A SD card (those little memory cards that go into many digital cameras) with a built in USB connector so it’ll work without a media reader on any PC with a USB port. Dang cool.
Category: Geekdom
Has the guy ever heard of using the <br> tag?
And if you’ve ever done any sort of programming you’ll appreciate this idiot product manager, too.
Why Take A Gadget-Filled Road Trip?
I’m not sure why you would take nearly a dozen gadgets on a trip in the Mt. Hood Wilderness, but this guy did (including a video iPod, a MacBook Pro, and Sony PlayStation Portable). Out of all the gadgets of his I might have brought, it’d probably only be the satelite phone, in case of emergencies. Otherwise, you can’t really enjoy the trip because you’re constantly playing with your gadgets.
Thanks Mrs. H for the link.
U3 Uninstaller and Remover
I recently bought a new USB key as my job commandeered my old 256mb one (I am using it instead of a floppy for the configuration media for the ZoneCD for the hot spot I setup). So I bought a new 512mb SanDisk Micro, and was going to start following some of the suggestions on these various sites and fill the thing up. I plug it in and this stupid U3 service installed and popped up (which is a service far more annoying than useful). Despite deleting the U3 files off the key, they still came back. It was slowing down loading of the key, too, and it was really annoying.
After a Google search, I realized I wasn’t the only one with the problem, and found that U3 has an uninstall application. Apparently there’s a hidden partition that it clears out, which would explain my inability to remove it.
So if anybody ends up with a U3-enabled USB key, there is hope if you value your sanity.
Another WYSIWYG Editor For MovableType
This is mostly a note for me, so move on if you’re not interested. But I’ve used Arvind’s great EnhanceEntryEditing plugin on the Cascade Winds site for quite a while and it’s really simple and has a super clean install, but I’ve wanted something more for quite a while. I’ve always liked FCKeditor, and there’s a plugin for MT that uses it. It looks a bit more complicated to install, but for a fully featured FCKeditor, it’s probably be worth it.
One of these days I’m going to get this site redesigned to use the default styles so I can use one of these great styles as a starting point (entirely CSS) and some of the handy plugins here that would require me to hack this current template to pieces.
Anybody Want An Old Mac?
I’ve inherited an old Macintosh Performa 6400/180 from a homeowner that I work with, and I have no idea what to do with it. It’s not even remotely new enough to give me an excuse to learn OS X (some folks have gotten it to run, but I doubt it would run well). I don’t know if it’s even worth installing Debian’s PowerPC Linux port to just tinker with it (I don’t have room in my house or time for it and I don’t need the frustration of trying to install it on this thing). I haven’t bothered to boot the thing up to see what’s even on it, software and OS-wise.
Generally, if I had an old PC, I know I could at least part it out and use some of it, but I don’t know Mac hardware at all (it’s been many years since I’ve opened one up). And I don’t know if there are local charities that would take it (I’d like to see the thing put to use instead of just dumping it). Heck, if it were even possible, I could make a PC with off-the-shelf parts, but I’m not really thinking I want to tinker with it that much.
Any Mac geeks locally want the thing? I have a monitor and keyboard and mouse to go along with it. It’s yours if you want it and can come get it (I live in Northeast Bend). Just email me at jake [at] this site’s domain or comment here if you have any suggestions as to what I should do with it (and taking it out to the desert and shooting it full of holes is not an option).
Where Are They Now?
Remember all the search engines like Excite, Magellan, Infoseek, Snap, HotBot and Looksmart back in the day? Where are they now?
Free Sunriver WiFi Hotspot is (Officially) Live
I actually mentioned this earlier as kind of a side note, but I wanted to make sure things were running smoothly for a couple weeks before I dedicated a complete entry to it (and yes I do hope people search and find this entry, as getting listed on Jwire seems to be impossible). But there is now a free wireless hotspot setup in Sunriver. Obviously the thing doesn’t cover all over Sunriver, but it covers a good bit of the Sunriver Village Mall. The wireless access point is free to use and setup based on the comments I got from this post.
I didn’t release information about it until yet (at least in a dedicated entry) because we were having issues with it, but those have all been worked out (assuming Unicom doesn’t kill the DSL line again). You can check the status page with more information about the hot spot here, but if you’re in the Sunriver Village Mall at all (like maybe listening to some free music), you’re welcome to hop on and use it.
Yahoo Calendar vs. Google Calendar
I’m mostly book marking this for my reference, but if anybody wants a good comparison of Yahoo!’s Calendar versus Google’s new (beta) calendar, CNET has a good review as well as good comments on the article to help you make a good decision.
Where The Hell Did That Come From?
I’ve written here a few times about the various times I’ve removed malware from various computers. Generally you don’t hear about me actually having it on my system because I have a ton of safeguards in place. Today, that changed not because of what I did but because of what a co-worker did to my laptop (which is supposed to be off limits). Said co-worker just wanted to play a practical joke, as he thought he was just doing some harmless fun, I guess, or something. Actually, I don’t know what he was thinking, but if I were him, I’d be thinking he won’t have a job soon.
I’ve spent a total of 5.5 hours today eradicating whatever the hell it was (there were several that got picked up by AVG). It required this post (and the thread attached to it) to get rid of the more annoying one (most of that was spent trying to find that thread, as the file names were all different, but the unique key was the same). AVG managed to kill the bulk majority that popped up (which included Trojan horse Dailer.BZB, Trojan horse Downloader.Generic2.CWC, Trojan horse Generic WUE, Trojan horse PSW.Ldpinch.XL, Trojan horse Downloader.Istbar.4.P, and Trojan horse Dropper.Generic.FRP), though a couple of them were spawned from other processes that had to be manually scrubbed and scanned.
And the thing is, after thinking I have it all clean, something still pops up: Trojan horse Dialer.BZB. AVG is killing it from doing anything, but I guess I get to go find out what’s causing that.
Meanwhile, co-worker’s going to get a serious beating and I’m going to be locking my desktop if I’m away from my desk for more than a few minutes. Meanwhile, I want to find the script-kiddie who wrote these stupid things and shoot them. All of them. Seriously. I know I’ll sleep better.
Update at 4:15: OK, I think the Trojan horse Dialer.BZB is dead. There was a strange DLL tying itself into the winlogin.exe process upon start up. Looking at the properties for the DLL, it was totally blank, and a google search for the DLL’s name didn’t turn up anything. I unbound it from the process, ran killbot to get rid of it on next boot, and it hasn’t appeared yed.
However…. now Trojan horse generic.WUE is popping up again in the cache files for MSIE (getting an AVG popup), and I haven’t even used MSIE during this whole process and it’s not running in the background. Cripes….
Update at 10:20: I think the thing is finally cleaned off. I ran Trend Micro’s online scan and it found some stuff that none of my stuff on my hard drive found, and I think it irradicated the last of it.
My co-worker apologized profusely, and said he got the idea from a geek friend of his who gave him the file to download (he obviously have no idea what it was). I was the one that actually (unintenntionally) did the most damage, thinking it was a file I downloaded.
So as long as there’s no long-term damage (which there isn’t, so far), he won’t be getting an a$$ kicking — he just knows better than to get near my laptop now.
And as much as I’d like to retaliate, I can’t. I’m the only one in the office that has my own seperate system. We have a Citrix Metaframe setup at the office that powers every desktop in the office (they’re all thin terminals). It’s a stupid system, yes, but basically anything I do to him also (for the most part) gets done to everybody else. Obviously I can change that, but I’ve got better things to do with my time than to set him up in a seperate permission profile just so I can screw with him.
Update on 7/5: Forgot to mention, these are the ones that Trend Micro’s scan came up with, in addition to what I found before (I think the httpsniff is a false positive as I do indeed have an HTTP sniffer installed on here for troubleshooting):
SPYWARE_TRAK_ACEPSTL.12
SPYWARE_TRAK_HTTPSNIFF.A
SPYWARE_KEYL_BOSSEVERYWARE
Aliasnames: PAK:PEData (BitDefendr); Trojan-Spy.Win32.BewLoader.b (Kaspersky)
SPYWARE_KEYL_ASTLOG
Aliasnames: Tools.Nirsoft (PestPatrol)
ADWARE_ABETTERINTERNET
Subsequent scan have come up clean, so I’m assuming this got all cleared up.