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Sunday, May 14, 2000
I trust you have enjoyed a nice Mother's
day.
It was beautiful here in Winston-Salem. I
spoke with my mother this morning and the Tucker family here
enjoyed a nice lunch at Bennigan's restaurant after church and
then spent the afternoon as a family on a leisurely bike ride
through Bethabra Park, stopping about three-quarters of the way
through the ride for a frosty at Wendy's. The frost was a
bribe to Katie to keep her going.
One thing we learned this afternoon was the gears
on Suzy's bike needs some serious adjustment. I have tried
to make these adjustments in the past, but just make matters
worse. I'll have to solict someone with more experience to
help get things straightened out.
Earlier this evening an associate from work
called with a computer problem. Yep, when folks find out
you know a little about computers you become a help desk.
I'm glad to share what little knowledge I have.
Anyway, his problem was this. He would
attempt to shutdown his computer through the start menu, but the
machine would not shut down. It wouldn't even quit when he
hit the power switch. He said he finally unplugged the
computer from the wall to get it to shut down. However, when
he restarted (and scandisk did its thing) the same problem
reappeared. I was at a loss and immediately thought his
motherboard or switch had gone bad, so I suggested he call Dell
customer support. He had just purchased the computer last
December, so he was well within his warranty period.
He called back in just a few minutes and reported
that Dell customer support had said he'd picked up the pwsteal Trojan
virus and should go to the Norton website where there was a simple
10 or 12 step process he could go through to get rid of this Trojan.
His kids use AOL frequently and probably picked up the virus
there. He indicated the Trojan fix would be simple to find,
only thing was he could not get online.
I pulled up the Norton site and did not
immediately see an easy fix, so I searched for the virus and the
only fix I found was to download the latest virus signatures.
I told him to call Dell back and ask for exact URL
where this easy fix could be found.
I didn't hear from him for a while, so I decided
to go ahead and download the latest virus signatures. I
chose the version that broke the signatures into three
disks. I planned to take them to him at the office Monday.
I then got another call from the computer in
trouble. He'd gotten a different tech support rep on the
line this time and had been put through a few addition diagnostic
steps. The final result was to run something called ZZ Top,
which I told him sound like a music CD to me, but apparently it's
Dell's emergency recovery program. He added that his machine
came from Dell with McAfee anti-virus software, so our trip to
Norton wouldn't have helped anyway.
After assuming ZZ Top was formatting his hard
drive I mentioned that he was going to have to install some of his
favorite software which includes Windows on Wall Street. He
loves tracking his favorite stocks, religiously inputting data
every day, and when I mentioned he had probably lost all of
his data his heart sank. Of course I asked about a backup of
this important information and of course the answer was that he
didn't have it saved anywhere.
You would think a tech support rep would mention
that you're about to wipe out any data you have saved on machine
before launching a system recovery procedure. I am sure had
this been done he might have thought about his WOWS data,
Too late now.
I had a message waiting this morning from Jonathan Hassell
[hassell@hassell.pair.com]
after I mentioned a service like DynoDNS. Seems like he's
tried similar services to keep his cable modem alive and wasn't
that complimentary.
I found a similar service, TZO.
I had it running for four or so months here and it worked
fine. I took it off because the reliability of a cable
modem connection for serving up stuff is not what you'd
expect.
I would strongly consider leaving
your pags at pair Networks. After serving up pages here
with TZO and putting up with constant outages and degraded
performance, I signed up with pair, as you know.
I'd prefer not to worry about if my mail server is working
right. Save the hosting for ADSL or frame relays.
Hope you enjoyed your trip to Concord
Mills. I head up there about once every two weeks (it's
only a 30 min drive from here, with the outerbelt.) The
racing simulator is pretty cool. :-)
Good luck with your Linux box.
Thanks for the heads up. I am too
pleased with pair.com to
consider serving myself, besides they offer redundancy to the
internet backbone that I would have no way of replicating.
However, it would be cool to have a static IP
or the equivalent, which would let me bring up a mail server
sometime in the future on my Linux box. That way I could
pop my mail from right here at the house anytime I wanted.
May an exchange server? Who knows. Probably won't
happen.
We were cooked when we returned from Concord
Mills last night. It was an intense day of shopping,
resulting in lots of new clothes for the kids. I even got
a few things for myself. Hit Bugle Boy for some new khakis
and a couple of shirts. Also found a few things at
Burlington.
I was able to waltz the kids by the NASCAR
silicon speedway or whatever it's called. Lucky me. We
attempted to eat at the Alabama Grill, but they were promoting
an hour and a half wait, so we settled on Bob Evans.
Suzy commented that there is so much going on
in corridors with sound and different designs that it is very
distracting.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Monday, May
15, 2000
Some Wall Street analysts think the impact of
Intel's motherboard will
have little impact on the bottom line. Bob Thompson also
posted some interesting
comments on Intel's situation on his Triad Technology Group
website today. As always we can count on Bob to be more
straight forward than any industry fluff piece ever dreamed.
There seem to be more and more stories about
security flaws in Microsoft products. The latest to come
under attach is Internet Explorer with the claim, and Microsoft's
confession, there is a security hole in this product that will
allow someone to steal
the secret information stored in your browser's cookies.
Of course Microsoft is promising a quick patch.
I attended the memorial service today for Adam
Petty which was held at High Point University. After the
service Kyle and Patti invited everyone there to meet at their
farm in Trinity, NC for lunch. I was glad I continued on to
the farm where I got to spend time with each of the Petty family
and reminisce about some of the good times we have enjoyed
together. Kyle and Patti were very gracious under these very
difficult times, greeting each guest and spending as much time
with each individual as the afternoon would allow.
The service was filled with emotional recollections
of Adam from his parents, grandparents, brother and sister.
Montgomery Leigh, Adam's younger sister, stood before the crowd of
nearly 1,000 and presented her own fondest memories of her
brother.
Jayski, a favorite stop for all NASCAR fans, has
established this Adam
Petty tribute page.
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