It is the criminals responsibility not to be criminals. People should not be telling us that we need a police force, airport security, or anti-virus software. What they need to be doing is telling the criminals this:

If you're walking by an unlocked car, don't steal it.
If someone leaves their front door unlocked, don't rob them.
If someone leaves their notebook computer unattended, don't steal it.
If someone has an nice watch, don't rob them.
If someone is stopped at a red light, don't carjack them.
If you are on a airplane, don't blow it up.
If you are riding the subway, don't blow it up.
If you are riding the bus, don't blow it up.
If you write computer programs, don't write a virus.
If you've hacked into a system, don't delete any files.
If you work for a bank, don't steal people's account numbers.
If you are near a school, don't sell drugs to kids.
If you are in the mob, don't kill people.
If you are a serial killer, don't kill people.
If someone annoys you, don't beat the crap out of them
If your partner dumps you, don't murder them and their family before you kill yourself.
If you are the head of a large corporation, don't raid your employees pension fund.
If someone looks like an easy mark, don't defraud them.
If you can't afford your next fix, don't mug someone in an alley.
If you are driving, don't speed.
If you make money, don't evade taxes.
If you are a criminal, don't break the law.

Once this meme gets sufficiently passed around LiveJournal, we will have no more crime.

Been busy with computer stuffs. Last night zarthon, purpleglitter, and I built purpleglitter's new computer, Clementine. Since the Windows XP CD we installed didn't come with the newest security patches and the patches weren't downloaded immediately after the computer was brought online, today I spent a couple hours getting rid of the infection that sprung up within 24 hours of Clementine's completion. Everything seems to be under control now. I need to improve on the work I've done with Oz and there are some tweaks I want to do to Severus as well. I've got plenty to keep me busy this weekend.

Severus appears clean, for now. However, I am getting strange access attempts originating within the house_of_clocks local area network. I'm currently trying to narrow down where the signal is coming from. I am concerned that there is another infected computer in the house.

The infection is back on Severus. I need to attempt to clean it again. Grrrr....

I am 90% certain that Severus has been disinfected. The virus scan came up clean and it is exhibiting no suspicious behaviours. I will continue to watch it closely over the next week or so, but at this point I feel comfortable enough with the situation to use it as I normally would.

Last night I discovered that Severus has an infection. I need to attempt to cure it today. Pain in the ass. I really hate hate hate the microsoft.com site. Most of the features don't work in Firefox. Even from Explorer, many of the site tools I need aren't accessable from a computer not running the same version of Windows, which is inconvient because the infection blocks those tools from being accessed directly from my computer and I don't have access to another computer running XP. I'm going to give fixing it a try, and if I can't get Severus cleaned and secured, I will have to say goodbye to having PhotoShop on my computer and make the move to Linux.

Sara and I met in Porter Square yesterday at noon ready for our trip to Cauldron Farms. We were both hungry, so Sara treated me to an Indian food buffet lunch before we left. I enjoyed it very much and felt ready for the trip.

When we got to Fitchburg there was no one waiting at the station. We waited for about 20 minutes, then Sara went to a nearby internet café to look up Raven's number while I waited at the station in case someone from the Farm arrived. Shortly after she left to get online I started having trouble walking. At first it felt like I was trying to get up a very steep hill even though I was on level ground. Soon I couldn't maintain my balance, so I sat on the ground. Luckily I was at a transit station and sitting there didn't look particularly out of place.

The spell didn't last too long and I was up to walking again by the time Sara got back with the bad news: Raven had canceled via e-mail shortly after we had started our journey. So no reading. A waste of money and a day.

It was two hours before the next train to Boston, so we decided to tool around town. We really wanted to find a coffee house, but were unable to. We did run into a cool queer kid who explained to us just how little there was actually to do in Fitchburg. I though with a small state university that they might have at least an okay coffee house, but I guess not. We did have fun talking to him and before we knew it, it was time to head back.

On the train back I had another "spell". More intense and twichy than the one in Fitchburg. This time I lost consciousness for what Sara tells me was five or ten minutes. Nobody usually pays notice to this things as long as one stays off the ground and doesn't make a good deal of noise. As I remained relatively quite in my seat throughout the episode, I was not hassled.

I did end up going to the ground shortly after we arrived at Porter Square, but again I was on a transit platform, so it didn't look particularly out of place.

Sara insisted on seeing me home, but didn't end up staying for very long.

-----

Once home I tried to get my computer patched to avoid the worm that I heard was going around yesterday. Unfortunately I still don't know if it is properly patched. It has intractable adware on and I need to reinstall the operating system. I'm very very tempted to install Linux instead of XP, because I'm so pissed off with Microsoft's policy of leaving gaping security holes in their products and then charging for products that attempt to fix those holes. I've already given up on Internet Explorer, maybe it's time to ditch them completely. I would miss Photoshop. That is the only thing stopping me.

----

Today I woke up quite disorientated. My behind-elbow and behind-knee were really bothering me. I was a bit stumbly. But I'm not going to let my "spells" dictate my life, so I left the house anyway. I headed over to Walgreens, and almost made it to the door before I went to the ground in the parking lot. Again, as with these things, it was not a catastrophic fall as I knew I was about to go down. I ended up on all fours twitching because I wasn't able to properly orchestrate my decent. Quickly several people came by asking if I was "okay". I told them that I was, that this happens all the time, but they were insistent on "helping" me. They even called the emergency services. Oh joy!

The police arrived first. I told the officer that I was fine, that this happens all the time. He said that I should get checked out at the hospital anyway. I replied that they checked me out last week for the same thing and said it was nothing. That going again would be a waste of time. He seemed stunned by that statement, but I didn't really care. The firefighters and the paramedics arrived in quick secession, each again trying to convince me to go to the emergency room. I refused and signed their little thing saying I was refusing treatment.

Soon after they left, I went into Walgreens. I ended up on the floor in the back isle. Apparently "customers were worried", so management called the emergency services. I left before they could arrive.

I'm at purpleglitter's now. Still a bit dizzy but feeling better. Ready for more adventures.

Apparently my computer had contracted a worm, which broadcast my email password, which is how my account was hacked. All is fixed now.

The worm more than likely infected my system when an infected attachment was opened. I'm always very careful with attachments. However, I have been letting a number of friends check their email on my computer lately. I'm going to give a speach on attachment security to anyone who uses my computer from now on.

At purpleglitter's house, I discovered that she didn't have 1 worm infecting her computer.

She didn't have 2 either.

3? Not even close!

More than 4!

5? Even higher!

6!! Six viruses/worms infesting her system!

I cleaned them out, but they did enough damage that everything pretty much needs to be reinstalled. Luckily she didn't lose any of her documents.

Sitting here drinking my coffee.

I've taken my morning meds, and I hope they don't put me back to sleep.

My shoulder feels much better. It still hurts a bit, but much less than yesterday.

As Code Red is long dead and gone, I've changed my lj e-mail address back to hydropyrothia@neitherday.com. However, if you want to reach me it's best to send e-mail to beverly@neitherday.com.

Today I've been having a new problem with Photoshop. I've been getting "Scratch Disk Full" everytime I've tried to make a new document. My drive has over 500MB of space, so I thought that was a bit odd.

I ran scandisk. Nothing.

I ran Disk Cleanup. No effect.

I ran a virus scanner. Nothing.

I ran scandisk on thorough. Nothing.

Finally I noticed I was trying to create the image at 220 X 220 inches instead of 220 X 220 pixels. Oops.

It was still 91°F at 8:00 when I left for Petra's house. Lake gave me a ride to Petra's place in exchange for making her biscuits and gravy in the heat. Avoided the busses, at least on the way there. When I arrived, Petra wasn't home yet. I was going to call her, so I walked to the nearest pay phone, which is in the T stop of Davis Square. When I got there, Petra was just getting out of the T stop, so phoning was unnecessary.

We walked back to Petra's place and watched some boring society film staring Gillian Anderson. I missed about half of it, as is often the case with movies. It does make rewatching movies more interesting, as I often see scenes I didn't see the first time around.

Petra is excited to be moving in. I'm excited to have Petra moving in. She's a wonderfully fun person to be around. Now we just have to find someone for the big room.

Took the bus home. It was not air conditioned, but the windows were open. It was barely bearable.

Got home, sat in the air conditioning to cool off. Spent some time with my Lake. Went to be around midnight.

Up this morning around 9. Code red is no longer a problem, but my host's e-mail servers are having problems with the backlog. The weather is shaping up to be much nicer today. This time yesterday it was already unbearable.

Going to make breakfast for Lake and I in a minute. Tofu pups. Not an ambitious meal to cook, but it's what Lake wants.

Today has gone well for the most part. I've spent most of my day watching TV and playing with Lake in the newly air conditioned rooms. Since the room with my computer in it isn't air conditioned, I've been avoiding it.

Code Red seems to have abated. However, we're going to wait until tomorrow to switch back to our regular e-mail.

I did get two new scratches today. Nothing I'd really call a cut, just scratches. One on my chin from hugging Madeleine when she was in a bad mood. Another, self-inflicted with a wish pod. I guess I should make a wish with it now that it has been anointed in blood.

Both of those events were minor, and I want to reiterate that we've had a pretty nice day for the most part. Later I'm venturing out into the heat to Petra's house to watch movies. I know that's insane. I know I'll be dizzy and dripping in sweat by time I get there. I know I should just stay home and relax, but I want to get out.

The biggest thing I don't like about going out on the busses on days like this is the damn drivers that refuse to use the air conditioner and insist on locking the windows shut. It's like traveling in a crowded sauna.

Regardless of the heat and the buses, I'm excited about going out and seeing a friend. It is something we don't do nearly enough.

My mood has been swinging like crazy today. Up and down. The heat of the day is starting to kick in. Lake says it's supposed to be cooler tomorrow. I'm happy about that. I'm getting the unexplained pains in my right leg and my right arm. I've told my primary care physician about them, and she couldn't help me. She couldn't help me with my chronic dizzy spells either. She'd diagnosed me with diabetes, even had me on a strict diet and monitoring my blood sugar twice a day. It turns out it was a misdiagnosis. I'm still in search of answers. Some people have suggested that my physical problems might be a symptom of my mental problems. I don't know if that is the case, but it is definitely a possibility.

Lake found more information from our host. Here's their explanation:

Code Red Worm 7 While none of our web servers have been infected with Code Red, the worm continues to scan our 100,000+ IPs addresses for vulnerable servers. While this is going on servers are being bombarded with port 80 requests by the worm in an attempt to penetrate the server. This is causing the CPU loads to skyrocket and legitimate http requests to go unanswered. We have every admin working on blocking the offended IP addresses which now number over 150,000 attacking machines. While we anticipate this to last throughout the night, we will keep everyone informed should things change. To watch the Code Red attacks and infection, please visit www.caida.org/dynamic/analysis/security/code-red/index.html 6 As reported by news.com "Last week, another version of the worm infected an estimated 300,000 computers worldwide. Some undisclosed Web sites, however, had to be taken off-line because the worm halted or overloaded routers and systems. The worm also knocked out Web servers at companies of various sizes as it commandeered them to scan for new victims. Last week's onslaught also disturbed Defense Department systems, Pentagon officials said. The worm spreads by latching onto computer servers and then randomly sending itself to 100 other IP addresses, which in turn start scanning the Internet for more computers to hit. Since the Internet has no national boundaries, the worm has quite likely spread globally, and hits have been reported in South Korea, France and Britain. " 5 We are upgrading our firewall systems in order to better combat Code Red. Some servers will experience intermittent connectivity issues throughout this maintenance window. Everything should be completely finished by 6am CST. 4 We have removed all crv2 netblocks from our routers ACL. Al traffic should be coming through without problem at this time. Code Red is not over by any means, but the port 80 scans are slowing down. Accept our sincerest apologizes for the issues you may have had over the last 24 hours. They will not continue. 3 Due to the code red worm, we have been forced to block the IP ranges of networks with the highest number of infected machines. We will lift these blocks as soon a possible. We have technicians working 24 hours on this issue. Please refrain from calling technical support unless you are positive that your issue is not being caused by the excessive traffic or IP blocks caused by this worm. Thank you very much for your patience during this situation. 2 You maybe experiencing intermittent connectivity or nonconnectivity and slow transfer rates. Our entire staff is aware and working to find resolve to this and will continue doing so until completion. Call times are sporadically high due to this and trouble tickets are climbing rapidly causing other issues to be obfuscated and not attended to. Please refrain from calling in or submitting a ticket on this issue unless it is absolutely necessary. Thank you for your patience and cooperation in this matter. 1 The second wave of the Code Red Virus struck at 7:00 PM CST on July 31st, 2001 and has been continuing nonstop since then. While all of the systems have been checked and patched to make them safe from Code Red, the entire internet is struggling with its effects. Part of the problem with the Code Red worm is the fact that it scans the entire internet looking for other hosts to infect. This additional traffic causes latency problems throughout the internet. Because of this, expect to see latency and packet loss across the internet that may result in your website appearing to be "down" or certain portions of your domain not to function correctly. Rest assured that all systems are up and running and we are working with the entire internet community to get this resolved as quickly as possible. More information about the Code Red worm is available at http://www.sans.org or http://www.iis.net

My website and e-mail was on the fritz all weekend and is still having problems. Our host tells us that it's the Code Red Worm. What I don't fully understand is this: the Code Red Worm only affects Windows NT and 200. My site and e-mail run off an Apache server, which shouldn't be effected. Maybe our host's firewall server is running Window NT or 2000. That might explain the problem. I just hope they get their act together soon, because I know I've missed a lot of e-mail and I want people to be able to consistently access my site. Lake is using the same host, so she's experiencing the same problems.

Lake has caught the Sircam Worm (well, her computer caught it). She's been receiving e-mail after e-mail, not knowing what was going on (one a minute, each with a 200K+ attachment.) She looked up her problem online and found it was a virus released last week. She's now in the process of deleting it.