Diary of a Network Geek

Damn mailservers.
Okay, look, I know that e-mail as defined in the original RFCs is not the most reliable service in the world, but this is getting pretty ridiculous. I know that I’ve missed several automated e-mail from my blog notifying me of incoming comments, but I have no idea what else I’ve missed. At least one person wrote a comment on this blog that mail she’d sent me bounced back, but I don’t know how many other e-mails haven’t made it to me. And, no, it does not help that I fix things like this for a living because I don’t have access to the servers that are misbehaving, not to mention all the various points of failure between me and the sent mail.
Anyway, if you sent me e-mail and didn’t get a response, please, send it again. Or, leave a comment on the blog. If your comment/e-mail is private, just add that to the start of the comment and I’ll keep it hidden from the rest of the world. I moderate every comment on my blog, so no worries about something accidentally rolling live that shouldn’t. Just be sure to mark the private stuff “PRIVATE:”, okay?
We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog obsession.

Have you ever had to learn on the fly?
Well, most of us geeks have, at one time or another. In my case, it was basic Cisco router administration while under fire. No, not literally under fire, just in a tight spot with tons of pressure to get things done quickly and right the first time. Back then, it was pretty easy to get an entry-level Cisco certification, but they made that harder right about the time I tried to get it. Which, honestly, is besides the point. I didn’t really need a Cisco cert to get stuff done. All I really needed was some basic commands. Well, now, we’re all in luck. Thanks to TechRepublic, you can get through some basic Cisco admin tasks with little or no help. Just hit Cisco Administration 101, and they’ll walk you through the basics of setting up a router. And, by basics, I mean setting the Admin password, too, not just configuring the interfaces. Basic configuration includes basic security!
Anyway, it’s a start and enough to get you through a tight spot.

Attention:If you are not a professional geek, the following announcements may bore you to tears!
Right, now that it’s just us boys, let’s get down to brass tacks. First, there’s that pesky Windows Meta File vulnerability. It’s been patched. At least, according to this article on AustralianIT, the overlords at Redmond have stepped outside their rigid, lockstep patch routine to address this vulnerability. All I can say is “About time!” Though, this has been a known problem since November, kids. The only difference now is that the media got ahold of this during a slow news week. The vulnerability wasn’t as big a deal as most news sources were making it.
Second, according to Groklaw, SCO has asked to amend their complaint against Novell. Why? Well, the evidence points quite clearly to the fact that Novell hasn’t violated a copyright, but SCO’s revenue model is such that they have to sue someone for something. So, toward that end, they want to change their suit to, essentially, a breach of contract against Novell. All I can say is, why has this been allowed to go on this long? Someone spank McBride and make him apologize for being an ass then let’s just drop this and move along with the rest of the industry. M’kay?

Finally, this is a little more personal. For years, I’ve been hearing about how the mythical “web services” concept is going to save us all tons of work and money. For just as long, I’ve been saying that it’s not going to work. It’s slow, resource intensive and damn hard to implement. Folks, trust me on this, I’ve been with companies that have tried this again and again. It’s a great idea on paper, but it just ‘aint gonna’ work. Now, it seems like people are finally starting to come around. At least, if I’ve read this ad for a TechRepublic webcast on this topic correctly. Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?

Well, I feel better now. Please, resume your Friday and enjoy your weekend.

Oh, God, this is a new low.
So, the other day, I’m joking with a friend about obsessively checking my webstats for certain pieces of information. He sort of laughs at me in e-mail and questions why I haven’t done a PERL script to automate it. And, I did actually think about it. The problem would be, as I explained to him, that I’d have to run the PERL script as a daemon, or process. Or, as a CRON job that repeated every fifteen minutes or so. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get the kind of notification that would make writing a script worthwhile. The only problem is, even my super relaxed webhost, Amzia.net, would eventually have issues with that kind of utilization.
In any case, I scouted around for some PERL code anyway, even though I’d probably never be able to actually use them. Then, one morning this past week, it occurred to me that I had PHP code that I could modify to produce the same results. So, I copied my chunk of code, tested it and put it out there, live. Worked like a charm. I got live results and e-mailed them to my friend and we had a good laugh that I’d gone and written code, that worked quite well, for a very personal, inside joke, that no one but he and I would see, or get. But, no, that’s not the new low.
Later, on the same day I made it live, I was sitting outside enjoying one of my last remaining clove cigarettes and caught myself refining the code in my head. Yep, I’m sitting there, petting the dog, smoking and tightening code in my head. I even started to add functionality as I crunched the code, too!

Oh, God, I am such a geek. I don’t even think another tattoo would help at this point. Oh, well, at least it pays the bills.

I’m sure most of you know this already.
However, I have a lot of less technical readers here lately who might not have quite as many subscriptions to security mailing lists as I do, so, I thought I’d post a quick warning. There is a significant security hole in all but the absolute most recent version of Blackberry server, and possibly even there, too. Apparently, if someone sends you a specially crafted TIFF or PNG graphic file and you read it with your Blackberry, the attacker can compromise your Blackberry server. By compromise, I mean download and run executables on it. As in, so long and thanks for all the financial data you might have stored on any Windows-based server. Yeah, it could be that bad, due, in part, to the way Windows handles security and the level of access that the Blackberry server wants to that Windows network. So, all you Blackberry readers out there, including you Mystery Reader, be careful with attachments until your IT staff gets the upgrade done! (And, go ahead, bug them about this. Don’t be put off by their scowls and catcalls and rude hand gestures. Network Geeks love to get these little interruptions in our day!)

A guy tried to sell me his wife’s cousin today.
At least, that’s how it felt. He was thanking me for working on his laptop, which is personal, but used for company business. I have to admit, it was a real bear considering all the spyware and junk on it. So, he said that the next time he’s in Brazil, where his young wife is from, he’d get me something and bring it back. Then, we got talking about a project I’m working on and he starts showing me pictures. Of course, all his pictures are mixed in together, so we see a bunch of family shots and he comes across a bunch of pictures from the beach. He laughs and says he could bring me back one of “those nice, little Brazilian girls, but my wife and yours would probably be unhappy.” I laugh and tell him that I’m divorced, so it’s all good. That’s when it happened. He pulls up this pic of a girl in a bikini and tells me she’s his wife’s cousin, or something, and she’d love to meet an American man.
“She’s even nineteen already, so it’d be no problem.” Right. Sure. I’m thirty-seven and he’s going to convince a ninteen-year-old who, at best, speaks English as a second language, to move North and marry me. Yeah, that’d be great for everyone involved. I mean, look, she was pretty and I’m all for people emigrating to this country and getting citizenship and all, but, uh, not that way and not with me that way.
That happened before 9:00am, and the day just got stranger from there…

Better late than never!
Okay, well, hopefully, you didn’t have any major IT problems with your company this holiday season, but you might next year. Think about it. The holidays are a great time to attack an IT department. For one thing, so many people take extra time off around the holidays that everyone’s working a skeleton crew. For another, even those of us at work are slacking pretty badly. Add in office parties to that and, well, you get some good opportunities to make a run at an unsuspecting victim.
Thankfully, the good folks at Techrepublic have prepared a little article about dealing with holiday disasters. It’s a good read and, hopefully, will alert you to some issues that might come up during the holiday season. Share it with your Helpdesk/Network Engineers/Whoever, if you can get them to focus long enough.

Uh, then, can we have them?
Remember that hand-crank laptop I mentioned some time back? Well, the chairman of Intel, Craig Barrett, seems to think that the poor don’t really the clockwork laptops. Uh, okay, then can the moderately poor get some? How about the barely middle-class? I know a lot of those kind that would dig them, especially if they’re going to run Linux.
Gee, you don’t suppose he’s trying to kill this because they’re not going to use Intel chips, do you? Naw! Of course not! What was I thinking?

Woo! That’s a lot of acronyms!
So, let’s break this down… What I’ve got here for you fine computer geeks who read my sad, little blog is a link to the National Security Agency Central Security Service computer Operating Systems security configuration guides. Clear as mud now, right? Okay, so what this is, in a nutshell, is a listing of guidelines from the NSA about how to configure and run server and desktop operating systems to their security standards. Or, at least, to the standard they release to the public. The latent paranoid conspiracy theorist in me can’t shake the feeling that the NSA doesn’t generally have an outward flow of information. And, they list four versions of Windows there, as if they can be actually secured. Surely, that must seem suspicious to my readers. Of course, they also have info for Macintosh and Solaris systems, so, you never know.
Anyway, it’s fun information from the NSA, so go have fun with it!

“I may have to blow up the building.”
Why does my life have to look so much like Office Space? Why?
So, I’m talking to the boss today about the new Linux server that we desperately need, trying to confirm that we will, in fact, order this essential piece of equipment before the end of the year, when the quotes expire, and I get…
“Well, if not by then, shortly after.”
“Ah, you do realize that those quotes expire at the end of the year, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And then the prices will change…”
“Well, tell them that any deep discounts would be appreciated.”
“Uh, those were already in those quotes. After the first of the year, the prices go up.”
“How much?”
“Um, not sure, but a lot.”
“Oh, well, find out. Maybe it will make the MoneyGuy go faster.”

To quote Charlie Brown, and mix my metaphors, “AAAARRRRRGGGHH!!”
And, all this without Chotchkie’s or Jennifer Aniston. Life is not fair.
All I can say is, no one better try to take my Red Swingline Stapler.