Saturday, May 15, 2004

It's a worm eat worm world...

It's a funny thing, really. Someone has written a worm virus that infects PC's infected with the Sasser worm - because of a vulnerability in the Sasser worm itself. But it's not a NEW thing - DoomJuice and DeadHat infected PC's that had the MyDoom worm, however, they didn't gain entry to PC's because of a vulnerability inside MyDoom. That's the new wrinkle to this game. It's just the way of the virus writing community, I guess. As always, run those anti-virus programs, people!
A update on the (alledged) writer of the Sasser worm. Sven J. is his name, and he has told authorities that (get this) he was trying to create an ANTI-virus. Seriously. He says that he came up with Netsky to get rid of the Bagle worm - which the Netsky-A variant does do. Of course, that's not all it does... Anyway, looks like he'll probably avoid jail time. Good for him, I guess.
I have recently had a bad time with a spyware infection - no less than 8 different lame sidesearch, optimizer, and browser enhancer programs just appeared out of nowhere on my Add/Remove Programs list! No idea how these got there, but with help from Ad-Aware 6 and SpyBot 1.3, I got rid of them (I hope...) - but man, was that a pain in the ass! I've never had a big problem with spyware before, and I really hope to never have one again.

Friday, May 14, 2004

Handheld gaming news from E3

This is pretty cool - I'm a big video game fan, have been since the days of the Atari 2600 (I'm an Old School Gamer). The handheld game market, which has been owned forever by Nintendo, is about to get quite the shakeup. At E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) Sony officially unveiled their new handheld, the PSP. And Nintendo has officially unveiled their replacement for the GameBoy Advance, the Nintendo DS. More info HERE. That Sony PSP sounds awesome - wireless connectivity, and it's a music player and will play movies too? Crazy. I'm quite the collector of game and PC hardware, and I will be getting both of these - maybe not immediately (depending on how expensive they will be), but as soon as I possibly can.

Oh - for a little bit of Flash weirdness, check out Cramato.com. This is really funny if you're familiar with the song that plays during the animation - "Psycho" by System Of A Down. Still pretty darn funny if you don't know the song though.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

A new piece of Mindless Fun

Thanks to the Link of The Day on Userfriendly.org I have discovered a new website to spend hours doing absolutely nothing useful at - and having a great time doing it! Go right now to The Encyclopedia of Pointless. May I suggest the Choose Your Own Error Adventure as a fine way to start exploring the site. Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

On Things Involving Cats & Dogs

Random thoughts for today -
Why do dogs love us so?
Do cats get jealous of the dogs, because the dogs love us so?

Yeah, I know, that's a little weird. Let me provide some explanation. My wife and I have two pets - a cat, George, and our dog, whose name is Lucas (yes, I know - "George Lucas". You probably won't believe me if I say that wasn't planned, so I won't even bother to try). George is my wife's cat, she's had him since before I knew her. We got Lucas after we bought our house - Lucas will be 2 years old soon. Anyway, enough background. George and Lucas have what I like to call a "HATE/Why Won't You Play?" relationship. Lucas wants to play with the cat, have a good time chasing each other around the house - dogs do this, it's natural for Lucas to want to, I suppose. George does not like the dog. AT ALL. It's not just a normal disdain that cats have for dogs in general - it's special. He will hiss and spit at the dog, and if up high enough to do so, will wallop Lucas in the head with a right cross paw or two. Like I said - "special". The other day Lucas was following me around the house (like he does) and we went into the kitchen. George was in repose on the center island in our kitchen (like he does) and decided to up the ante some in his ongoing war against dogs. He bit. But not Lucas - he bit ME. Fairly hard too. Didn't break the skin, but I think he would have if I hadn't whipped my arm out of the way in shock. Needless to say, I was very surprised. This was unprovoked - If I am spinning the cat around on his back on the kitchen floor, and he nips my hand lightly - this is to be expected. I provoked that reaction, and it was just a playful nip. This was an unprovoked action, and I'm surprised by it. I don't anticipate further problems, as George seemed very sorry and contrite when he witnessed my displeasure (via the strong (verbal only) scolding he received). But - is this an example of the envy I mentioned earlier? Was he just jealous, because he thinks the dog is loved more? I don't know...

Monday, May 10, 2004

Well, THAT'S new...

So - I go to www.blogger.com to write a new post for the blog today, and it's different. Blogger, that is. They've changed the site. New graphics, new interface - it's quite a change. Still kinda getting used to it, but so far I like it.

In other news, I've been using Mozilla Firefox for some time now, ever since they updated to version 0.8 and renamed it Firefox. I also started using Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird. And I think they ROCK. A browser that gives you a built in pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, easy to install skins, and the ability to install additional features Mozilla calls extensions. Thunderbird has a decent built-in spam filter, is easy to use and configure, and also has downloadable extensions. Plus, they're free of ads (unlike Opera), and totally free! Try them - you'll like them!

Sunday, May 09, 2004

Ah, Sunday...

A day of rest, indeed. With the schedule I have at work now, I'm there from 6am till 5pm Wednesday through Saturday. So when Sunday comes along - I am very very tired, and in dire need of a day off. Nice thing is, I can laze around the house all day Sunday, and I still have Monday and Tuesday off as well. Nice, huh? Yeah - I'm one lucky bastard. On a different note, Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!