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!

Phone Time

I’ve been busy lately getting my Mac Mini up and running. I found great software (EyeTV) to let me watch TV like Beyond TV enabled me to do in Windows. I can’t think of too many more applications that I need to find equivalents for, but I’m sure more will come up. I’m not sure if I reported this already, but I was sucessfully able to save all my data! My external hard drives were encrypted in Windows XP, and when my shoebox crashed I feared that without the private key the data would be gone forever! I had tried several times in the past to share the key so my laptop could access the data over my network but nothing worked. Luckily when I connected the drives locally I was able to decrypt at will. I’m going to consider some type of NAS system to handle everything. If I had a junk computer OpenFiler would be nice to try out, but I’ll have to see what I can do.

Katie upgraded the her phone today to the iPhone, and I’m under increasing pressure to do the same. I’m interested in an iPhone as well, primarily because its the closest thing to an Android phone that I can get right now. I presented my dad with a document comparing the options, but he is completely confused when it comes to data plans. His thinking is that data plans are for Blackberries. Blackberries are for business people who require immediate access to their email and stuff. Since my dad can wait until he gets to the office to get his email, I can wait as well. Oh yes, and I am always on the computer anyways so I probably don’t need a data plan anyways. Well at least that is his thoughts. I would argue some of the email is moderately important. He was going to take some time to think about it, so we’ll see what happens.

To start this shopping adventure, my brother and I quested to the mall to check out the phones ATT and Verizon had to offer. The ATT store was packed, but had lots of phones to look at. The Verizon booth on the other hand had like 4 phones to look at, and they were all just different colored razrs or something like that. I really don’t like the razr, and seeing it in pink isn’t going to change my perception of it.

Days will pass your words to me

I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July. Happy Birthday America! I watched the fireworks on my local PBS station to celebrate since South Hadley’s fireworks were canceled on both the scheduled date and the rain date. The announcer on PBS was a bit excited, but I can’t dock anyone for being excited about the United States of America’s birthday. Who knows when/if South Hadley will reschedule them to.

Today I’m writing to you from my new computer. Its pretty decent. An Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz with 1GB memory. Nothing to brag about by any means, but its sufficient for my needs. If you’re wondering, it does happen to be the cheapest mac mini that you can buy in stores… but I think of that more like a coincidence. It runs OS X 10.5.4 and XP Pro SP3. Installing XP was a pain. I planned on using an upgrade copy I had from a machine that I’ve junked, but of course the mac mini lacks a physical eject button so I was unable to insert my windows 95 cd to qualify for the update. Then I remembered another computer I had a liscense for that I was no longer using so I found that full install cd. So far no big problems that I’ve noticed, but I’ve stuck pretty much to web browsing on both operating systems. I got my external hard drives up and running, and by luck I found the private key I used to encrypt them all so my data is saved! Now I have to find a temporary home for it so while I reformat the drives and dump them into a NAS box I’ll be setting up (likely running OpenFiler).

Putting a damper on this whole thing was StudentDev @ RPI. The server went offline over 48 hours ago and no one has been onsite to reboot it yet. I’ve been tempted to make the drive up there, but knowing my luck I would get there to find the Union locked or something. Yes, that means my viewtracker widget, facebook application, message board, and development sites are all offline. If I felt the server wouldn’t come up in a day or two I would work to restore backups, but I don’t think anything major it wrong. I’m hoping for like a power failure or something.

I think this weekend enlighted me slightly into the development of myself contrasted with people around me. I think I’ve reached a fairly stable state of my life right now. I’m mostly comfortable with most of the things I do. I find myself pretty content most of the time. This is a little bit different when constrasted with the evolving lives of others around me. I’m not sure if I should ask if I’ll be “left in the dust”, as I’ve architectured the enviroment to avoid that, but Im unsure what evolutions I’ll have to make to maintain that level of contentness I’m currently at. Think of it kind of like a limiting reagent problem in chemistry or maybe some equilibrium thing. While I’m at equilibrium right now, there are other forces that may preassure me to adjust my position to maintain equilibrium. Not the same level, but the same balance.

Tomorrow I’m back to work. I’m not sure what kind of week it will be, but we’ll see. I should spend some time tonight working on a few outlines for a few objectives. I guess I’ll go start working on that. I will be doing that while trying to fall asleep in my bed. Which is technically in my brothers room, but his bed is in the spare bedroom, though he actually sleeps in my room on my bed because he fits diagonally.

Goodnight moon.