Brian's World

Upgrades Complete

Whew, I just completed a pretty exhaustive blog upgrade. I got hacked again… I suspect I never got rid of the original infection a few weeks ago. I found a hidden folder filled with html files of links, likely to game search engines. I also found a file that would be used as like a hackers console into my system. It had a file directory brower, upload system, php shelll acces, and mysql querying system. Pretty nifty.. if it wasn’t being used to compromise my site. I can’t say for sure it was used extensively. They could have done much more damange than they did, so in those respects I’m lucky I guess.

As you can see Brian’s World has a new theme and everything. I started from scratch again, and the theme was really the only thing that I couldn’t bring in easily [it was also the most infected area]. I found this theme, made by some guy called Bob and cleaned it up a bit. I know its a bit different, but its a change we all have to get used to. I spent extra time to ensure no comments or posts were lost, and I think we’re good. I also cleaned the database in an effort to remove strange symbols that kep appearing in there, usually after punctuation. I think I got most of them, but we’ll see how that happens.

Recently I spent some time developing an iPhone Order Tracking tool. If anyone has ordered an iPhone from AT&T in the past few days, you’ve probably learned that they are shipping them at a snails pace. Not only is it a snails pace, but it is a snail they randomly select from a snail-ball machine. They put $200 in and see what name comes out. Surprisingly, my phone isn’t backordered itself, its the freight that is. Does that mean that they don’t have a box to ship it in? I don’t know. If you want to track your own order, visit the page and change your link accordingly. http://nsb1.info/~bmichalski/iphone.php?zip=01040&po=9771

Katie survived her orientation at Hofstra and made at least 4 friends. Thats infinity greater than the number of people became friends with at RPI orientation, which was 0. If she hasn’t told you, you might be surprised to hear she’s taking Computer Science instead of Calculus. I won’t spoil any more of her secrets than that, I would expect her to be blogging soon.

I think tonight Kevin M, Katie, and I are going to see a movie. I hope its a good one. I will not report back about it unless it has a profound impact on me.

P.S Report any issues with my blog ASAP!