It’s good to be home and hug the wife and hug the kids.
Maybe since I’m back in my comfort zone here in The Garage, I’ll think of something to write about tomorrow.
Let’s face it, the shit I’ve been doing is boring. There’s got to be some funny shit out there to make fun of.
Something awful went wrong in Angleton last night. According to the wife, power was lost to the entire town. Wasnt even a storm system in the area. Accordingly, all of my lab went down, including the server that hosts this blog.
I am sure no one even noticed, since almost zero people read this blog, but more importantly my email was down and access to other resources I host were also non-operable.
But, have no fear. Through the wonderful technology of the telephone, I called the wife and had her restart the main server. Everything else can wait until I return to my lair. The lab. The Garage.
I hate rude people. Do you? Went down to the little contenental breaksfast, (it is amazing what passes for breakfast under the guise of “contenental” isn’t it?) at the Bradford Homestyle Suites who have been accomodating me during this brief hiatus to the land of the young and liberal.
The breakfast quarters, which are tiny to begin with, are packed. People standing around talking. People sitting and enjoying their canned fruit and frozen Sam’s Choice waffles. And then there were a group of women, teachers I gathered from the brief snippets of conversation I overhead, who were sitting at one of the four–count ‘em, four–little tables enjoying a nice… conversation.
I stood at a little bar that ran along the foyer into the reception area. Another guy cleaned off a spot at the little phone kiosk for guests in the recpeption area to use. People were squeezing by the little table with the four little teachers having the little carefree conversation. How rude.
Then to top it off, once the place started to clear out a little bit and some table space was opening up, the little gaggle decided they could now relinquish the table. So they moved from their table to the hallway leading into the common area, effectively blocking it. As I shoved my way through them on my way out, I said [soto voce], but still audible if barely, fucking assholes. I am sure they were aghast and had no clue. After all they were teachers.
Now you can see why I find it so easy to make new friends.
It’s almost lunch time. Working on a lab about session management. Yawn.
This has been helpful class so far in that Java and the J2EE archetecture is very new to me and the Visual Studio development tool is brand new. However, the main thrust of the course is basically putting web presentation on the front end of an existing web application. The setting up of the descripter files, security, and database connectivity was glossed over. Of course that is the info I am most interested in.
In other words, this is a pretty basic class. In hindsight, I wish I had book-studied for this exam and spent my training funds on the Web Application Server (WAS) course. C’est la vie, n’est pas?
Since certification to enhance future job prospects is the primary goal, it’s all good. Is it time to go swimming yet?
Just testing remote blogging. I am sitting in the IBM JSP Servlet class in Austin. This is going to be a long week.
More later…
LPIC Linux Level 1 - Test 101
Scaled Score: 540 Req’d Passing Score: 500
Section Analysis # Questions # Correct % Correct 1. Hardware & Architecture 2. Installation & Package Management 3. GNU & Unix Commands 4. Devices, Filesystems, & FHS 5. X Window System
It is with regret that I report that I flunked the Linux test, which is bad… but not as bad as it sounds.
Scaled Score: 490 Req’d Passing Score: 500
Section Analysis # Questions # Correct % Correct 1. Hardware & Architecture 2. Installation & Package Management 3. GNU & Unix Commands 4. Devices, Filesystems, & FHS 5. X Window System
I think just one additional right answer and I would have passed.
But here is the kicker, the three sections marked with arrows in the table above are in the section for test 102 according to the study guide I am using. I was taking test 101. Half of the sections I studied are now included in test 102. Obviously, the arrangement of the test objectives were changed by LPI and I didn’t know because the study guide I was using wasn’t updated.
So, here is the upside. I already know half of the 102 material because I mistakenly prepared for it for test 101. On test 101, at the minimum I only have to answer maybe two additional questions correctly about either RPM packages or XFree86 and I will pass. What all this means is that I may be able to complete both tests by next Friday. I cant take test 101 again for seven days. So I think I will take test 102 on Thursday and re-take test 101 on Friday. That puts me back on the original schedule which was already week behind.
Still, it is hard not to be bummed out. But my plan is the best I can make of the situation and the end result is better than the original.
…is scheduled at 10:30am tomorrow in the big city of Houston, which is about an hour’s drive. I have been doing exam cram the last day or two because I think I am going to FAIL!
Do you hear me, I said FAIL!
The Horror!
Anyway, I always freak out like that but I am feeling better now that I covered all the material in the exam 101 study guide front to back twice in the last two days or so and four times in the last two weeks. I will rise early in the morning, go over the highlighter’s notes, and pass that damn exam.
On my test Linux box here at TheGarage, I have installed, configured, and/or have running the following services, processes, and applications:
They are going to get me on all those damn command options, I know it. I am a reference manual kind of guy and if I find myself typing a long command more than once, I’m creating an alias for it. The people who remember all that crap off the top of their head are sick!
Nah, it’ll be alright. I’ll get enough of them right to pass the exam.
Here are a couple of services I have attempted to set up, but have not been as successful:
Websphere is definitely still in my sights, especially since I will be travelling to Austin week after next for a week long course covering Servlet and JSP Development using Websphere Studio Application Developer 5.0. Thats a mouthful there, isnt it.
I am about a week behind my original schedule, but by mid-August, according to plan, I will have three brand-spanking new professional certifications:
Then I got to get a real job instead of this BS work from home on small projects crap–which I absolutely love doing, but my big screen TV is on its last leg. The big downside to which is the re-institution of the commute back to Houston, where the dollars always are at.
After that development occurs, I will probably stack another IBM certification–most likely DB2– to bump the overall IBM certification level to Certified Solution Analyst, or something like that.
An awsome display of the possibilites stemming from the use of Flash technology and lysergic acid diethylamide .
{Hat tip to Dave}
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What can be done about all these little fuckers out there who download all the port-scanning hacker wannabee software and continuously run it against your site in the hopes of achieving an erection?
If I could get my hands on one of the little bastards, I’d throttle them good. |
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About once a day, sometimes more, some nosy little shit bag probes my system for hours on end. They run port scans, send bogus TCP packets, and even try to spoof my internal, non-routable IP addresses. Hello? They are non-routable addresses. Fuckwits.
If it weren’t for the consumption of my already scarce bandwidth I could give a shit. I am sure a professional hacker could get into my garage without too much effort. But there is nothing here a professional hacker would want. My mail relay is inoperable. The only porn I have was downloaded for free from the net (I am not a pay for porn kinda guy). So what the fuck they want? Nothing that’s what. A bunch of bored little kiddies spending my money.
CATCH….{
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If you are one of these little wannabee hacker douche bags, and you are at a party some day bragging about your hacking proficiency, and someone walks up and bitch slaps you to the ground… that will be ME!
more… I am now convinced this is a deliberate DoS attack. I guess I pissed someone off. If they think they are pissed now, wait until I find out who it is. Then they are really gonna be pissed. These are the address blocks sending shit to me: Today: Yesterday– log overflow (bastards) |
}
FINALLY…{
Lets see what kind of game they got. My ISP was absolutely zero help. I will follow-up with the abuse complaints I filed with my ISP as well as the two ISP’s who owned the incoming IP’s, although I know they were probably spoofed I am still going to want any evidence they might have as to the origin of the attack. Then, just fill out a little on-line form with all the 411 I gather and let the FBI take it from there.
I went rummaging around some of my old stuff, packed away in dusty boxes like some kind of pack-rat, and found a perfectly good router with VPN and firewall. Leftover from some previous adventure. My HTTP/SMTP server is now behind a decent firewall, so amateurs need not apply. (This is not a challenge to the pros who lurk around. Just to let the amateurs know to fuck off.) I still have some additional work to do to so all my admin jobs (log rotation, replication, etc) on other boxes behind the real firewall will point them to the new internal IP address of my exposed web server.
So all you little bastards, or bitches as the case may be, did is waste a little bit of my time, which I usually just waste on my own anyway. As a bonus, I knew that router was stowed and I had been meaning to get it set up (I mean why waste a perfectly good resource?) So thanks, my garage network is now even better and more secure than it already was.
}
I wonder how Ken Lay will fare in his upcoming trials. I will be surprised to see if he did anything criminal before Skilling got the boot. Very surprised. This, of course does not mean I will be surprised to see him convicted of everything with which he is charged. (I thought Martha would get, off, remember?) The lying thing to prop up the price while he worked to save the company is probably where the jury will turn on him.
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On the other hand, Jeff Skilling… I will not be surprised to find out that guy had his hands in everything. He strikes me as the kind of guy who would insist. I saw him play 3-on-3 street basketball with Clyde Drexler and some other guy at one of the weekly mini-street fests they had at Enron. Skilling had some game and you could tell he really wanted to win. Drexler, on the other hand, even in retirement, probably could have run the court all by himself. (Watching Drexler up close, even on the equivalent of a driveway, was absolutely awesome. A true talent.)
In the end, Drexler let the last game get down to something like 9-9 and then blew it and let the employee team win the tournament, which I thought was a classy move. Not that the Enron employees weren’t good. This was the winning team out of about five or so in the final game.The prize was to play Drexler, Skilling and some other guy in a final game*. Needless to say, Enron was a very dynamic place. |
Of course I don’t really know Lay, Skilling, Fastow, or any of these guys in trouble for stealing from Enron, except for having worked as a distributed systems consultant for Enron Energy Services (EES) for one year in 1998 and Enron Broadband Services (EBS) for about five or six months in early 2001. In 1998, at EES, the environment was one of fast growth and a lot of technology work to be done. Lots of business to be had in the energy sector, especially where trading was concerned. I probably could have been convinced to work there in 1998, but not in 2001.
In 2001, the pace was similar at EBS as it was at EES in ‘98. My work area was in the hallway for the first week or two they were growing so fast. Then I shared a large office with about five other programmer/analysts/consultants, each working on something different. But in about two months, about March, the pace quickly changed. And I mean like a night and day change. Not enough space quickly became plenty of space. I was one of the last consultants to go I guess because I was one of the main designers of the order fulfillment/billing system. In the end, of course, everyone went. People I have known for five years and longer who were Enron employees were out on their ass and all that money they thought they had in their retirement was gone.
In the interim of those two gigs at Enron, I also worked as a consultant for six months at Dynegy, who was also experiencing new found riches through trading energy on the open markets. They were doing a lot of the same things Enron was doing. All of the energy trading firms were doing similar things. That’s why I think we will find Enron’s problems lie in the back-room shenanigans that occurred with the creation of all these related companies to market a wide range of different commodity-type products–like water, energy, even computer bandwidth–not in manipulating the market (Californians got wht they deserve for being so stupid about their energy policy), not in the overall general business practices involved. The more these new business entities were being created, the more the people setting them up figured out how to profit individually from them with accounting maneuvers and other good-ole-boy programs.
If this proves to be the case–which so far it has–I am very much not in favor of hanging Ken Lay out to dry due to political expediency unless he was in involved in the actual crimes. If Lay did anything wrong post-Skilling, he will suffer doubly for it. When Mr. Lay says that being friends with the Bush’s is actually hurting his defense against these charges, I believe him. That is a very powerful crowd of friends that the man spent a lifetime acquiring and cultivating that is off-limits to him now as a result of the extremely hostile political climate. His relationship with his friends also puts him in the cross-hairs of those who hate his friends. Ken Lay rasised a lot of money for Bush-Cheney in 2000.
The ultra-libs and partisan hacks want to destroy Ken Lay simply for the resulting propaganda bonanza because he is a friend of Bush and made his money from oil (energy is always referred to as “oil”, isn’t it. “Big Natural Gas” just isn’t as sexy sounding as is “Big Oil”.)
Otherwise all the other energy trading companies would be in the same boat as Enron.
Halliburton is the new Enron and the libs will try to destroy it too. It’s Big Oil after all.
*I was at the first annual Dream Team Slam Dunk Basketball competition. All the search references are in regards to the second annual tournement, where Ken Lay was on the team. I am not sure of the team members in 1998 except for Drexler and Skilling. The games were very competitive and Drexler and Skilling did all the work. Skilling seems to have put on quite a bit of weight since then.
Damn. I knew when all the new photos of Debra LaFave, the school teacher cum sex-fiend (sorry), were published the search engine hits would start. I saw the video clip FoxNews had on the day the story broke and knew she was a bombshell. Then the wedding photos began to get some play. And now my wife was showing me a full spread, ahem, that Fox has on their site. Dang.
I didn’t think I would be getting many hits (relatively speaking of course) since all I had on my site regarding Lafave was a little blurb in a larger NewsRoundup entry.
I got to tell you, if this chick had been an ugly buck-tooth hag who could eat corn-on-the-cob through a picket fence, this story would have died the same day it broke. But nooo. You got every hard dick in the world who used to fantasize about banging their teacher in Jr High looking for some new whack material to stoke their fires. And gals too, I suppose.
Good luck, guys and gals.
Was looking at my referrals just now and after deleting all entries from my own IP address (which is cheating me because my wife does actually read my blog), I have 1,726 referrals from outside my network. My page counter only has displayed 1,279 hits. There is an incongruity there that has me confounded and pissed off. I’m looking into it. That’s about 25% of total hits not even counting those that don’t get logged as referrals, such as bookmark links.
| Madfish Willie has a short-list of Texas colloquialisms. Being a life-long Texas country boy, I added a few more. Here are the ones I added: |
 Hillbilly money clip |
Geez, all I got to do is listen to myself talk. I may start compiling a list each day as I say them. Now go read Madfish Willie’s
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