Conficker Worm Could Be Heading Your Way

Conficker (also called Downadup) will be triggered on April 1st.





This one makes me a little nervous, because it's being taken seriuosly by the major tech security firms. I've read that there are at least 3 million machines that are already infected & ready to be triggered & one of the computer techs in my family has been told by their employer to not make any plans for April 1st, or 2nd, in case they have to stay at work trying to do damage control.

If this worm lives up to the hype I've been reading, we might see networks to jammed with traffic & spotty web sites & email, maybe more. Remember "Slammer" in 2003? I do. Yuck. I don't know too much about it yet, but have been reading up to get up to speed just in case it affects me, mine, yours, ours, etc.

Microsoft announced a $250K reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individuals behind the creation and/or distribution of Conficker

You can test whether they have the worm by trying to access the web site of F-Secure or Symantec Corp. since the worm supposedly blocks those sites.

I read sci-fi, & the apocalyptic takeover of humanity by vicious sentient machines seems pretty plausible to me & this could be the first step. You know, create a massive botnet army that harnesses the power of the internet to do evil against the citizens of the world...

(playing in the background)
"Paranoia will destroy ya..."

Here are some links so you can read up for yourself:

• Statesman article
• CNN article
• Microsoft article
• Wickipedia article
• ABC News article
• CBS13 article
• PC World article
• Tech-Linkblog article

Now go check your machines!

Good Deal

Staples has an Acer X183Hb 18.5" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Reg: $199.99
Save: -$100.00

Price after savings: $99.99 Each

Click here for the link.

Science Fiction No More

The headline reads "UK Scientists Grow A Living Human 'Brain' "

Kind of gets your attention right away huh? I go on to learn that a group of scientists at Aston University have altered cells from a cancer tumor & are making them behave like brain cells with the intention of learning how real brains work.

Huh? Ok, so I don't quite get it. How can you create a brain from a cancer tumor? At this point the article sounded decidedly science fiction-ish, but evidently it does have some merit--at least to the team at Aston U.

I was struck by the headline. How it really grabbed you & reeled you in. Is that good journalism? I guess so, I read it.

I started thinking about the advances in...well, everything. Technology, science, medicine, communications, you name it. And of course our headlines reflect it.

I've been reading science fiction all my life & remember the sense of amazement I got in 1996 when the internet was first blooming across the country. I distinctly remember thinking that the books I had been reading since I was a child had already dreamed it up before it was a reality.

George Orwell wrote about an armor plated war vehicle a full two decades before the first tanks rolled out.

Gardner Dozois is the anthologist for a series I love "The World's Greatest Science Fiction" & compiles a yearly summary of events that frequently reminds me that the world is always trying to keep up with the author's imagination.

So here's to the weird headlines, hope we read a lot more!

Click here to read about how the guys at Aston are doing their thing.

Is This A Ghost?

An eerie image of a figure in period costume at a Scottish castle has spooked experts conducting the biggest ever investigation into photographic evidence for ghosts.

The picture, taken in May 2008, appears to show a man or woman in a ruff peering out of a barred window at Tantallon Castle. No mannequins or costumed guides are employed at the castle, and three photographic experts have confirmed that no digital trickery was used on the photo.

Tantallon Castle, a ruined fortress dating back to the 14th century, stands on a remote rocky headland near North Berwick on the Scottish east coast.



Click here to visit the Science of Ghosts website & learn about the project that brought this photo to the public eye.

Happy Birthday Craig!

Today you are almost middle-aged.

Hope your work schedule eases up soon.

Happy Birthday Leonard Nimoy

It seems like just yesterday you joking around with the Captain...wait, I guess I must be imagining that since you had no obvious displays of emotion after the second episode. At any rate, here's to you!

Er, just a suggestion, now that you're a serious photographer, how about a sci-fi series? You could probably give it a unique perspective.

Raw Chocolate Vitamix Recipes

For the sweet tooth:

Chocolate Covered Cherry Chews

Dehydrate 24 pitted bing cherries until chewy. Set aside
1/2 cup raw cacao powder
1 cup raw cacao nibs
1 cup raw agave nector
1/4 cup pure water
Add water, cacao nibs, & agave nector to vitamix & blend till creamy.

Dip cherries into mixture & lay on dehydrator sheet. Dehydrate for 2-3 hours. Roll in cacao powder. Cool in refrigerator.

Enjoy!

A Garden?

We are contemplating creating a garden at work this year. We have really good sun there (as opposed to my yard which is almost all shade), & it would be really nice to put some of that space to use. We're contemplating a vertical garden, which would look similar to the picture on the left.

We eat alot of salads at work & make green drinks almost every day, in addition to growing our own sprouts.

Now if I could just figure out how to get cacao seeds so I could grow my own chocolate tree I would have it made.

I'll let you know how this project turns out--assuming we agree on it in the first place.

Restaurant Review Umi Sushi Hendersonville

My friends & I went to the all you can eat sushi night at Umi's in Hendersonville last night. The food was good as usual but they could have done a better job of crowd control. When it's an invitation-only event & you are paying a pretty good price ($25 each + tax, tip, drinks) you really don't want to have to wait in a line for 10 minutes with a paper plate like you were at a BBQ fundraiser.

We had a good table but I pity the folks who were in the main dining area--the restaurant created a buffet line at the sushi bar & when everybody showed up at the same time the line ended up snaking all through the dining area. Folks sitting there had to be a miserable trying to gobble down dinner with all that noise going on, people staring down at their food, faces right at butt level, etc. I wouldn't have stayed if I had been seated there.

Now before you get on me for hating Umi's let me just tell you that it is my favorite Japanese restaurant--bar none. Every other time I've been there the service has been great & the food (all of it, not just sushi) has been fresh & tasty.

I think next time they have an "invitation only" sushi night I'll decline.

Happy Birthday William Shatner!

Live long and prosper!

Oh & yep, you really were ripped off when they didn't include you in the movie.

RIP White Squirrel

Our favorite white squirrel was hit by a car this morning. He was playing in the yard when we left for breakfast & was dead in the road when we got back. We sure will miss him.

Happy Day

Today is Sunday or sushi day as it is known around here, so I thought I would post a link to this:














It's Sushi Soap by Baron Bob. Stay clean & think about your favorite food at the same time.

Here's the link.

Happy Birthday Johann

Your skill at creating cantatas will never be forgotten. You were & still are an enigma & obvious multi-tasker, making time to father 20 children by your 2 wives & still composing over 1000 works--most of them in record time.

Remember that time in Arnstadt you were playing the organ & ended up drawing your sword on that "nanny-goat bassoonist"? You were such a wild & crazy guy.

Your Toccata in D Minor remains to this day one of the most well known pieces ever written. I'm sure you had no idea you would live on in movies, ringtones, & video games in America. Did you even know about America? If so, you certainly never wrote much about it in your copious notes.

And a great big hooray for you, spelling out your own name in the music in "The Art of the Fugue". I just wish you had been able to finish it...

Thanks again & Ich habe genug to you Mr. Bach.

Click here for the ogg vorbis of bwv565 (Toccata & Fugue in D Minor) Believe me, you'll recognize it.

Another Good Deal

Pyrex & Corelle Amethyst Items, $1.99 Each

Use code A20350 to get additional 20% off.

Here's the link, while it lasts.

Enjoy

What It Really Costs

SEO can be expensive. I came across this report on SEM (search engine marketing) spending. The chart below lists the daily budgets of the current top spenders:

1 geico.com $246,379.60
2 progressive.com $200,614.27
3 expedia.com $136,401.83
4 bank2online.com $127,413.46
5 thinkcash.com $116,581.36
6 ebay.com $102,031.29
7 esurance.com $93,367.57
8 google.com $79,116.47
9 gamespot.com $76,451.85
10 orbitz.com $75,771.79

Wow, I wonder how many click-thru's have to happen before this kind of money pays off?

Buh Bye Internet Explorer 7, Hello IE8

That's right, coming at you with "porn mode" er, I mean "InPrivate" enabled, is the all new IE8. It's been in development since 2006 if you can believe that, & the web is all abuzz...about other stuff, not this.

Despite using a Windows machine, I haven’t touched IE for weeks. I downloaded the release to check it anyway out but since then I have only opened it a few times. I only use IE to check client's work anyway lately, for various reasons.

Here are some items of note:

• IE8 has some new security features (yawn), like an updating list of “bad” sites, and it will pop up a message if you go to one.
  
• IE8 uses "Accelerators" to give you more options in the menu when you right click a word or phrase.
• There's a drop-down menu that previews suggested searches. (joy...the last thing I want is a browser telling me what to look at on the Net)
• Tracks headlines
• Tracks eBay auctions
• Tracks weather
• Uses "Web Slices" to track using the Favorites bar
• Related tabs are color-coded (ok, I kind of liked that)
• Search field can show images now
• Add to Favorites with one click (ok, I kind of liked that too)
• Here's the Wikipedia article about it.
  

For the record, it's already been successfully hacked, more than once. But then again, so have all the other browsers out there so I'm not sure that I just gave you any real news.

All in all, I think this browser is an improvement over IE7, which was an improvement over IE6, etc., etc..

The real question in my mind will concern two things--speed & stability. I run XP & Vista on a variety of machines & whenever I check IE always comes in dead last in speed. IE8 slows down considerably when you have more than about 10 or 15 tabs open, even after they're finished loading. As for stability, only time will tell.

So buh bye IE7, thanks for the memories. Hello IE8, I hope we get along.

Good Deal

GraveyardMall.com has women's Foster Grant Sunglasses for $10 each while they last.

Here's the link.

Enjoy

The Bad Economy Is Not My Master

The economy sucks. There, was that eloquent enough? I'm not breaking any newsflash here, you can't turn on the radio, tv, or whatever gadget you get your info from without yet another sad story. My friends have had to change jobs, move from their homes, drop out of school, you name it, just to get by. Truth is, they're barely doing that sometimes. It's been hard especially on smaller business's. The Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce said at a meeting last year that over 90% of the business's in operation in Henderson County were considered "small business".

Every day I drive about 3 miles to the post office before starting my day's activities. At least every other day there will be another business closed, building empty, or home for rent or sale. What's not to be paranoid about? How many people have lost a huge chunk of their retirement since 2007?

I'll bet we all have recession stories by now.

I bring up this not-so-pleasant subject to make the point that everybody reading this has been affected in one way or another by what's been happening, so what good does it do to lash out against somebody else who is going through it too? I'm getting tired of watching desperate people take the low road time after time. I haven't seen it help their situations at all, I've only seen it damage self-esteem, relationships, etc..

When this is all over, where will they be? I know how it feels to need money, I know how it feels to have bills looming overhead too, & "not good" doesn't begin to describe it. But acting out of fear, anger, desperation, whatever, doesn't help at all. That much I know.

I firmly resolve not to do that! I started yesterday with someone who has treated me pretty unfairly. It didn't feel good & I was arguably within my rights to act in kind, but I didn't even though I was tempted. Maybe some day we'll meet again & get a few things straightened out. Maybe not. Maybe I'll get hit by a milk truck before that happens, but at least I'll know I did the right thing--in spite of the economy.

So take that recession! You might keep me from making a bunch of money but you can't keep me from taking the high road when I have the chance...

Half Off Deals

This site sells certificates for...you guessed it, half off. They have alot of restaurant deals, but what makes them different from restaurant.com is that they also have certificates to other places as well. Currently in Asheville there are certificates being offered for Foot RX, a car wash, a tshirt shop for gals, etc., along with about a dozen restaurants--many that can't be found on restaurant.com.

This site is nice if you are going out of town, they offer lots of travel deals.

As always, caveat emptor. Make sure to read the fine print : )

Enjoy!

Here's the link.