Category: Life in General

Passwords In the Clear

Posted on by chappyshi

I was recently reminded of a work incident that occurred a few years ago whenn I needed to retrieve a forgotten password.  The coworker/system, instead of generating a new password and emailing it to me and forcing me to immediately change it, brought the password up in the clear.  I use, shall we say, racy, embarrassing passwords.  They haven’t been compromised and I remember them but I don’t want others to know what they are for the obvious reason that they are passwords but for the less obvious reason that the might be construed as very weird.

So it is weird and bad enough if one of your coworkers pulls up a password which embarrasses you.  The other day I was at the library and…yep…you got it.  I ask to see if I can view a history of books that I have checked out and the female librarian asks for my card number.  I give it to her and as she is saying “the default password is “111111” which I had changed at first logon, she is somehow pulling up my account with my “not for public consumption  password” and telling me that I have such and such checked out.

Well  I know what I had currently checked out.  I wanted to see a history of all of the books I had checked out.  I think that they can’t keep that info for privacy reasons though I may be wrong about that.  NTL, the librarian said that they might not be able to store all that info due to storage limitations.  I kind of doubt that because all you need are a few fields like a card number linked to a user name, and every book that had been checked out on that card number.  That database would not require that many fields and take up that much disk space in my estimation.

The bottom line is why do we still have major databases systems out there that store passwords in the clear?  If you are a system administrator and can reset passwords, whether or not the password is in the clear is no matter.  But if you are a hacker, it is a different story.  No serious computer system should store passwords in the clear!

Waste Not Want Not

Posted on by chappyshi

In the process of buying food, I wind up with more reusable bags and containers than I can possibly use.  I am admittedly not a regular dishwasher which is not to say that I leave a mess of dishes in my sink or all over the counters.  I carefully rinse everything and set things aside  to wait for a good washing.

As such,  I often find myself washing a combination of more than 30 reusable (in my estimation) containers and plastic bags.  It is a pain in the ass drying out the bags and ensuring that they are sanitary.  Is it worth it in the big scheme of things?  Is it a waste of water?  I don’t  know but it is worth it to me.

I am also terrible about the use of tissues, paper napkins and paper towels…and when I say terrible I mean I keep and use them until they are totally useless.  I go through lots of tissues due to allergies and such but not nearly as many as most people might.  I think that in the 4.5 years I have lived in this apartment  I haven’t had to buy any napkins and might have bought one additional roll of paper towels due to that which I had already on hand.

Ultrasound Chicanery

Posted on by chappyshi

Is a fetus any more viable, and accordingly less likely to be aborted, just because the expectant mother sees it on an ultrasound?  This is what regular Washington Post Op-Ed contributor Kathleen Parker would lead us to believe.  I have much respect for Ms. Parker…her opinions are well thought out and moderate.  However, I don’t follow her logic on this one.

In the Washington Post opinion piece, Images of Choice, dated May 2, 2010, she describes herself has “both pro-life and pro-choice” noting that “Once a pregnancy is viewed as a human life in formation, rather than a ‘blob of cells,’ it is less easy to terminate the contents of one’s vessel.  I ponder the description of a woman’s uterus as a “vessel” but that is really not the issue for me.

According to the article, “Oklahoma passed a law….that would require women to have an ultrasound, though,…they are not required to view the images.”  Apparently they have to “…hear the doctor’s description of the images.”  Murder of humans and killing of animals goes on daily.  Surely in the majority of those murders and killings the murders and killers are looking at what they are killing realizing that they are sentient beings not “blobs of cells.”  You are either taking a life or you are not taking a life.

I honestly can’t think any women, or pregnant teens, who are so stupid that they don’t realize they are taking or preventing a life, even in the first trimester.  I believe that most women will have an abortion based on financial, emotional, and mental factors rather than the picture of a fetus or “blob of cells.”  The option seems too traumatic to think that forcing one to have an ultrasound really makes a difference in the decision making process.

I’ll never know though…  However, a woman should have the right to make the choice without the interference of the state or federal governments.

Coppermine Photo Album Bug 2, Not!

Posted on by chappyshi

I thought I had another bug in my Coppermine Photo Album but after much research, a backup of my web site and database, and an upgrade of my photo album software  I found that I had just screwed up.

When batch uploading files to my site I got the error “no new file was found.”  Finally, and embarrassingly enough, I realized that I had created the server folder containing my new photos using spaces and symbols in the name which is a definite no no as far as I am concerned.  I have used filenames sans symbols and spaces for years considering that they were an unnecessary complication in the world of 0’s and 1’s.

After removing the  offending spaces and symbols, I was easily able to publish my photos.  The PHP software that I use for my photo album just couldn’t handle the offending characters.

Coppermine Photo Album Bug 1

Posted on by chappyshi

I am not convinced of this yet but it appears that I cannot post photos that have no “EXIF” data to my Coppermine photo album.  I have not found confirmation that that is a problem yet on the Web but it is a problem for me.

Photos batch processed using Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 lose their “EXIF” info and can’t seem to be published to my Coppermine photo album.

PIM My Ride!

Posted on by chappyshi

I have been trying for probably a year now to find the, for me, perfect PIM.  It has to include email, calendar, to do list, and some type of memo option.  A big concern has been reminders, be they by email or application pop up, for both calendar events and to do list items.  The Linux KDE package, Kontact, appears to do the trick.

Many people use the calendar for all appointments/tasks that require reminders.  I am however of a mind in which I deal with deadline based reminders and goal (not time sensitive) reminders.  The difference may be subtle but to me it is significant.  Hence I require a PIM with which I can configure events and tasks using an automated reminder system.

It was very easy to import all  my mail from my Linux Evolution client.  Two or three steps pulled in all my folders.  Contacts,  exported as Vcards from Evolution,  were easily imported into KAddressbook and integrated into Kontact.

I had some issues getting KMail to recognize my address book after importing it to KAddressbook.  After multiple deletions and recreations of the address book, I got it to work.  Unfortunately, I am not sure what the problem was or why the fix worked.

Nonetheless, it seems to be working as I would like it to so I’ll  keep testing it out and hopefully adopt it as my “new” standard.

Watershed Cleanup Followup

Posted on by chappyshi

Twas a gorgeous day for the cleanup…hardly a cloud in the sky with temperatures in the mid-60’s.  I would call our effort at Bull Run and Route 28  in Manassas, sponsored by REI of Fairfax, both a success and a disappointment.  It was my fourth or fifth cleanup including a couple on the Potomac River in Point of Rocks and one off Walney Road in Chantilly.  We picked up less trash, with a turnout of about 40 people, than I had on previous cleanups with 25 to 50 percent of the participants.

Apparently a local Boy Scout troop recently adopted that stretch of Bull Run so it seems like our efforts would have been better utilized elsewhere.  I see plenty of trash in creeks that I pass by on walks around my neighborhood!  Additionally, we suspected that much of the trash had been washed further downstream by the wicked runoff we had from more than 70 inches of snow this winter.

You can see the results at the Alice Ferguson Foundation web site which says we collected nearly 113 tons of trash from 214 reporting sites in the Potomac River Water.  One of my pictures below tells  the tale of how much we collected…pretty weak but the trash just wasn’t there.

22d Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup

Posted on by chappyshi

The 22d Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup takes place from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM on April 10, 2010.  My brother-in-law, Ed, and I are going to meet up with a group, at Bull Run on Rt. 28 about 2 miles south of Rt. 29,  sponsored by REI in Fairfax, VA, (21 people have signed up) to pull trash and garbage out of the river and surrounding areas.

Get more information here.  Please sign up and come help us out!  Green Day, Green Earth, Green Thumb, and all that.  They are short of gloves because of an inordinately large turnout this year so bring some gardening gloves, or even better, oyster shucking gloves.  They protect your hands against sharp objects and drain the water from your gloved hand much better than other types of gloves do.