Diary of a Network Geek

I am a geek.

This may be self-evident based on the fact that I work in IT and maintain several websites including two blogs, but the implications of that may not be clear.
In software development, of which I have done very, very little, there’s a concept called “version control”.  In brief, it’s about keeping track of the latest revision of your written source code, so that you can revert, if necessary, to an older version for part of the code, when…
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I am NOT a designer or web programmer.

Sure, I’ve dabbled with Perl enough to be a Level 11 Perl Monk on Perlmonks.org, but I’m not really a programmer.  And I’m sure not a designer, either, even though I can appreciate really good design work.  In fact, my ex-wife used to say that I was from the “big orange button” school of design, because I was more interested in the technology behind the button you pushed on a website than making…
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Have you ever wanted a “do over”?

Remember when we were kids and we’d be out playing and something crazy would happen that totally messed up someone’s game?  We’d more often than not give them a “do over”.  We’d let them reset and try again.  Wouldn’t that be nice to have in every aspect of life?
Well, speaking as a professional network geek, sometimes there is, at least on some network equipment.  We call it a “factory refresh” or, as the title of this post implies, a “factory reset”.  Basically, for  you non-techs, the idea is that sometimes a configuration gets so wrong, so borked, so bad that it’s easier to just reset a device back to how it shipped from the factory and start the configuration process over again from scratch.  I cannot tell you how often I’ve been happy to have this feature and be able to use it.

Of course, sometimes, we inherit these borked devices.  Or we foolishly throw out the two-page manual that tells us how to reset the thing.  Then, we have to go searching for the information on how to reset whatever it is we’re trying desperately to get configured before the weekend, so we don’t have to stay late, again, on a Friday.
Well, wouldn’t it be nice if that was all in one place?  Well, now it is, mostly.  There’s a handy site/wiki called Factory Reset that has most, if not all, of the reset instructions for the most popular and common computer appliances out there.  They’ve got everything from routers to switches to network-attached storage.

So, if you’re wrestling with some device that has gotten out of control, again, why not pop over there and find out how to reset it so you can get out of the office and enjoy your weekend?

Do you trust everything you see?

We’ve all seen QR codes, even if we may not have all recognized what they are.  These little, square dot patterns are everywhere these days, especially in advertising.  In fact, some people have gotten so used to scanning them with their smart phones to get more information about products and services that hackers are now exploiting them.  I recently read a very interesting article on TechRepublic by Michael Kassner titled Beware of QR Codes about an exploit found in the wild, and QR code exploits in general.  The problem is, we tend to trust them, mainly, I think, because they’re too new for us to have been burned bad by them yet, and they are popping up everywhere!  Pay attention as you go through your day and see how many of these little deals you bump into.  They’re in everything from magazine ads to product labels to posters to coupons!  Even Doonesbury has run a strip with a QR code in it!

So, as you swim out there, awash in the ocean of marketing and sales that we live in, pay attention to those who might subvert your complacency.  If it’s easy for you to use, it’s probably easy for someone to abuse, just like the QR code seems to be!

You ever wonder how hackers in the movies type code so fast?

Okay, maybe it’s just me, but when I see programmers cranking out code on a TV series or a movie, I always wonder how they’re typing so much so fast.  And, I’ll be honest, I wonder how accurate their code really is.  So, I’m sure most people don’t really care about all that, but just assume all computer people bang away on the keyboard to churn out code.  Hey, they probably don’t even notice what keys we hit at all!
Well, I’ve finally found out how Hollywood simulates what they think coding is like!  It’s a site called Hacker Typer!

You go, open up the application, which looks like an old-school terminal, and just start banging on the keyboard.  It literally does not matter what keys you hit!  And, the app does all the work, producing line after line of what looks like decent, usable code.  I actually have no idea if that code will do anything or not, but it looks good, and, in Hollywood, that’s all that matters.
So, what the heck, it’s Friday.  Go hit that site and pretend to be a hacker!

Let’s start the year slow.

So, I’m sure a lot of you got new PCs or laptops, or upgraded your old ones, this holiday season.  Maybe it was a Christmas gift.  Maybe a Christmas gift to yourself.  Maybe you just took advantage of the post-holiday sales.  Whatever it was or how ever you got it, you probably are feeling the pain of reinstalling all those “essential” programs that you use on a regular basis.  Things like Firefox and Mozilla or Chrome and Skype or Winamp or Flash or .Net or iTunes or LibreOffice or any number of similar little things.  You’ll be feeling the pain of having to go to all those individual websites to collect the various install files to run.

Well, I have the solution to the problem you didn’t realize you had.  It’s a little site called “Ninite” and they call themselves “…the fastest way to install, reinstall or upgrade free software”.
You go to the site, check the different bits of software and click the “Get Installer” button and the site will serve up a downloadable installer file that will install the free software you checked on the form.  You run the file and your software gets installed.  That simple.  Oh, and the basic service itself is free.
Now, if you want to maintain that free software and keep it updated, they have a very reasonable service for that, too.  For the personal edition for a single computer, it’s just $9.99 a year, at the moment, but, of course, that may change.

Both the free and pay services are available for Windows or Linux, which I think is pretty damn extra cool.

Anyway, there’s your first fun/cool/useful link for the new year.  I think it bridges the fun, the free and the very geeky stuff that this blog is, I hope, known and appreciated for sharing.
Happy New Year everyone!

No, seriously!

Okay, so as we approach Christmas, I tend to think of gifts for people and I’ll no doubt post about them.  Okay, so, mostly, these are things I wouldn’t mind getting, but, still, I have good taste, so you’ll enjoy them, too.
So, clearly, you can tell that I’m no web designer from the way this site looks, right?  Well, believe it or not, I used to code all the pages for this site in HTML, by hand, using nothing more than a text editor!  Okay, all you design people can stop laughing at me now, thanks.
Anyway, when I saw this book, HTML for Babies, I was delighted!  Finally, I can start training my two-year-old godson to code compliant HTML so that he’s ready to take over managing my websites by the time he’s in Middle School!  You think I’m kidding?  Then hit the link and you’ll see that, no, I’m serious.  This is a book filled with properly coded HTML and simple, positive messages perfect for any toddler learning to read.  It really is baby’s first HTML training manual!

So, go ahead and start your geek young!  The perfect stocking stuffer for your budding web developer!
(You can also buy it directly from Amazon here: [amazon_link id=”0615487661″ target=”_blank” ]HTML for Babies[/amazon_link])

There are a lot of Linux distributions.

No, really, I mean there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Linux distributions out there.
Frankly, it can get a little overwhelming sometimes.  But, I think about them and what they all are and what they do.  I think about them because it’s my job, and because I’m always thinking about what’s coming next in the IT industry.  So, what Linux installs do I think about?  Funny you should ask….
I think about Android.  Yeah, that’s right, the operating system that runs those Droid phones is a kind of Linux.  That’s kind of amazing to me, really, but there it is.  And, I think about it because Android seems to be on more and more devices these days.  Everything from phones to tablets to who knows what next in the consumer market.  But, I try to pay attention to Android because so many people at my office have Android based phones and they all expect me to help them figure their phones out.
I think about Fedora, which is the open source version of Red Hat, which enjoyed pretty good market penetration when they first got going.  They’ve got a lot more competition today, but, still it’s in an IT professional’s best interests to be at least familiar with Fedora.
That goes for openSUSE, too.  openSUSE was bought out by Novell some time ago, so there’s no telling where it’s going to end up with all the buying and selling around Novell’s bits and pieces these days, but it’s still a pretty heavily installed Linux distribution.  My brief experience with it was good, though, I have to admit, that was on older hardware for a personal project, not a corporate gig.
If you’re an Oracle shop, you’ll probably know about Oracle Linux, which is basically Red Hat Linux after Oracle has made modifications to it.  Oh, and jacked the price up.  Still, if you work with Oracle a lot, it’s probably worth looking into.
Eweek recently ran a slidwshow about these, and several other, versions of Linux under the title 10 Linux Distros Every IT Manager Should Know.  Obviously, I agree with some of their listing, but clearly not all.  And, I think they left some off.

For instance, what about the live CD editions?
Two I think anyone in IT should know are Ubuntu and Knoppix.  Knoppix has been around a longer, but Ubuntu has a slicker interface and, I think, is a little better at detecting hardware than Knoppix.  Also, you can install Ubuntu from the live CD media, if you would like, and plenty of people do run it as a desktop.  The real plus is that there’s a pretty healthy community around these two installations, especially Ubuntu.  So, if you need help with either one, there are a lot of resources on the internet to answer your questions.
I use these two all the time to recover data of damaged installs of Windows.  I even used one to build a PC imaging system before I started using Clonezilla, which is also, incidentally, based on Linux.

If you’re worried about security, Linux can help with that, too.
For quite some time, the National Security Agency has sponsored SELinux, which is a pretty secure, hardened version of Linux.  They designed it to be reasonably secure right as a default, since an insecure default install is usually where security problems start.  Of course, you may not trust the NSA.  And, while this is “sponsored” by them, it’s not actually an official US Government Linux install.
For that, you have to go to the US Airforce.  Their Lightweight Portable Security distro is the first official US Linux distribution.  I haven’t actually tried it myself, but ZDNet has a pretty good review of it.

So, as you can see, if you haven’t looked into Linux much before, there are a lot of things to investigate.  And, as a computer professional, I DO recommend that you check out at least some flavor of Linux.  It’s so prevalent and so flexible and handy to have that if you haven’t bumped into it yet, you will.  So before you need to know it, investigate it some on your own.  You’ll be glad you did.
(And, I’m sure every seasoned IT pro has their favorite distro, like Debian, but there are too many to list them all.  If you have opinions about any, please, leave comments!)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

Like Wikipedia, but on the micro scale.

It may surprise some readers here that I’m a geek in my professional life.  (Okay, so it may not have surprised many readers, but, still…)  And, as such, I tend to use computers in a lot of my daily life, including my creative life.  One tool that I’ve been experimenting with a bit is tiny, low-overhead wikis, sort of like a tiny, personal Wikipedia, only it’s on my desktop and not publicly available via…
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(Incidentally, this is a great way to setup pretty painless documentation for a small IT department.  And, in fact, I’ve started doing just that!)

Hackers are porting Linux viruses (virii ?) to OS X.

Last week Monday, ZDNet reported that hackers have ported code for a trojan from Linux to Apple’s OS X.  For those of my readers who don’t know what a trojan is I’m referring to a malicious program that opens the door for other, usually even worse, programs to come into the infected operating system, like the Greeks did in the classic stratagem known as the Trojan Horse.  It hasn’t been seen in the wild yet, but apparently the C source code for this has been available for quite some time.

Frankly, I’m surprised that this doesn’t happen more often than it does.  In the old days, virus writers had to really know something because they used assembly to create them.  Now, with Windows and all the other object-oriented programming languages filled with bloated libraries of programming calls, along with the availability of existing code on the internet, they hardly have to know anything to write fairly nasty malware.  And, as I’ve mentioned before, as Apple laptops become more popular, more malware will start to show up there.  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to infect iPads and iPhones, too, if they haven’t already.

I hate people like this.
I spent most of my day today cleaning a malware infection off a machine.  This little bugger had not only disabled the Windows Task Manager, which is pretty common these days, but it also cleaned out the Start Menu, including all the built-in things like the link to Control Panel and My Documents and all those things on the right side of the Windows XP default Start Menu.  But, it also flagged most of the drive as Hidden and System, making it even more difficult to load the software I used to clean it.  I had to go into Safe Mode just to get the system clean enough to restart into Safe Mode with Networking so I could update Malwarebytes, which is what I eventually used to get rid of the beastie.   (I used Spybot Search and Destroy to keep the malware from loading to make the machine useable with networking support so I could update Malwarebytes, incidentally.)
So, yeah, these slimeballs keep me in a job, but, really, I’d appreciate it if they stopped helping me stay employed.  I promise I can find plenty of other things to do!

So, look lively out there people!  Be suspicious of what you download and click on!

UPDATE:  Apparently, this has been found out in the wild now.  And, according to TechWorld, it has a purpose; to use your system to generate BitCoins for it’s evil masters.  Very clever.  Nasty, but, still, very clever.