Another world

I had my head stuck in subnetting at work yesterday. It took my mind off all the other problems I was having. When dealing with this it is like you stick your head into this big tree that is full of leaves and you can see nothing else around you until you pull your head out of that tree. That was how it was for me. Very intense.Four long hours with one bathroom break.

The tech on the other end of the phone was super fantastic. We started off slow because I did not know what to expect and neither did he. By the time we were done he and I had shared dog stories and we were laughing and calling each other awesome.

I actually only had him on the phone for maybe two and a half hours. The first hour was prep work on my part. The last half hour was pack up and get out of there.

Yes, my head hurt by the time I was done. It may have been from no lunch. This tech is on the west coast so we began at 11 a.m. my time and finished at 3. I did have a helper - he ran and bought me a bottle of water during the marathon.

I was not "properly" trained. I have never been to formal schooling or training for computers. I have been to a few week-long classes - mostly two to three day classes. I did learn the hexadecimal numbering system - on my own. I  did not need it for work - for some reason that one just clicked with me.

As for subnetting, I did write a paper on it back in 1997 or 1998. I understand it, I just cheat and use an online calculator. I do not know how to figure it out in my head. Yet. I may learn, still.

In high school I was the artist or the short story writer. I managed B's in math but I only took as much as I would need to get into college. First level algebra and geometry. Nothing higher. It made me sick to my stomach. So did the teachers. Then, I did not even go to college. To this day I have not come across a math teacher that I liked. I did pick up a college refresher course (when I thought I would go to college back in 1992). His name was Lovejoy Das. I sort of liked him. He was from India. He said as a boy they used to do math problems in the dirt with a stick. WTF? I would have drawn pictures in the dirt.

Anyway, the day (yesterday) ended with a huge success.  I (we) pulled off a minor miracle as far as I was concerned. I had no idea how to set this unit onto the network and we did it. It required the wonderful world of subnetting, but I did not give up. I figured out the necessary changes and they worked. By god - they worked. It certainly made me feel better than the last few days of holy horror I have been through with another district. I have another job today and I am going to try my hardest to be successful with that also. Then tomorrow - back to the horror mess. Who knows? Maybe I will hit them out of the park all week. LOL!

My headache. I did take some Advil. By the "bewitching" hour of 9 p.m. it was completely gone. I have mentioned before that strangely, a lot of my headaches seem to dissipate by 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. By the time I went to bed I felt wonderful. I had taken a sinus Advil maybe that was the ticket.

Fishing and Phishing/Malware and Virus

This stock photo is an example of how unstable the Internet can be

We are standing on a shaky pier, looking out into the murky depths of an unforeseeable future in the vast unknown.

So, I have been fishing. This particular virus is known to run over port 3127. I know. Many of you are probably asking "What the heck is a port?" To see a list of ports, you can go here. To see a description of what ports are, you can go here. I don't recommend it for the weak of heart. If you work with computers you quickly come to realize another old saying. The more I know, the more I realize what I "don't" know.

The more I researched this particular virus, I came to discover that it is designed to look for port 3127 on a machine. If that port is in use by another application, it then attempts to use port 3128. So on and so forth until port 3198.

I did not have the time to monitor all these ports, so I selected about ten and placed the monitor list on. The amount of log files that came back was seriously overwhelming. I took the monitors off and reported the findings and hoped that what I had found were indeed "false positives."

Which brings me to malware. There is a lot of malware out and about on the web. I use three programs to scan for it on my computers. Malwarebytes, Ad-aware, and Spybot Search & Destroy. I know there are others, and I have used them. I do notice that from time to time I have to remove and re-install Ad-aware. Ad-aware and Spybot tend to conflict with one another, but I do my best to keep my machines covered. Keep in mind that I use the free versions of these products. I know I stated earlier that you get what you pay for, I do pay for anti-virus protection. Malware is a different entity.

Let me take a moment to warn you about installing free software. Many times the free software has made a deal with Yahoo or Google and will try to slide a "toolbar" into the installation. Read each window before clicking the Next button. I recommend that you remove the check mark from the toolbars (or anything else they might be trying to sneak past you) unless you know specifically what the toolbar is and what it does. I don't like them.

Another interesting fact is that because there are so many different anti-virus applications, and they all tend to be in competition with one another, they usually cannot agree on a name of any particular virus. One product may call a certain virus mydoom, while another calls it Novarg. Then there are various versions of the virus. The first one may be named mydoom, the second wave may be titled mydoom.b, third mydoom.c and so on and so forth.

Then there is the generic groups. Where an application will group many different kinds of malware into one generic pile. One example is the Mal/Generic-A virus. For all the different types of threats that fall into this category, you can go here.

This particular virus has been accused of being a false positive. This indicates that an anti-virus program has tagged a file that looks suspicious and claims that it is a virus or malware. Other anti-virus packages state that the file in question is indeed "NOT" suspicious and that the other program has what is relatively known as a false alarm. See here.

Regardless, all of this can boggle the mind of an average computer user. You may say "How in the hell are we supposed to keep up with all of this malarkey?" The short answer. You can't. I can't. I have problems with my computer from time to time. My best tool is Google search. I read ten hits or more on each problem I have. Are other folks having the same problem? If so, how did they fix it?

Anyway, in conclusion - it is a mess out there. We do the best we can. I always compare it to driving. Traffic on the Internet gets congested. We can run over a chuck hole or a nail at any time and get a flat tire. As careful as we are, there will always be risk. And, remember. There is always that little window where a new virus is created and can wreak havoc before the anti-virus companies have time to create a fix for it. Especially with the speed of the data these days. It can almost take the fun out of it for us. Hopefully, things will get better. Things will get safer. Products will improve.

Notice: The author of the blog does not profess to know it all. The thoughts and words in this post are what I currently understand at this point and time in my life. It may not be completely accurate and I might even disagree with it in the future. I do the best I can to understand and absorb and then attempt to explain the subject with how I perceive it. Do not take my belief as gospel, but ask or research many different views on the subject at hand to come to your own conclusions.

My desktop

This was from last year. I change my desktop about once a month. Speaking of once a month, I have come to discover the real reason behind my massive migraine. I still don't plan to drink any more of the vitamin water. I felt so darn good yesterday I spent the day smiling and chatting like a fool. I wanted to cry because I was free of the pain. Sigh. It was a good day.

I chose to study the topic TCP/IP. I know the subject pretty well, but a refresher is always good. Keeps me on my toes. Given the extent of my headache, I certainly didn't want to tackle anything new and very challenging. One of the big areas to study is the OSI model. All People Seem To Need Data Processing. Backwards = Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation and Application layers. First letter mnemonics like Roy G Biv.