reader can use a skilled full-time programmer. If so, I encourage you to check into Ron. Not only would you be doing a good deed, you’ll end up scoring some nice hardware if your effort leads to a new job for Ron.
In fact, I’ll go Brad one better: I’ll throw in a $50 Amazon gift certificate to whoever finds Ron a job. That means that along with the nifty game console, you can get a game or two.

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2003-07-08 · 15:19

The Ticket

When I lived in Huntsville, I used to work with two guys who traveled insane amounts of time (48+ weeks a year!) One of them (Hi, Johnny!) turned me on to The Ticket, a newsletter for Atlanta-based travelers. Even though I wasn’t based in Atlanta, it was useful since just about every trip I took resulted in a flight change in ATL.
Now that I’ve moved, and especially now that I’m not flying DL much, it’s not as useful– but I still read it for the occasional gems. If Tim had been able to read it, he’d have known about the secret security areas, f’rinstance, and he might have made his Monday-morning flight. So, here’s the July issue, from which you can get archives and subscription information. Enjoy!

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2003-07-08 · 14:28

Verizon followup

I got a response from Verizon after the letter I sent. This afternoon, I got a call from Josh, the assistant store manager here in Maumee. He apologized and promised to “take care” of the problem. I was (barely) able to refrain from asking whether that meant that Bob would be found in the Maumee River wearing a cement overcoat.
So, on one hand Verizon gets points for quick action; I faxed the letter the afternoon before a long holiday weekend started, and I got a call back on the next business day– not too shabby. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether the CEO’s office handed out the kind of preemptive butt-chewing that prevents these kind of problems instead of just patching them. I guess the store manager was too busy with his other stores to handle this particular problem, so he delegated it to his assistant. C’est la guerre.
Update: I just got off the phone with Drew Moss, assistant to the Verizon Wireless CEO. He apologized profusely and promised that the director of retail services for this region will be looking into the matter. Since the store manager already knows what’s up, I expect that to be a short conversation. Drew also offered me a month’s credit on my bill, which was a nice gesture. VZW is now officially back in my good graces.

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2003-07-08 · 11:58

New MS RSS feed

Thundermain has a new RSS feed that lsts the ten most recent downloads posted in the Microsoft Download Center. This is a simple way to keep up with new white papers, documents, and patches. Check it out.
For bonus points, check out Jiri Ludvik’s list of security blogs, from which this blog is inexplicably absent. It’s still a good list. (Hat tip: Susan Bradley via NTBugTraq.)

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Filed under Security

2003-07-07 · 16:08

A few changes

I’ve tweaked the site layout to accomodate the presence of Google AdSense ads. I think they’re unobtrusive, and when you click on them you help support the cost of maintaining this site. There are still a few browser-specific bugs in my CSS layout, which I’ll gradually eliminate as I get better with CSS. Thanks for your patience!

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Filed under General Tech Stuff

2003-07-07 · 10:15

Physical security on my mind

I’ve been thinking about physical security a lot, mostly because I happen to be revising chapter 5. Take a minute right now to look around and see whether your physical security procedures are adequate. Could someone easily walk off with a server? (If someone can steal a DC, they can 0wn you totally, basically forever). Do you have adequate environmental protections– power conditioning? heating/cooling? fire warning & suppression? I could write on and on about this, but I bet that if you spend a few minutes thinking about your environment you’ll see what you need to do to improve it, probably at very low cost. The US Army’s Field Manual 3-19.30 has some interesting thoughts that may help you.

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2003-07-07 · 06:50

While you’re waiting for book 6…

I was recently forwarded what purports to be an intercepted email from J.K. Rowling to her publisher. Now that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been released (and it’s quite good so far), Rowling has apparently decided to get a head start on book 6, the penultimate title in the seven-book series. Titles under consideration include:

  • Harry Potter and the Freshmaker
  • Harry Potter and the Nocturnal Emission
  • Harry Potter and the Quaint British Public-School Tradition of Sodomy
  • Harry Potter and the Inopportune Pimple
  • H. Diddy
  • Harry Potter and the Weed of Wackiness
  • Harry Potter and the After-School Minimum-Wage Job

I look forward to seeing the book when it’s released.

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2003-07-07 · 06:17

It was a dark and stormy night

Well, it was storming at 0445 when I got up this morning. Since I work in the basement, the thunder was nicely muted. Then, however, I fired up the Haunted Tape Drive, an old ADIC FastStor library I bought off eBay. I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet, but I finally installed the drivers yesterday so I could take a refreshing full backup first thing this morning. Long story short, that thing squeaks, mutters, and beeps so much that it’s like being trapped in a basement with Beetlejuice, only without Geena Davis. I’m sure I’ll either a) get used to it or b) start scheduling my backups to happen overnight.

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2003-07-03 · 16:55

Happy 4th of Julie

So, thanks to Julie’s inspiration, I now have Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever as my phone’s ring tone. Bring on the fireworks. This process was relatively straightforward:

  1. Install Kyocera’s MP3 maker, which takes an MP3 file and produces a .pdb file.
  2. Move the Sousa file out of my iTunes Music folder and put it back in my shared folder where it’s supposed to be
  3. Sync the shared folder with my ThinkPad
  4. Run the MP3 utility, producing a file named “stars.mp3.pdb”
  5. Helpfully rename the file and copy it onto my SD card.
  6. Struggle with figuring out why the file doesn’t appear (hint: it doesn’t appreciate being renamed to “stars.pdb” vice “stars.mp3.pdb”)
  7. Say “to hell with it” and sync the phone normally
  8. Soft reset
  9. Profit! (no, wait, that comes later)
  10. Notice that the ringtone appears in Prefs Phone where it belongs.
  11. Crank up the volume and enjoy.

(And let’s not forget that traditional toast: “God bless the United States, and success to the Marines!”)

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Filed under General Tech Stuff

2003-07-03 · 14:25

Sending SMS from iChat

This is extremely nifty. From Dave Farber’s IP list:

With today’s release of AIM4.6b1.1131, the capability has been added to
allow AIM users to send SMS messages to mobile phones. All you do is type
the message you want to send as an SMS into a new IM window and change the
screenname field to +16175551212. Replace 6175551212 with the phone number of the SMS-capable mobile phone. The “+1” is the country code, which is required; however, I don’t think AOL supports non-US numbers yet, but they
do plan to.
To utilize this cool feature in iChat, simply type Shift-Command-N for a “New Chat with Person,” and enter the phone number in the above format. When you send the message, you’ll receive confirmation from AOL that it was sent. Pretty neat!

I tested this and it works like a charm. Finally, a use for iChat 🙂
Update: As Mike Wendland and I found out, it does matter if you enter the “+1” before the phone number.

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2003-07-03 · 13:50

The hacker tourist

If you like Neal Stephenson, go read this now, but allow some time: it’s a long article.
In other SF news, my copy of this year’s edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology is on its way! I’d forgotten about preordering it, but Amazon helpfully mailed me to tell me the good news.
Update: Hat tip to Mike Strock for pointing out my broken link. Spackerhood runs in the family.

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2003-07-03 · 11:47

Verizon: “Is there some reason you’re looking at me?”

In which Paul suffers a broken phone and gets satisfaction from the warranty while simultaneously getting rudeness from a store employee; a missive to the CEO

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2003-07-03 · 06:09

Confidential to the MailMarshal folks

Is there some reason why you can’t just give me a context menu item to add a sender to the server’s whitelist? Having to review messages in the console and then add them to the configurator is a pain in the butt– just let me right-click an item in the console and say “add to Friendly Senders” or “Add to Friendly Listservers”. Just a suggestion that your competitors have already implemented…

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