Microsoft has issued a warning today about an unpatched issue with their DNS service. There's a mitigation which is pretty easy to do, I'd suggest you do it ASAP if you run a Windows-based DNS server. Unfortunately, the security guy at the Washington Post doesn't seem to understand the vulnerability, as he's reporting it as a problem with their web server, which is wholly inaccurate.
I'm sitting at my parents' new house, waiting for their DSL installer. I've only been pestering them to get broadband internet for most of the last decade, and their new house is in range of DSL service from WCTA.
You know that stupid chain letter that says Bill Gates will give money to each person you e-mail? Well it's a lie. But this is the truth:
Microsoft is donating money to charity for your instant messages as part of their I'M initiative. Put the tag for your charity of choice in your nickname field, and Microsoft will donate money to that charity for each of your instant messages. You need to be on Windows Live Messenger 8.1 to do this, but it's an easy (and free!) to way to help out a worthy charity, and they have several to choose from.
The badge in the upper right corner of this blog will take you there, as well as tell you who I'm currently donating to.
I think someone forgot to proof-read the new signs that they installed in the parking lot outside our building yesterday:
The patches I applied to my various systems seem to have all worked for now. The only Daylight Savings Time bug I've seen has been with NetBackup 6.0MP4. For some reason, I had some backups run about 7 times last night, over and over and over again. Fortunately they were differential backups, so they were very small and fast, and didn't use a lot of tape. Apparently I'm not alone, and since we all experienced this for the first time on the same day, we're guessings it's related to the time change.
My friend Missy is running in the Valley of Gold Half Marathon, an upcoming fundraising race for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Besides those two diseases, they also raise money to fight Multiple Myeloma, the blood cancer my dad was diagnosed with a year ago. If you have 5 bucks you wouldn't miss, drop a bit in her coffers, as it's going to a good cause.
We're starting to near capacity on our tape library at work, and I'm itching to buy a new system to augment it. Ultrium 4 (or LTO 4) is right around the corner, but no vendor can tell me yet when they're going to have the drives. Ultrium 3 is available now, but if I can wait a few months to double the capacity of my library and increase the speed of my drives by 50%, I'm inclined to wait.
We've been using Ultrium 2 for the last four years, and while it has worked well, a full backup of the servers I do backups for is now approaching 30 tapes, and storing and moving them is getting to be a pain.
First one to show up on my door with an LTO 4 library gets the purchase order...
As if RPGs weren't enough of a threat to our helicopters, now we have to worry about suicidal moose attackers taking them down.
Dear News Media,
No one outside her family gives a damn about Anna Nicole Smith's burial location, or the fight over her corpulent plastic corpse. Please stop covering it.
Thank you.
It has taken many months, but my parents have finally put their house up for sale. If you're looking for a house near Las Vegas, check it out!
