A Little Monkey and Tails.

I had this cute munchkin visit me yesterday for a bit. Her father (my nephew) was passing through.  He and his wife have a set up where he takes this little one to visit his friends from around where he grew up (they have children also) for the week-end, and her older son (from another relationship) goes to his father's grandparent's for the week-end - resulting in the Mom getting 2 days all to herself. They call it a mental health day (or something similar). I think that is wonderful! Although I am not positive when my nephew gets any totally alone time.

She is the cutest little 3 year old and she climbed the neighbor's swing set/fort like a little monkey.

I am going to try harder to post more often. I have so many things I can do on-line that almost all of my time is spent sitting here at the computer. Almost everything I do can help me in my job in one way or the other. Helping people is still one of the biggest areas in my life for me. Online, I am a reader of redd!t and have several divisions that I read to see if I can help. I also get several ideas and tips from readers to benefit myself.

Just last evening I was reading the area about Tor (The Onion Router). This one has been an example I use when I am instructing the techs about the filter. Most of them have no idea what it is, or how it works. Sigh. But that is an entire book in itself and if you know me, you are probably aware that I can get very long winded when I start talking tech.

Anyway, the user mentioned Tails.  I had not heard or read about this one. So, I had to investigate and of course I had to have it. For testing purposes and to present to the techs how end  users (the savvy ones) are getting around the filter in the schools and endangering their network.

I had to find 2 USB sticks with 4 GB available. (I had always referred to them as flash drives, but I kind of like this term). So I did have one empty 4 GB one (how did THAT happen?), and the other had just back up data on it - so I moved that to one of my external HDDs.

So, I started this new endeavor.  Four hours later I went to bed. LOL!  I am learning a lot, but I am also being very, very cautious. I have screwed up my system before trying this stuff and I should have known not to start this after 9 p.m. I was much too tired to think this through and follow long, intricate instructions.

It is one of those deals where you are going through the steps one at at time, and you come across the step that reads "If you don't have such and such, click here to set that up (or install it). So, you follow that link and you start installing that program. You get halfway through the steps and you come across another one that reads "If you have never installed such and such before, you need to change this or that before you can enable it". And I follow the link to THAT site. It went about 4 sites deep and I was getting very tired.

Well, it didn't work my first go round. But hey, I did learn a lot. And, I will try again today. Maybe. Of course I will - I am too excited to get this puppy on a flash drive and see what I can do with it in my work environment so I can bring it to their attention to watch out for this work around.

I run into the techs who have the attitude "So, what? They are always going to find a way around the filter. I can't stop them all."  This might be true, but I can see that he/she has given up the fight. This saddens me. Yes, there will always be a rogue student who knows so much about technology that he will consider this a challenge (sometimes they don't mean harm, they just want the ego boost that they were able to beat the system) and brag to his friends and share his knowledge.

But once in a while, guys......once in a blue moon - I get a tech who gets that look in his eye, the "Oh really?" look and they write this down. They hopefully are going to take action to block or attempt to block this activity in his or her district.

And that is why I do it. That is why I share what I know with others. I want to make the schools safer for the students. It may be a losing battle, but I can't just say "Screw it. Let 'em see it. They're gonna see it anyway."  Well, I'd prefer them NOT to see it in an educational environment. In other words "Not on MY watch."

Did anybody watch the movie "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?"  You know how I love my movies and I have so many I can talk about. I like Tina Fey in MOST of her movies. I am not a HUGE fan, but at least she does not make me cringe. For this movie, they delicately add humor to a horrifying situation that so many live through. But then there was MASH. I know the humor was exaggerated, and there were only a few times when the show brought us back to the reality of the horror of war.

It is slowly coming back to me. I had trouble remembering my password today. I had trouble finding spell check. But it is coming back. I need to go and ready all of YOUR posts this past year (or has it been longer) to see what is going on with you.

I have a lot more to write (tell). This year seemed to be a bad one for cancer hitting my friends. They are fighting the fight. A lot of little children in my family. I always like that. I was the youngest of 8, and I was 12 years old before any of my siblings had a baby. They then came thick and fast, but that first grandchild (for my Mom) and first nephew (for me) was doted on. My sister was the type who packed up her husband and baby and drove 50 miles one way EVERY week-end to stay with us (at my Mom's house). And on Sunday evenings drive 50 miles back.  Well, her husband drove. Her husband did everything for her. Nice in some ways, but over the years (as she has told us) it can be very smothering. We used to chide my sister when the gas stations changed over to self-serve. She had ALL the gas stations marked out who would pump the gas for you. It was ages before she was able to pump her own gas. I'm not sure she can, even now. Hmmmmm..... LOL!

Ah....where have I been?  I guess I needed a break. I am currently updating a Newsletter for work and I needed to test a blog site. So naturally, I chose this one. I need to show the techs in the districts how easy it is for a student to see inappropriate pictures when a blog site (such as blogger.com) is open.

Okay...I've seen enough.  I changed my interests to some unpleasant subjects, then went to other bloggers with the same (unpleasant) interests. About lost my lunch.

So, as an example let us say that blogger.com is allowed (open) in a school district. The reason is a lot of educators (teachers and such) create a blog on the site they are familiar with (such as our - blogger.com). They ask the tech to allow the site - let's call it Mr. Williams Science Class. On blogger.com it may be called: mrwilliams.blogger.com.  The filter recognizes the root in the URL. In this case, "blogger.com" It won't only allow mrwilliams.blogger.com, it must allow the entire site. I have tested this like crazy hoping I can just get Mr. Williams' blog site. These are examples, by the way.

Nope. Filter must allow the entire blogger.com site. Well, given a savvy student, once they realize that they can get to blogger.com, they can create a blog in about 15 minutes and place interests in their profile with subjects describing any sexual/fetish term you can think of - and begin finding others with the same interests who have posted pictures that you would never have believed existed 15 years ago.

To make it even worse, the tech has no idea how this works. Most of them don't. Not only do they allow blogger.com, but they allow the entire category. In our filter it is called blogger.forums.

That allows all blog sites (that the filter has categorized as such).  Wordpress.com.

There we go. Seven minutes. It took me 7 minutes to create a new blog site in wordpress.com, verify the site with one of my many fake e-mails and search for nude photos on the blog site. I was looking at nasties in no time.

The above wordpress.com is categorized in the forums.blogs category. So many districts have this open. I try to get the word out in my Newsletter. At my trainings, I discover that nobody reads my Newsletters.

What should I use? Shock and awe?  Should I have the host of the training sit there in front of everybody, create their own blog page on wordpress, type in nude under interests and let them all see for themselves?  Would I get in trouble for demonstrating this in a school? Sigh.

I have a training coming up next week. Nobody has signed up yet. They do not have time they say. I had three show at the last one. One tech was brand new, one tech will never get it (as in he will never understand how the filter works) and another was rather savvy, but I shocked him with what I showed them.

So, there you have it. Will Little Johnny see anything? - maybe not. High School Johnny - you betcha.

I want to be like Dear Abby

So, when I read my latest suspicious search report, I want to be like Dear Abby. Most end users are searching for unsavory subject matter, but once in a while you just get questions.

Such as "Where is the nearest Dick's Sporting Goods?"  This shows in my report because the word "dick" is included in the subject matter. If somebody searched for "Where is the nearest Target?" I won't see that request.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, you get the occasional question that makes me go "hmmmm". One that comes to mind is "Will make-up kill a turtle?"   I went "Yikes".

Hopefully that story had a happy ending.

But imagine if I were like Dear Abby. You can call me "Dr. Answering Suspicious Searches"  or Dr. ASS for short.

One question popped out at me the other day.  I can't help but pretend I am like Dear Abby and my mind just answers them as she would.

Dear Dr. ASS:  "Will having sex push back my period?"

Answer:  "Sure, probably by about nine months!"

(Same end user because it was the same IP address, but about twenty minutes later)

Dear Dr. ASS:  "Can I eat baked beans while I am pregnant?"

Answer:  "Sure, but I wouldn't recommend it."

Things like that. I have become desensitized to the other searches. I see so many. You can imagine a young teenagers' mind and curiosity and what shows up in the "suspicious" search query. Sigh. Just to give you an example, they probably do not know what bestiality is yet, but hey - they search for and I imagine hope to find graphic images. I am certainly hoping that the filter is holding strong and just because they try to search for the subject matter, does not mean they see or get any web pages that hold that horrific content.

The horrible thing is, to test the filter one kind of has to search for things like this themselves. Let me tell you it isn't as easy as you might think. For starters, being raised to be a "good girl" and going to Sunday School and mean looks from my Mom if I mentioned even the word "period" let alone anything stronger. You seriously got the look of death from her. Suffice it to say, I did not learn the facts of life from her.

It just is not that easy for me to type in "gir1 having s3x with a h0rse" into the search engine. I mean, My God! What if an image were to slip through?!  You just can't erase that kind of picture from your mind. And, GROSS!  I can only imagine because I have not (nor probably ever will) search for anything of that nature. This is all just information to let you know what I see in the searches. Yuck!

I have searched images and we have an issue with Bing images that will not force the "safe search" feature like Google does.  With the filter on, if an end users tries long and hard enough, pretty soon they will be rewarded with images that just floor my adult 54-year old mind.

If it makes you feel any better, I have set the filter up to block ALL Bing images that are on their explicit.bing.com server. That is "supposedly" where all the icky stuff resides. If you want to test this, go to bing.com, click on Images and type in any unsavory word or phrase that you can think of.  If your bing is like mine, the search setting defaults to Medium. Changing this setting to "Strict" cuts out the most obscene images out of the search. Maybe Bing got their act together, but for some reason, end users were able to override this setting and choose the setting "off".  This is disastrous. This is why we blocked bing images altogether.

Now, do the same in Google. Even before changing any settings the results are less nasty. At least mine were. The only setting that Google has now (they must have changed it) is to choose "Filter Explicit Results" and when you do that, depending on what subject matter you searched for you may get nothing. That is what happened to me. I typed the upper female body part in Google and got quite an eye full. When I changed the setting to "Filter Explicit Results" Google told me it could not find any images for my request. YAY!

I'm ranting today

It is getting ridiculous. The is the sixteenth time our school district's fiber has been down this year. Yes, part of it is my organization's fault. We do have a fail-over (another telco) but not those in my area code. My area code contains about 10 school districts. We have been trying for months to get this area code over on to the fail over telco but we are caught up in red tape with the state. Arrgghh!

The schools are LIVID.  And we have been trying for months to get rid of this telco altogether. We had to wait until our five year contract expired first. Then it is red tape with the state. The state is married to this telco. The telco monolith is not a stupid empire.

Another fiber cut. I am trying to educate myself on what happens when the fiber gets cut out in the field. We have to drag information out of the telco as to what happened. They do not give up any information willingly. This time the cut is in a manhole.

This cut happened yesterday about 1:00 p.m. On a Sunday. It is in a manhole somewhere. Who in the hell was working on a Sunday? And in a manhole? And get this! The latest report is that the technicians had to leave the manhole for safety reasons.

What? Is there some sort of mutant alligator down there? Did the Monday morning showers and flushes of  the sewer systems threaten to wash one of them away? I don't know! We don't even get details like "where" this manhole is.

One tech at a vocational school expressed his frustration to my manager. He has several people coming this morning to do some testing at his location. Some are driving 2 1/2 hours (not certain I believe this, but okay).  He needs to call them and let them know there is no Internet before they get on the road. Well, as of 7 o'clock this morning - still nothing.

This same area lost connectivity for about 36 hours a week ago today. It is not pretty out there. Most understand it is not my fault. They need to vent their frustration on somebody since the home office is 60 miles away (and they rarely - if ever) answer their telephones. The anger and frustration just loses something when you leave a voice mail.

So, I get it. I always answer my phone. I can't tell you how many times I get "I know you can't do anything about it, but I call you because at least you answer your telephone."

Anyway, here was an interesting read on fiber cuts. Two that affected me and schools in my area are listed in March 2012. And I lifted the photo above. I can only imagine having to take that equipment down into a man hole in below freezing weather where sewer is running around your ankles. Or, can they bring the cable up and out of the manhole and repair it? Sheesh. I don't know. How in the hell did it get cut down there? What the hell are people putting down into their sewer systems? We never really get the entire story and are left wondering.

http://www.ecessa.com/coverage/internet-outages-happen-every-day/

Oops to the nth degree

This post may be a long one. Depends on time and how much emotion I can purge out through this miracle of miracles "the keyboard".

The incident I am about to post is work related. I am going to try to keep things as inconspicuous as possible.

I will call this tech/school my valley nemesis. I have posted about this tech before here  and here.

Big breath. Okay.

This valley district tech has determined that his school needs three hundred Mb/s of bandwidth. Most of my schools run on 100. A handful are moving to 200 this year. I know that may not register with some of you but just an idea. Most have 100, he wants 300.

That is okay. It is do-able.

My co-worker (who used to be my manager and was demoted) set up the order. He used to do all of this as a manager and now he still does this work. Since I was hired in 1995, the home office techs rarely have to go to a school in my area any longer. Note that this co-worker (former manager) still gets the same pay because they cannot take money away in our system. I bet they can if they really want to, I'm just stating the fact about him and his role.

He has not been to this valley district in years. Years and years. To move to 300 Mb/s this valley school needs to switch from an rj45 cable to a gBic module. If you worked with your Internet equipment you may be familiar with the rj45 cable. It is the big clip cable that looks like the old phone cables (actually the phone cables are rj11) but are bigger. If you do not have wireless, they are the patch cables that connect your PC or laptop to the Internet modem/router or a switch/hub.

The factory-made ones are very nice with their moulding that covers the clip so it does not catch on stuff and snap off. My hand made ones are not nearly as pretty and most all the clips have been snapped off. LOL!  Here was my cabling bible for years.  (For anyone who crimped cables, sing it with me!  Each three syllables:


Orange/white, orange,
green/white, blue,
blue/white, green,
brown/white, brown!


UGH!

My fingers began cramping up with sympathy pains just writing this from my nightmarish memories.

To move to 300Mb/s they need to convert to THIS type of cabling. Fiber optics.

 

I won't go into single mode and multi-mode here. Now, at the time I was told to go to this school and perform this switch over, I had no idea what lay ahead for me. I knew the configuration of our equipment. I figured the rj45 cable would plug into the gBic module with an rj45 interface (hole in layman's terms). I really thought it would look like this:

 

I would go to the school, simply unplug the rj45 cable from one interface (port or hole - whatever you want to call it) and plug it into the new "fiber" interface. The hole where I would insert the above pictured module. When I plugged it in I noticed the module had a  fiber interface on it and not an rj45. I looked at the tech (if you read the links I displayed above, you will know that this guy is not amicable). 

I asked him if the telco had pulled fiber to this room. He looked at me incredulously. "No."  I said perhaps I brought the wrong gBic module. My co-worker (former manager) had handed me six in little brown boxes but never told me that they were different. I had assumed they were all the same. There was no writing on ANY of the boxes. I sighed thinking I would have to fly back to my office and look at the four I left there (I had brought two. I did think ahead enough in case one was D.O.A.).  They were both gBic modules for fiber.

The tech called my co-worker (former manager) and asked him about the module he had given me. This is where it started to turn sour. This co-worker (former manager) was in a meeting. He has been given the duties of moving their home office into a new building. The amount of work this entails is enormous. He has stated several times that he does not feel he is qualified to perform this job. Yet, he is still doing it. In some situations you do it the best you can. His stress level is beyond enormous.

My co-worker (former manager) told this school valley tech that it HAD to be fiber optics. Now, at this very moment the tech and I did not know the distance between this wiring closet we were currently standing in and the electrical room of the building. We measured it with our feet (walking and counting) later and discovered it was about 230 feet away. 

In other words my co-worker (former manager) was telling this valley tech that they needed a fiber cable run from the electricity room to our wiring closet for this to work. My co-worker (former manager) since he had not been in that building in years did not realize that the telco equipment was that far away from our equipment.

Now you see where the Oops comes in.

To be continued....

Mangers lie

I am trying to figure out why my manager lies in this fashion. This is about the third time this has happened.


In this circumstance the school districts want a service from us that will tell them and help them control what is eating their precious (expensive) bandwidth.

Sites such as YouTube and gaming can sap all the bandwidth, thus leaving nothing available for actual work.

Where are the teachers? I don't know. I have been in some situations where there is no teacher to be found and the kids are really going to town on the computers and the Internet.

I think a lot of teachers treat the computer lab as a babysitter. Plop the kids down in front of the TV computer and go to the teachers' lounge.

Back to the application. We (as a department) have been talking about such a program for a year. We have a program in place that monitors our equipment and lets us know when a device loses connection, etc. We can investigate - did the building lose power, did a janitor unplug the equipment, what happened? Stuff like that.

This application has a sister app that will tell the district what their traffic is. For example: Pandora. If you are not familiar with Pandora - it is a streaming music application.  Streaming radio is a huge hit with office personnel. I can't tell you how many times I will go to work on a secretary's computer just to find she has the radio streaming to her PC, but the volume is turned down low or muted - she forgot it was running.

Big bandwidth sucker there. Another one - video. YouTube. If a computer lab teacher tells students to watch a video and 25 end users all go to the same video and watch it - wow. Bandwidth usage skyrockets. The teacher is supposed to stream it to an overhead projector so all the class can watch it at one time. Thus only one machine is viewing the video and streaming it down the Internet pipe, instead of 25.

Or, the teacher is out of the room and some kid finds a great dirt bike video and the kids around him see him watching it and they in turn, look it up and watch it.

Chaos.

Anyway. This post is already getting too long.

I told my manager that I was very interested in working with this program when we get it.

Now, I am not a perfect employee. I slack off now and then. But there I was sitting around this summer, knowing that I have three huge projects looming. I am always waiting for something. Somebody to get this ready, somebody to order that. I sigh. I fear that everything will come at me at once. It usually does and then I do things half assed because I don't have the proper time to work with it.

Don't misunderstand. I call or communicate many times asking my co-workers or managers who I am waiting for, if there is anything "I" can do to speed up the process.Can I make some phone calls, can I come to the office and physically install equipment? Can I do the legwork?  ANYTHING! Nope. Zilch.

I get anxious and I decide to download the evaluation copy of the program. I try and do not succeed. I am naive and try to run it on my stand alone laptop with just adequate CPU power and memory. The program (even the evaluation part) needs a server with more power than my piddly laptop.

The company that sells the program contacts me and is very anxious (salesmen) to get me using this. I am stalled but at our staff meeting at the end of June my manager tells me we have it and he needs to install it on a VM (virtual machine) then I can begin to use it.

I am beside myself with excitement! Okay! I ask "Can I tell the techs about this program?" 

And this is how I remember this incident vividly.

He meant to say "You will want to play with it for a while first" instead saying something like "Play with yourself".  Well, that was all me and my delinquent co-workers needed. We started laughing and making jokes. That kind of conversation sticks with you, you know?

A month goes by and - nothing. Just e-mails back and forth where he says "Next week, I can get that done." I began calling him "Next week Andy".  Not his real name.

I sit and try to think of a way that I can be proactive instead of bitching about how much of a slacker my manager is. He is not a slacker, I am sure he works his ass off. But I found myself grumbling because I was anxious to go and here I was - waiting again.

I heave a big sigh and I decide to use an old server that was given to me a few years ago to "play" with. It may not have the power, but I have to do something. I had installed Linux on it (my Linux playing days) and decided next time I was in my organization's home office I would ask for a Windows Server disk and install that OS so I could download and work with the evaluation copy properly.

I was there on Wednesday for training. My manager was at lunch. I asked a co-worker for Windows Server disks and he began looking through a tray of disks. Another department co-worker asked me what we were looking for. I explained the situation to her. She said "I can have you a VM up and running in 30 minutes."

My heart sank. Really? I explained to her that the manager has been promising me a VM for weeks. She said "I'll do it." I gave her the specs. I told her that this was an evaluation copy and after 30 days we hoped to roll it over to the real program. The company that sells this product told me we could do that.

By this time our manager came back and got in on the conversation. I told him and he said "We haven't bought the program, yet."

I just looked at him. Somehow I knew this. Deep down I suspected as much.

I should have called him on it right then and there.

But to tell you the truth, I was so damn happy to have a VM to work with and they had just purchased me a new laptop I did not want to spoil my good luck.

I have been told many times that I have a "bad attitude" so I try very hard to never say anything negative.

I like my manager. I have to believe that he does not mean any harm when he lies like this. I am trying to figure out why he tells me they bought the program (remember the play with yourself conversation - I did not imagine that) when they did not.

Some things that come to mind are - he does not want to disappoint me. Or maybe he likes to make me happy. That is my "positive" thinking. What he does not realize is that he jeapardizes his integrity with every lie. When I discover the lie, I think less of him.

I am just trying to understand. There are many reasons I never take a management position when it is offered to me and it happens at every job I have worked at.

I was an "office manager" in my early twenties and really just managed myself. I didn't have big staffs or have to decide pay raises, etc...

I would not want to be a manager. Just like I would never want to be the president or the mayor.

I am a worker bee. I do best working by myself. Managers need to delegate and make hard decisions. And lie, I guess. For whatever reasons, managers need to lie and I have to tell you - I'd have more trouble with that than anything else.

Just what am I supposed to say?

You know, after 16 years of working with schools I probably have said it all. I didn't say I've seen it all or heard it all. I pretty much have said it all.

Let's just get that out of the way. I hate to sweat.

Picture it. A little tiny, dinky town. The elementary is still functioning. Barely. To the west is an Amish county with little to no electricity in their schools. Not much Internet need there. To the North is the wide world of Ohio Industry. The schools are getting along pretty well there. To the South - elementary buildings are closing and the school district is combining into a campus environment. To the East - little city schools - still managing to barely hold their own.

This elementary will probably close next year or the next. No money is being shoveled into it. Their Internet connection is down. I am fighting with the telco. They say it is my equipment, I say it isn't. I swap out my equipment - twice. In that hot, dirty, dark, and tiny wiring closet that I am so used to seeing in every tiny, dinky elementary in rural Ohio.

Sigh. I am no longer 35 years old. I am 51. I am older. I am premenopausal. Is that a word? Hell if I know. Hell if I care. I am hot. I am grouchy. I am getting a headache.The sweat literally pours off my head and into my face. I have no idea where it comes from. It is like I conjure it up out of nowhere. Is it menopause? Ladies? My sisters tell me of night sweats but they don't have this soaking sweat that I seem to experience during the daytime. I do not have night sweats.

Then I look like pure S.H.I.T. My hair is plastered to my head. My face is soaked with moisture. My glasses are steamed up (I have only worn glasses all the time the past year; so I am not completely knowledgeable about how to maintain them while it is raining or while I am sweating profusely). My clothes are sticking to me.

Anyway. The tiny, dark closet is just off the teachers lounge. They come in for lunch. I get the usual. "Are you going to FIX us?"  "Are we still down?"  Here's a tip. If I am still there and you don't see me packing my equipment up - you are STILL down! That question irks me. 

Sorry. It has been SIXTEEN years of the same questions. The same circumstances. Me fighting the telco. For the record I have been wrong a few times. For the record - the telco has been wrong 90% of the time. I swap out my equipment. Twice. Still down.

The secretary comes back. "Are we going to be up today?"  Gee, let's see. Maybe. I am not sure if I have sweated (Yes, blogger I looked this word up in dictionary.com) enough in this dark, hot, dirty closet. I think I'll  keep you down a little bit longer because THAT'S HOW I AM! I AM A MEAN BITCH AND I  HATE ALL OF YOU! And I just love, love, love being in this dirty little closet with no air conditioning - no Internet connection - no cell phone service. It is like the sweat box in prison, I would imagine. Except I have to think and try to troubleshoot. I can't sleep or zone out. No, I have to work. Thank you, but please let me stay in here another hour!

But no........

I smile and tell her that I have done the best that I can do. I have swapped out my equipment twice, but that the equipment is pretty old. She asked me why their tiny little elementary were not getting the new equipment after I explained to her that all other districts were going to fiber. She said they were supposed to get broadband in the area. I smiled weakly at her. I asked her if this little town had cable television. She said "No." Sigh. I said "Then you probably won't have fiber any time soon."

I did say "Is there industry that supports education around here?" She said "Yes" and named a business. I said "Contact them and see if they will put fiber in for you." It was a cheap shot and I knew she would probably not call them, but at least I had a suggestion instead of shrugging my shoulders and saying "You are S.O.L."

She left. What happened to the lottery money that education was supposed to get? I found out by reading the following URL's:

http://www.wlwt.com/money/27667257/detail.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/17/cbsnews_investigates/main3269456.shtml

Thank-you lying politicians. Thank-you Mr. Greed.

I painfully do what I am supposed to do and instead of making a beeline for my car and A/C I stop in at the office to sign out properly. I am handed a mercy ticket. The secretary has stepped away from her desk. I quickly sign out and slip out the front door to the sanctuary of my car.

And the wikipedia article on state lottery had one mention of education - it was in their slogan. No mention of school funding. Surprised? Yeah, me too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Lottery

And you know what? While I am totally disgusted, let me mention a movie. "Brooklyn's Finest."  If there is anything I hate more than sweating, it is watching R Gere in a sex scene. For the love of God man - give it up! Stop it!

God, Cindy -four years? Really?!

WWBD

A blast (of snow) from the past.

I am not pictured in the photo above. I would have been 3  years old. I was probably inside eating playing with my brothers' trucks.

The photo is taken either by my Mom or sister 1944. Brother 1942 was off in the AF during this time. I think. I don't know.

He and sister 1944 are having computer problems.

You get an update or do something or the power goes out and your computer needs to/ or has to restart. You get  a black screen with one line of text. Windows cannot start because the blah.dll file is missing or corrupt. What do you do?

WWBD? What would Bill do (as in Bill Gates)? I know what Bill wants you to do. He wants to you run out and purchase the latest and greatest version of Window available. Preferably the Ultimate Professional edition of his OS and install it and begin using it.

My brother came close to hauling it off to the nearest repair center. He does not have very much patience (although he is very thorough and diligent).

After finding the installation disk I was finally able to walk him through installing a new version of XP onto his spare hard drive we purchased a month or two ago.  We would have repaired the Windows that was on drive C: but he did not recall his Admin password. Oops. After we installed a new version of XP on the D: drive my sister found the folder with the lost password. Figures. Heh, heh. Murphy's law and all.

We get that installed and I advise him to call the cable provider to have them set him up with Internet access. They can give  him all the numbers he needs to plug in, etc.. I also warned him about the time it would take the system to update that version of XP (four years of updates can take a while) once he does get back on-line.

The tech with the cable company says that he needs a new driver and a new cable and he will have to go to the nearest (insert greedy cable company name here) center and purchase them before he can get him access to the Internet. They probably did that when they first set him up... but who knows where that update is, now. What cracks me up is they told him he now needs an Ethernet cable to the cable modem (which I thought he was using)... whatever.. I guess he connects USB to the modem? Yikes.

Anyway, I was walking him through trying to access Word/Excel files and the phone kept cutting out. They have cable/Internet/telephone all through the (insert greedy cable company name here). My sister (who lives with him) let him use her cell phone and he told me he had enough of computer troubleshooting and was going to give it a rest after he called (insert greedy cable company name here) and got the phones and cable television working again.

Wow. What really scared me was how lost they were w/out the Internet. I would be lost, but I have four computers and two cell phones in the house that can access the Internet. I also have four machines at work, plus access to a lab of 25 computers that can access the Internet.

What do we do if the Internet goes away? Or collapses? Or the traffic gets so bogged down we can't move? When mine goes out I revert to reading the newspaper, etc... I know this subject has been beaten to death, but seriously what would YOU do if you lost your Internet access? And it wasn't coming back anytime soon.

My sister drove to Akron (her daughter's house) to check her e-mail (she needed a count for cookies she was baking for a Christmas lunch) and to take my daughter's dog out, also. E-Mail was not the only reason. :)

I had set her up with e-mail on her daughters' PC when she stayed there after her daughter's surgery. She did not know how to access her e-mail anywhere else but at home. My brother had set her up so that all she had to do was to click an icon and it opened Outlook Express and she went from there. Imagine me showing her (insert greedy cable company name here)'s webmail and trying to explain to her how Outlook pulls e-mail off the cable company's mail server and places it on the PC hard drive at her house. So that when she goes to her daughter's house and accesses her e-mail she can no longer see her messages. Where did they go? She did get it though after I drew pictures. Seriously. I do that for everybody when I explain things. I think it helps.

Now, I am trying to explain that to my brother when I suggested that once he does set her back up with her e-mail to not set up Outlook Express because she is always going places. To visit family, motels, libraries and she checks her e-mails at their computers. He is not getting it. Of course he has a lot on his plate right now. And I was not there to draw pictures. ;)

I told him tomorrow. Tomorrow I could work with them some more. Between Thanksgiving and New Years I do not have a lot of time. I am late already. I am supposed to have about a dozen things done this morning to get ready for today and I have not done a one. Sigh.

Welcome to 50!

Another from the museum

Okay. I've been 50 for nearly six months, now. The other morning as I checked my e-mail messages (I have no less than 4 e-mail accounts - don't ask), I saw that my electric bill was very close to 4  times higher than normal. WTF?! My "normal" electric bill is $70 a month. 

I was concerned to say the least. The only thing I could think of that changed in the last month was that my daughter, her boyfriend and his cousin set up the downstairs basement into a gaming room. Complete with 3 X-boxes, 3 TVs, electric guitars, etc.. Sometimes they play into the wee hours of the night and all the lights are on for hours at a time.

Still. That seemed a bit excessive to me. My niece lived with me for over 3 years (using the basement as her bedroom area) and my electric bill was not affected. She didn't leave lights on, but was known to leave curling irons on etc...

I've had a couple of nephews stay with me for a few months at a time - still no great increase in electric. I have a gas furnace and a gas water heater.

One time my dryer ran all night (timer broke) and that barely caused a blip on my electric bill. So, what was causing this excessive amount?

I sent my daughter a text message.  I made sure to tell her that I was not mad, just concerned and we would have to figure out what was making the bill so high.

Of course she became defensive at first - blamed the heater in the downstairs bathroom. I told her that we ran the heater every winter and it has never been an issue before. I told her that perhaps my refrigerator was dying. This was all in text format.

I looked at the bill online again to see what the exact date range was. That's when I saw it. Last months' bill. At first I thought that I paid it late and it was not registering on the bill. Nope. I had not paid it AT ALL! WTF!? This is the first time I have ever done this! 

Oh, my. Now, I have to tell my daughter. But first I had to figure out why I didn't pay it. I had switched all utilities to on-line payments two months ago. I guess it just didn't register or I didn't get one in an e-mail from that utility. Nope. Just checked. I got a notice alright. I just moved it to the utilities folder and promptly forgot about it. I guess.

You would think that somebody who works with and on computers every day would be a bit more aware of on-line banking and bill paying. Not so! I do SO much on-line it figures that some things go by the wayside.

I actually was probably one of the last members of the family to begin on-line payments.  What is up with that? Well, I'll tell you. Since I work with computers and am very generous by nature, I left my wireless router wide open for anybody to use. Almost everyone who visits me has an iPhone or iPad that needs a connection to the Internet. I didn't lock it down with security. Bah, I said. Back then the router was in the basement and the signal died as soon as one walked out my door. Eventually I moved the router upstairs and while enrolling my daughter into college, I thought "It's time to lock it down."  And, I did.

Over the past two years, I have been allowing myself to relax and do a bit more on-line than I used to. It is because I know and read about all the horror stories of stolen identities etc... and I know HOW they happen and it has just taken me a while to trust this stuff.

And between you and me - I actually LIKE the process of writing checks and paying the bills. I KNOW, right?! Who in the world LIKES to pay bills?!  Sigh. I'll rephrase that. If I have the money in the bank, I LIKE the PROCESS of writing checks. I just do. Maybe I should have gone into accounting.

Back to the electric bill. As I looked over the past 12 months, I realize that "normal" has crept up to over $100 a month - to $170 a month. Huh. This past month was actually ONLY $80. It has not been that low since the spring. Stupid A/C and hot flashes!

I decided this warranted an actual phone call instead of a text. I called. My daughter answered. I started with "Now, don't be mad! I'm only  human!"  I was laughing the entire time.  And, I told her what I had done. She yelled "MOM! I've been going nuts running around unplugging everything!" Whoops.

Ah, well. At least I know she will work with me if we ever DO have a problem with utilities. When I related the story to an older and dear friend she quipped "Oh, yeah. You're fifty alright!"  And I always thought the electric company had to worry about the 20-year-old age group not paying their bills.

Little furry heads

Somebody got me a computer game for Christmas. I am addicted. Yep. Like I needed another addiction. To get points you make at least 3 fuzzy heads of the same color in a row. I would drag the lime green one down to match 3 green ones in a row. The entire row moves. There is more to it, after you play for a while. You get locked (where the row won't move) you get big fuzzy balls that move two rows at once and a lot more. So, I've been doing that on the computer instead of other stuff. Heh.

I did get two of the main goals done over the holiday week-end. I did not go anywhere on New Years eve or day. I ventured out on Saturday with my daughter to pick up her big Christmas gift. Our wireless provider would not let us upgrade her phone until January 2nd, so she had to wait a week. She wanted the Droid. It is a lot of phone, I want to tell you. She had one of the Blackberry flavors, prior. In March I may move to a smart phone.

One goal was to clean up the basement clutter - done. The other was to get my non-working dryer out of the laundry room and into the empty side of the basement, then to get my spare dryer out of my garage, down the sidewalk, up onto the back porch, inside the back door, down the basement steps and into the laundry room and hooked up. Done. Did it. All by myself.

I am a wee bit sore, but not much. I did break off one of the legs, but I used shims to level the dryer off. The hardest part was getting the unit into the back door. I had to leave my house from the front door and push it in from outside. In single digit weather! The funny part was walking the dryer down my sidewalk (it really sounded to me like a science fiction monster walking around) at 10:00 a.m. on New Years' day hoping beyond hope that none of my neighbors had a raging hangover and I was waking them up. LOL!

I also play the time game. That is where I start the dryer walking down the sidewalk and get it into the house before any "good Samaritan" neighbor sees me and comes over to help me. Now, most folks wouldn't have to worry a lick about this issue, but I have great neighbors. I was fortunate that on one side are two elderly widowed ladies and I don't think the guy on the other side was home this week-end. Whew. Made it into the house without incident.

Okay. The truth is I have a very difficult time asking for or accepting help. There. I said it. I am going to be 50 this year. I ain't changing now. Well, maybe a little.

Then there is sister 1944. She yells at me. Well, if you can YELL in e-mail. She, her husband and our oldest brother are retired. She keeps telling me to let them know what I want done and they will come down and do it. Big breath. Okay, if I am going to change, I will ask them to rip up my carpet and put a floating floor in my living room come this spring. Right? Just bite the bullet and ask for help. Maybe get a couple of other family members involved and supply food and beverage for all. The hounds will have to be boarded for that week-end, that is for certain. Get them out of the way. Well, it is a plan.

In the mean time, I am getting caught up on my clothes washing and will probably go back to playing my furry head game during this cold snap here in Ohio. Happy New Year y'uns guys. Some co-workers and I debated what "y'uns" meant back in the 80's when I moved to Virginia. Of course they say "y'all" there. As in "you all". We in the eastern part of Ohio always said "y'uns", as observed by my Virginian co-workers who were teasing me one day and I said "Y'uns guys!" Well, that started it. As close as we could come was "you ones". Huh? Maybe. It helped having a Pittsburgh native in the work group. Well, we didn't have the Internet back then, but there is a lot about that phrase out there on the info highway nowadays. Looks to be a Pennsylvanian dialect.

Wow, it's November

Some property for sale near my house

Wow. November already. I voted on Tuesday for what my vote was worth. I lost most of what I voted for. Ah, well. I don't like gambling. I don't care if I ever go into a casino, but a lot of family likes it. I voted no mostly so they won't lose their shirts.

My sister (in prison) is in limbo. Waiting for the VA to decide if they are going to pay for any rehabilitation for her or not. The problem is she lost all her college class time she was taking in the reformatory. I don't think she will be able to continue that if the VA sends her to Chillicothe. Whatever. One of her "boyfriends" started this, he will have to finish it.

The pups are chewing up everything. Cha - Ching! Even medication. Fortunately, no bad results. They are starting to get into things they have never touched before. We have to really start to think before we leave the house. I am going to go through tomorrow and do some puppy-proofing.

I worked on a friend's Internet connection today. She wanted to install my ceiling fan for me. She got far enough to take the light down and had to stop. She needed to ask somebody for some advice. Sigh. I told her this was not as easy as 1-2-3 like hers was. But, she insisted that she could do it easily. Okay.

I am meeting sisters tonight for dinner. I hope I have enough stuff up and out of the way so the pups won't get into things. They are getting under and around things and dragging cords out. Two fans bit the dust. My nephew is re-cording one fan and my friend (ceiling fan) took the other and said she can fix that one with electrical tape. Well, I just hate to tell them it will only be a matter of time before the pups chew through any new or fixed cord they put on the fans.

I watched an older movie. "Midnight Run" with R DeNiro and C Grodin. It was a bit boring at times but I watched it all the way through. I really enjoy D Farina and J Ashton. I also like to look back and see if this movie was made before or after a popular one that I saw them in.

A bitten dorsal fin

This is another shot from my nephew's collection. I am not posting my own because I am on a new computer. Well, new to the household. I am setting up a spare PC to use in case mine fails. It was purchased in 2003 and Dell will not issue a warranty for it anymore. Yes, I purchase the extended warranty on my computers. Yes, I work on computers. I know what can happen and I know that I don't want that much down time when the hardware fails.

So, on this new computer I have Internet access, but no personal pictures. But, check out the dorsal fins on that shark. I asked my nephew about it and he said he hadn't noticed. Since he posted 92 photos from Sea World, he was probably just clicking and uploading. He said he would look at the photo and get back to me.

At the reunion motel we will have plenty of devices with Internet access. Most of the younger crew's cell phones are equipped with all the bells and whistles. Service may be tricky in the hills, though. My daughter is taking her new laptop. She gets bored easily at these gatherings. Still, it is great because I am the type of person who has to know "right now!" and she looks stuff up for me in a flash.

When somebody is talking about a movie and they say "Who was that guy who played so-and-so?" I run and look it up. The other day my sister sent me an e-mail asking me "What was the name of that movie where the skinny girl dies in the end?" What?! I laughed and replied exactly that: "What?!" I mean, can she give me a little more information? I guess we were talking about a certain movie one day, but I'll be darned if I can think of what she means. This morning I woke up and thought "Passengers" with Jane Hathaway. Maybe that is the one she is thinking of. If you have not seen it yet, I don't want to spoil it - but she does NOT die at the "end" of the movie.

I'll be seeing her today and riding in the car with her to WV so I can find out if that is the one she is thinking of. Speaking of movies, I watched "The Life of David Gale" from my Netflix choices. Not my favorite movie, but it was a mystery.

I have to go and roll my cheese balls into the chopped walnuts, now. About everything else is done and ready to roll. Ah, I need to put my name on my lawn chairs. We were laughing because we told folks not to put just "insert our last name here" on their stuff because ALL of us just about have the same last name! LOL!

Update on the pooches: they are growing like a weed. Their legs are double the length as when we first brought them home. No more pot bellies, especially Chong. He is getting lean and lank. I have to remember to take my camera outside to take a small video of him running. Cheech still does the little hop and run (he is a bit bow legged) but Chong runs full tilt. His ears are flat back against his head and he is off and running like a rocket. We are pretty sure they are rat terriers, now. Check out the picture at this site of the 5-week old pup. Ours look(ed) exactly like that shortly after we obtained them. Adorable.

What a mess

I don't like to clean gutters

I don't have a fear of heights. Well, maybe I do. But not six or eight feet off the ground. I don't fear that. I really need to clean my gutters so I guess I'll get the ladder out this week-end. This is my patio during the rainstorm. That's where my daughter and I spent the evening Wednesday watching the storm. Sirens were blaring all over town, but we stayed put.

My neighbor asked me if I wanted him to clean out my gutters? The really bad one was on the side of the house where he could see it. That does it! I'm going to figure out some way to reach that side and clean it. I may have to buy a new ladder. I am considering sitting my 6 ft ladder on a table to reach. Sigh. I know. I won't do it. Dammit.

It was very nice of him to offer, but you have to know me. It was an insult to me. It made me feel inadequate. I thanked him profusely and his offer still stands, but I cannot ask for help from anybody. He said "I work for beer!" I laughed.

I am going to watch very closely. When he leaves (hopefully for a golf outing) I am going to get up there and clean them out. What a mess.

I have a horrible case of plantar fasciitis in my left foot. It came about from doing so much work the week before the graduation party. It flared up and has not let up since. My days have been sheer misery. Hot, sweaty, grimy and in pain. I am certainly not getting the Miss Congeniality award this week.

Long week

We said good-bye to Sable's little cousin yesterday. Her Mommy came and picked her up. Her Mommy had quite a week with her son (that cartwheeled off the cliff on an ATV). My sister looked whipped.

I have had a very busy and grueling week at work. I collapse in the evenings when I get home. Not sure if it is the work or if I am getting sick. The machines really whipped me around today. I fought them all day to get them to do what I wanted them to. I got most of it working.

Back at it tomorrow.

At home I have been helping a relative fight her computer. She does not have anti-virus and she got a nasty case of malware. The about:blank one. I did something right. Her Internet is working again.

I got into it with my Internet provider last evening. They advertise that if you get the "turbo" feature of their Internet, you get 5GB of email space. I don't. I get 1 GB. (70,000MB to be exact). We went round and round. I knew it was going to come down to the fact that I am a former "adelphia" customer. It did. That is their excuse.

I told them I was sick and tired of hearing that as an excuse for my Internet/web page/email not working the same or as well as others on their network. I ticked off the customer service representative and she ticked me off. I gave them a scathing survey review and I gather that the former "adelphia" customers will be transferred over in September.

That was what they said 2 years ago. Maybe I should begin asking "September of what year?"

Snow Doe

I've misplaced my camera. Again. I used my daughter's Olympus a couple of times, but I am not familiar with it, so pictures come out blurry. I reached back into my archives from one year ago this month for the above photo of the deer in the snow. Salt Fork region.

I have not received the promised new cable modem from my ISP. Our connection has been cutting out for the past three days, so I am not real certain what is going on. Kids are complaining because they are using the Xbox 360 online and when the Internet cuts out, they get dropped out of their game.

The winter doldrums have set in. I am looking at a busy March. I'll be out of town for about half of the month taking care of things for family. I am busy this month scheduling and rounding up family/friends to take care of my pets and to help out with my daughter. I'll probably be doing a lot of driving back and forth. This will give the little green car a workout. It is now 12 years old as of last month. Since the odometer worked on and off for 2 years, I am not exactly certain the mileage. Since we put the new one in and started at zero, it has over 16 thousand on it. Prior to that the old one read over 150,000. I am estimating we probably didn't register 10,000 to 15,000 miles. Around 190k.

I am not exactly sure why my spell checker quit working. Maybe I should post in Explorer to see if it starts working again there. I am running Firefox 2.0.0.12 version right now.

In my Sunday paper I get The Parade section. It lists the world's worst dictators. I find this interesting as I get older. After watching the movie The Kingdom and researching as to why Americans choose to live in Saudi Arabia, it answers some questions. But, how dangerous. After reading about the way these dictators run their "kingdoms" are just plain scary. And why does the United States keep in contact and trade with them? Oil is an obvious reason, but there are others. Sudan because of gum arabic? An ingredient in soda and candy. Ugh. I chose a great week to stop drinking my beloved Canada Dry Ginger Ale, didn't I?

Zimbabwe for stainless steel. Or rather the stuff that goes into making stainless steel. We do like our stainless steel. The economy in this country appears to have gone kaput, but the United States is owed a great deal of money from them and so we continue to keep negotiations open hoping someday to collect on that debt.

And, as for Uzbekistan, isn't it rather ironic that the largest importer of uranium from that country is given the name "Nukem"? Is that some sort of a joke?

We went to see Jumper at the theater the other night. I wore my ear plugs, but I think I even got a headache from them being in my ears. It was quite uncomfortable and I am not sure I can get used to them. I'll keep trying different types, I guess. The movie was okay, but had a rather lame ending by my account. It is about teleportation.

Lucy didn't fall

Dinkenesh

She only moved around the corner. Well, she may have fallen - but it would have been 3.2 million years ago. And it could have been from out of a tree where she spent most of her time.

It had been a few years since I had been to Cleveland to visit my friend Lucy. The last time I was there I told her that we were kind of growing tired of the trip and we had pretty much exhausted our interest in the area. She said she understood and that she would be there if and when we decided to return. Somewhere along the years, she moved from the East Wall to the South Wall. I told her that change was inevitable. She laughed and said "Don't I know it!"

Lucy is full of stories. You can't imagine her experiences. She doesn't tell me in so many words what her life was like, I pretty much have to make it up as I go along. There was a gentlemen there that was telling everything he knew about Lucy to a man from Nigeria. I already knew how she got her name. What I didn't know was that she was christened during a beer drinking party. Well, I guess they were celebrating, because Lucy was a very special female.

I thought it was Richard Leakey, but it was Johanson. He happened to be the curator of the Cleveland museum during the time that he and Gray discovered Lucy and this is how she ended up in Cleveland. Except she isn't in Cleveland. I was a bit dismayed when I discovered she really resides in Ethiopia, but came to realize that was her "real" home. I have heard that she may be visiting in Houston Texas this year. Just a replica of her resides in Cleveland. Oh.

It was a 93 mile trip one way for my daughter and I. But, we learn. We broaden our brains just a little bit more. For more museum photos, click on the link on the right side bar of the blog "See more of my photos."

Moving on, does this sound legitimate to you? Yesterday in the mail I received a notice from my cable/Internet provider. They stated that they realized they had made a mistake when I added turbo Internet to my service. They realized that I didn't have the correct modem for this service. Not only are they going to send me a new modem to set up, but they are going to credit me for all the months I have had turbo Internet but (by their words) have not had the speed I should have been having. Okay.

I haven't called them to complain in months. What gives? I am suspect. Have you ever heard of a cable company admitting a mistake and compensating you for it? And to top it off, admitting it before you even ask or question the bill and/or service? This is just too fishy for me. I may have a problem with trust, but I have my reasons.

Is there anything in my previous posts that could be incriminating to me? Did I go too far with my daughter and her school? Did I say something about work that I shouldn't have? Hmmm. Interesting. Is this modem going to monitor everywhere I go and each word I type on line? I just don't trust them. Here are their exact words:

(begin letter)

It has come to our attention that the cable modem we provided to you for use with your "Name of Internet Provider" Turbo service needs to be replaced. In the next few days, you will receive a replacement modem via UPS which will allow you to take advantage of the full speeds of Turbo. In the meantime, in order to minimize any inconvenience to you, we have credited your account the difference between the Turbo price you have been paying, and the price we charge to regular customers. Depending on your billing cycle, you should see this credit in your next statement, or the statement after that.

We value your business tremendously and apologize for any inconvenience this situation may cause you. We look forward to providing you with blazing-fast Turbo services for many years to come.

(end letter)

We watched Jodie Foster in The Brave One. It was okay. I didn't like it as much as her recent movies. Too gruesome for me - the violence. Ugh.

What a day!

Seagull waiting for food at Conneaut, Lake Erie

Northeast Ohio's high speed cable connection is having serious problems. One particular technician named Todd (was too afraid to give me his last name) is especially having problems tonight. A few other techs gave me their last name. They have nothing to fear. I am pretty sure that Todd has had his life threatened before. I really, really hope that my high speed Internet provider records their customer calls and that they actually play them back. Hope, hope, hope I do. I called Todd a difficult a$$hole. He asked me to please refrain from using that type of language with him. Which I did, but I still called him the most difficult technician I have ever worked with. He hung up on me. I told my daughter that I had bit my tongue no less than eight times before I finally laid into him about his rudeness to me.

Oh, there was a lot more to the situation. Which I am way too upset to go into here. It happened five hours ago and I am still fired up about it. I called Customer Service. Okay, it took me four times (I repeat - four times) and almost an hour to get the customer complaint made against Todd, but I did it. Two calls ended up in dead air when the technician tried to transfer me to Customer Service and I had to hang up and try again. I am not completely satisfied, but that is all I can do. They make it so difficult to get around the bizarre automated phone system. I am persistent if I am anything.

One support technician gave me an 800 number for Customer Service, it ended up being disconnected and I got a recording giving me another toll free number, which just so happened to be the number I had been dialing in the first place. Four times to get through to somebody who would lodge a complaint about Todd the technician who had studied networking. He never said he passed any certifications, he just kept saying that he had studied networking so he knew what he was talking about. Well, maybe he did, but I don't tolerate condescending and rude.

So, I figure their Customer Service department is their technical support department and vise versa. I am still really fired up. Two technicians did apologize for Todd's rude behavior (the women) and I thanked them.

Anyway, while dialing the toll free number, I finally get the message that my high speed Internet provider is experiencing difficulties in my area of Ohio because of the recent storms and flooding.

This was one sour post today. If I offended anyone I am sorry, but it feels great to punch the keys on this keyboard and just lay it all out. I am seriously getting depressed about the state of things I see on a daily basis and I am getting sick and tired of it. So, do I take the easy way out and ask my doctor for nerve pills so I can settle down? Or can I do something about it? I want to write a letter to the editor of the newspaper for starters. Yeah, that would go over like a lead zeppelin.

Oh, bother. Well, for all you pet lovers out there you will be happy to know that my daughter "forced" me to bring home two kittens we found outside a small diner this evening. We were returning my sister's dog to her and stopped for a quick bite and there they were. Clean, friendly, older kittens. We have them quarantined in the back room until I can get them to the vet's office. Sigh. Please, no lectures. I can't take it. I'll try to find homes for them, but I know that is unrealistic.

Oh, and I locked myself out of the house today. I was so upset dealing with that technician today that I grabbed my laptop out of my car to do some troubleshooting and took it down to the basement. In an absent minded moment, I threw my keys on the table with it. We took off and "wham" out the door I am. I have an extra car key in my purse and I called my sister (the one we were meeting to take the dog back to) and told her to bring our extra house key. She brought me a hand full of keys, and said she hoped one of them was it. My daughter picked it out first try and we got back into the house, which was a blessing because the two new kittens were trying their best to get out of the box that the diner gave us to carry them in.

I'll get pictures of them tomorrow. For now, I want them to relax and settle down and I want to settle down, too. Grrrr. Then this evening we are sitting at the school for my daughter's orientation and she informs me that tonight is Wednesday. I thought to myself, "Oh no! I missed an appointment at 5:00 p.m.! How in the world did I tell my sister I would meet her tonight when I knew that I had an appointment?!" Of course, I was just sick about it and it was well into ruining my evening when a friend told me that "No, this is Tuesday evening." Cripes. I just want the day to be over with.

Tech Support

I called my cable high speed Internet tech support again today. We seem to have the "turbo" figured out. The download speed is fantastic. I am not sure I am going to keep it after 30 days, though.

Anyway, the guy couldn't help me with ftp. He didn't know what ftp was. Certainly he was playing dumb. How can somebody assist me with my high speed Internet and use the terms turbo, Ethernet, wireless, tracert (short for trace route) and ping without knowing what the hell FTP is?

I told him "Never mind. I'll research the problem on the Internet and then call tech support back if I can't get it to work." He said "Thank-you" in a relieved sort of way and hung up. Now, I have waiting in my inbox a survey to fill out. Oh joy.

Is this what I get for calling technical support on the week end?

Taking a dip

Rhino at the zoo

The weather is warm. This rhino has the right idea. Take a cool dip. I don't have a pool. My daughter has asked for one. Too much maintenance for me, plus we shun the sun.

Watched "Zodiac" tonight. It was pretty good. I liked the character cast.

I spoke with some workers in one of the schools today after I overheard one guy tell a co-worker that he put fire alarm systems in a college last week. He told me mostly what I read on-line. Both he and his co-worker stated that they were pretty sure 180 decibels (yesterday's post) would be incorrect. The co-worker said that would break the windows. Whew. My ears still hurt.

I am ticked off at my high speed Internet provider. I ordered the turbo and was having problems so I called them last night. They said they would have a tech call me. Asked for a good time. I waited all evening. Nothing. I am busy tomorrow all day. Not sure if I want to call them on a Sunday and lay into them. Grrr.

Access

My glasses and pen on my notes

So while my daughter takes her driver's ed in the building that I work in, I just stay upstairs in my office for an extra three hours until she is done. I may run out to get a bite to eat or let the dog out, but I am pretty content to sit quietly in my office and document, document, document.

There are some individuals in this world who have nothing better to do but to think of ways to muck things up. They devise these little programs (worms) that will bring an entire network to it's knees. It isn't a virus. A lot of end users just clump anything that corrupts a computer or a network as a virus.

One version is a DoS. Denial of Service attack. If this little program gets the IP address of a server in a network, it can really cause some havoc. When a machine sends a request to a server, the server MUST answer. That is it's job. Like a doorman. Somebody knocks on the door and the doorman answers. The little devil knocker has run and is hiding behind a bush. The doorman stands with the door open for a few seconds, looking from left to right, then shrugs and closes the door. Before the doorman can turn around to go back to his "other" work, there is another knock on the door. The doorman answers the door. Again, nobody is there. The doorman looks around again and then closes the door.

Now, multiply that to a billion or so and you get the idea that the server is now "unable to serve". A Denial of Service attack has been performed on the network and legitimate end users do not get their door knock answered because the doorman is too busy attempting to serve the knocker who keeps running away and hiding behind the bush. Unlike a human brain, the server cannot "learn" to ignore the knock, but must try to respond each and every time. Sick, I tell you. Just sick.

In business, this can be nipped in the bud pretty quickly. When business is not getting done, you can bet that some money is going to be spent to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. But, in a school, the problem may go on for weeks.

A teacher instructs the lab to go to a science page. They type in the url and click. The browser just sits and spins. Going nowhere. The resources of the network are depleted because deep inside the network the attack is at full throttle. The kids begin to snicker. One throws a balled up piece of paper at their friend. The teacher is side tracked by another student. Meanwhile, the browsers for this class go nowhere. The teacher sighs and tells the class that she (or he) must go and find the technology person to see what is going on and they leave the classroom.

A bored students recalls the funny video he saw on youtube the night before. He tells a friend and they decide to see if the browser will get them out to youtube. If not, Google will show them a hundred other sites that may have that very funny video. It could be on somebody's blog. The filter has a tough time stopping this type of errant behavior. A pause in the network attack allows the student to begin the video. They laugh and a couple of other students try and see if their machine will pull up the video. Pretty soon the school has a dozen or so machines attempting to play the very funny dirtbike video. Meanwhile the attack begins again, this time from another machine.

I had a strange thought pop into my head today. I do get a lot of "sappy" e-mails. You know they type. "You are such a true friend, here is a bouquet of flowers just for you..." on and on. I rarely (if ever) forward these. I do a lot of reading about how the Internet works behind the scenes and I understand how bogged down a network can get. As I painfully wrote above. It occurred to me that someday the Internet could get so bogged down with useless junk (it may already be there) that nobody is going to move. It will be like this precious commodity. I can hear end users crying "If only we knew we were wasting the precious databases of the world by plugging up the networks with all that garbage!"

Yeah, I need to get outside and walk more.