i didn’t mention in my last entry that someone(s) scanning for vulnerabilities found a php-based software on my server that was crackable. fortunately, all of the ips that were hitting it appear to have been script-kiddies (or didn’t spend time mucking with my box), as they don’t appear to have actually used the access to crack my box (which they could have done). one (or more) of them ended up using it as a relay to spew spam, which is how i noticed it. i figured out what the flaw was and modded the php code to error out with a snarky message to them. *sigh* that’s just part of what goes with having anything available to the internet-at-large. keeping up-to-date on your software helps, but even then there are 0-day exploits and lag times between when the world (and thus the crackers/script-kids) knows about an exploit and when a patch is made available by the vendor. and that is ignoring brute force cracking, social engineering, etc.
i was supposed to be working all day saturday to do disaster recovery site email testing, but it got canceled friday afternoon. so that’s now the second time it’s been canceled the afternoon of the day before. it’s really annoying because you get geared up and ready to do it, try to make everything fresh in your mind — then you’re told it’s not going to happen. it’s a major mental and emotional let-down.
speaking of major mental and emotional let-downs, i suppose i should mention today would have been my 12 year wedding anniversary. and it could be father’s day for me; i could have a 6-year-old kid. but it’s not, and i don’t. does that aspect of my past matter any more to me? sure. but not like it used to. for all intents and purposes, the tamara i believed i married back then is dead and gone from this world. she has become a painful memory in my past, a tagged mental note that you can never be sure what is lurking underneath, and just how unfair and two-faced they can turn out to be because of it. enough time has passed that it doesn’t fill my thoughts very often any more. and even when i do think about it, though there is still pain and anger and sadness there, it’s much less intense overall. but, at the same time, marriage and a family is a desire i have for my life, so that failure and loss can bring me down a lot if i let it (focusing on it and/or starting off in a poor emotional state). it’s still relevant to me because i’ve never really had new memories in that area to shift my focus onto. (i wish jennifer or the hrc could have done it, but neither of them were ever really very committed toward me.) because of that, my experience with tamara is always sitting there available to me when i get lonely or sad or depressed — especially over that facet of my life. as the crucified song notes: “my loneliness is evidence of my failure” (though in the song they are trying to point out that is flawed thinking, so don’t trash them for being negative or such nonsense…trash me instead :). anyway, enough of that subject.
yesterday and today i spent some time over at the potts’ house working with jack trying to figure out how to silk screen. he got some equipment from someone, i came up with some designs for a simple shirt for the party for the radio show i help with, and we’re supposed to screen some shirts. yesterday was the first day for either of us, and we learned we didn’t really have stuff figured out. earlier today jack and jackson figured some stuff out, then this afternoon jack and i made the screens for the techbytes shirt. tomorrow we should actually try screening some shirts. i watched some youtube videos today trying to learn more about silk screening and techniques and such. it’s so nice to have an instant resource for all kinds of things right at your fingertips whenever you want it. hopefully our stuff will come out well.