Dude!
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/07/star-trek-exper.html
Seems the Star Trek Experience is closing in Las Vegas. I guess when I go out there for VMworld in September I’d better make a point to go see!
Thanks, Jallarzie for the recommendation… bummer it’s closing!
Well, another blog entry… though sometimes I do wonder if anyone reads my prattlings.
I’ve been depressed lately. That’s part of the reason I’ve not been blogging. That and the fact that in order to combat the depression I’ve not been home much. As a result, since I don’t get online from work since I actually now have a job that requires me to actually DO some work (unlike my last one in which I was busy but could do the job blindfold).. well… that leads to blog stagnation. And that’s not a bad thing… it just means that anyone who DOES pay attention is not getting many updates 
So what’s going on that’s making me depressed? Oh… the usual. Money worries, economy worries… plus there’s then the feeling that I’m suddenly surplus to requirements at home and not really needed any more. I know that’s not a fair thing to say, but it’s the way I’ve felt recently.
There’s other stuff of course… and those who know me best already know what they are. But the thing that kills me is that I have every reason to be happy, but I’m not. Anyone else feel like that occasionally? Sad thing is, I really don’t know what to do to fix it.
So for now, I’ll just blog occasionally when I have stuff to say. I just installed Flock on my Mac to manage my blogs and social networking stuff… awesome browser tuned to a VERY specific purpose and I think I like it. I think I’m going to use it to see if it’ll help me keep up with my Facebook, LinkedIn and other social network profiles that I have scattered all over the place.
Until next time… ciao… and email at the usual place if you wanna chat or give me feedback. Or just comment
[Cross posted from the Subaru SVX Club Site, because it’s just cool!] Read more »
Yay! OK… for those who’ve followed my automotive adventures to-date, my car blew a head gasket back in January. Because of finances and stuff I had to hold off on repairing it because I already had three vehicles and didn’t feel fixing my E46 was worthwhile. For those who don’t know, an E46 is the internal BMW code for the model of 3 series I have; See here for more information if you’re interested in learning more about the E46.
Well, I got the money together and in March I put my car in the shop to replace the head gasket, seals and stuff.
Fast forward… four weeks. Ack! Yesterday morning I got the call that my car was finally ready. I’m not happy about the time it’s taken to get it all back, but things are definitely better now that I can go get my car
Well, OK… maybe not. Maybe I was just hacked by someone with a script and a desire to build his bot army. Either way, this site was hacked over the weekend. Yay. I think.
Apparently, there’s a bug in Coppermine (which I happen to use to host the picture gallery) which is currently allowing a scripted hack. This hack inserts an invisible frame into every page that hits some script, the usage of which is not known by me since it was down when I got hacked! I found a lot of good info here about exactly the hack I was hit with, but not much about what it actually does.
So, what did this mean for me? Well, it means those people I promised last week I’d send them email… well, I will this week… promise! I spent a good chunk of yesterday (Sunday) going through my site, securing it and cleaning up hacked pages. It affected every HTML and PHP file that was owned by the user that Apache runs under. Easily fixed; remove write access to the Apache user to all its files… it doesn’t need to write anything anyway!
Unfortunately, at the moment the fixed version of Coppermine (1.4.16) is not yet available through Gentoo’s Portage… so I must either download it myself or wait until it hits Portage. I think I’ll wait; keeps my system nice and clean and easy to work with
So, if you see anything amiss on the site, PLEASE let me know. I didn’t feel like cleaning up Wordpress or Coppermine, so I reinstalled them both on the site then secured them. So things may not be exactly as they were last week… but it ought to be close enough.
And if you visited my site after 9:19am on Saturday morning, make sure you scan for viruses and/or trojans! That’s when the hack hit.
That’s all for this update. End of line.
In part, to track my vehicles and the changes they go through, I’ve added a new “Automotive” category. That way, you can also ignore my posts if you don’t really care Read more if you’re interested, otherwise move along… nothing to see here. Read more »
You know, I feel completely un-motivated today at work
I gues that’s what happens when you’re on notice and they’re working you right up to the last minute they can. Tomorrow’s my last day here and really I find myself lacking motivation to do anything.
My reasons aren’t because I’m lazy. Quite the contrary; I would rather be busy than bored any day of the week. However, the problem remains that I can’t get too deeply into anything because with tomorrow being my last day here, anything I start I won’t be able to finish. It’s like a presidential lame duck. Read more »
OK, it’s been too long since I posted but things have been hectic. I don’t get time to sit down and write posts nearly as often as I’d like simply because life is too busy to believe.
I do intend to post the second part of my trip report real soon, but I do have some updates on life in general that I need to put in. Read more »
Well, I’ll start with “Happy New Year” to all. I know it’s been three months since I last had a chance to write, but life’s been REALLY hectic. I’ve just really not had time to write anything… but hey, I’m resolving that now, right? 
So want to read all about the last few months? Well, just so I can keep the blog nice and short on the main page let me summarize. Busy, busy, busy, vacation, holidays and work.
Want to read more? Well, click away… Read more »
Sorry for anyone who tried to get to the website over the weekend. I screwed something up on the server when doing updates and didn’t realize after a reboot that Apache (the web server) didn’t restart. By Sunday morning I had cleaned up the now completely hosed Apache installation and re-built it completely from scratch.
It was a good thing; it allowed me to fix a few issues I had with the original configuration in that it was less than optimal in my opinion but had worked for a while so I didn’t worry about it. I love running Gentoo, but sometimes it can be a pain when a lot of stuff updates and you neglect to change out your configuration files