Interesting: Defaced Confederate Memorial

Veterans Day commemorates U.S. men and women who have served in the military for their country. Many people observe this holiday by visiting cemeteries and memorials as did someone in Montgomery, Al this past weekend. But this particular observance was a little more, um, 'thought provoking' than others.

Over the 3 day weekend someone climbed the Confederate Memorial near the steps of the Alabama capitol building and painted the face and hands of the 4 confederate soldiers black. A little after lunch my boss told me about the defacement and I grabbed my camera and walked over (I work just across the street). Most of the people around were walkers out getting their daily exercise and some had not even noticed. A few people that worked in the capitol building were talking about the act, but no one had any idea who did it or what it was in reference to.

At the bottom, over a carved quote, was a cryptic message "N.T. 111131". Later, a coworker deciphered a possible meaning. Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831 seemed to fit the situation. On August 20, 1831 a group of slaves led by Nat killed at least 55 white people in Southampton County Virginia. Nat was caught, tried and hung on 11-11-1831. The details are horrifying in many ways, but the essential story is about an oppressed man who could take no more and rose up against his oppressors.

I certainly found the "defacement" thought provoking as I did not know about Nat's Rebellion, or, at least, had not thought about it since some long forgotten history class. I'm sure many people were not happy about the "black face soldiers" but I believe it is a fine, non-violent, thoughtful idea. And one fitting of Veterans Day, a day when we look to thank those who provide us with the freedom to promote ideas any way we see fit.

Interesting: White Hat Hacker Smack Talk

Reading SANS Internet Storm Center diary is part of my morning ritual and today I got a good laugh out of an entry by Tom Liston where he cracks some questionable javascript and even tells the black hat how to fix it:

"So... all of you JavaScript geniuses out there, please take note: I "cracked" this obfuscation while munching on in-flight pretzels and working ON MY CELLPHONE. If you seriously don't want someone to know what you're up to, then I think your encoding techniques should require cracking on something that doesn't ring..."

Here is a link to the full entry Climb a small mountain ...

Interesting: Google Reader

If you keep up with lots of news sites and blogs and aren't using and RSS aggregator, well, do it now. I've been using Google Reader for a couple of months and I'm very happy with it. It's easy to use and I don't have to open another app to access my feeds. Check out Scoble's demo and the Google Reader Blog for more info.

If you'd rather have a stand alone app, check out these. And definatly check out netnewswire if you have a mac.

You can even check out my shared feeds if you want.

Interesting: I'm getting old

Last Saturday I travelled back to Cherokee to play in a charity baseball game to honor my recently retired high school baseball coach, Richard Phillips. The turnout was really good, lots of family, friends and kids and the proceeds went to buy new equipment for the current highschool team.

It was great to be back on a baseball field with guys I haven't seen in years. There were enough for four teams, one older and two younger. Team 4 won our game 5 - 2, I went 2 - 3 with an RBI and a run scored. We won't talk about fielding :)

It was a lot of fun and I hope it becomes a tradtion. Here are a few pics I put up over at flickr.

Security: MS06-040 Patch

Microsoft has released a new patch to fix a buffer overrun vulnerability in a service that runs on Windows 2000, XP and 2003 systems. This is a remote code execution hole that would allow an attacker to take complete control of a system.

If you are behind a firewall that blocks ports 137-139 & 445 then you are somewhat shielded from this problem, however, it's best to apply the patch.

SANS has more information on the current worm activity.

Interesting: Microsoft buys up SysInternals

The announcement came this week from Mark Russinovich of SysInternals that he, co-founder Bryce Cogswell and the tools are moving to Microsoft. It's not really all that surprising being that Mark is better at building tools for the Windows platform than many of the folks already at Microsoft. SysInternals hosts many excellent troubleshooting and recovery tools including Process Explorer and Rootkit Revealer.

All the tools and support are currently still available from the site while Microsoft reviews the options of how to best leverage its new purchase. I already have them all, but I'll be sure to download current versions of everything just in case Bill deceides to hide them behind WGA.

Mark says "I’m looking forward to making Windows an even better platform for all of us!" Russinovich will be appointed as a Microsoft Technical Fellow, a title "awarded to someone whose technical vision, expertise, and world-class leadership is widely recognized." Microsoft currently has 14 Technical Fellows. Analysts are hoping that Russinovich and Cogswell will each add to the stability and security of future versions of Windows.

Here's to hoping for even better tools now that he is on the inside.

Interesting: Getting a little slack about this

Wow, it's been awhile since I put anything here. Since the whole point was to get me to start writing something on a regular basis I'm just going to throw some random links out here from stuff I've been looking at.

Microsoft's Powershell has had much of my attention for the last month, although I'm still not where I want to be with it. A command shell with access to .NET objects is double plus good if you want to automate ... well, anything in Windows. Scott Hanselman has so many things to say about I'm just going to link to a google search. Ars Technica has a guided tour that explains much of the reasoning and syntax in Powershell. There is also a Microsoft Blog for PowerShell. There are tons of other resources out there for this awesome tool and I'll likely post much more about it as I get more comfortable using it.

I've been slowly becoming more and more of a web hermit, although you'd think that would make me post more ... apparently not.

I keep finding PETA more and more disturbing.

I've also been trying to figure out if Chappelle Theory is a joke, a whacko conspiracy theorist, or actually the truth.

I got a new monitor that I'm very happy with. Although the price has gone down steadily, I still got a much better deal than what Dell lists.

And I've been to the beach, the Southern League Double A All-Star Game in Montgomery and spent a massive amount of time sitting on my back porch with a laptop. I should really post some pics at flickr and link to them, but I'm lazy ... maybe next time.