People… for the love of all that’s good and pure… STOP CLICKING ON EVERY DAMN FILE YOU GET IN YOUR EMAIL!!!!

There’s something nasty going around at the moment. McAfee is calling it W32/Mydoom@MM (Symantec calls it W32.Novarg.A@mm. It sends you a file (could be any of a number of extensions: exe, pif, scr, or even the trused zip). Theres no way to tell that it’s a virus except by looking at the size of the message/attachment (32kb on the message, 22,528 bytes for the file)

In the last 30 minutes, I’ve received over 50 infected messages… and they’re coming in faster each minute.

The problem here is it’s hard to know where it came from, as it can spoof emal addresses from your address book and/or make them up.

So basically… don’t open any attachments you receive until you’ve updated your anti-virus software and patched your system. If you don’t have anti-virus… please, unplug your computer from the net and put it back in the box it came in, then burn it.

I’ve been working at home for the past couple weeks.

They set me up with a loaner laptop from our IT department and I configured it for my uses (much to IT’s displeasure). Apparently, loaner laptops are to be used just as they are and come pre-loaded with everything they figure you need (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). That’s all fine and dandy, but I’m doing coldfusion dev… so I need to add a few more things (IIS, ColdFusion Server, HomeSite, SQL Server, etc). Heh… I guess I’ll have to scrub it before I return it.

In other news: I’m screwed.

My neurosurgon wont return my primary physician’s phone calls, nor will he make an appointment to see me. My wife found several articles on the web about the procedure that I need done, one of them containing a picture of the device they need to install in my spine:

I need 3 of these… scary, eh?

I’m still on hold for the procedure… an estimated 2 years until the FDA approves it for multiple disk replacement. Great fun! Until then, I’m living the rock star lifestyle… without the sex or the rock and roll. Nothing says “superstar” quite like waking up and poping a hand full of pills (repeat every 4 – 6 hours). Wheeee!

Not much of a post, but then again, it beats nothign (and that’s what you were gonna get… so quit your bitching!).

Well, it’s Wednesday, and I’m doing my day in the office thing.

I’ve been working at home and will continue to do so 4 days a week… wednesday being the day I come in. It’s worked out pretty damn well so far, hanging out in my jammy bottoms and a t-shirt while writing coldfusion applications on the loaner laptop. We’re looking into bringing my desk phone home as well.

It’s a Cisco IP Phone 7960, so in theory, I could establish a VPN session with the laptop to the corperate network, and when someone called my work number, the phone should ring in my house. I’m going to talk to IT to verify that this is will work and that no one will jump me if I attempt to remove the phone from the building.

Tonights rockstar life plans….. watch Enterprise at 8 and Bands Reunited – A Flock of Seagulls on vh1 at 10.

Oh yeah… I’m outa control!

I awoke early today.

I dreamt that I had gone back to Huron, South Dakota. In my dream the trip was fun (counting all the signs that advertise Wall Drug, driving past the Worlds Largest Bird Feeder, and listening to farm radio. It’s when I actually got there that everything got bad.

Perhaps it’s a warning that I shouldn’t go back this year, the first time in 19 years. Or, maybe it’s that Pike’s Kilt Lifter that I drank last night. *shrug* I guess I’ll find out this summer when I head back for my 20th High School reunion (not sure if they’re having one or not, but I’m going back anyway).

It’s MLK Day (w00t! Happy Birthday Dr. King!). I have a great deal of respect for the work he did durring his short life.

If you have an apposing view, please feel free to not post it here (as I will simply remove it and ban your entire ISP from the server… and that would suck for you). It’s not that I’m against people with apposing views (everyone has the right to believe what they wish), but this is my house, and if you crap on my carpet, I’ll kick you in the ass.

I won a 20oz Coca Cola product!!! Oh Boy!!! All I did is twist the cap AND I WON! BECAUSE I’M A WINNER!! YEAH, BABY… YEAH!!!

Ok…now that I’ve gotten that out of my system… on to today’s mental dump:

I’ll be working from home quite a bit from now on. That should make my life a lot better… sitting on my recliner and wearing sweats. My work has given me a laptop and a few coldfusion aps to develop… so I have something to do to actually earn my money. Life is good!

And speaking of money, my home equity loan came through! Today, I’m mailing about $20,000 worth of checks to various credit card companies. If you’ve never done this, you have no idea how satisfying it is to pay off credit card debit. Sure, I have to pay for the equity loan, but that will only take 3 years… paying on the credit cards with the way they calculate interest would have taken over 10 years.

Other news:

The server is coming along nicely. Jester got spam assassin and a few other goodies installed on the server. Hopefully, this will help keep my users inboxes a little easier to look at. I doesn’t catch everything… but it’s cutting the spam by over 80%.. and receiving 10 – 20 junk mail messages per day beats the hell out of getting 100+. We wub Jester!

On a final note, after much deliberation it has been decided that Thomas Kemper’s “Happy Cow Winterbräu” is tasty… but your head will thump like a bitch the next day… and that’s after drinking only two of them.