Google Maps

If you haven't been there yet, you need to check out Google Maps.

I've been using them for the past month and a half or so. It's maps, provided by NAVTEQ, are some of the best online maps I've seen yet. They are not 100% accurate but compared to MapQuest they are great. I know MapQuest is the current leader, but a lot of that has to do with market dominance and age (it was one of the first) more than quality.

Like I said the maps aren't 100% accurate but reading the maps is much easier. The street names are clearly marked and major roads are highlighted for your ease. The problems I've noticed are related to recent road construction. Nashville is always changing something, it seems. It's difficult to keep up with that. I'm sure this'll be a problem with any mapping software out there however. The second problem I noticed was that when I put my address into the system it found my house about 2 houses down from where it's actually located. It put me on the corner rather than up the hill. That's not too bad though. A few hundred feet off target is reasonable to me.

Another addition that Google added was the satellite maps. You can zoom to your house and then click a link to see the satellite map. It's pretty cool. Not all areas can zoom in very close but some can. Depends on how far out you are from a major metropolitan area.

So next time you are looking for directions, give Google Maps a chance. I bet you'll like it.

FTP Compromised

Well I've allowed myself to be hacked. Damn that's disappointing. I've not been paying close enough attention. Interestingly I discovered the problem investigating why my website was so slow and my FTP access was messed up.

Hackers or Crackers, whatever, these warez people, create folders to upload and download illegal software, music and movies. I ended up with a number of directories that I could not easily remove. You hackers know what I'm talking about, using high ascii characters to and reserved names to make it difficult to remove them.

Here is the way to remove these directories if you run across them.

1. Stop your FTP service or IIS entirely.
2. Open up a command prompt (Start, Run, type CMD and hit enter)
3. Navigate to your FTP directory using the CD command. (example: cd C:\ftproot\files)
4. Once there if you do a standard DIR command it'll show the invalid directories but with thier long file name with invalid characters. You won't be able to delete it with Windows Explorer.
5. Instead of DIR, try DIR /X. This will force the DIR command to include the old 8.3 file name, often something like bignam~1.
6. Now you can use the RD command (remove directory), but it also requires a couple of switches to work properly. If you do not Windows will tell you the directory is not empty. So the command is RD /Q /S foldername. Using the example folder name above the command would be RD /Q /S bignam~1. Depending on how much junk was loaded into those folders it may take a few seconds for the command line to return, but once it does the folder is gone.
7. Repeat for all hacker folders. Be sure to look through all your legitimate folders. They'll sometimes hide them.
8. Run the IIS Lockdown tool from Microsoft. It'll help make your system more secure.
9. Once it is done confirm that you do not have anonymous access to your FTP server or make certain that write access is not allowed. If you need to allow write access and also allow anonymous download only access, you'll need to setup two FTP servers. One that is your locked down one and one that is for anonymous access. I personally disallow anonymous access.

So how did I get caught? Well I'm not entirely certain but I suspect it had to do with a recent move of my server. I had the whole site on a different drive and then had to move it because of an upgrade.

Am I certain I'm safe? No not entirely, but you can bet I'll be blocking some IPs at the firewall.

Do I hate the people who did this? No, but they are irritating, however I put myself in this boat by not being diligent. Anyone who puts a server on the Internet needs to remain viligent. This was my mistake and hopefully the steps I took will prevent further access. If not, my FTP server may just have to be turned off completely, or only on when I need to use it. Either would be a lot safer.

As is said from time to time by security experts and hackers. The only way your PC is 100% safe is to unplug it from the Internet. Some go as far as to say unplugging it from the wall (turned off), but that's a bit extream.

I hope the steps above help others, but the bottom line is that if you use IIS you have to be careful.

Keywords: IIS, FTP, Hacker, directory, com1, lpt, tagged, upped, high ascii, invisible characters, warez

SCREEN SHOTS (removed 12/05/2006)

Inner City Value

I'm sure there are some legitimate answers to this question...

Why is it that around city centers there are low income areas, "the projects"? Land value would seem to be worth more, but apparently it's not as these older neighborhoods are often run down and full of low income families.

Now I'm not suggesting kicking these people to the curb but with gas prices going up I can see more people wanting to move closer to town. The inner city areas seem like they'd be prime property to build some nice condos and/or revitalize the exciting housing.

Nashville has some neighborhoods that would be GREAT for commuters who are tired of spending 60-90 minutes each way to and from work. I spend 15-30 minutes (depending on traffic flow) each way and I live only 7 miles from work. There is an entire section of town, "West Nashville" that most people I know wouldn't even consider. The few neighborhoods they would are on the outskirts.

Help me understand. Why do these poor neighborhoods seem to survive in the middle of a thriving city without being bought up by investors and land developers?

Just get in

I was just thinking about risk-takers vs. risk-adverse people. I'm definitly a risk taker. I take more of the idea that it's best to go in fully and then deturmine if what you have is too much. Let me give an example. My company is looking to do an online 'webinar'. Researching our options we found that there are different levels we can chose. Basically we can go low level and risk not having the resources or professionalism or we can go high level and risk having way more resources than we need.

In this case I think we should go all the way. My logic? If we discover that parts were unnecessary we can remove them on the next webinar that we do. If we chose to take the lower level we may not realize the benefits that we are ignoring, in doing so perhaps our webinars are not as effective as they could be.

This goes back to my original thought. Risk is a part of life, not just business. There are those who stick their toe in the lake and slowly go in and there are those who dive in head first.

People automatically think of the risk associated with diving in head first. You might bonk it on something! But what about the risk of the swimmer who goes in slow and cautious who gets knee deep, a fish brushes by them and they freak and get out of the water? The risk they are taking is that they are not getting to enjoy the benefits of being in the water. The person who dived in head first may have been just fine and is having a ball out in the water cool and comfortable. Or they could be getting dragged out of the lake with a head wound.

The point is that each method has its place. In a clear swimming pool 8 to 10 ft deep, diving in head first has little risk, but the toe first person may not get in because the water is 'too cold'. There is a time and place for each method. I'm still learning when to use which. It's something that takes experience and your head screwed on straight.

Just don't be afraid to get in the water, regardless of which method you use, or even if you use an alternative method. Just get in. Standing (or laying with a head wound) on the shore will get you nothing.

Yea yea

I know I don't write enough any more. It's tough finding time between work, school, working on the house, working on the yard and last but definitly not least doing things with my sweety Melly.

I'm taking HR Management at Belmont University. I've starting prepping my yard for spring. I got my grass seed and will be doing the weed and feed soon. Melly is planting flowers and such and we are working on a nice rock path into the back of the yard. I have some pictures, but they are on my camera stuck at home with dead batteries.

Work is work as always. I'm taking another team lead position. I like being a team leader though it's a lot of work. I'm hoping that the experience I gain, in addition to my classes, will give me a path into management. Time will tell.

Well back to work...

VWs Cruzing Downtown Nashville

Saturday afternoon here in Nashville it was beautiful. Warm weather, sunny sky. People were out in large numbers downtown, both tourists and locals alike. I was heading home after class (being an adult student sucks sometimes) and I was checking out all the nice cars that were being cruzed around and besides a flashy red Acura NSX, four cars stood out among the rest, three Golfs and a Jetta. I'm a VW fan (duh) but I mean it seriously when I say they stood out and in a good way. They were very clean, dropped and tricked out, but not riced out. Due to traffic I didn't have the chance to really get a great look at them but I was pretty excited to see such nice VWs anyway. I was able to pull along side as I was turning right as they were turning left. I gave them a little honk and a peace sign, to show my VW brotherhood and then like a total dork I had to tap my breaks a bit harder than I needed because traffic in front of me stopped.

Needless to say it's a tad bit embarrassing to drive like a lamer in front of those you respect. I mean I don't know those guys, but there is some pride in being a VW 'driver'. To not drive like one, as I did at that moment, is embarrassing. I might as well had said, "Hey guys look at me, I'm an uber-dork!"

I'm sure I gave those guys a good laugh, thumbs-up for them and their sweet rides. Maybe next time I'll be less of a dork. And I'll wash my car too. LOL

Top 10 video games parents should be wary of

Ok first off, every one of the games on the list are rated "M" for MATURE. Children should never have access to these games to start with but apparently over-zelous groups feel it needs to be stressed further.

CNN Money, 'Doom 3' vs. 'Madden'
Interest group identifies video games it says are inappropriate and appropriate for kids.

While there are some good points in the article the bottom line is that it's parents responsiblity to know what their kids are playing. A friend of mine and his wife have strict rules as to which games can be played at their house. Most games rated T are still out of the question because their youngest is not yet of that age. Some of those games have been racing games such as Test Drive: Eve of Destruction, because of, "Mild Lyrics, Mild Violence, Simulated Gambling". The lyrics are in the music that is playing, which you can turn off. The violence is inherent in the game as it's demolition derby. The gambling is, you race other players for money. Most of these themes are not beyond a 9-13 year old and other games have 'gambling' but since it's not with 'money' they don't have a problem with it.

The point of this is that parents have to judge games for themselves. Ratings are there to guide, but are not fool proof. But it's pretty clear that most Mature rated games don't need to be in the hands of younger children. They suggest 17 and up. That's reasonable for most.

This is no different than movie ratings, which personally I feel have degraded badly in recent years, but for some reason it's a big deal because video games are supposedly precieved to be only for kids. That's a bunch of crap there. Most of us who grew up on Pong, Atari and even NES are now adults and we still like to play video games. As we've grown our tastes and themes have changed. Jumping for magic mushrooms and the like evolved. We want more story. Look at how amazingly successful Myst was/is. It has no major violence and killing or sex, but it had a great story and puzzles that were geared to a more developed mind. An eight year old even today would likely be frustrated or bored with Myst as it's a bit more than the average child intellect can deal with. Not to suggest there are none, I know of some myself.

As technology has improved so has game-play and story. Games coming out today have more im common with movies than they do computer programming. Developers utilize the same technology to develop creatures and special effects. Games today have better special effects than some movies just 5-10 years ago. We can play live action rendered on-the-fly 3D games that are nearly as beautiful as Toy Story when it came out and that took hours per frame of film!

For some reason parents seem to treat games like movies though. They don't restrict when they should. I saw a whole family come into the theater to see Hellboy when it came out. While it wasn't rated R it certainly was not acceptable for a 3-5 year old little girl, such as they had with them. The father had to take her out after the first 30 minutes and frankly that was probably too long.

Where did peoples brains and good judgment go? If you're a parent you should know what you are buying your children, not just getting something because its on their wish list. And explain to them why they cannot have it. You think my friends kids are happy about being restricted from more mature games? His son wants to play Grand Theft Auto and other such games because they look (and are) cool to play. But rules are there for a reason. Some of the things you can do in those games a pre/early teen doesn't need to be exposed to just yet.

Adults know the difference between entertainment and reality. Children build their perceptions of reality based on their experiences. Giving them these experiences before they are ready to realize it cannot be reality can be dangerous.

It's easy for me to preach not having any children yet and I recognize there are likly things I'm not considering from a parent perspective, but I'd still argue that parents have to regulate their children. That responsiblity is not that of game maker or retailers who sell them. A video game store like EB Games has the responsiblity, as a theatre does, to prevent minors from buying a mature rated game (or see a rated R movie), but if the parents buy it for their child, the parent is the guilty party, not the store.