We have a costume contest in our office every year. I didn't dress up, but many of my coworkers did. This dude is in my department. His costume won 3rd place. He always has some good creepy costumes every year.
Yes I did a little post work. I added the background. But the evil clown look is all his. Muahahahaha!
Well apparently they think they can still get in. hahahaha!
Here is one attempt:
21:25:55 217.82.245.135 [20]USER anonymous 331
21:25:55 217.82.245.135 [20]PASS Ugpuser@home.com 230
21:25:55 217.82.245.135 [20]MKD 031025232433p 550
21:26:00 217.82.245.135 [20]MKD 031025232438p 550
21:26:00 217.82.245.135 [20]MKD 031025232439p 550
And another, this one is a bit more specific. I wonder who 'AK' is?:
17:36:57 81.60.105.239 [25]USER anonymous 331
17:36:57 81.60.105.239 [25]PASS ANONYMOUS@ON.THE.NET 230
17:37:13 81.60.105.239 [25]MKD /com1.aux.lptr.lock++#####++tag+++++for++++++++ak+++++/+ 550
17:37:38 81.60.105.239 [25]QUIT - 226
I don't get it...:
23:56:09 212.194.141.155 [39]USER anonymous 331
23:56:09 212.194.141.155 [39]PASS Pgpuser@home.com 230
23:56:11 212.194.141.155 [39]MKD 031028005455p 550
Only four attempts since I locked things down. Not too bad.
06:43:25 67.68.198.22 [40]USER anonymous 331
06:43:25 67.68.198.22 [40]PASS Xgpuser@home.com 230
06:43:27 67.68.198.22 [40]MKD 031028014211p 550
Ok after a little research I've discovered the "_gpuser@home.com" user password is generated via the application called Grim's Ping. It's basically an application that port scans for FTP server with annoymous upload enabled. Technically it's not a hacker tool because there could be legitimate free public FTP servers, but really I can't see that being a reality. The reality is that it searches for misconfigured FTP servers. Once a user finds an open FTP server, you can bet it'll be used for warez, as mine was.
So that means really only the user at IP 81.60.105.239 really made a personal effort to connect to my FTP server. The others just used a free app. I suspect Mr./Ms. 81 actually used a similar application previously and simply had not realized I locked the FTP server down yet.
For the fun of it, here is where these lUsers came from:
IP: 217.82.245.135, ISP: Deutsche Telekom AG, Country: Germany, City: Unknown. The user is on dial-up
IP: 81.60.105.239, ISP: Retevision SA, Country: Spain, City: Madrid Not 100% certain about city
IP: 212.194.141.155, ISP: T-Online France - Club Internet, Country: France, City: Lost after Paris Sprint ISP
IP: 67.68.198.22, ISP: Bell Canada, Country: Canada, City: Toronto
Well that was fun. Time for bed. Night night.
I've changed my Archives format from weekly to monthly to save on space. My archive list was getting a bit long. I hope this helps.
I also fixed some messed up links on my UT2003 skins page.
I removed some blogs from my list this afternoon. They were either no longer active or rarely updated. To those individuals, please don't take it personally. But the purpose of the links is more for MY convenience than anyone else's. If you're not writing, what's the point of me going there?
Out of curiosity I looked at the others lists. A couple of them were VERY long lists. I wonder, do these people read all those blogs regularly or is it just a cross-linking kinda thing. I've read various blogs where the author was a self proclaimed link-whore. I know the more cross links you have the more visible your website/blog will be on certain search engines, but I still don't get it.
My website has a bit more content, aside from my blog such as my art, my webcams, my Unreal Tournament 2003 Skins, and tutorials, so more visibility to my site would give the world more access to those items, but many blogs are just blogs with their only content being their writings. In some cases that's more than enough. There are some exceptionally entertaining writers out there. But in other cases you wonder why they even bother.
I guess all in all this is just one mans opinion. I put blog links on my site because I choose to. Because I am entertained by the blog I've linked to. Maybe that makes me a link-prude.
As you may have noticed, I've finally re-added comments to my site. After reading an interesting post by Mike from Hunkabutta, I desided I should get this working again. I've outsourced my comments rather than using my own hosted comments too. That worked ok, but was a bit problematic at times.
Haloscan will probably have issues now and again too, but at least people can comment now. I'm beginning to wonder if anyone besides Melly and John read my blog. Hopefully one day John will get his blog up and running. Slacker! ;)
For a long time I listened to music more for the music itself and the lyrics really didn't do much for me. Of course this was probably poison from the chart topper radio stations, who play the flavor of the week. Many, not all, but many of these groups have weak lyrics.
The last couple of years I really got into Industrial and EBM (a off shoot of Industrial) music. I used to listen a bit to the older stuff way back when and even when I started listening to the newer stuff I wasn't really listening to the lyrics as much as I was the music.
The I discovered a few groups, with the help of Digital Gunfire, that actually have cool music as well as very intellegent lyrical content. Often the mood is dark, but sometimes very optimistic. They are real emotions that most mainstream groups will stay away from. They are adult emotions instead of teen emotions, complex and powerful.
Even if you don't like electronic music the lyrics are still very strong on their own, poetry if you will. To me that makes the music even stronger.
I'm certain there are many other generas that have good strong adult (not adult in the sexual sense) lyrical content. Industrial happens to be the one I'm enjoying for now. As it's not very accessible to many people I felt it would be some what helpful for me to suggest a couple of groups; VNV Nation and Assemblage 23.
Lyrics Links: (for those who'd prefer not to listen to electronica but still want to know what i'm talking about)
I've had the week from hell this week. Ok I've had worse, but it still SUCKS!
I was pretty depressed this afternoon, but eating some dinner and watching VH1's "I love the 80's - Strikes Back" has helped. I'm sure the beer has too.
No I'm not going to go into why I've been having a shitty week or why i'm depressed. I don't feel like talking about it. So there. :รพ
Monday I had a statistics exam. I really did not feel prepared for the exam at all. I should have studied a lot more.
The test was tough and I used the entire time allotted to us. When I finally handed it in, I really didn't feel very confident about my chances of passing. I figured if I passed it would be just barely.
Well we got our exam scores tonight and I managed to get an 80%! I could barely believe that. I still have a hard time with it. I wonder if he gave me partial credit for trying my best and leaving brain juice on the paper as I strained and wringed my brain trying to fnd the knowledge to do the problems.
A few of the problems I got wrong were big "DUH!"s, but I was suprized at the number I DID get right. All in all this was a pleasent suprise. About the only good thing that happend for me today. I think I'll celebrate with some beer.
Well they didn't deface my website, but they did take advantage of a gapping hole I had left in my FTP server. I have to take full responsiblity for the hole too. I installed a webportal package called DotNetNuke. In doing so I broke some security settings I had in place.
I wasn't really happy with DotNetNuke and thus abandoned it, but I never reset my security. Shame on me. I certain know better.
One of the groups, Chaos-Crew left their signature, thanks guys. One pecker apparently didn't know what he was doing yet and made a HUGE mess of his/her directory structure. It may have been on purpose, but whatever.
I just formatted the drive and restored a backup. I put in place other security measures to prevent this from happening again, but I won't go into those.
I will say however that I blocked their subnets on the firewall. Sure they could spoof them and use another address, but that makes it more work. They were just using my server as a Warez server, so they'll probably just go find some other poor saps computer and hijack it.
Needless to say I'm a little irritated, but I also look on things like this as a challange. They had no other access to my system, near as I can tell, so it was rather benign. They helped me find a bad security hole that I had not fixed, now it is. Thanks guys. What would we do without you wonderful hackers trading your Dido and German version of the movie Terminator illegally on our servers? What I found rather funny too was the copy of Norton AntiVirus 2004 on my server. Gee don't you trust each others files? LOL
Famous line isn't it. But have you really thought about it?
It's a philosophical proof in a sense. We cannot prove anything without a doubt but or own existence and only that because we can think about it. I won't go into the details of that, primarily because I'm rusty on the philosophy myself.
A similar proof is that there is no specific color that equals red, because every individuals eyes will display color just a little bit different. So we as a society agree that some shade is red, with a high level of variance. But what about those who are color blind. To them red doesn't exist at all. It's simply a shade of gray (or something in that area) that they have been forced to learn as red. But distinguishing between red and blue and green when they are all the same luminosity can be difficult, if not impossible.
The point I'm trying to make is that thinking actually makes reality much more ill-defined. If colors don't exist, because they are simply a construct of an individuals visual perception, how could anything exist? I hate to dive into the popular media philosophy, but our reality could very well be Matrix-like. Our brain requires our five senses to communicate with the outside world. Those senses can fool us and/or be manipulated. Just ask anyone who's taken a hit of LSD.
So who's to say the world we live in is any more real than the world of cyber space or the worlds in our dreams? These are common questions that many people have asked, but I wonder, 'If thinking is required to exist, then animals and/or brain-dead humans don't exist, except in my own mind?'
I believe thinking actually makes your existence even more dubious. Or rather, the world we exist in is.
Yah baby! The Huskers whooped Texas A&Ms butt, especially the Husker defensive team. Nice come back from the humiliating lost last weekend.
Nebraska Huskers - 48
Texas A&M Aggies - 12
An important note: the last 6 points that Texas A&M scored was on the Husker 3rd,4th or 5th string, late in the 4th quarter. The Nebraska coaching staff was trying to give every player a chance to get on the field.
Way to go Huskers! Yea!!
The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida has put up a very interesting Java applet on their site. It begins as a view of the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of 10 million light years and then zooms into towards Earth in powers of ten of distance. 10 million, to one million, to 100,000 light years and so on and then when it finally reaches a large Oak tree leaf. But that is not all it zooms into the leaf until it reaches to the level of the quarks viewed at 100 attometers.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html
This is a fantastic representation of how magnificent the Universe is and how vastly infinite it is both in the macroscopic and the
microscopic level.
Please note: I did not write the above information. I copied it from an email that I got from a buddy of mine. I suspect he got it from some news site. I felt it was worth sharing. If the original author and copy write holder wishes for me to take this down I will be more than happy to do so. I suspect that Florida State University would not have a problem with the link however.
I'm afraid one of my favorite bands has really disappointed me. KMFDM, an industrial band that's been around since the 80's, has released a new album, WWIII. Unfortunately it's been released under Sanctuary Records, a member of the RIAA. I'm not certain why they jumped ship from Metropolis Records. Metropolis isn't a member of the RIAA, they have some great artists working with them and they are great with their customers. Apparently they and KMFDM had some kind of disagreement. That's really too bad.
Because I am boycotting the RIAA I will not be buying this album. I will not be stealing any of the songs from file sharing applications either.
KMFDM will be playing in Atlanta, the closest show to me, in November, but I'm not even sure if I want to go to that now either. I really feel like a jilted fan.
I will be removing the KMFDM link banner from the right side of my home page as well. Sorry guys. Love the music, but I won't be buying your CD.
Until artists can be DIRECTLY compensated for their music, I'll be sticking with Indi-labels and net radio (Digital Gunfire).
Ok time to finish this up.
After a failed attempt to blast the kidney stone and going for another scan the next morning, I was asked to return to the Urologists office with my scans. The radiology lab and urologists office were in the same building so this wasn't a big deal. After analyzing the scans they found that the stone had moved down the ureter a good amount but because of the swelling and stretching my ureter had already experienced, they felt it would be best to manually remove it rather than hope it would pass naturally. It has already been over a week at this point.
They admitted me to the outpatient surgery center and they took me back, put me back into my little hospital gown and put me in bed. After all the fun paper work and IV crap they wheeled me up into pre-op. That was a bit spooky. Before I was already out before this point and in a different building. I could hear heart monitors all over and doctors and nurses in scrubs were walking all over the place. Since it was early and I was kinda tired anyway, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. That didn't work very well. Eventually they gave me my anesthesia and poof I was out.
When I woke I was in my little recovery room. They had othroscopically removed the stone. And yes they went in without and incision, so you can guess where they entered. All you guys can cringe now, though I suspect the women would as well. They replaced the stent as well. Or at least I think they did. They may have used the same one, but I don't think they did. The piece of suture hanging out of me was longer. Yes I had a piece of suture hanging out of my penis and it was taped to be secured. Anyway, I'm sure you all enjoy that picture.
Ok so I got dressed and...well I hate to admit this, but I've waited so long to post this that I don't recall who picked me up. They took me downtown to the Hilton. Pretty swank huh? Actually the company I work for was having a Users Conference at the Hilton, so my boss suggested I stay there. I shared a suite with him.
The company always gets the operations staff rooms since we have to be there early to setup the rooms. Yes I'm part of operations and normally I would have had a big part in the setup of the conference and I missed it all. I was and still am diappointed I missed it. It's always a lot of fun.
Dave, my boss, felt that it would be best for me to stay there so that I'd have someone on hand to take care of me if I needed help. It really was a good idea. I mostly slept on the couch and watched TV. I had not discovered how comfy the bed was yet. Actually I slept a good part of the night away like that, on the couch. The next night I slept in the bed. Man that was sweet.
Room service for food and no worries about cleaning and stuff. It was great really. I can look at look at it now and see how great it was, but at the time I really could barely appreciate it. I was pretty hoped up on pain killers most of the time. They made me sleepy and just generally "blah". I didn't feel like doing much of anything.
Friday (Sept 26th) at about 3 or so I was given a ride home by one of the admin girls who lives out my direction. She's a really good person. She went to the store and got me a few things, soup and bread among a couple other things. It was just what I needed. I had no desire to cook, so cans of soup were great.
I just took it easy all weekend and Monday. I was feeling a bit better at this point. Sunday I let the pain killers wear off a bit to see how things felt, but the stent and attached 'string' were very uncomfortable. My appointment to have the stent removed was for 1:30pm on Tuesday the 30th of Sept. However, due to issues at the doctors office, they had to do it sooner. So I was scheduled to be there at 10:45am. Finally at 11:15 or so the doctor came in, asked me to drop my drawers. He suggested I remove the tape, which had attached itself rather well at this point. It wasn't too painful, but it was a delicate operation and I'm sure it was more comfortable for us both for me to do that part. After I did that he came back into the room, asked me to lay back and take a deep breath. He said release it slowly and by the time my breath was done the stent was out. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but I DID take a pain killer that morning, just in case.
That stent was about a foot long with curly Qs on each end! It was only about as thick as a piece of spaghetti, but still, yikes.
The doctor highly suggested I go home, take some pain killers and take it easy as the stent removal would likely irritate the ureter and it could potentially swell and duplicate some of the discomfort I had experienced with the stone. Needless to say I wasn't interested in that! I had planned on working that afternoon, so I stopped in the office and let Dave know that I was going to take the rest of that afternoon off.
I went home and chatted with Melly a bit and napped. I did feel a bit of discomfort so I'm glad I took my doctors advice this time.
Wednesday I went to work. I was a bit down and dragging still but by Friday I was feeling much better.
Thankfully today I'm feeling 100% again. Many big thanks to everyone who helped, especially Melly, John and Dave. Thanks also go to those who sent their well wishes to me. Hopefully I'll never have to go through that again!
