The Long Road

Happy birthday to me, lalala

I'm 37 today- a prime number.  I guess that means this year the only thing that can divide me is myself. Well, and one-but that just leaves me again.  I love math jokes :0

So freely accepting well wishes, money, winning lottery tickets and visits by geekily handsome Scotsmen :)

Politely declining negativity- try again next year.

It's going to be a good year.

[repost from notgoddess.com since no one reads that and I need some input]

My kids just got back from their summer visit with their Dad.  We stopped at the store to pick up some groceries and one asked for some peanuts.  Another chimed in, saying "Yeah, Mom has peanuts but won't let us have them."  He was referring to Whatever's new wife, their stepmom.

My world crumbled a little bit and I'm not sure what expression I had on my face.  I hope I recovered quickly enough-they didn't act as if they'd noticed anything.  And yes, I bought the peanuts though they had to eat them outside (shells are very messy).

Dan Kaminsky, Director of Penetration Testing for IOActive, Inc., has put his reputation on the line to protect the internet.

He’s discovered a flaw in DNS that could leave it open to DNS-poisoning. For non-techies, DNS is what matches a webname like google.com to an ip address like 72.14.207.99 – the actual address of the website. A bad guy using this exploit could cause you to type in google.com and go somewhere else entirely, unlike normal phishing sites or redirects you wouldn’t know the difference.

The details are sketchy, but Mr. Kaminsky has been working with all the big guns to simultaneously release a patch to fix this issue on all platforms. Since it’s a patch going out to individuals, I gather it’s something that affects client machines and not (or not just) the name servers themselves.

If you have automatic updates on your computer, you’ve received the patch this last tuesday. If you don’t update automatically, go to your OS update site and update NOW.

Mr. Kaminsky estimates it’ll take the bad guys about a month to figure out the flaw once its presence is announced. So, August 6, 2008 is put out as the deadline to update. I wouldn’t wait.

If you want to test your own DNS, he’s provided a checker on his blog. Click on the ‘Test My DNS’ button on the right sidebar.

Links of interest:
Dan Kaminsky’s blog post on the DNS poisoning exploit
Dan Kaminsky on putting his reputation on the line
Dino Dai Zovi’s blog entry-one of two people to do a peer review on Dan’s work

And lastly, if you haven’t already-patch.

If you are a fan of Torchwood, Doctor Who or stuff that probably shouldn't be funny but is anyway, I ran across this clip from a movie with Hitler with the subtitles added to talk about Torchwood.  Probably helps that I don't know enough German to follow the actual dialogue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLg-43lTEvM

If you cannot handle the humor here's another video just for you....

I couldn't bear the cuteness after about five seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNS6SUe-kGc

I had my six-month review today.

I thought I'd been doing well, contributing and such, and if asked how I felt about my current position words such as 'Wonderful' and 'Fantastic!' would be liberally sprinkled in the response.

Of course I felt a little dread-I think anyone would, but was reasonably confident of a good review.....

[this is where if I were mean I'd do an lj-cut to heighten the tease-factor...]

End result of the review: They love me. I'm a phenomenal asset and they are extremely satisfied with my performance. :) :) :) :) :)

...maybe a few more :) :) just for good measure.

I feel great.  I love this work-it's challenging and I really have a talent for it.

Here's to the next six months at my dream job. :)