Monthly Archives: April 2004

Hacked by Chinese?

Posted on 2004.04.16

I took a personal day off from work today. I did this because (a) Peter was supposed to come over today, (b) my laundry was still wet, and (3) I noticed that this webserver was being attacked by the Chinese.

Looking through my website logs routinely before bed, I saw a bunch of automated hits to nonexistantg pages from a single IP in China. Looking at Peter‘s logs showed a similar, if not exactly the same, pattern. Later, Chris‘ logs showed a similar pattern as well. Checking out the server, it doesn’t appear to have been compromised (though Chris gave me several scares, and then remembered that the anomalies he was seeing really weren’t – e.g. su root-nobody for cron.daily’s updatedb run). Anyway, I think we are safe at the moment, but Chris and I each did some routine server maintenance and/or security tightening just to be on the safe side.

Besides that, I didn’t make much use of my day off. Mostly, I sat around watching Star Trek on scifi and procrastinating about doing something useful. Not that I mind doing practically nothing of course, I just wish I had more time with which to do nothing :)

In other news, Peter is coming up from NJ for the weekend tomorrow morning (instead of today), and Ithaca’s annual egg drop is Sunday afternoon, in which Chris is going to participate. To prepare, he’s been busting open C02 catridges (which is always good fun, despite scaring the kitties), and running to me with lots of new ideas. I’ve had my share of ideas, too ;)

Anyway, I think that’s enouh random disjointed summing up posts for the evening. :)

House Hunting

Posted on 2004.04.14

Our lease runs out at the end of July, so Chris and I have to step up the house-hunting (from next to nothing to excessive). Chris thinks we can get through the buying and moving processes by August, but I have my doubts (as we haven’t even looked at any places yet). Needless to say, the DIY house plans are on hold indefinitely (though Chris may want to bulldoze whatever house we get now a few years down the road and build his own on that property instead).

Meh. In case anyone is unaware, here are my house criteria, in order of importance:

  1. Location (a): Ithaca, NY 14850
  2. Price: <=$120,000; ideally in the $60-80,000 range
  3. Crime: Negligible (most of Ithaca; the ‘projects’ here are equivalent to the good areas of New Brunswick)
  4. !haunted ;)
  5. Must be able to get cable
  6. Disrepair: <=moderate; stuff we can fix ourselves without getting contractors; stuff that doesn’t affect the structural integrity of the house or involve any form of insect/rodent/mold infestation
  7. Floors: 2
  8. Location (b): Should be within walking distance of work (i.e., no more than 2 miles away)
  9. It would be nice to have a front porch

Hopefully Chris‘ optimism on the time frame involved here turns out to be realistic. I really don’t want to have to change my address everywhere 3 times this year :/

(edited my criteria a bit)

This will surely brighten your day

Posted on 2004.04.13

Dana in IRC just forwarded this to me.

I present to you, the funniest spam ever.

>Dr. Bakare Tunde
>Astronautics Project Manager
>National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)
>Plot 555 Misau Street
>PMB 437 Garki, Abuja, FCT
>NIGERIA
>
>Dear Mr. Sir,
>
>REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE-STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
>
>I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force
>Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made
>a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a
>later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military
>space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when
>the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members
>returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up
>by return cargo. There have been occasional Progrez supply flights
>to keep him going since that time. He is in good humor, but wants
>to come home.
>
>In the 14-years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated
>flight pay and interest amounting to almost $ 15,000,000 American
>Dollars. This is held in a trust at the Lagos National Savings and
>Trust Association. If we can obtain access to this money, we can
>place a down payment with the Russian Space Authorities for
>a Soyuz return flight to bring him back to Earth. I am told this
>will cost $ 3,000,000 American Dollars. In order to access the
>his trust fund we need your assistance.
>
>Consequently, my colleagues and I are willing to transfer the total
>amount to your account for subsequent disbursement, since we as civil
>servants are prohibited by the Code of Conduct Bureau (Civil Service
>Laws) from opening and/ or operating foreign accounts in our names.
>
>Needless to say, the trust reposed on you at this juncture is
>enormous. In return, we have agreed to offer you 20 percent of the
>transferred sum, while 10 percent shall be set aside for incidental
>expenses (internal and external) between the parties in the course
>of the transaction. You will be mandated to remit the balance 70
>percent to other accounts in due course.
>
>Kindly expedite action as we are behind schedule to enable us
>include downpayment in this financial quarter.
>
>Please acknowledge the receipt of this message via my direct
>number *** (*) *-***-**** only.
>
>Yours Sincerely,
>Dr. Bakare Tunde
>Astronautics Project Manager
>***@*********.ng
>
>http://www.**********.ng/

Unconcious Mutterings Week 62

Posted on 2004.04.11

Here’s this weeks…

  1. Boxing::gloves
  2. Lewis::and Clark
  3. Bodyguard::guide
  4. Burnout::day
  5. Cruising::speed
  6. Easter::Sunday
  7. AA::Driving
  8. Research::study
  9. Redemption::day
  10. Snickers::bars

The results may be skewed… “day” came up twice. I suppose that’s what I get for listening to conversations in the other room while blogging.

Heh, it’s kinda funny how quickly I get used to being home again. I’m gonna miss this place :(

/me looks at watch…. “Happy Easter (almost)”

Posted on 2004.04.10

Yesterday at work there was an excess of meetings and seminars, most of which I apparently didn’t end up going to, because I didn’t know about them until after the fact. Oh well, if no one bothers to tell me these things (they forgot to add me to the mailing list), then it’s not my fault. That’s alright though, because for some reason I ended up managing to get more work done in the absence of having other people around- I think I got more done yesterday than I did for the whole rest of the work week, combined.

I skipped lunch so I coul get home early so Chris and I could head back to NJ-land early-ish and hopefully complete the 4 hour drive before it got too late. Of course, we still didn’t end up leaving until a bit after six, but thanks to my trusty laptop and scummvm, the drive seemed to go by pretty quickly.

Today I had the fun job of fixing all the borken computery things that have been simmering at home since I last left (the router and my dad’s email [which admittedly broke when I switched servers]). Computer stuff at the homestead still isn’t 100%, of course- Thunderbird keeps complaining that the mail server name doesn’t match it’s common name (I can’t find an easy way around this, as of yet- I’ll probably have to generate a new SSL certificate….). Right now, I’m at Peter’s new apartment (which has wireless, yay!) hanging out with the usual crew plus a friend I haven’t seen siince highschool and his girlfriend, watching (and sometimes participating in) N64 gameage. w007.

Anyway, just a quick update from the road. There’s been an influx of additions to the photoblog, some good, some not so good. I’m mostly trying to work out some bugs with my system, as well as test how many mails are actually being transferred now (most of them, it seems – a good thing :) )

If I don’t get around to posting tomorrow, enjoy the holiday, everyone.

Friday Five

Posted on 2004.04.09

It’s ba~ack….

1. What do you do for a living?
I’m a bioinformatics analyst (prog/analyst III) in the Tanksley Lab at Cornell University.

2. What do you like most about your job?
That I have a lot of freedom, and the time to hack away at what needs to be done without too much worry. Oh, and the laptop is a nice perk as well :D

3. What do you like least about your job?
Sometimes I have too much freedom and don’t know exactly what I should be doing or how I should go about starting it when I do know. And I don’t ask enough questions so this can be a real bad thing….

4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because _____…
Because things that SHOULD be working aren’t. Like when the Apache LogFormat directive is only working on one virtual host when it is set up identically on all of them, so the access logs just say “common” on each line in all the borken hosts. Bah.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
Programming video games, system administration, or doing something blue-collar for a change.

Slooooow email

Posted on 2004.04.08

Anyone out there in the vastness of the Internet have a camera phone? Of course you do. I’m talking to you.

Whenever I send an email (with a picture attached, of course) from my phone it takes about an hour for me to receive it- if I get it at all (a few messages have disappeard into the void).

Either I’m crazy (possible), or this problem has appeared since I stopped using my textamerica moblog and started using my local equivalent. I have been tailing my procmail log so I know exactly when the messages arrive, and the fastest one has been 45 minutes after I sent it. I still haven’t received the one I sent at 10:30 this morning….

Anyway, is this a conspiracy or something? : ) Does verizon just scoot mails to textamerica quickly since that is a “real” company and it’s good advertising for them? Or is this a transitory problem and it’s just coincidence that it started just as I switched where I was sending emails? Can the problem have something to do with the fact that I haven’t paid (or received) a verizon bill yet (as I just signed up on Sunday), but have been sending a ton of messages (partially to test my new system)? Or maybe they just have trouble routing to my domain for some reason…..

Any ideas/opinions/clues?

Everyone else is doing it….

Posted on 2004.04.08

I’ve seen these questions on Linuxchix Live, various LiveJournals, as well as several friend’s blogs. I figured, “What the Hell? Nice weather out, might as well go jump off the bridge like everyone else!”

This is kinda lengthy, and probably not too interesting, so I’ve banished it to the “Read More” section, below :)

Clickly if you care, but don’t sweat it too much- if I weren’t me I wouldn’t read them, either.
Continue reading →

New phone

Posted on 2004.04.04

Yesterday, I took the snow tires off of my car.

Today it snowed.

Not entirely unexpected :)

Other than that, today I also got a new cellphone that I was talking about a while back (I ended up going with Verizon, because that’s apparently the only really viable solution in Ithaca [acccording to my co-worker, anyway]). I also accomplished the arduous task of cancelling my old cell phone, as well as my old bank account (which I’ve been putting off since I moved).

So, yeah. I’m actually accomplishing stuff today. Groovy.