Are you ready for Conficker?

http://www.mcafee.com/us/
http://www.symantec.com/index.jsp

If you cant get to either of those sites, you have a problem.  You have been infected with the W32/Conficker virus due to attack the internet tomorrow.

I don’t claim to have any idea what it will do, i’ve read a little – but I am not an expert.  It’s set up to go bonkers on April first.

Even if you can get to both of those sites, never ever run IE again.  Avoid using IE at all costs.  Here are some other good options:

• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html?from=getfirefox
• http://www.apple.com/safari/
• http://www.google.com/chrome

That is in the order I would rate them.  In my opinion, IE is the single biggest security hole online.  It’s nearly criminal!

Today’s a great day to update your virus protection, head over to http://windowsupdated.microsoft.com and get things cleared out!

Of course, if you are one of the people I have convinced you should use a Mac … you have NOTHING to worry about! 

The evolution of watching a bicycle race from another state

Back in 1990, a guy in Ireland (Seamus Shortall) had a TV card in his PC.  He downloaded images off the live Tour de France coverage and I posted them on an FTP site.  It was about as much internet coverage anybody had really seen of the Tour.  Today, I’m sitting here at work.  I can watch the race happen – but to be honest, this stage is about as boring and predictable as Atlanta traffic.  I can listen, but the chucklheads talking are KILLING ME!  I open up my twitter and realize that “Radio Tour” is giving us bits of info about the race.  She’s talking to (via twitter) Johan Bruyneel (Lance’s boss).  Allen Lim is bored out of his mind in the Garmin team car…. there are photos and much more.

This will make little or no sense to many people, but in short – it’s cool to me, to be connected to so many people so easily.  I can watch, I can ignore, I can read later… the information is everywhere.  There are even some rumors that when Lance’s stolen bike was recovered – it was on Twitter before it hit the news!  Tech Support, News, Information … good stuff!

The more stuff you get into, the more stuff that breaks – but I’m proud of myself for giving up on my Facebook <–> Twitter sync issue!  I just said “whateva…” and moved on.  That’s progress for a geek like me!

Is this the final Comcast chapter?

I think so – but at this point, I won’t hold my breath.  Many of you dont care – and you don’t have to read – sorry – but I have gotten a lot of email, comments, etc… people want to know if I win my battle with the blundering media giant.  I pray this will be my last update on this subject…

When the technician left the on Saturday, I checked a few channels to see if they worked.  They did… Cool.  I didn’t check my percieved channel listing and compare it to the TV.  Who does that?  (I do now).

Today, I go to watch some TV at lunch and cant get to channel 44… or 46… or any thing above 26.  You can imagine my reaction.  I am back on the warpath.  I start contacting people at comcast in every way known to man.  Email, phone, internet, blog, twitter, chat… (all at once).  The tech that was here the other day calls me and tells me you are supposed to only have those channels. That’s not what I was told.  That’s not what I saw on the web.  My wife can verify that.

Well… being a bit OCD… I freak out and continue to annoy comcast.  Help isnt coming (I mean, it isnt fixed yet and my obession grows… )  Hearing what the tech had said I say to myself – what am I supposed to get.  I search, I research… but I keep finding I get “all” the channels.  That cant be right.  (This is where the geek in me comes out).  When you go to Comcast and click on the “Channel Lineup” button, a string is passed to the next web page.  Based on that string – you get the appropriate channe line up.  EVERY PACKAGE ON THE PAGE … except “Limited Basic” works properly.  You see, they pass “Limited Basic Cable” instead of “Limited Basic” to the next page.  Since that string isn’t recognized – it fails and gives me false information.  Yes – computers are a addiction, a sickness and obsession sometimes.  It haunts me at times, but coming to the reality that the second chapter of this saga was caused by a mis-understanding perpetuated by a website – I was at least able accept the circumstances.

The rest of the story is a bit happier.  The tech had dispatched a person to come to the house and fix it.  At the same time, I was on the call with Comcast sorting out the whole ordeal and learning about special packages… etc.. I was not home… but Sarah called me.  I told her not to let that comcast person leave!  I frantically called comcast and got the workorders sorted out.  I now have all the channels I wanted.  I have OnDemand, I have internet and I am poised to cancel my phone service in a short time.

The maddening thing about this all… at the end of all this, I told the woman at the executive office how to reproduce the error, how to fix the error and what was going on.  She tested it, she could not reproduce it… I talked her through the steps I took and she saw the error.  Why did I do all that?   I hate computer errors.  I fix computer errors.  It’s what I do… that and MAYBE I will save ONE PERSON from she shit I just went through, I will have done a good thing.

Since Comcast is in the subject, @comcastcares and @comcastBonnie probably get this.  Thanks… but you shouldn’t have to be online looking for us screaming.  You should fix the problem on the frontline.  I like to sit down, surf the web, watch my TV and relax… maybe I can finally do that.

That not so fresh feeling

I had it, but I’ve done some stuff to change that.  I’ve updated my blog theme and re-organized the side a bit.  The key thing I’ve done is integrated my twitter stuff.  For those of you who haven’t found twitter yet, you have now!  Twitter is a platform for what is called “micro-blogging”.  You are limited to 140 characters – you can basically comment or say what you are doing how.  You can find my twitter feed @ http://twitter.com/scottpatton if you are so inclined.  You can do all kinds of cool stuff like update it with your cell sync it with your facebook and your blog.  There are TONS of people on there including our new president, Lance Armstrong, friends, family and people you couldn’t POSSIBLY care about… It’s there if you want to use it!

As you may have picked up if you are following me on FB or any other place, the quest for fitness has been rekindled.  I hate to admit it, but I lack the fire I had last year.  I have this feeling (right now) like “I did this last year…. why do it now… only to have to do it again”.  I mean, how many times have I (and kabillions of other people) lost a butt load of pounds, FELT SO FREEKING GOOD…. only to start eating like you used to, forgetting to work out…. bleh… it’s painful to think about.

Last year, I got motivated and ran a streak of 50+ days with intentional exercise.  I’m at 2 right now.  2… 50+ more to go.  The cool thing I have going for me is that Sarah is now gearing up for her next Team in Training event.  She will be riding the “Fletcher Flyer” in June.  Yes, I said RIDING!  I’m very excited to have her doing a sport I can easily support her in her efforts.  I will also be riding the Flyer with her.  We have a few months to get ready for the 100 mile jaunt around North Carolina.  I’ve ridden a Century in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida.  Time to add NC!

Computer Geek Mistake…

I have to confess, I broke the auto-blog-emailer-do-hicky. It got left behind on the old server. I’ve fixed it, but those of you who get an email when I update my blog have missed a few posts! You might want to get caught up… not that much of it is very exciting…

OCD took my brain away….

I am officially retiring from spam counting. My 2+ month obsession is absolutely driving me crazy. I am averaging 220 a day for the month of november and seeing a number that high is making me nutz. I know you were all looking forward to 12/1 when I posted the most recent stats, but at this point I will simply say … LOTS! I can’t take it. There are more subtle geek reasons for this as well, but they would take a long time to explain. I will probably purge my well filled spam folder every few days now. The google mail setup is awesome, it stops most of them. I am glad I got that off my chest. I feel better already!

Call Steve, I want some money!

First of all, I am personally responsible for the sale of 2 MacBooks this week. One to my aunt and one to my mother-in-law. I do believe they will both like them a lot. Second of all, after Kathy (Aunt) spent several hours talking to the tech support guys last night, only to not have her iPod issues fixed, I was able to resolve the issue in a matter of seconds. That’s just wrong. I had heard Apple support was good, but being the guy that can baffle most any tech support crew, I doubt I will ever call them. Kathy was all in a tither about her podcasts and it took us all of about 5 minutes to get her sorted out.

Along the way, we did use iChat and did a video conference which was cool! Then I just asked to share her desktop, was able to take control and fix stuff. No tweaking modems, no sending emails, no hoops, joops or poops… just work. It is nice to not have to work on computers, just use the computers to make life better and stuff.

Macs that are 1 degree of separation from me (or less): Mine, Sarah’s, Gray’s, Kari’s, Alison’s, Kathy’s… maybe YOU are next! If you are bored, go to youtube and search on Mac v. PC. There are some really funny commercials on there!

4425 – That’s the number

Keeping you up to date on my monthly spam progress! We saw a large increase in the middle of the month. A huge surge. For a while we were averaging well over 175 spam messages a day. It’s really kind of silly and annoying. I wonder who are the “learning challenged” people that are making this industry thrive?

On a related note, I read something the other day. It seems that people started sending spam as jpgs, then as pdfs, then as zipped files… the latest – mp3! That’s right, you can get spam that have to LISTEN to while the try to sell you something. I can just hear it…. “Hey overweight old lady living at the end of a dirt road using AOL …. does this sound like you? If you send me your bank account information, for just a small fee of $2.99 a second you will be able to watch home shopping network with a furby wearing lingerie!”

Seriously, who buys stuff from spam?

3580 and counting…

At the beginning of September, I made a decision that I was not going to delete a single spam message for 1 month. I didn’t leave them all in my inbox, rather I let them get auto sorted, and if I foung them, I sorted them into my spam folder. Now, 29 days later, there are 3580 spam messages in there. I have only seen about 5-10 come through my inbox.

Now, I have in the past recommended a special email account for email lists, signing up for things, all that. Keeping your email very private so spammers don’t get it. Mine… well, it’s been on websites for 10 years, I am deep in the spammers grips. Nothing is going to keep them from sending it, but I don’t get it! You may ask how? I have tried just about everything. From Spamassassin, Challenge/Response systems, secret codes… I just get spammed, a lot! (almost 6 messages an hour on average!).

I set up my email through google hosting. It’s a free service that lets google manage your email and spam. You get TEXT based ads on the screen, but I find it well worth it. The downfall of the system is some people don’t like the gmail interface. I have embraced it. Simple, fast, clean… and 2 gig of email storage is more than enough for me! $9.00 domain registration, free hosting, no spam…. priceless!

Closure on my poorly routing GPS – it’s NOT the GPS!

So all of these photos are click-able… I encourage you to click on these as they will show you what has caused me “grief”. This first photo is a photo of the intersection directly off Google Maps. You can see, it’s a big, wide open intersection. I wish there were cars in it… but the no such luck. The next three photos… Well, I can’t truly believe!

I spent some time playing with the GPS software. It did the same thing! I was shocked, angered! How could the screw up so bad! In an effort to get ready to attack Garmin support tomorrow, I went to google maps and did a little routing. WHAT??!? It did the same thing! Let’s try MapQuest! SAME THING! Oh sheesh… this is crazy! Yahoo Maps … guess what? SAME THING! You have GOT to be kidding me… Nope!

Here is the evidence!

I’d love to tell you this makes sense. It doesn’t, but at least EVERY map site I tried is right!

I suppose, to make this REMOTELY productive…. I will rank the mapping sites on ease of use:

1. Google Maps
2. Yahoo Maps (Though it might be as easy, I am just used to google)
3. MapSource (Garmin Map Software – $120 … the others are free but don’t talk to my GPS)
4. MapQuest (The original is falling behind the others!)