For the past three years or so, I’ve generally been content with the way things in my life were going, but I always had this itch in the back of my head, like something really important was missing.
I don’t want to reveal too much too soon, but I think I might have found it. Friends that are close to me should know what I’m talking about.
Filed under: General | 2 Comments »
Another day, another Mail Enable exploit.
The vulnerability is caused due to an error within the SMTP service when handling the HELO command. This can be exploited to crash the service via a HELO command with specially crafted arguments.
The vulnerability has been reported in the following products:
* MailEnable Standard (all versions)
* MailEnable Professional (all versions)
* MailEnable Enterprise (all versions)Solution:
Apply Hotfix.
http://www.mailenable.com/hotfix/MESMTPC.ZIP
Report from Secunia.
Filed under: General | 1 Comment »
Yes, I’m still alive. Enough people have complained about the fact that my last post was over a year ago, I decided to throw up a quick blurb to let everybody know I’m not dead. *waves to Mike*
I just moved into a new apartment over at Briar Hills. Aside from the rather gaudy exterior, I’d say it’s quite nice. No other place in Omaha gives as much space for the price and they let me keep my cats. So, I’m happy.
Filed under: General | 3 Comments »
I’ve had a lot of people ask me about this issue, so I’m just going to post the resolution here. If you’re experiencing script errors within various MMC snap-ins and have installed the cumulative IE security update 896688, here’s how it’s fixed. Originally, I was recommending that people uninstall the patch, but Microsoft has since released a KB article.
Copy the following and paste it into notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
@=”ClassMoniker”[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\InprocServer32]
@=”ole32.dll”[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}\ProgID]
@=”clsid”[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\CLSID]
@=”{0000031A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}”
Save the file as patch.reg and double-click it. Click “yes” at the prompt to merge into your registry. The error messages should be gone at this point, but if they persist, you may have to restart the machine.
Filed under: General, IT | No Comments »
My site’s starting to get hit really bad by “blog spammers.” They stop by only to spam the comments section of posts with horrendous ads and links. It’s not a huge issue, at the moment, since WordPress is configured to collect everything into a queue where I have to approve it before it goes live. Although, I do consider it to be a huge waste of my time to have to login and clear out a few dozen or so spam comments from the queue each day. I’ve temporarily had to disable email notification of comments, since I was receiving them all the time.
I plan on installing a comment spam filter plugin soon, but there’s so many of them and they all work so differently. I know a lot of the people that visit my page use WordPress themselves. So, I’m going to ask — how do you deal with it? What plugins have you tried and which did you find to be the best? Is there any one that stands out from the rest?
Filed under: General | 2 Comments »
I’m thinking of giving this Hosting Speeds Comparison Project a try. I haven’t really done much advertising for the hosting and this site gives out free advertising and the ability to compare yourself with several other hosts out there. They give you a small banner to place on your site that shows your rank and allows people to perform speed tests. I’m using the customer version here, but it looks something like this:
Filed under: General, IT | No Comments »
I honestly don’t think my stomach could tolerate another Mountain Dew. Ever since Mountain Dew started their “Every Ten Minutes,” sweepstakes, I’ve been drinking it like it was water. The eligible bottles started showing up around here a little over a week ago and I’ve managed to accumulate 29 points since then. I wouldn’t reccommend anybody else try this.
I’ve never had my ass kicked so much by a beverage in my entire life. I bought four bottles yesterday: 2 LiveWires, a CodeRed, and a Wild Cherry Pepsi. They were all gone by midnight and I didn’t really think anything of it. Though I had the worst stomach ache you could imagine by morning. I woke up and it literally felt like my stomach was being eaten from the inside out. To top it off, I had my advanced Linux class this morning and you don’t want to miss one of Mr. Johnson’s classes. So, sleeping it off was not an option.
Even though there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I would touch a soda product this morning, I’m still determined as ever to pursue every chance I have to win an XBox 360. I actually paid a couple of people to buy and drink bottles of Mountain Dew for me under the agreement that they give me the cap once they were done.
Hopefully, if I don’t win an X360, I’ll at least get a t-shirt or something once this is all over.
Filed under: Gaming, General | No Comments »
I realize that I’m a bit late with this post, but I’ve been a bit pre-occupied for the last week and a half ever since I got my laptop back from being repaired. I’ll summarize everything that’s happened between now and my last post into categories for easy reading.
Laptop Repair
If you’re fortunate enough to have a Nebraska Furniture Mart in your area and you ever purchase a laptop from them, pray that their warranty repair work isn’t handled by Trisec Computers. These guys are a complete and total joke when it comes to servicing machines. This will have been my second experience with them and I hope to god it’s my last. The first incident happened about a year ago. I was unlucky enough to have the hard drive in my laptop fail only after six months of use. Back then, everything was shipped to and handled by Toshiba. So, I received my machine back within two weeks as promised. This time, I called about bringing my machine in to have the hinges repaired and they notified me that everything was handled in-house now, so I should expect things to be completed quicker. Bullshit! I called them a week after submitting the machine for repair to see how things were coming along and they hadn’t even looked at it yet. So, I called back a week after that and they had looked at it, but weren’t sure at this point if the work would be covered under warranty. They told me to call back the next day and talk to “Cid.” Fair enough. I call back the next day and, thankfully, Cid is knowledgable and very understanding of my situation. He explains that he’s seen a lot of issues with the hinges on my model of laptop, so there’s no problem in proceeding with the repair. I ask him how long it should take and he tells me that parts usually take 3-5 days to arrive and it should be completed shortly after that. Good news! I call back five days later only to find out that they’re still “trying to acquire” the parts they need to fix my laptop. I later find out that they’d initially ordered the wrong style of hinge. They want me to call back later that day. I have their phone number memorized by this point. So, I call back later that day as instructed and the guy I end up talking to informs me that they’ve found and ordered the parts they need and to expect them in another 5-7 days. I’m very irate at this point, but I comply and call them the following Friday morning. They’re not finished, but they have the parts. “Call back later this afternoon,” they say. They ended up finishing up around 4:00 and I picked my laptop up by 5:00 that evening.
I’ve had my machine back for a little over a week now and I’m pleased with the sturdiness of the new hinge, though I’m still absolutely baffled at how they managed to take an entire month to perform the repair. I used to work for a small PC repair shop in Elkhorn, NE and I remember people getting upset if we had their machines longer than two weeks.
New Network Equipment
With the addition of a third wireless device onto the home network, my MN-500 router was feeling a bit strained. The 802.11b was no longer cutting it and I figured I would eventually benefit from gigabit ethernet. So, I invested in a new D-Link DGL-4300 router and a DWL-G650 cardbus adapter for my laptop. The difference in performance is absurd. I can actually tolerate transferring large files over the LAN, now. With the new mobility that wireless G gives me, I opted to upgrade my local file server (old Athlon Thunderbird) to USB 2.0 just so I could connect my external 320 GB hard drive to it as a third dedicated mass storage device allowing me to still access those files on-the-go.
PVR Experimentation
I’ve recently become addicted to watching videos that people have made featuring Halo 2. It’s really interesting what some creative people manage to turn out and I consider several of the montage videos to be very inspiring. So, I went and purchased a Plextor ConvertX PX-TV-402U PVR and decided to start creating some videos of my own. I’ve produced nine videos so far. Most are full games, which I’m collecting as potential montage material. The ConvertX has a hardware encoder that automatically encodes to video to a high quality DivX format, but I’ve re-encoded most of them into a lower bitrate WMV in order to stream them over my WMS server.
Full Games:
Team Slayer on Ivory Tower [7/29/05]
Team Slayer on Sanctuary [8/25/05]
Capture the Flag on Sanctuary [8/25/05]
Rumble Pit on Elongation [8/25/05]
Neutral Assault on Coagulation [8/27/05]
Rumble Pit on Ivory Tower [8/29/05]
Team Slayer (Swat) on Lockout [8/31/05]
Brief Snippets:
The Typical Team - I made this out of frustration one night after being placed in several pathetic teams by the Halo 2 matchmaking system.
Mad Crazy Lag - I found this to be a particularly unique instance of lag in a game I happened to be recording.
Control Server Issues Resolved
I’ve been having weekly bouts with the Flaretech.Biz control server after converting the VPN into a router-to-router configuration. I only did this because it offered me more power with routing configurations and loads more convenience by allowing me to configure my local fileserver as a gateway into the remote network. That way, I could map drives to shares on both servers using any machine on the LAN.
I eventually gave in and switched back to a remote access based VPN after I started experiencing slowdown issues with Helm’s remote calls and an aggrivating problem where Mail Enable continuously wanted to bind to the RAS adapter and use the 10.0.0.x local addresses for inbound/outbound communication, which would obviously never work for any Internet-bound traffic. I ended up getting a call from a customer mentioning she couldn’t send any email. I ended up having to band-aid the thing just to get outbound email to work and decided that the issues caused by this configuration were starting to outweigh its conveniences. Restoring the remote access VPN configuration managed to solve all outstanding issues.
New School Quarter
I’m so happy that I’m done with last quarter’s classes. I didn’t mind the Linux and Windows Server classes, but the Comp II class was kicking my ass. I’ve never had an instructor as ignorant and nit-picky as the one I had for that class. I don’t think any of my papers scored above an 85 the entire quarter. I’ll never forget one particular incident right after my laptop broke where I took it in on a Saturday and my homework is due on Sunday. I didn’t have access to a machine with Office, which is required for our assignments, and the school wasn’t open on weekends so I couldn’t use their labs. So, I decided to send him a message requesting an extension on that week’s assignment. I explained my situation to him and told him that I would be able to turn my paper in by Tuesday, following my Linux class. His response back simply said “don’t be late.” Thankfully I barely ended up passing that class. I don’t know my exact grade yet, but I was teetering between the upper 70s and low 80s the whole time, so I’m guessing I either ended up with a B or a C, which is fine by me, just so long as I passed the class.
My new classes start this week on Tuesday. I have a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule this quarter. I had a schedule like this a while back and it was no sweat, so I’m sure I can handle it. I should finally be getting into the “complicated” stuff. I have an advanced Linux class, an advanced Windows server class, and a LAN/WAN class, which is basically all about configuring routers. So, this should be fun.
I began finalizing one of the bigger projects I’ve been working on for a client as the last quarter ended. So, I’ve been spending most of my break in-between quarters catching up on some much-needed and relaxing Halo 2 time. I made it a goal to hit an overall level of 30 before the break ended, because I’ve always been stuck between 25 and 28 due to the teammates I get paired with, but I know I’m good enough to roll with people in the lower 30s. I finally ended up accomplishing that goal the other night. I know it sounds stupid, like I care about the number beside my name. Though, I actually just prefer to set goals for myself so that I have something realistic to work towards. It also helps me strive to become a better player. I have a lot of fun playing the game this way and it gives me a sort of sense of accomplishment.
If you’re even slightly observant, you’ll notice that I’ve added a little Halo 2 level pod to the bottom of my sidebar. If you’re interested in making your own, you can do so here.
Filed under: Gaming, General, Halo 2, IT, School | No Comments »
I realize I haven’t written anything in a while. I usually get so unbelievably busy around the 4th of July season that it’s hard to get anything done. I’ve been meaning to write for a while now, but there’s just been so much to catch up on.
However, yesterday was so absolutely horrible that I more or less had to write about it.
Everything started out like a normal Thursday would. I woke up, went to class, and stopped by my grandparent’s place since it’s on the way there and back. Only yesterday was slightly different because my aunt and one of my younger cousins were in town from Kansas City. My aunt was helping my grandmother with a giant charity sale at her old high school across the street. Usually I stop by and have lunch with them, but my aunt and grandmother had already eaten with the others helping out at the sale. So, she asked that I take Brennan (my cousin) back to her place and make sure he and my grandfather had something to eat for lunch.
I knew Brennan wanted to take a ride in my car, so I made the suggestion of picking up Taco Bell. My grandfather agreed and said he didn’t mind Brennan riding along. The nearest Taco Bell was on 120th and Center St, which wasn’t very far away at all. We were turning into the plaza off of 120th St and there was a stop sign with a Grand Am already stopped there, waiting for traffic to pass. We pulled up behind it only to have it suddenly switch into reverse and start backing up. By the time I’d honked my horn, it was already too late. Her rear bumper had already connected with the front of my car. So, we both pulled over and inspected the damage. The lady gets out of her car and says “oh my god, I didn’t even see you back there. Where’d you come from?” I just thought to myself “you have to be kidding me.” Luckily, my license plate holder sticks out quite a bit or at least enough that it prevented any damage. I’m also lucky that she was driving a sporty enough car so that it was low-riding and not something that would’ve scraped up my hood. I was in a decent mood at that point in the day and after thoroughly checking the front of my car for any damage, I decided it wasn’t worth getting the insurance companies involved. So, I let her go.
After lunch, Vicki, my aunt, asked if I would take Brennan to the bowling alley so he could hang out with my younger brothers and sisters. I didn’t have a problem with that and actually ended up staying and doing some bowling myself, since I’ve been interested in getting into a league lately. Apparently that was a bad idea, since after we came out and I managed to get everybody home, I noticed a scuff mark on the rear right side of my car that wasn’t there earlier that day. I’m guessing somebody or something rubbed up against my car in the parking lot. So, now my car’s been hit by something twice in one day.
Once inside, Brennan discovered that I had Halo 2 and asked if we could play. Since I’m always up for a game of Halo, I agreed. It was during this time that my little sister decided she was going to mess with everything on my desk, I guess. She must’ve messed with my laptop quite a bit, because when I went to use it later that day, I noticed it was closed and I always leave it open and running. I’d been having some issues with the lid being “flimsy” previous to yesterday and had plans to take it in to be serviced when I had a chance. Though, my little sister somehow took that a step further and managed to pull out the speaker that sits on top of the hinge and completely break the metal part that connects the monitor to the hinge. So, now I have no other choice but to take my laptop in for service ASAP and pray that they can somehow fix this. I’ve just finished transferring everything over to an external hard drive and I’ll likely be taking it in first thing after I finish this entry. Of course, I’m not finished.
The reason I had gone back to my laptop in an attempt to get some work done is because the boys went outside to ride around in the new ATVs we’d just got last week. Well, apparently while Brennan was riding one, he lost control and couldn’t manage to find the brake. So, he collided right smack dab into the middle of the rear bumper on my parked car. Wonderful, that’s three times my car had been hit in one day.
It’s stuff like this that almost gives you the feeling that you’re not allowed to have nice stuff. There’s always going to be somebody there to ruin it for you, I guess. I just wanted to make sure I got this posted before I took my laptop in, since I won’t be able to get online much without it. I know that some of the people I talk to online check here somewhat often. Hopefully this is enough so that those people don’t start thinking I’ve disappeared.
Filed under: General | 3 Comments »
I just returned from the theatre not too long ago. I went to see the latest Batman flick, ‘Batman Begins.’ It’s rather late, so I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail to give my opinion about the movie. All I have to say is that it was great. I’m probably echoing the postings of thousands of other bloggers out there, but I’ll say it anyway. ‘Batman Begins’ is likely one of the best Batman movies released to date. I especially liked the plausibility of the whole thing. I read on the official site that the story writer, David Goyer, spent a great deal of effort in making sure everything was believable. I honestly think he did an outstanding job. The movie leaves you with impression that anybody could become Batman should they train hard enough and come up with millions of dollars for all the gadgets.
I find myself feeling the same way I did about the first Spider-Man movie…wanting more and unable to wait for a sequel.
Filed under: Movies | 2 Comments »