What do you tell people when.... ????

So... I'm at this social gathering last weekend. This woman starts talking to be about her computer because she hears I "do computers" from someone else. Man... That's an understatement. Anyway... she's telling me how she spent 12 hours last Friday "trying to fix AOL." I'm biting my tongue at this point. She can't make it dial. She does all this stuff... speaks to some HP person in India and has to pay money for them to prove her modem works. She calls AOL and they tell her to reinstall (the Windows way) and it finally "works" except now her AOL software pops up for no reason and does it constantly and all the time.

I'm sitting there trying not to let my eyes glaze over or smile and thinking to myself "you've got some sort of trojan horse or virus lady". What do you tell people and not either get yourself sucked in or make them have a heart attack?

Symptoms:

1. She's on dial-up and I'm sure AOL is configured to handle all of her internet traffic by default and offer to connect when there's traffic wanting to go out.
2. Her AOL software mysteriously stops working and needs a reinstall to fix
3. This stuff happens "all by itself and suddenly".

She's probably part of some script kiddie's botnet. How do you begin to explain that to someone? Sheesh! I don't want to be too negative, but I'm thinking "you need anti-virus software and don't have it - you got what you deserve".

Finally another woman who was there got sucked into the conversation. She "does help desk" and the woman with the trojan (man... that sounds bad) knew it. The help desk person says "that's easy to fix - stop using AOL". That shut the whole thing down. Help Desk FTW :-)

I Still HATE Dell

People who know me in real life know that Dell screwed me out of a computer a few years back by sending it to an existing customer with the same name at a different address. After first being nice and then yelling and screaming, I had to go through my credit card company to get the money back. I then wrote Michael Dell a letter and attached an invoice billing him for $100/hour for all the work I had to do in order to get my own refund. All that got me was a letter from his personal assistant who lied and said that "Dell has taken care of this matter for you and refunded your money". I try not to swear on my blog, or at all in real life, but it's hard not to when telling this story.

My Dad's laptop cover started to break. We went online to Dell's parts website and found exactly what we needed after entering the service tag number of his laptop. The description said it included the back cover, the bezel (frame around the LCD) and all of the replacement rubber bumpers because you have to rip them off to unscrew the thing.

So... yesterday, he gets the package. I arrive and he's pretty disappointed. All that's in the box is the back cover, and it's the wrong color. We call the "customer service" number and get some guy in India who says he can refund the $80 we had to spend for this thing minus shipping because WE ordered the wrong part. Finally it ended up in a shouting match. I pulled up the description on the internet and read it to him (quite loudly). I told him "I don't even work for Dell and I can pull up the description of he part and see that we indeed ordered the right thing. Why can't you do that - you work for Dell?". He then agreed to refund the shipping too. He suggested we talk to someone in sales so we could get the "right" part. So he transfers us.

The person in sales was unable to even locate the part - even with the part number that we had. Unbelievable... Dell sinks to a new low that I didn't even believe was possible.

10 minutes later, we had purchased the part on ebay for less than half the price.

Dell "Sucks Out Loud"!!!!! Michael Dell, you give Texas a bad name. I used to recommend your products and say the customer service was horrible. I can't in good conscience do that anymore - the quality of this laptop cover sucks and you can't even order a replacement because Dell outsources their customer service and has pot-smoking clowns who do order fulfillment.

I work for a VERY large company. Last time I had people come on-site to repair Dell Laptops, even they were badmouthing the quality of Dell and how it's gone down hill.

Christmas is coming. Don't buy a dell.

Christmas Project Update

I have received some of the hardware I purchased to do the crazy Christmas lights. I have decided, however, to register another domain name and put the info for my lights on that site. I use the TangoUniform.org site for things I don't necessarily want my real name attached to. As my other web site will probably have the URL on a sign on my front lawn when the Christmas Lights are on, I decided it would be a good time to separate the two. I am not planning on having much more detail about the Christmas Lights on this site. Sorry! I don't really want a "Mad Hacker Lives Here" sign on my front lawn. It might upset the neighbors ;-)

FiOS Security Hole Update

I just got to witness another FiOS install. Verizon appears to have used some hillbilly engineering to plug their own security hole a little. The Default WEP Key is still the same as the MAC address with the first 2 characters removed, HOWEVER (in this case, at least) they have changed the actual MAC address of the router. The router is broadcasting a different MAC address than the one on the sticker. I was joking around with the installer about it. He claims to not have heard anything about the security hole. Still the same dang sticker. Must have hired a bunch of undocumented workers and showed them how to swap out the hardware inside the routers - ha ha ha. Hopefully this exercise in hillbilly engineering is a temporary fix and not their long-term solution.

Insteon Addiction

OK... I'm hooked. This stuff rocks and looks pretty cool. For bedroom switches, though, I'm gonna have to remove the light pipes and replace them with black electrical tape. They look really cool everywhere else though.

I'm gonna have to get one of those countdown switches for the exhaust fan in my bathroom. That'll be great to defog everything after showers.

I have all of these useless switches on the walls of my new house that control outlets - I HATE those. I can now replace the switches with Insteon and wire the outlet so it is always on. I can then use Insteon (or X10 for the moment) modules to control what I REALLY want to control when someone hits the switch. This is going to be fun (and cause me to spend money - ha ha ha). I'd better get a whole house surge suppressor installed soon.

MH

First Impressions of Insteon

WOW... Call the police - two posts in the same month - LOLOLOL.

I received my Insteon Starter Kit yesterday afternoon. I ordered the "kitchen lighting" starter kit because it had a variety of different components that I want to try. I also ordered two Insteon Outlets and the relay version of the 6 button control pad.

Yesterday I only had time to plug in the two access points. These are what allow the Insteon signals to cross between the two legs of the "split single phase" circuit that most homes in the USA have. It took two tries to find outlets that were on opposite legs - quick and painless.

Today I installed the two outlets and the 6 button dimmer. Anyone who knows me or who has read my Wiki knows that I have a lot of X10 equipment. The dimmer switch is the "holy grail" of the X10 world. It allows you to turn the light on dim and brighten as you go. Another feature that they only ellude to on the website is that the switches, when in X10 mode, not only turn the light on when you push the button, but broadcast the on and off signals to the powerline as well (part two of the "holy grail"). I have the other 4 buttons of the 6 button dimmer set to control X10 devices. They monitor the powerline for signals and adjust their status accordingly (the buttons light up when they think the device is on and go dark when they think the device is off). Pretty nifty stuff. Most of the Insteon documentation mentions that the devices "do not repeat X10 signals". I think they leave the transmit X10 signals part out on purpose so as to not confuse people.

I will be buying some more Insteon switches VERY soon. The home I bought this summer leaves a little to be desired as far as switch placement goes. I can use the 6 button controllers to compensate for this. A lot cheaper and faster than hiring an electrician to boot.

Good stuff. Over time I see myself going almost completely away from X10. So far I am not very happy with the computer interfaces offered by Insteon - not a lot of Linux support, which is a killer for me. Who'd wanna automate their home with Windows - EWWW!!!!!

Yes, I am bridging both legs of my electrical system with an X10 bridge (homemade of course) and two Insteon Access Points. So far so good.

I am officially an Insteon fan (I just wish the stuff was as cheap as X10 - but then you get what you pay for. All things considered, Insteon is a bargain for what you get compared to X10).
MH

Hilarious Car/License Plate

Man... On Thursday 7/31/08 I spotted the most Hilarious Car. I really need to get a camera phone so I can post a picture of stuff like this...

This guy passed me driving a "Wanna Be" Mercedes. All Mercedes are "Wanna Be" cars in the first place. He had North Carolina license plates that said... (Resisted temptation to put the actual plate here - let's just say it represented the ultimate "Wanna Be" language of the Dot Net Framework). I was trying not to wet myself from laughing so hard while explaining to my sons what a "Wanna Be" was. It was awesome. He must have been from RTP North Carolina which most people think stands for "Research Triangle Park". It's actually "Research Trailer Park". What a total chick magnet this guy must be - ha ha ha.

Couldn't help but think of "J.P." from the movie "Grandma's Boy" (the guy who spoke with a robot voice). Maybe that was him in the car! Dude... Thanks for the laugh!

Fun Christmas Project

If you are offended by Christmas then LOG OFF!!!!!

I just ordered some circuit boards for making one of those Christmas Light Displays that are synchronized with music. The boards are coming from another country. Once they arrive, I am going to order enough parts to populate one board and build it for a total of 16 channels. If it works, I will build the remaining boards. I will post my progress here. Yes... I'm starting early - but this could be a big project. Hopefully the local overstock store will have a ton of cheap Christmas Lights for sale around Thanksgiving like they did last year.

I already have an FM transmitter and found some cool Christmas Music. I am not revealing the songs on the internet because I want to be the first to do these songs. I'm probably going to include "Wizards in Winter" by Trans Siberian Orchestra because "everyone does it" and I can get a good start on a sequence by downloading it.

(The following video link is not of my house) For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, check this video out (I REPEAT, not of my house).

If I get anything decent working, I will upload some YouTube videos and post the link to my channel.

Since I just moved in June, I will surely make an "impression" on my new neighbors. Cracks me up... I found out that my house is known as "the computer science house" by several neighbors because the previous owner taught computer science at an elementary school. Boy, are they in for a surprise - HA HA HA

DMZ Host and OpenWRT

I now have my ActionTec router that Verizon gave me with my FiOS set to use my OpenWRT router as the DMZ Host. So far, so good. The only major "problem" so far is that if I portscan myself, all of the ports that I am not running services on show up as "closed". The ports I run services on and a few others drop the packets on the floor and show up as "stealth". I need to figure that one out but at least I'm connected through a secure connection now. I tried turning the ActionTec into a bridge but it doesn't seem to be worth the trouble. My bandwidth seems to be about the same with this config. The bridging methods I've seen appear to be a real PITA as you have to reset some things after power failures etc. Not worth it to me at this point.

Update: Quick tweak to a couple of lines in my firewall config on OpenWRT and everything is as it should be once again. grc.com reports my router is totally stealth.

MH Alert: Major FiOS WiFi Security Hole

I recently got FiOS through Verizon. I am very pleased with the service. If you have FiOS, please take a look at your router... in particular the sticker with the default WEP key on it. Notice another number that is very similar that happens to be on the same sticker????? AHA - they use the last 10 characters of the MAC address as the default WEP key!!!!

So:

1. You aren't foolish enough to be using WEP, are you? Switch to WPA or WPA2.
2. If you have to use WEP, you aren't foolish enough to use the default WEP Key, are you?
3. The first 6 characters of the MAC typically are the same for the manufacturer/model so they are probably all the same.
4. WiFi 802.11b and 802.11g broadcast the MAC in the clear so your router is basically announcing it's default WEP key to the world!

I mentioned this to my installer and he said "yeah... people are stupid and they don't change it." He was fairly technical as far as installers go and knew it was an issue when I mentioned it.

This is so awesomely stupid on Verizon's part. Surely these things have serial numbers that could be used as the WEP key. "Can you hack (sic) me now? Good..."

"Verizon... It's the network" and it's not secure at all - BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Most WEP protection can be broken after collecting many thousands of packets. Verizon's can be broken after one packet - BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Personally... I'm going to turn off the WiFi on this beast altogether and use my OpenWRT router as the "DMZ Host" and use it's WiFi. If I can spot this hole during the installation of my service, what other gaping holes are out there waiting to be discovered? Verizon should have gotten a router that uses OpenWRT, the service would then rock my face off.

Be careful out there!

Update... In Verizon's admin interface, it has RECOMMENDED next to WEP and not next to any of the WPA options.

Microsoft's "4th Gen. After Success: Sucks" Pattern

I have held this theory for a while and wanted to document it. I have noticed over the years that after a particular technology that Microsoft releases "catches on", the 4th generation of it becomes a horrid piece of trash. Here are my examples:

1. MS-DOS 1.x - Tremendously caught on - started the whole PC Revolution. MS DOS 4.x was the worst version of MS-DOS EVER. Version 5.x and 6.x were major improvements and brought things back under control.

2. Windows 3.x - Windows finally catches on. The following releases of the technology were (#2) Windows 95, (#3) Windows 98/98SE, (#4) Windows ME. I don't think too many people will argue with me that Windows ME was the worst.

3. Windows NT Technology - This really did not take off until Windows NT 4 so we will call that #1. The following releases of the technology were (#2) Windows 2000, (#3) Windows XP, (#4) Windows Vista. Need I say more? Look at how horrible Vista is doing.

What is it with Microsoft and the number 4? The only thing I can figure is this: Look what happens when you count to 4 in binary on your fingers - ha ha.

Hilarious Spam Story

It's been a while since I've posted - been busy but have a funny story to share. A while back, some company started spamming one of my domains. Several companies, actually. Some dirty spammer sold an address list using addresses from my domain and presenting them as doctor's email addresses. So these "legit" companies start sending me a lot of medical spam. This one company ignored my emails to cease and desist a while back, so I called and yelled at them on their voicemail. The next day I get an email from a hobo account with the VP of this "company's" IT department as the username asking me to identify myself. I ignore it and the spam stops until YESTERDAY.

I start getting spam from this same "company" again. I go to their website and click on the "contact us form" and type in a KNOCK IT OFF message. I hit submit and all I get is this red message near the submit button - no data clears, no redirect. Red message says "your request has been submitted". I hit the submit button a couple of dozen times.

I get an email from the same dude above, using his "company" email. He tells me that I need to submit each email separately as a request to stop, and that I've been acting unprofessionally. He then accuses me of a denial of service attack for sending him a couple of dozen requests.

I go back to his web form and address him by name. I tell him that I don't have to act professionally - he's spamming my house. That he has a dodgy web form and that 2 dozen messages to get someone's attention does not constitute a DOS Attack. I tell him to fix the problem, stop buying addresses from spammers and to grow up.

Dude has the nerve to write back and basically say "OK... but technically we're not spamming you". I can't believe this bozo - it was hilarious.

If you are reading this, Mr. White Trash Big Shot IT VP From (_|_) As*ville North Carolina, be glad I am not using your real name or company name. I will next time - 3 strikes you're out.

ROTFLMAO

Enoying my new server

It's been alive for about a week. My virtualized Red Hat 7.3 install is chugging along inside VMWare Server as is my virtualized FreeBSD 6.1 machine. The older hardware has been given a rest (well the 850mhz PIII became the new Kid Computer). My buddy Chris at work helped me diagnose a video problem I was having because I thought I was running the nvidia driver but really running the nv driver - causing havoc with vnc. Other than my virtualized FreeBSD machine's clock racing ahead a couple of minutes a day (no matter what I do - solved the problem in RedHat - that one was racing MUCH faster) everything is chugging along fine.

VMWare Server Sound on CentOS

Kind of disappointing that VMWare Server can only use the sound on one VM concurrently and that's only of nothing else is touching the sound card. Turns out after googling around a bit that VMWare uses OSS for it's sound. I installed the alsa-oss package for FC7 and the alsa-oss-libs package for FC7 as well (got them from rpmfind.net). I then renamed my vmware script to vmware.orig. I wrote a new script called vmware to run the aoss wrapper and have aoss invoke vmware.orig and pass all of the args it received. Works like a champ. Now at least all of the VMs can have sound. They can't use the sound at exactly the same time, but at least it's better than it was before. Afterall, what's a home automation system without sound :-)

It's Alive!!!

I got my new server machine built on 2/15/08. Best of all, it worked the first time. I do have the SATA cable plugged in backwards and also into the wrong SATA controller. The system complains that it can't find the rest of the RAID drives when I boot it. Not a big deal and I will fix it eventually. First computer I built in a long time. Also I think first time ever that I installed both a motherboard and a power supply and haven't actually drawn blood.

I changed my mind between Centos 4.6 and 5.1 a few times. I hate the changes to anaconda in 5.1 but got used to it after 4.6 didn't recognize my integrated sound.

Finally Confirmed Order

Finally have equipment on the way. The Dual Layer DVD writer with Lightscribe that was the only surviving piece from my original set of orders showed up yesterday to irritate me :-)

I got a quad-core processor and an Intel "Bad Ax" motherboard (at least the guy in some tech video says people call it that). Should be a fun machine build - haven't put one together totally from scratch for quite a while. It'll have 4 gig of RAM and a 750 gig SATA drive. Should be halfway decent for running VMWare Server.

Order Fell Through

Well, the website contacts me 2 business days after I place my order and say they don't have the RAM or the motherboard anymore. I paid with PayPal and got an immediate refund. I didn't realize how hard it is to find a dual processor ATX motherboard that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm leaning towards a single Intel Core2 Quad. Those motherboards are much easier to find and will potentially run around the same speed - or close enough.

New Server

My big plans have been delayed - so... that means it's time to upgrade my server to keep my sanity while I wait for life to resume. I am building a 2 processor Xeon 2.8Ghz machine with 6 gig of ram and a 1 TB SATA hard drive (for starters). I wanted something to host VMWare Server Images. My existing rackmount server has been converted to VMWare and the DNS and DHCP duties it performed have been rehosted on my OpenWRT Router. I also have an extra power supply laying around from when I rackmounted this particular server mobo and realized that ATX really wouldn't work correctly with the hybrid board (long story).

My buddy Carlos the Jackal said I shouldn't buy this particular motherboard because I would spend too much money finding RAM for it. The place that sold the mobo had RAM for $49/gig so I decided he was wrong :-D

Most of the parts should be here this week. I need a snow day so I can put it all together after the parts arrive.

In the meantime I'm building a base VMWare image that I can use for development. I'm going with CentOS 4.6 i386 for the initial VM. The Host is probably going to be the x64 version of the same OS. Seems pretty stable. CentOS 5.x sucks in VMWare right now - VMWare tools won't install. I'm sure you CAN get it to install, I just don't want to dork with it.

I eventually plan to ring the devil's doorbell and run away (install Vista on VMWare and play with it). I may as well with my MSDN Subscription it won't cost me anything.

I also want to try out various other Linux Distros like Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware etc. This will give me the opportunity to try out a ton of things without using old crappy hardware or committing myself to one particular install.

I may try to convert my trusty FreeBSD machine to VMWare as his hardware is aging. I wonder if it's as easy to virtualize as Linux is now that I know the secret ;-)