Category: Geekdom

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Doug, the Haiku Master

Stream unvisited—
An update is required.
I wait forever.

Okay, the above title is an exagerration, but let me explain. We are using a new version of the source control system in place at Kronos. (We switched to this new system—which is not a Kronos product—about six months ago, from VSS, which sometimes produced catastrophic problems, and was not living up to our needs). The latest release of this new product promised some highly beneficial new features, but, primarily because Kronos is pushing the product well beyond its typical implementation, there have been some “performance issues.”

After receiving a notice last week that performance was really slow, but the system was not locked up, instead of a whine, I posted back a quick Haiku. Haiku, at least as we learned it in high school, is Japanese poetry consisting of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. There are variations on the definition, especially when working in English, but the format tends to produce poetry that appears to be deeply insightful at best, and pithy at worst.

I received quite a few compliments on the e-mail, but didn’t realize how notorious I’d become until a co-worker who I do not believe I’ve ever even seen stopped me in the stairwell and asked, “You’re the guy who wrote that Haiku, aren’t you?”

Here are a few of the other comments:

  • This is most masterful.
  • Thanks Doug. This helps make the pain of [the source control product] more bearable.
  • Very nice!
  • {:-)
  • This is great. (-:
    I’m sure you've seen all those “error message haiku” that have been circulating for years. Some of them are very funny as well. My favorite was:

    With searching comes loss
    And the presence of absence:
    “My Novel” not found.

  • Congratulations tovarisch Doug Wilcox: you are now awarded the “Udarnik of the Month” title. Now write more haikus “sverx plana” before the end of October. (“sverx plana” means something like “above the required quota”).
  • bravo!
  • Excellent haiku of the day. Thank you!
  • Excellent!
  • LOL!!!

    How about:

    Jboss starting up,
    Machine useless for all tasks.
    Gaze at screen saver.

    To which I responded:

    JBoss now better;
    Standards can be pleasant:
    One Gig of RAM.

    OK, that one made my cat wake up when I laughed!

So am I popular, or notorious?

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All You Need Is Jesus (So I Need the Light Saber)

[david]David, who turned 5 the day we moved in January, re-discovered my light saber keychain, that came as a promo with Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. He has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get me to give it to him for a couple of weeks. The other day he found an angle that he was sure would work.

“Dad, when you’re saved, all you need is Jesus, right?” I looked at his face, and noticed that he had an odd-but-very-cute, somewhat droll smile that I’ve seen before, usually when he thinks he’s figured out a way to get more allowance money.

As he’d been pestering me for several days about the keychain, and I was in its general vicinity, it only took me a few seconds to see where he was going with this. “So,” I said, “you are saying that I only need Jesus, and I don’t need the light saber, so I should give it to you!” His smile broadened, as he was obviously pleased that I saw things his way. “Unfortunately, even though I don’t need the light saber, I still want the light saber, so you can’t have it.” (Plus he has broken it twice.)

Maybe I’ll get him one for Christmas. Of course, he’s already asking for Christmas gifts early (wanting me to order them online immediately), specifically two Lego Spider-Man sets.

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Slaying Dragons: Scumware Removal

I spent a number of hours this weekend removing scumware from a friend-of-the-family’s machine. The following Q&A pretty much sums up what I went through.

Q: What caused all this mess?
A: All these problems were caused by a class of programs known as “adware,” or “spyware,” often called “scumware.” At the most basic level, adware is software that, once installed on your computer, displays advertisements, usually associated with Web sites you visit, and typically in the form of other Internet windows that open.

There are many varieties of this adware. All varieties are annoying, but have to be installed at the users choice, and can be uninstalled easily via the Control Panel. Unfortunately, many types of adware are not so easily removed, and are extremely intrusive in what they do. Even worse varieties are nothing less than viral infections that require extreme measures to remove. (The courts and Congress are finally beginning to take action against this latter type.) And in a few cases, these software packages will install without even asking the user permission, although they usually rely on unpatched software and lack of virus protection to do so.

Q: Why did Norton Antivirus not take care of this when it all started?
A: These problems are a fairly recent phenomenon. Until Norton Antivirus 2004, this type of problem was not addressed by antivirus software (you have Norton 2002, which is excellent, but won’t stop this particular problem from happening).

Q: What can I be aware of so it doesn’t do it again?
A: Most of these ad programs, and many viruses, get in through Internet Explorer. There are a couple of reasons for this. Internet Explorer has a couple of known “holes” in its security, and (in addition) unsuspecting users often install things via ActiveX controls (those windows that say, “Do you want to install such-and-such?”) that allow companies to take over search results, the default home page, and even worse, as you found out. You might be interested in this related link on my BLOG: http://blog.wilcoxfamily.net/?p=142. It was probably the case that these adware things were installed when you accidentally clicked “yes” on one of these controls.

However, in a few cases, just visiting a site can install these browser helper objects. My advice to users for the time being is avoid Internet Explorer (switch to Mozilla) until Microsoft patches these critical holes.

Also be sure you run the Windows Update Service (it probably reminds you automatically) to keep Windows ME updated with the latest patches, and be extremely religious about updates to PestPatrol and Norton AntiVirus. Run virus and PestPatrol scans at least weekly. (I use a daily scan now.)

Q: Will all the new things we installed keep everything out?
A: Between Norton AntiVirus, BHODemon, PestPatrol, and switching to Mozilla, I think you’re in good shape as far as protection goes. You seem to pay good attention to how your computer is operating, and running a PestPatrol scan now and then should keep you free from trouble. Like Norton, PestPatrol works constantly, and should prevent something like this from happening in the future. At the worst, you’ll know when it happens, and we can get it cleaned out.

Q: Can you explain what each one does, so that I (a know-nothing-about-it guy) will be able to understand.
A: We installed two new things. The first, is BHODemon. As you’re not using Internet Explorer now, you don’t have to pay too much attention to it. What it does is show you which Browser Helper Objects (little programs that attach to Internet Explorer) are installed, and let you disable them. This was helpful in showing me that you had several obviously malicious Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) installed, and let me disable most of them. There is one on the list that is disabled, but still in existence. Next time I’m working on your computer, I’ll get rid of it, but it isn’t doing any harm right now, as BHODemon is keeping it dead.

The second piece of software is PestPatrol. PestPatrol is designed to fill in the gap where Norton Antivirus doesn’t typically operate, and completely remove all the little pieces of these nasty programs we’ve been talking about. Like Norton AntiVirus, PestPatrol runs all the time, and will offers good protection and removal of these threats. Like Norton AntiVirus, PestPatrol has an auto-update feature (right-click on the icon in the system tray to run it), and like Norton AntiVirus, you should run a full scan about once a week. Don’t worry about any Spyware Cookies that are reported. They do no harm.

Q: When we installed Mozilla, you showed me a way to have 2 or 3 subjects up and could go from one to the other, I do not remember how. Can you explain or tell me how to grt that information, from the program.

A: The “tabbed browsing” is my favorite feature of Mozilla. To open a new tab, just press CTRL-T or choose File –> New –> Navigator Tab. You can also open a link on one page into a new tab, by CTRL-clicking on that link.

Q: Just out of curiosity,when did you finish up with this?
A: I think it was about 12:45, but I actually didn’t spend that much time at the computer. Mostly it was a case of running a scan, using PestPatrol to remove files, then restarting and rerunning the scan. After a few cycles, we got down to only one piece of scumware left: CleverIEHooker, which consumed most of my time.

I spent quite a bit of time with PestPatrol, PestPatrol’s Web site, a startup configuration utility from Microsoft called MSConfig, and the Windows Registry Editor to get rid of CleverIEHooker. It turned out that this program was replacing a registry key every time I removed it, which is why PestPatrol didn’t clean it out completely. I found and deleted the program that was replacing the registry key, got rid of the key, and on the next reboot, was able to remove the remaining pieces.
Once I was done, I did a final reboot, verified there was nothing else hiding, and set VNC (the remote-control software) back to its original mode, where you’ll have to activate it if you need my help.
Overall, this was at times annoying, but I’ve learned some excellent scumware removal procedures from it. I’m glad I could help.

—Doug

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The Virus Wars

Read this unusually detailed story at PC Magazine online.

Among other things, this article covers the human engineering factors in virus writing, the state-of-the-art in combating viruses by antivirus software companies, and the real scenarios we are likely to see in the future. The article is very infomative, and includes input from a several different virus writers.

On a related note, The Wilcox Family Says Goodbye to Internet Explorer: Mozilla has become our default browser for the time being, as I am waiting for some very scary Browser Helper Object vulnerabilities (and other exploits) to be repaired in IE. I’ve had one virus make it past Norton Antivirus in the form of a BHO (it was caught in my nightly scan, and did no damage), and my team leader, who is tech-saavy enough to write his own viruses and extremely security-conscious was nailed with two separate BHO infections in the course of a week. So, for the time being, we default to ’Zilla, and only fire up IE for a few sites (like the Sohmer Family BLOG that won’t display or work correctly in Mozilla.

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2 Years at Kronos: Message to My Co-Workers

Today marked my second year of employment at Kronos.

What a busy year it has been on the home front! Naomi Nichelle (NaNi) was born in October, 2003. I lost my father in December—which was very sad—but I will see him again one day. Peter Jackson fulfilled our dreams with The Return of the King (and restored the Huorn in The Two Towers extended edition). We (finally) sold our house in Brockton, and moved to Nashua in January, 2004, shortening my commute by over 2 hours per day, and greatly improving our family life. I reveled in buying cool geek swag for NaNi from thinkgeek.com, and my wife Nichelle gave me the “Holy Grail of Lego” (the Star Destroyer model) for our anniversary.

Work this year has brought many changes. I've had three managers, one of whom endured me only for a couple of weeks. I've tried to forget the HTML UI Framework v1, and concentrate on building v3 (despite the occasional, discourteous reminders of v1 via the PAR system). I've had the opportunity to learn Struts, dramatically improve my Java skills, start studying for Sun Java certification, and achieve victory (with the help of a great team) in building the Lego guy at the tech summit. Along the way came immersive learning in ADP-ization, Czech localization, and AccuRev. Now that Larry Krakauer has retired, I may even have a shot (albeit a long one) at becoming the alpha geek—someday.

The constant support and genuine caring my co-workers provide has made this year pass quickly and pleasantly. More than ever, I am grateful for the blessing of working at Kronos—such an excellent company—among such excellent company. Thank you for your part in making this past year such a great one!

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The King Returned—at Midnight

Last night I went beyond mere fandom, and decided that I would head out to our nearby 24-hour Wal*Mart superstore around midnight to pick up the long-awaited Return of the King DVD. As a bonus, Wal*Mart was giving away a small photoframe magnet for those who picked up the DVD between midnight and 6:00 this morning. Both are pictured above.

While I wouldn’t travel very far to do this, and definitely wouldn’t camp out awaiting such a release, there was a certain thrill to owning the DVD almost before anyone else in my area, especially at only $14-something.

We still await word on what will be in the extended edition, due out in the “Holiday Season” of 2004. I keep checking The Digital Bits Web site, and the official Lord of the Rings Web site, but no news has been released yet.

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My First Spam in Hebrew!

I’m so glad that the Internet allows such rapid intercontinental communication. Imagine a world where one’s inbox would not be regularly populated by the decades-old and now primarily e-mail based Nigerian Money Scam, and the like. Horrible!