So I guess the title really doesn't work like Puffy originally intended, but hey, I'm not a suave music mogul billionaire.
Last week I had the privilege of being graced by the presence of a little malicious piece of code that took my home computer captive. This little guy seemed silly to me at first but like a devil in disguise, I had him all wrong.
When I went to do a Google search and clicked on a link, sometimes it took me to a random site that wasn't the intended target. While this was annoying, really annoying even, it was hardly cause for too much concern. I simply thought that I had probably inadvertently downloaded this malware, through one way or another, and like others I've experienced before it, it wouldn't be too hard to be rid of it. Well, I guess I have been malware/virus free for so long, that I have not been completely up-to-speed about how vicious they have become; because this little puppy went right for the jugular. That little bastard!
The sites I was being redirected to weren't anything questionable, so I thought that the creator was just trying to get some web traffic to some target sites to increase web ranking. While intrusive, this was not really anything to be all up in arms about. I'll just find the cookie, executable, or what have you and remove it. No sweat! So I boot up the malware removers that I have grown to trust; Spybot to scan for known threats, HackThis to look at my currently running processes, and Windows Malware Remover just for good measure (even though it's not all that great in my opinion). To my surprise, they all came back clean.
So I went back online, and after a few hours of looking (after all the web site redirection from the malware) I found others have experienced something like this before as well, and that they found a rootkit installed. I was shocked! A Rootkit! Really! That's pretty hard core for a pesky little web traffic redirector. So, I downloaded a rootkit search utility, and booted back in safe mode to give it a run and do a little snooping under the hood. When I scanned I caught some stuff that didn't belong there, but nothing really pointing to the cause of my troubles. I did however find an installed driver that I didn't recognize and promptly removed it. But, before I realized what happened it was all over. It's like I set off the trip-line and turned the harmless bunny into Donnie's alter ego.
This little bugger then proceeded to turn my PC upside down. It removed the keyboard driver to make it tough to navigate around, and deactivated my Windows installation so I could not get web updates, even if there was something out there offered by Microsoft to fix my issue (which I still think there isn't). After a number of other attempts to unload my burden, I resorted to the last straw before a reinstall (*shudder*) and tried to do a System Restore to a previous state. Oh wait, those are all corrupted from the virus. I was again, shocked!
After that I remember that I bought a HP Mediasmart Server running Windows Home Server last year. A nice little feature that Windows Home Server offers is fully configurable home computer network backup and recovery. We aren't talking about a folder or two of files here, we are talking the whole shebang. Programs, pictures, movies, music, documents, and even Windows itself ... backed up every night ready to take on my computer catastrophe. So with a quick sifting through my CDs to find the startup disc, and a few menus later, I have a computer that is being completely reinitialized over my home network without me lifting a finger (other than to write this blog). After all I have done with that machine in the last year, from streaming multimedia wherever I want it, to remotely controlling tasks at home, to sharing data on the internet with others, after getting me through this mess, that machine is probably the best piece of computer equipment I have ever bought, hands down! You might think it's overkill to have a server in your house (my wife sure thinks so at least), but that thing is a workhorse with the voice of a slick operator.
So now I have a fully restored machine just the way I left it last week without too much trouble. So long days of reinstalling and getting frustrated. I should paint an S on the side of my WHS box after this one.
-Conte
Horrifying!
So I was Googling something today and while looking for information I happened upon a few personal blogs much like this one; one's with no real objective, just thrown out in the wind for all to see and criticize. I had a little time to kill so I read a few posts from a smattering of blogs, and now I came to my own blog to reflect. Oh how it comes full circle.
I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of personal blogs are the tech age version of the office copier spam. If you are unfamiliar with said spam, it's the stuff people in an office tend to frequently print out and leave behind for others to read and absorb. This can range from a news article, to a story/poem, to one of the dreaded 'FWD: FWD: FWD: ... FWD: READ THIS OR YOU MIGHT DIE ... AND SEND THIS TO 10 OTHER PEOPLE' emails. The placement can also be randomized ... common places are bulletin boards, exterior cubical walls, lunch tables, water coolers, and bathroom stalls. If you need a visual, watch the scene in Fight Club where Ed Norton's boss tells him to 'clean himself up.'
I personally try to avoid these print outs at all costs because there's usually a personal agenda behind all of it and I really can't be bothered. Though, sometimes I make a game out of it by reading it specifically to stereotype the person that left it there (don't judge me!). Some of my all time favorites are:
- FWD: Mary/Angel Sightings!!! [accompanied by over-sized pixelated pictures from around the world of various common things that don't have anything to do with Mary (the mother of Jesus Christ) or Angels]
- The inspirational "short" story on life fulfilling activities [you can take your pick, I've seen many variants]
- The print out from the local/national paper on legislation concerning 'fill in the blank' [drugs, gay marriage, etc ... this is always great stereotyping material here]
Though the 'old timers' tend to continue this trend of office garbage, the new age kids are taking it to the interwebs on their blogs! But the content is nearly the same ... some sappy story, or emotion provoking song lyrics, or 'OMG wiz-bang WTF' ... it's all there. I just find it funny that the generational difference in media distribution mechanism does not have much impact on the media being distributed. What do you guys think?
-Conte
So as some of you have noticed (like 2 of you, but whatever), I have not posted in a long time. While I like having an open forum of a few, there are times when I am too busy/am too tired/don't care enough/have nothing to say and blogging definitely takes a back seat. Most often it's the whole sitting down to write something the whole way though. It takes dedication and about a good hour to write some of this stuff, and usually a video game, TV show, quality personal time, or work wins out. Well, I hope to change that by writing fewer, shorter blogs. So you can get your fix of my geek wit without the months in between. But be forewarned, the content is probably going to take a sharp decline here. I'm shooting for quantity, not quality since the opposite, that I much prefer, caused the epic lag of postings.
Anyway, without further ado, the story that brought me back to my blog.
So at work this week I was given the task of analyzing some data to help solve a problem. I mean, I am an engineer ... that's what we do! So, this data just so happens to come from a conglomerate of places around the world, each doing their thing in their own way, without much concern for the other. Again, not much surprise here. So I get to work taking the prisms and pyramids and cramming them into the round holes. One of the oddballs is a legendary file format from before I was born ... so it's freakin' old! You'd think this is good ... well documented, well understood by the masses, well supported by industry ... ya, you'd think wrong. So, I went about porting it to the new hotness ... I scripted up a nice little file manipulator that takes my mess and packs it with 10 atm of pressure into a bunch of little peas that the simulator like to chomp on. This was great! So easy (took about 2 hours) and now I can save myself a lot of frustration and potential error doing it by hand. So I fire it off, and a few seconds later I have a nice organized space for me to start doing the real work. So I pop open a new window to start looking at some characteristics only to see the data didn't look right at all! Perplexed, I spent another 'block' of time (I'd rather not say how much ;) ) figuring out what exactly went wrong. In the end, it turns out the tool that was the back-end of my script was interpreting the file differently than if you ran the tool from the main program itself. Was this documented ... NO! All the documents say is the usage. It doesn't explain format or expectations, or anything ... it might as well say 'insert quarter for bullet to the brain'! Thanks ... loved the experience. So in the end ... I had to do the exact thing I was looking to avoid.
In hindsight I'm glad I caught it so I didn't look like a horses ass presenting something that's not even plausible, but man did it burn my blood. So this is the one case where working smart instead of being a stupid drone screwed me in the end. Moral or the story: next time, use a bigger hammer!
-Conte
Woot-Off Suckage
Just a quick note to let my readers know how unhappy I am with that current status of the 'Woot-Off'. Now I'm sure all my geeky readers know what Woot is but for you cooler people out there that stumble this meaningless blog, Woot is a site were they sell one (1) item per day till it's sold out. The item is usually some tech electronic gizmo or some geeky dohicky, but sometimes it's actually something useful ... like a coffee pot .... mmmm .... coffee. Anyway, they do a nice little story to andvertise the product that is usually amuzing if nothing else, post a nice big picture, and sell like mad. They keep statistics on who bought what, and from where and all sorts of other stuff they probably sell for a profit to some other capatilistic company for demographic information as well as host a forum where people can piss and complain about the crap that's being sold and how they can find it cheaper at some other obscure internet site.
While that's all good and fine, Woot comes to the pinnacle of existence when there is a 'Woot-Off'. These are usually magic occasions that stem straight from the right half of Roald Dahl's brain. On these days, Woot goes into hyperdrive selling everything off the warehouse shelves one right after the other till it's all gone. Often on these days I am completely taken over by my curiosity and find myself hitting F5 on the web page insesantly to see whats next on the block; I actually use Woot BOC (a Woot Watcher derivative) but that doesn't make for a good story. It's amazing how much work doesn't get done on days like this just because there's something that I could possibly want a click away. Sad ... yes.
Anyway, to the point. Lately, the items and deals on Woot-Off days have been really weak! Right now its a 7-Piece Shun Stainless Steel Kitchen Knife Block for $250. Nice knives yes ... but is that price supposed to make me impulse buy them ... not me! And other stuff I saw today like a no-name LED flashlight, or typhoon RC toys, or Bacon Salt ... yes I'm serious ... they sold bacon salt. Who's buying this stuff! I'm very upset with their clearance sale and while I can't bring myself to boycott it because I'm still intrigued by my curiousity regardless, I think my account won't be seeing any action anytime soon.
-Conte
NPN is for Engineering ... Get It Straight
- It seems like a pyramid scheme with terms like 'unlimited profit potential' and 'have others work for you'.
- If I had to deal with mindless BS stuff like this at work everyday, I think there would be a higher probability of suicide by the time I retired.
- I think the acronyms should be reserved for worthy terms; and this isn't one.
- I hereby announce to the world, that 'NPN' is now only to be used when referencing the typical NMOS (N-channel Metal Oxide Semiconductor) doping of a field effect transistor (FET)
Why do I see more NMOS and NPN transistors as an undergrad than PMOS and PNP?
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Following up on my blog POSTage Required, last week I got an email from the ASUS RMA department for my most recent case. Apparently, this time they actually tried to fix the motherboard I sent in ... and whatever I did to it, it couldn't be fixed. Uh, I mean a virus ... ya, a MOS corrupting, black with yellow polka-dotted internet virus did it. As I was unsure that the motherboard was really the culprit, this was actually good news. This means that I'll get another board in return that should get my computer to run again. Then the monkey wrench came. They emailed me to ask me if I would be willing to accept a different model in return; a P5K Premium Wifi instead of my P5N-32 Premium Wifi. Since I didn't know the difference, I thought I'd look it up and see what they were offering.
After checking out the spec, and a few reviews (especially Toms Hardware ... they always show the goods), the boards seemed extremely similar. Though, I still had a few concerns:
- The most important one is the P5K supports CrossFire instead of SLI. For you non-computer geeks, these terms represent rivaling advanced video interface technologies backed by 2 different companies that take advantage of 2 video cards for graphics processing on a single computer, instead of using just one card like the 'sheep'. So, if you have an ATI processor based card you want a CrossFire enabled motherboard, while if you have an Nvidia processor based card, you want an SLI enabled board. However, if you are not in the upper 2% of hardcore PC videogame-heads that have money to burn on two video cards (cutting edge cards usually cost over $250-$300 each) you really don't need to be bothered. This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I never fit this category, and it's not because I don't have the disposable income. Sadly, there are plenty of people in this world that are way geekier than I am ... hard to believe, I know, but I assure you this is the case. Click here if you want to see a whole lot of them fight about unimportant non-sense in tech slang, though I wouldn't waste my time.
- Moving on, the only other thing that concerned me was completely cosmetic ... the back plate that covers up the empty space between the rear I/O connections. It's pretty laughable that this would be a big deal to me, but I have had a computer before that I lost the back plate to and every time I had to move it I was always worried that something would get in there and screw up everything. Though this $5 item has no real importance to the functionality of the computer, when it's not there you always wish it was. And, tracking one down after the fact is a feet and a half ... and I'd rather not be bothered.
- It was made a half a generation later so they made the P5K compatible with slightly faster RAM than the P5N.
- According to some reviews, the copper heat piping was routed so it does a better job at dispersing heat from the active components.
- The layout of some of the internal I/O was reconfigured and is now easier to get to.
So Monday morning at the crack of dawn *cough* 8AM *cough* I get the delivery of the motherboard. I open the box only to find that they didn't send me a refurbed P5K ... they sent me a new one! While this isn't a huge win, it's kinda nice that ASUS cared enough about me as a customer to do the right thing and do better than sending me something they had 'laying around'. I think that is why I keep buying my computer motherboards from them even though I am plagued with motherboard issues. At least I know that the company will do everything they can to keep my happy with my purchase when inevitably it goes belly-up. And I have to say, it works.
-Conte
For undergrad work, the texts tend to use NPN as a learning vehicle. IMHO, this is probably because as ancient_nerd said, negative voltages can be confusing and counter-intuitive. Also, there is not enough time to go over every little thing in an undergrad EE track. The courses you take in undergrad should just supply you with the understanding to interpret new device level interactions when you encounter them.
For a clearer understanding of design application of different devices advanced graduate level courses (VLSI, RFCMOS, BiCMOS, Active Microwave Design (GaAs, InP, InGaP, GaN), Mixed signal design, etc.) and/or on-the-job training are often necessary. Each of these technologies will offer their own way of answering a design problem, and will lead to different circuit topographies.