The last few days have been made very interesting - if that's the proper word - by pollen. Never really had allergies before, except for a couple of mild problems in Alabama while in college. Well, I've got 'em now. People tell me that the allergy seasons here are no worse than they were in Minnesota, so either adults are different from kids (though I don't recall any problems my last spring in Minnesota either, at 18), they're wrong, or God hates me. Anyway, I'm slowly recovering; no, I can't take anything for it, since I'm allergic to anti-hystamines. The only thing I can do is curl up in a recliner with a book (preferably one that does not require thought) and wait it out. Spicy food does help. Hot & Sour soup also helps. All else is a false hope. <G>

Anyway. I'm coherent tonight, although still stuffy. We'll see how the weekend goes, and one way or the other, there will be a column up by Sunday.

Oh, and by the way - Congratulations to Keri's Uncle Jon; he won one of the trophy races tonight over at the Monroe raceway. He broke the car doing it, but hey, who cares - he won!

Thursday, April 18... err, 19 - Somebody Kill the Little Man With the Drill

The one drilling in my head, throat and joints.

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday, but I just wasn't up to it. I'm slightly better this morning... aside from the little man... so I hold out hope for later. Just as soon as I can hold a train of thought for longer than... um... what was I saying again?

Tuesday, April 17 - Stalking the Wily .dll

Lots of bits and pieces tonight...

Last night, I finished ferretting out the remnents of the W32.badtrans virus from Keri's workstation. She'd done the first part, using the instructions provided at that link as far as they could go. Unfortunately, the vaunted team of analysts at SARC didn't get this one right. I haven't done a thorough analysis of the complete situation, but these are my notes on eradicating the virus from a Windows 2000 Professional Workstation.

The virus infected a number of files; the notes from SARC indicate that the only consistent file is INETD.EXE. In addition, Keri's workstation ANYA had ksdsys.exe, ksdll.dll, KERN32.EXE, and kern32.dll.

Keri was able to delete all but ksdll.dll, which even after repeated reboots insisted it was still in use. The SARC advisory also mentions a win.ini file entry, but that wasn't the case on Keri's system. Instead, there were two registry entries - both "Run" keys in the usual places - for INETD.EXE. I deleted those, rebooted into the recovery console, and was able to delete the last infected file. I still don't *completely* trust the system, but it's no longer exhibiting any signs of either the trojan program or of the email the system had been sending. Repeated full virus scans come back clean, and there are no anomalous system processes, so I think it's clean.

In any event, the SARC advisory makes it seem that removal is simple and easy, when the reality is that it's not. I also doubt their claims that the virus is not widespread (0-49) infections at only 0 to 2 sites, since Keri obviously is not at one of those two sites - and the people she communicates with are unlikely to be within one or two levels of the original infection. You'll have to draw your own conclusions about the overall reliability of SARC and antivirus software companies in general.

In other news, Keri decided I should relax tonight. Why people associate this with time spent away from computers is beyond my comprehension. <G> Yes, I had a stressful day dealing with computers today. (Side note - why oh why do software companies hard-code filenames and directory locations into their products? I don't want to install applications on C:\ in some situations!) I don't see why it therefore means I don't want to spend time with computers in order to relax from that... but then, I'm wierd.

Anyway, we sat and watched Buffy and Angel together (and I'll agree it was nice to just sit and spend time with Keri.) Buffy was a bit intense, but good, while Angel... well, can I just say Joss Whedon is a sick, sick man and he desparately needs therapy? Vampire pyramid schemes? OK, I suppose it's not that much of a stretch from low-IQ blood-sucking money-grubbing scum on late-night TV to late-night blood-sucking vampires, but still...

And, last but not least, I had a short discussion with Bob Thompson and a few others in the Backchannel on the topic of Open Relay mail servers and spam prevention. I want to think it over some more, but I think there's enough material to put together for next week's column. We'll see.

Monday, April 16 - Monday. 'Nuff said.

The hub for the home network failed this morning. We got hit with a virus/worm on Keri's computer. Several work projects are having unexplained problems today.

The current column is up. Consider it a word-based napkin-sketch, that's what I was thinking of when I wrote it last night. Otherwise, I'll be back later with more explanations and information when I'm in a better mood. Say, Thursday. <G>

OK, I'm in a slightly better mood. <g> Time to get to it.

First, a napkin-sketch is what I call the first stage of design. It's where you have an idea in your head, and you haven't run any numbers, you haven't checked anything out - you just have this idea of something you think will work. Well, the first step towards refining that idea into a finished product is to put something down on paper that you can use to refer back to the original idea. We all forget things, so a napkin-sketch is a way to prevent that.

It doesn't have to be on a napkin, that's just what I call it because it seems like some of the best or most influential machines in history start that way - with an engineer scribbling a few notes and an illegible drawing on the back of a cocktail napkin. This is why engineers don't like bars with fluffy paper napkins. <G> The sketch doesn't have such refinements as numbers, scale, or anything like that. Suppose you're the world's first packaging engineer. You've just had a great idea in the bar one night for a new package - the box. Take a scrap of paper, a pencil, and quickly draw a cube. Label it "BOX" to one side, jot the note that it should be made from wood, and there you go - you've just made a napkin sketch.

Wait a minute, you say. Wood? Aren't most boxes made from cardboard? Yes, they are. The second most important thing about napkin sketches is that you can never, ever walk to the factory from the bar, hand over your napkin, and say "I want 50,000 by Friday." Napkin sketches are the barest forms of concepts, nothing more. There's plenty of work to be done yet before you can start calling it a finished product.

And so we return to the napkin-sketch of my column for the week. It's not a story, per se; there's no dialogue, the characters are just names picked at random, even the places are just the first Moon place-names I remembered off the top of my head. The point is to create a framework I can hang ideas on - the non-permeable spacesuit, the excavation tools, the reality that we can't restrict colonists to the living spaces they take with them, and what that means. A combination of Misterhouse software and the console system of the Microship have made a strong impression on what should be doable with a computer system to make tasks easier. A hint of how cramped things will be - Conestoga wagons weren't spacious the first time around, and this future generation won't be any larger - and it'll be more densely loaded.

It still doesn't begin to approach the thoughts and ideas I've had. Will there be a barter-economy? Probably. Weapons and wars? Wars might be pushing it, but there will be no spare resources for things like police - conflict will almost certainly happen, particularly if a group becomes desparate for a means of survival. Is there any point to maintaining Earth-centered jobs, such as wed or software development, book writing, design, or research? Well, yes - given time and lucrative resources, such as the first colonists' possibilities for book contracts - you could arrange for supply flights, bringing new items, luxuries, replacements for things lost or broken. I can see early pioneers financing their flights through research contracts with Earthside scientists - your experiment carried out on the Moon, maintained 24/7, in exchange for a few million dollars US. Later flights could be partially financed by the earlier colonists - new arrivals bringing requested supply items for double the price of their lift cost, etc. What sort of new societies might form? How much resemblance would they bear to modern society, or to the Old West? (I suspect anyone basing a guess off of either one would be equally far off.) Would air be bought and sold? Water? Metal?

Anyway. This is my napkin sketch. Yours is probably different. Now let's start refining it.