Luzern
We had a nice weekend in Luzern (Switzerland). The hotel
was excellent. Luzern is a nice town. It’s only a 2,5 hours car ride. The first breakfast buffet was funny. As I came to the breakfast room I noticed a lady wearing a fur hat. I smiled to my wife and sat down and a minute later four young people came in the room wearing pyjamas and bathrobes. Guess what ? These four were there children of the fur hat lady and yes you’re right they are americans…
Excellent
Today I had to do some maintenance on a Lotus Notes Application. This is a software that I inherited not from a quick and dirty programmer but a more quick and more dirty programmer. This guy never ever tested his code. One function locks a section with the role „Excemption“. But the role in the ACL is „Exemption“ (for years). So you have to find all documents where this section is locked add the wrong role to the ACL unlock the section and lock the section with the right role. After all remove the wrong role in the ACL. So much effort because a simple function wasn’t tested.
Good night Germany wherever you are…
Wenn die Chemie brodelt
Es gibt frisch Verliebte die austicken, man sieht den Hormonspiegel in den Augenhöhlen hin- und herschwappen wie einen künstlichen Horizont.
Mit solchen Menschen einen Abend zu verbringen kann zur Qual werden.
Schön für das Pärchen, schlecht für alle drumrum. Es wird gekichert, getuschelt, über die Wange gestreichelt, die Gesprächspartner ignoriert, auf den Schoß gesetzt, mit den Wimpern geklimmpert, den Kopf schräg gehalten und dauergegrinst.
„Hase“,“Bärchen“,“Schnuffi“,“Schlumpf“…
Es ist ähnlich prickelnd wie mit fremden Menschen im Aufzug zu fahren oder wenn in einer langen Autofahrt der Gesprächsstoff ausgeht.
Es gibt nur einen Ausweg: Langsam zu Kommunikationsknochen vortasten, unbemerkt anschalten und hoffen daß das dumme Ding endlich anfängt zu bimmeln. Gott sei Dank, es klingelt endlich…
„Oh ehrlich, du hast dir einen neuen Computer gekauft? Nein, ist kein Problem, ich komme sofort vorbei…“
WLAN@Hotel
While I’m sitting in a little,tiny not so comfortable hotel in south germany I started IBM Access Connection and here again a open WLAN. Thank you Hotel Manager.No phone on the room but a open WLAN. I love open WLANs.
Der Knopf im Ohr
In den guten alten Zeiten hatten die Kuscheltiere ein Knopf im Ohr. Heute haben es meine Gesprächspartner. Ich hasse es.
Man kommt in ein Zimmer und stellt eine Frage. Die einzige Person im Raum beginnt zu reden, hat aber nichts mit meiner Frage zu tun. Das ganz wirkt ein wenig surreal, wie eine Szene aus einem Wim Wenders Film. Der Mann dreht sich mit seiner rechten Gesichtshälfte zu mir und deutet mit abgespreitzten Daumen und kleinem Finger zum Kopf.
Ah, er telefoniert.
Später sitze ich da und starre nach wildem Codezeilenklopfen zum Fenster raus. Die Tür geht auf, jemand betritt das Büro.
„Hallo“
„Hallo“
„Sie sollten im Taskmanager nach Prozessen suchen die mit einem ’n‘ beginnen..“
„Äh, wieso ?“
„Strg-Alt-Ent…“
Wieder war nicht ich gemeint, sondern der Gute war am Supporten mit Knopf im Ohr.
Mann-O-Mann, Zeit zum Heimfahren…
Es gibt sie noch, die Servicewüste
Unglaublich, ich habe heute zum fünften Mal mit einer Karosseriebaufirma telefoniert. Ich hatte mein Auto dort am 13.10. abgegeben. Drei Tage später abgeholt und bar bezahlt. Auf den Hinweis, daß ich eine Rechnung brauche wurde mir mitgeteilt, daß das Büro momentan nicht besetzt wäre, sie mir aber die Rechnung sofort zusenden. Das was vor vier Wochen. Beim heutigen Telefonat habe ich dem Geschäftsführer mitgeteilt, daß ich am Montag den Vorfall dem lokalen Finanzamt melde, wenn bis dahin keine Rechnung eingetrudelt ist. Daraufhin kassierte ich noch einen Anschiß, was mir denn einfällt wegen 500 Euro so einen Aufstand zu machen…
WLAN@home
Since I received my IBM Thinkpad T40 with WLAN on board there was a deep voice in me that kept on saying
‚You need WLAN at home, you need WLAN at home…‘
Last friday was the end of a busy week and the voice inside me said
‚Buy a WLAN DSL router NOW !‘
I checked a few online issues of PC magazines. Then I checked the availability at the local preferred store.
Here we go, I bought the SMC Barricade 7004 VWBR (a.k.a ‚Fluckskompensator‘).
One thing that I don’t like on any powerdriven machine is the absence of a ‚Power‘ switch. I want to switch off machines. I don’t want to unplug them.
The rest is fine. The case is slim with two antennas. There is only a english printed manual, but on the CD are pdf-manuals in more languages. I was surprised that a RJ45 Ethernet cable was included. OK, that’s all in the box.
After a little research in my homeoffice I found my T-DSL username and password. I needed it only one time when I set up my Linux based router…
The SMC device is a four port switch (10/100 Mbps), NAT router, firewall and DHCP Server. It supports only 801.11b (11 Mbit) which is ok for me at home.
The setup (webinterface) was fast and I had no problems with it. I enabled WEP encryption, configured the notebook with IBM Access Connection and surfed the web from the living room which put a smile on my face. The rest of my homenetwork (W2K PC, Linuxserver and iMac) was connected by cable to the ports. Every client received an IP address and was able to surf the web.
Maybe I disable the DHCP server and move this task back to the Linuxserver. I like to assign IP address by MAC address and use my own DNS server but on the SMC device you can only set the addresspool, leasetime and the domainname.
Did I mention that this thing has no powerswitch ?
Since I received my IBM Thinkpad T40 with Windows XP there is a deep voice in me that keep on saying
‚You need a PowerMac with OS X. You need a PowerMac with OS X…‘
Halloween 2003
Another thing that Europe adopted from the United States: ‚Halloween‘. The second time that friends of us made a Halloween party. So it started to become a tradition.
This year was a quit bigger party with about 40 people, sorry, monsters and witches.
Don’t drink and bite !
Talking Witch Project
The Other Everynet
Yesterday I’ve been to a customer. Two employees from the IT-Department talked about WLAN security.
While working on my Thinkpad T40 I started IBM Access Connection and surprise, surprise, two wide open WLANs were shown up.
I’ve showed them but they didn’t know those WLANs. I decided to go deeper in one of the WLANs. I connected and bingo, thanks DHCP I received an IP-Address.
I started Mozilla and I was able to surf the web. A quick look in ‚ipconfig‘ told me that 192.168.1.1 is the router address. I gave Mozilla „http://192.168.1.1“ to eat and a „Username and Password“ dialog popped up.
The router was a Linksys modell. A little google research and one minute later I had the default settings for this router. No username and ‚admin‘ as password. I tried it and here we go the Configuration Interface of the router.
I started my IM Clients and Lotus Notes and I was able to chat and replicate Databases with the company.
So while I was in why don’t make a portscan with Superscan ? I discovered another machine in the WLAN which turned out as another Windows PC. What about ’security‘ on this machine ? I tried the adminstrative share ‚\\192.168.1.100\c$‘ and the ‚Username and Password‘ dialog popped up. What would you trying ? Yes. ‚Administrator‘ and no Password. Unbelievable I was on the local ‚c:\‘ drive.
There were a few Worddocuments and I decided to open one of them. It turned out that the sender of this document was a local bookstore on the other side of the street.
I went over the street and asked the manager which company installed the WLAN. He said that it was a friend of him. I told him that I don’t think that this guy is a friend of him because the WLAN is very unsecure (Ok. ‚No security‘ describes it in a better way). The manager smiled.
Then I told him the router modell, the IP range, his IP Address, no password on the router, no password for ‚Administrator‘ on his machine and then about the worddocument I’ve read and that this was an effort of ten minutes. He didn’t smile anymore and he asked me what to do. I told him to set passwords and to activate WEP keys, configure DHCP for his MAC Address only (hey, this tips are for free! If you want more, pay me!).
I’ve been to the same customer today and do you know what? Nothing changed…
Hell froze over. The best windows app ever.
Hmm, here it is: iTunes for Windows. Quit nice application.
Don’t try this:
-Use it on your notebook in different networks. Startup time > 2 min (disable music sharing first)
-Don’t lose internet or lan connections while running iTunes for Windows, it’ll never come back to you.
-If you import a whole cd as mp3 from your cd-rom, sometimes iTunes freezes and will never come back to you.
-Don’t use to old hardware. iTunes doesn’t like the cd-rom of my old PC at home. ‚iTunes Drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs cannot be found.‘ This was no problem for ‚Musicmatch Jukebox‘
Ok Steve, next time or shall I say NextStep ?