jasonn's blog

Once your account or computer has been compromised, what do you do? First, change your future behavior. Second, secure your computers.

Last night my entire address book received email from my jason@jasonn.com account touting a Chinese website where the email claims I bought a new Macbook Pro dirt cheap. It looked like someone accessed my mail server and spammed my contacts through it. But, the address book was my Gmail address book and my email server stores no such list.

It was not the server that was exploited, but my Gmail account.

I've changed my methods and views. I no longer want to sympathize or understand my clients who make bad decisions, use bad product or are hampered by troublesome tech. I've done both. I've been oblivious to their plight because all my stuff just worked. I've been in the trenches with them. And, that just means I do my work slower while my stuff creeps along at a rate of crummy. So, I don't buy nor tolerate shoddy anymore.

Folks hate documentation. They hate doing it and everyone loathes reading it, especially when it's verbose. But, documentation is essential to profit and efficiency. And, I'm not talking about the efficiency of doing a lot of stuff quickly. I'm talking about getting your job done and putting profits on the bottom line. Email, calls, texts, etc. waste time. If you can find what you need without talking to anyone, documentation will save and print money.

If you're expecting a simple rndc or named.reload to work, and it kicks out this ominous error you don't understand, the wiki or newslist solution may mislead you.

Before you do anything else, check to see if named is actually running. There's a few ways to do this:

% ps -aux | grep named

% top (and just look for named)

% /etc/rc.d/named stop
% /etc/rc.d/named start

The commands and conf file locations below assume you're on a typical Linux system. BSD places items in /usr/local/etc/ instead of /etc and you may want to use "locate" or "whereis" just to make sure you've got the right file/program.

% netstat -n -a |grep 3306 > filename.txt
Tells you what's connected to us. Remove "> filename.txt" to just view it on screen.

% mtop

18 months of discipline.

I've been meaning to try this for years. What if? That's always an interesting question. Goals are usually ends, not means. But, what if that's not the best way? What if the means are the true paths to the goals? I'm not talking about giving up results driven choices. I'm talking about knowing the points between here and there and putting the focus on doing that well. What if I lived 18 months of my life doing exactly what I know is the right thing to do at that moment?

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Zachary Cohen proffers a suggestion for a much needed new social employment position, the Social Media Slave. Ouch Zach! Who wants that job now? That's not a particularly attractive job posting. But, will it work in the real world?

Facebook changed it's UI again and cut my wasted Facebook time by at least 30%. I predict ad revenues take a hit.

It's possible, if not likely that enjoyment and therefor increased use and distribution will compensate and the hit won't cause a corporate response to change it back. But, ads definitely took a hit in this redesign.