So Kelly and I got new cell phones for Christmas — it had been a long time coming for me, as I was stuck using Kelly’s old phone which, while trust-worthy was feeling quite brickish as of late. So, we got new Motorola V265 phones from a Verizon retailer in Oxmoor Mall. They are cool, small, have long battery lives, and also have little, crappy cameras in them. I’m most pleased with the usability and the battery life of it, but the camera is a nice touch. All that, and we are only paying about $10 more a month and we have beaucoup minutes now. Huzzah!

Now, here’s the rub… (There is always a rub). Verizon had locked down these phones so damned tight! You couldn’t get your photos off of your phone unless you paid Verizon $0.25 to send them via email from your phone. And if you wanted to transfer a background image to your phone, you had to go the same route. You can’t upload games or ringtones or any of the things that you might expect a futurephone such as this would allow. Verizon has that locked down and would like to sucker you at $0.25 a pop. Me, being the meddling user/client/customer that I am did a little research….

Turns out there are a number of pieces of software that can help you with your phone woes — but first you need the phone-to-USB data cable. I found one on eBay for about $8 shipped. Then you have to find a copy of Motorola Mobile Phone Tools (normally $50). One would assume that with the data cable and Mobile Phone Tools, you’d be able to get at your images, right? Wrong! Thanks Verizon! After just a little bit of searching around, I managed to find a very nice walkthrough for getting your photos from a Motorola V265 phone. It requires two further utilities, P2Kman and PST Phone Programmer, which you can also find with a little searching. It requires hacking the software on the phone only slightly, but then you can use Mobile Phone Tools to get your photos off of your phone and upload MP3s for ringtones, image files for backgrounds, etc.

I followed it, only had a little bit of trouble, and eventually got my photos off of my phone and put them into my futurephone image gallery. I also uploaded an image from Achewood as a background image, and as planned, I found and uploaded an MP3 of Kenneth Branagh’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V as my obligatory ridiculous ringtone. Enjoy.

One of my favorite British rock bands, Mclusky has called it quits, much to my dismay. I did not get a chance to see them when they played Cincinnati last year, and now they’ve gone and broken up! I think it’s only appropriate to post the lyrics to their song “Fuck this Band”. After reading you should read my previous post about Mclusky, and then hit their own site, mclusky.net.

Fuck this band
And their demon seed
Cos if they burst out
You're responsible

Yeah fuck this band
Cos their clothes don't fit
But their dancing clowns
Are incredible

Keep your passport near
There is no other disappointment here
There is no other disappointment here
There are no other obstacles

Fuck this band
Cos they swear too much
It's an obvious ploy
And irresponsible

Fuck this band
Yeah fuck their holes
But if they split up
You're responsible

Keep your passport near
There is no other disappointment here
There is no other disappointment here
There are no other obstacles

Fuck this band
And their foolish pride
Which lets them think
They can get away with this

Well, yesiree-bob, I got intruded upon this weekend. Not in a physical way mind-you, but in a digital way. I awoke Saturday morning (around 10:30 AM or so), having the night before hosted a rompin’ good night of Winter Feasting and Pokering, to Geoff calling to tell me A) that he was sorry to have missed the Winter Feast and B) that the server was down, and that both of these things made him sad.

Needless to say, I was pretty bummed out. Since I started leasing that server back in August 2003, there hadn’t been a single minute of down-time for the server! I logged onto my hosting company’s website (EV1Servers.net) to see what was up. I soon noticed that a trouble-ticket had been opened up due to “Acceptible Use Policy Violations”. Further, it gave me the indication that my box had been cracked (not hacked). AKA intruded, transgressed, violated. This happened at 4:20 in the AM, and at 4:38, EV1Servers had — quite literally — pulled the plug on the server. I needed to contact them to get them to start investigating what was up. Unfortunately, the Abuse Department can only be contacted via email, and when I pressed the Customer Support lady about me phoning them (“You are telling me they have no phones at all?”) she replied “Yes, the have no phones.”. A pretty blantant lie, I’m thinking, but nonetheless they had started their quick investigation about 12:30 or so, and had brought my server back up to me around the same time. They amended the trouble ticket to say that they had found some suspicious files consistent with an exploit of a webserver/scripting bug and that I should start the cleanup immediately.

Turns out it was a cracker with an IP address from somewhere in Brazil, and the target of the denial-of-service attack they mounted was also in Brazil. I’ll save you the gory details, but there were a couple of bugs (aka “vulnerabilities”) that were exploited to allow very limited but annoying access to the webserver. I host a server with a number of websites on it, and I can’t keep tabs on every piece of software (like webmail, galleries, bulletin boards) at all times. The best I can do is keep server-wide security as tight as possible. A big “oops” on my part, but I thought I was safe. After ensuring that the crackers hadn’t destroyed any data or left behind any “backdoors”, I brought the webserver and databases and everything save for the email system back up around 2:00 PM or so.

While I managed to plug the hole in the webserver that the crackers had made, I found there was another hell-of-annoying thing that had happened — the crackers had flooded my box with all sorts of SPAM email. I had to meticulously weed out those SPAM from legitimate emails and clean up the mail queue. I think that very few SPAM emails escaped my box. This was the biggest pain in the ass, and much to both mine and Kelly’s chagrin, it took me until damn near 5 o’clock to bring the mail subsystem back on-line.

Last night (Sunday) I spent most of it on the couch fortifying my server with firewalls, intrusion-detection software, and a number of other little tricks to help me fend off those pain in the ass crackers.

I realize most of this won’t make a lick of sense to most of you, but I thought it might be interesting to hear about the saucy underside of this thing we know as the intarweb. If you are really interested in knowing more specifically about what happened, feel free to contact me.

So my CapitalOne VISA card kept getting declined in the past couple of days (I don’t use it often, you see). The first thing that failed was an Internet purchase — so I thought maybe it was a faulty cart or something, but then I tried using it at a brick-and-mortar joint — no luck there, either! Go home, called CapitalOne, and they asked me if I had attempted charging $800 and $500 worth of stuff from Nordstrom’s Direct. I’m not a Nordstrom’s kind of guy, and Kelly doesn’t use this card, so I’d have to say that I certainly didn’t try to charge that sort of stuff.

The cool thing was that the charges never actually posted to my account — they were only authorized, and then CapitalOne blocked the actual charges, and locked my account. So, maybe all those commercials with the pirates and barbarians and such actually are somewhat true. It didn’t take but 10 minutes to get my account closed and a new one opened, but it will take 7-10 business days for me to get a new card. Ah well, I’m just happy I didn’t have to go through all the business of disputing charges and such.

…but you can check out the Noreastah’ Gallery! Currently only Friday and Saturday — more coming. I’d do it now, but I’m currently stealing bandwidth from some unfortunate soul with an open wireless access point. Thanks anonymous rube! Off to Cooperstown this AM! Then up to Patience’s pad in Yarmouth Port, MA. Wooo! All is well.

Internation Talk Like a Pirate Day is tomorrow, September 19th! Check out the official TLAPD site, replete with English-to-Pirate translator!

update: Chicago: Day Five Gallery

First off, i can’t thank joey and nick enough for allowing us to stay at their home. after having Project Improv roll through there (I think there were 5 of them) the week before, and then having us in there for five days, and joey leaving today…. it’s been fairly hectic in the Casa Belmaggio e Smith. So, to Joey and Nick – THANKS. Joey is leaving (today, I think) for Colorado for an extended two and a half month engagement, so break a leg, Joey. Nick, hang in there, buddy. I tell you — that boy is a smart and funny guy. Funny, because he doesn’t know how funny and gifted he is, I think. Hah. Ah well — watch out for pirates.

Chicago was a great town. I think it gets a bit of a bad rap as always being cold and windy, and from meteorological data, that would seem to be true — however, empirically speaking, Hunter and I enjoyed near-perfect weather. Rain only upon leaving.

Big cities have such a different character and dynamic that small cities. You put people together in close proximity, and they seem to get together. Nick’s area of town is very “integrated”, and to quote him “I’ve never felt threatened”. Not that Nick is or was fearful of other cultures, but I think when you put folks together they realize that other cultures aren’t that bad after all. I’ve never had so many people greet me on the street than in Chicago (including Ted Nugent).

I’ve come to the conclusion that I love trains. I’ve always got some sort of sociological experiment or observation in the back of my mind, and the train is like a little petri dish. Hunter’s own observation noted that “white folks are the most selective about their seats”. Meaning that they won’t sit by a non-white by choice. This is by no means a generalization, but white folks seem to do it more than other races. Maybe it’s just a cultural thing, I dunno. The train by itself is a hurdle by itself. In Louisville, “personal space” is quite abundant. In Chicago, not so much. Even the personal space of your car is in high demand. Chicago is the reason I think all cars should still have steel bumpers. Parallel parking isn’t just a hobby — it’s a necessity. All this composite-foam 5 mile an hour stuff is bunk. Ahh well. On the converse, Mini‘s are needed.

Larger cities spawn interesting sub-cultures that small cities will never see. Communities of similar-minded people have the manpower to exist and thrive (i.e. the comic scene, the ‘zine scene, the band scene, the gay community, etc). And the great thing about large cities — no one cares a lick about what you do, as long as it doesn’t adversely affect the public as a whole. You wanna be gay? Sure. You wanna dress up like Sailor Moon? Whatever. You want to wear an eyepatch? Bring it. All in all, a large city can be a very inspirational place. Now, I’m sure there are plenty of problems in the big city, but I was on vacation — no time for crime. Heh.

This trip was also a great time to hang out with Hunter, Nick and Joey. It had been a long time since I’d just hung out (extendly) with any of my old friends. Hanging out reading graphic novels was great. Very relaxing. It had been a long time since we just talked — or had a drink or two and talked even louder. Good times all around.

I had a great time in Chicago.