The Cerebral Dump

Had a power outage last night. Turns out some poor shlub (hope he/she is ok) hit a phone pole, and knocked out power in two areas that I know of. Power was out for about 50 minutes. The only computer that didn't work after that was my home linux server that hosts some of our personal domains. Anyway, after fsck'ing the server it came back up fine. BUT... Networking was out. So, I began testing to see if my NIC card had been damaged for some odd reason due to this outage. (yeah yeah I know get a UPC backup) Strangely the machine could ping itself, but not the router. So, I typed into the console "/sbin/ifconfig" It told me my card was correctly configured, and up and running. It looked good. To make sure I typed on the command line, "cat /proc/dev/net" to make sure that my system was loading my card correctly. It is. Everything looks good, I just couldn't reach the router. I move on to testing the HUB with my S.O. (Significant Other). After testing with a laptop, ethernet cable, and the specific HUB, it turns out to be bad. We yank it, and hook the home web server up to the main switch. We are now up and running. WooHoo!!!

Posted by cdump at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We called for road side assistance, and said we need help and a tow. It took forever (1 hour and a half) to get the guy to show up. (Please take note he had tools that I didn't. A portable jump starter, and load tester.) I have a jump starter/charger, but it's not portable, and I do not have a load/voltage tester. I have a voltage tester (my old electronics voltage meter. It OBVIOUSLY didn't occur to me to attach the voltage meter to the battery and turn on the headlights to test to see if it would hold the load.) He jumped the car, then added load on the battery to test to see if it holds the load. The battery would NOT hold it's load like it was suppose to. Sure it would stay charged at 12 volts, but would 'crap out' when he added load on it. The battery would not start the car even though it was fully charged.

Anyway, he followed us all the way to Pep Boys (jerry rigging the battery charger to the battery with the hood up). The new Energizer battery that we purchased is in the car (I replaced it in the parking lot of Pep Boys. Yes, I am a capable girl when I use my brain. LOL). It has a warranty of 24 months, and road side assistance free. If the battery dies (and we don't happen to have All State road side) they will send someone out to jump us, and we take it to Pep Boys and replace the battery for free. The bad thing is it costed $75. (Better than the $225 estimate that was going to cost for the alternator after the $59 tow. If indeed it was the alternator.)

What a horrid two days...

Posted by cdump at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had to remove the used burner I received from my Mom this Christmas. It decided to die on me. I'm very disappointed. Oh well. Guess it's time to save up for a new one.

Posted by cdump at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I setup a few of my email address through thawte.com for the Free mail sign/encrypt service. Now I can send and received digitally signed messages, and encrypted messages. I figured it was a good thing to set this up, so that clients/users have the option to send me encrypted email. Ensuring their privacy.

Also, I have a PGP key. So, if you prefer PGP over thawte certificates that's cool too. I can do both.

Posted by cdump at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm upgrading my graphics card today for my pc system for a better gaming experience. It's an ATI 9200 128MB graphics card. I received this for Christmas this year. WooHoo! Popped in the card, and it booted to XP, and I installed drivers without a hitch. Restarted to make sure everything is working like it's suppose to. I loaded up Americas Army game 1.9, and the detail is unbelievable!!! Instead of running this at 800x600 I am now running at 1024x768.

Posted by cdump at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I changed the graphic for my work site. I like doing this periodically, because change is good. Yeah, it's simple. But there is nothing like simplicity. There will be others that will be more elaborate, and detailed to come. I am going to try to put a new one up every month. It's fun.

Kaye-Designs

Posted by cdump at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever want to setup your own Honeynet/Honeypot?! Honeynets/Honeypots are used for finding bugs, security issues, and for getting to know the tools and tricks of the blackhat community. I have included some URLs of interest conscerning this...

KYE (Know Your Enemy) - Honeynets

The Honeynet Project - Tools.

Posted by cdump at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)