Salon.com News | America the ignorant

OK.. I thought maybe I was crazy when I was a TA that the students knew nothing. Now I know that isn't really true. They did no nothing about history. Sadly most of my knowledge is historic. I remember trying to read up on foreign policy when I was younger. I poured over what I could find.. and still felt I was lacking info. US News and World Report, dropped the World Report part, Time's foreign section is gone. I became more and more frustrated. Then I went to college and gave up reading the news. I was too busy reading other things.

By the time I got out...I was lost in foreign politics, except what my friend Eric kept me apprised of. I still find the nightly news boring. Not because the content is difficult or mature but because it is so fluff ridden. What the author calls "selfish journalism". We used to make a big deal out of watching the foreign parts of C-SPAN in college... Prime Minister's Q&A was always good for some laughs. Now I know why that was Eric's favorite part of the day. It was the only good foreign news on.

Fortunately the web now brings me foreign papers. Especially the UK papers. Since I read them much faster than I read the German ones... I was watching a German news wire durring the whole WTC/Pentagon thing, mostly because it hadn't been slammed.

Do yourself and everyone else a favor. Read a bit of foreign news today, and every day.

Gartner Recommends Against Microsoft IIS
Well I guess we all knew this was coming. I have to say I agree... I run IIS. I don't intend to stop running IIS. The problem is that EVERYONE including a moderately bright 6 year old can put up a website with IIS. But what everyone doesn't do is patch the thing.

When Code Red came out.. If you look back in my blog you can see it too.. I said if I wanted to write a nasty worm I would wait for microsoft to release a patch, write something that took advantage of that vulunerability and release it. That looks like about exactly what happened with Nimda. The patch came out two days later the worm hit. If people don't check for patches daily, or at least get on the Microsoft mailing list that notifies you of patches (after all it's free) IIS will never be safe.

The other thing people need to do is turn off the features they aren't using. Fine you are using IIS, you are serving a web page.. why do you have FTP running? ("What is FTP?" you ask. All the better reason to not have it running.) One of the biggest problems with IIS is that it default installs everything wide open, along with Microsoft's tendenancy to go with the principle of most privlidge on user rights.... it leads to servers asking, no begging to be hacked. It makes them easy to set up, easy to install... great... do we want easy targets or machines that require a bit more work to set up but are much harder to penetrate?

I guess this is my usual vent. NT and IIS don't have to be insecure, well they are in parts written with big gaping holes, that have been patched over causing littler holes etc... but in effect every OS is that way to some extent or another. The problem is the administrators, or small business owners or whoever who aren't patching their stuff. Take a bit of personal responsibility folks.

I concur..if somebody got hit by Code Red and Nimda (it would be because they didn't apply the patches that were recomended when Code Red was all over the news) their insurance rates should go up. Heck even my 72 year old uncle who has never touched a computer asked if I was patched versus Code Red. Get with the program folks..you are making us decent NT administrators look bad.

Resumes...
I hate them.....the worst thing about them is how driven they are by fashion. 10 years ago I was working on my first resume, the order of the day was changing font sizes and styles, pretty textured papers... you remember pale blue and marbledy, grey with little flecks... everyone spending hours agonizing over the choice.....the font choices were as bad...everything set in columns too...

A few years later... things were more moderate... font choices, were down a bit (well you still had all those choices but you were only using one or two) papers were still pretty but fewer choices....

now.. if it doesn't look swell in plain text all one font size completely scannable on startched white paper with no texture and no funny formatting you are doomed. The info is still the same... but you have to redo the whole shebang for what? fashion. Now as opposed to small lists of skills at the bottom set in nice redable columns, they go at the top comma delimited, impossible to really understand just worthless acronyms and jargon. Designed to get snagged by keyword searches. UGH. Got to get all the right ones in there..don't leave it out no matter how stupid it sounds, the more hits the better.

I hope for a more moderate solution soon. Better smarter OCR should allow more people friendly resumes in the future. Or heck maybe we can do away with the paper ones all together.

Why is it that after nearly three years of being contractually stuck at a job, when I am free the IT market goes to pot? There are jobs. However right now they are all *NIX jobs. I don't do *NIX well enough to do it professionally. I could learn it...but still...I let my *NIX skills rust after college... nobody wanted them.. now everbody wants them.. and I am way underskilled. ARRGGHHHH. Anybody know of a nice NT job in the Twin Cities. I can even fake Win2k.

CNN.com - Bin Laden exploits technology to suit his needs - September 21, 2001

Well nobody said Bin Laden was stupid. Giving up his high tech toys to avoid detection. I suppose US Separatists have been doing this for years.

Ok.. as thought it wasn't bad enough that users do dumb things... like oh I don't know forget the difference between format and scandisk.. and want their data back... I have a new pet peeve. I sit within 5 feet of the network printer, right? Regularly people come stare at the printer...nothing coming out.. it hasn't started a warmup cycle or anything right.. they stare at it a while give me a dirty look, hrumph, push some buttons and walk away...a bit later they return asking where their print jobs are... none stuck in the queue.. in the mean time I have printed something or someone else has.. they are SURE that it must be a sevrer problem. Because obviously they know more than the fat troll who sits in the wiring closet. I ask "Are you sure you hit print?" they grumble and go back to their desks.. 45 seconds later the printer whines.. and out comes their print job. HOW HARD IS IT? you have to hit print before things come out of the printer. My other favorite are those who take the printer offline and don't put it back. Then they are mystified at why things don't print.

STACK: ROBERTSON AND FALWELL WERE WRONG

OK..whoever posessed Rush.. can we have the real Mr Limbaugh back. Not that I disagree but still it seems just a bit weird.

You know the amazing thing about pets? They don't watch the news. They stay at home all day waiting for you to come home. When you get there every day is the same for them. They want to be let out of their crates, to say a brief hello, slurp a great deal of water, dribble it all over the house trying to say a more thourough hello, then they want outside, when back inside they want their dinners. They don't care that the world trade center was destroyed that the pentagon is burning, and that for some reason following four plane crashes in a single day reporters have never once uttered the word black box in regards to the plane. Weird huh. By the time the dogs and I had gotten done with the daily routine and I was changed out of my work clothes I had plum forgotten to turn the TV on. And you know what I didn't miss it much anyhow.. since at that point yesterday nobody was saying or showing anything new. yea dogs! and the cat ain't so bad either.

Welcome to 21st century warfare.

well I am certainly not bored today. This is a real mess. Hijacked airplanes. Crashes. What an adventure. I feel for the air traffic controllers who were talking to the planes when they went off their plans.

What I am most ticked off about however is the behavior of the news people at about 10AM today. The hysteria in their voices, the stupid questions like "Why didn't the security plan take care of these attacks?" like you can plan a defense for a building from a pilot trying to run into them with a commercial jet, what do they want anti aircraft canons mounted and manned on the tops of all tall buildings? Or the guy trying to convince somebody it was chaos and the government was disolving. It was reloacating sure.. but disolving, we are not without a government, it is highly inconvienced but it is not dead. UGH.

266 people killed on the planes alone, not to mention injuries in buildings.

A padded room with a view.

September 10th, my friend wrote a blog that I agree with whole heartedly. Why don't people think they/you can be happy without being part of some sort of relationship? Why do you have to be dating/married/whatever to be happy? Are we all unballanced ions seeking another ion to complete our rings? I think not.

sometimes i wish i was more normal. or maybe i am and nobody talks about it. i would rather not talk to someone i like..even just in a friendly way than talk to them and find out that they don't like me. this has gone on to become such a paranoia that i don't even talk to strangers on the telephone. not that i care if they like me..but just because i don't want to like them. raising isolationism to new heights.. quite probably. stupid...naw keeps me from being rejected. hell even when i need help i won't call anyone...that may be stupid. better to live alone with the delusion of friends than to find out the people you were deluding your self about don't like you.

so if i seem cold and distant now you know why..because i would rather not take whatever risk it takes to discover if you actually like me or not. stubborn, frustrating, irritating, dense, lonely.....there we go next time i get asked one of those company bonding questions about five words that describe you i have them all ready to go.

Welcome to the Adult Webmaster School!
You know the more I look for a job the more appealing this sounds. All right I know there is no way I can start out supporting myself on web porn.. but surely I could do it in the end.. and work not have to work for a boss I can't respect. Maybe in a field I have a hard time taking seriously.. but at least I wouldn't have a boss.

weird my june and july archives appear to be missing from the archive page. The files are still on the server though.. so all I have to do is figure out why they are gone and tada! things will be fixed. if anybody knows what I did wrong let me know.

Salon.com Books | The siren

OK.. I got to find me one of these biographies. Looks like I am off to the library.

HELP DESK ruled today. This sometimes frustratingly erratic online comic is good enough to put up with the eratic schedule on which it is released. Mostly I go back and check about weekly to see if things have changed and catch up. Really a good read. Other items on the daily section of my bookmarks include:

Your Daily Poetry Break Some old poem and a bit of explanation daily.
Ubersoft.net Home of HELP DESK
User Friendly the Comic StripAnother geeky comic
General Protection Fault Yet Another Geeky Comic
OED Online - Word of the Day A word of the day thing.. but more indepth than Websters
Merriam-Webster's Word Puzzles Fun 2-3 minute puzzle a day
Kevin & Kell Yet Another Geeky Comic --this one with anthropomorphic characters
Itty Bitty Rants Nate....occasional rants on things....been a bit sparse lately
betsy's stuff Betsy's stuff.. her just talking..
Welcome to incidents.org - By The SANS Institute Ooh look it's almost work related.

There are other places I hit daily...but these are the ones that are actually in the Daily folder of my bookmarks.

Some days I wonder if anyone ever reads this.. I sort of doubt it as it isn't actually linked to from anywhere, oh wait it is linked to from www.duckpondretreat.com isn't it. Hmmm... oh well since I mostly do it to keep me from going insane sitting here at my desk it doesn't much matter does it.

Every been really frustrated by a mythical computer problem. Not that I can't prove it doesn't work.. I just can't prove what exactly doesn't work. Really annoying. 11 days 11hrs to go on my contract.. scary... need a new job.