hah!
No matter how many times I downvote Jack Johnson it keeps coming back up.
Spyware is frustrating, then later on becomes hilarious.
A laptop came in from the field that had the internet connection hijacked. It would only go to some bogus anti-spyware site, and occasionally opens a bunch of popups.
I ran hijackthis without a problem, then I try to run spybot.
And when I hover over the “ok” this happens.
So that made me laugh. Real sneaky.
Finished up by running LSPFix.exe and removing a dll hook reported by Hijackthis. Finally a reboot and update of Nod killed everything and the internet worked again.
Problem: Spam is a pain and people complain about it all the time. But I don’t want more apps to maintain.
Solution: Spam filtering services.
So I got hooked up with Verizon business, who handles all the cell/WAN cards at work already, they offer an anti spam/virus filtering solution for $2.70 per mailbox. We’ve only got ~35 boxes so it sounded like a decent deal. So I attend a 1 hour phone call/demo thing and configure optimum settings while on the phone with the rep. Contact our ISP (I forward mail from pop-boxes to exchange) get them to switch over our MX records and .. I’m done.
Less than a month later I find http://www.spamstopshere.com It’s gotten some really good reviews and is a hell of a lot cheaper than Verizon (almost 50%). http://www.spamstopshere.com/antispam_pricing.aspx
After our contract lapses I’ll be making the change. Will end up being ~$300-$400 dollar savings over the course of a year.
So an update following SP3 broke Bluetooth mouse/keyboards. I could re-add the Mouse/Keyboard but they would never really be connected. The solution (which took about 1 hour to find) was to edit the “Bluetooth Support service” and change the Logon information.
Start > Run > Services.msc
Logon tab, select “This Account” – must be local admin
Changing it to an admin account apparently lets the system install the HID drivers needed to use the devices. Whatever it works, I hate bluetooth.
Went out for steelhead a few times over Thanksgiving break. I caught 2 tiny hatchery fish, steelhead jacks I guess, both about 20″ long missing an adipose. Calawah was low and really clear, I never do well when the river looks like that.
Also hooked what looked like a sockeye in the dickey although it would be really late for that so more likely a coho. It was dark and pretty beat up. Good trip, I really needed a vacation, bad fishing though.
Fantastic Contraption is a simple physics game where you try to get a wheel/ball thing into a goal.
Lots of levels and the forums are great. There are so many unique solutions to every level. I tend to go pretty simple but some of the things people come up with are mind boggling.
Here are a few solutions I’m proud of
Awash: http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2440801
Handling: http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=2442932
Unpossible: http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=2654974
Finally got around to attempting a little beach fishing after some advice from the gamefishin forums. I set out on Saturday a little later than I wanted but hit the beach around 2pm. I figured I’d give it a shot for a few hours hitting the slack low-tide. High tide would of been better but it was a lazy sleep-in weekend.
Walked up the beach about 1/2 a mile casting every which way and throwing everything I had. Buzzbombs, spoons, and coho spinners. I saw a few flyfisherman but didn’t see anything hooked/landed while I was there. There was no crowd at all. The view was pretty good too. (cell phone pic)
Welcome change from the Nisqually.
I started the morning with this – Critical Errors in the Event Logs: 150. At least they were all the same error:
Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [server.local] User: [user@domain.com] HTTP status code: [422]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly.
So after ~1 hour of searching I find at least 5 solutions including deleteing/recreating virtual folders, editing \etc\hosts, editing registry settings, removing SSL encryption requirements, and tweaking some IIS settings.
Right before embarking on this huge list of fixes I read the last comment in this thread.
I have hunted high and low and finally grabbed the users phone and found that there were items in the outbox that could not be sent and there were a few old drafts. Looks like the outgoing mail that was stuck was the culprit.
So I asked if I could delete them and no errors in 30 minutes so far from that user.
I asked the user to delete everything in drafts/outbox and sure enought here was an email about 1 week old stuck in there. Here we are about 1 hour later and no errors. So if this behavior is only presenting on a few devices and not all users I suggest you ask them to delete anything stuck in the outbox/drafts folder.
The USGS Topo Map Locator lets you download USGS maps for free. It’s a good resource if you want to go hiking/exploring or driving logging roads. You can download the PDF maps all for free, the only troublesome part is getting each section individually.