Archives 2009

For the last couple years I have relied on NOD32 to protect my systems from the nastiness of malware, viruses, and all the like.

For most of that time it was a good program.  It had it’s little hiccups along the way, but they always seemed to be resolved by Eset rather quickly.

That was until Vista Service Pack 2 came along and changed everything.

Don’t get on me about user error as I did everything in my power to ENSURE no issues.  I uninstalled my old NOD32 (version 4), downloaded the LATEST version/build direct from Eset’s site, installed SP2, then installed the new NOD32 I downloaded.

This is when things started to fall apart.  Ever since then I was plagued with system lockups and hangs ESPECIALLY at the login screen or going in to or coming out of standby or hibernation.  This wasn’t just happening on 1 machine either.  Both my [aging] Desktop and my [new-ish, 1 year old now] laptop were having CONSTANT issues.  I initially didn’t pin it down to NOD32.  I thought I was having some other issues until I jumped on to the Eset forums and found hundreds upon hundreds of other people having issues with their Vista SP2 machines.

I uninstalled NOD32 from both of my machines and they both became rock-solid.  My desktop went from locking up every 2-3 days to being up for 2 weeks straight.  My laptop has been in and out of standby/hibernation at least 2 dozen times without a single problem.  I checked as recent as last week and Eset has still not issued any newer versions of NOD32 to rectify the issues I and many many many other NOD32 users were having.

After nearly a month running with nothing, I decided it was time to hunker down and find something.  I began my trek to find an antivirus solution that didn’t suck so much balls.   I spent many hours combing over all kinds of performance benchmarks, detection ratings testing, and over all features I have now installed my new protection system…

Avira AntiVir’s detection rates were among the top rankings, often times beating out NOD32’s detection rates… and get this… IT’S FREE!!!  Everyone loves free, right?

Does it play well with Vista SP2?  I have no idea as of right now.  Only time will be able to tell me that.

So far my initial impression is good.  It is definitely light weight.  It definitely has A LOT fewer options then something like NOD32.  It is very basic… but really complexity doesn’t always mean better.  It’s about the programs ability to detect and protect.   I may not put it to that thorough a test in that regard as I am usually very careful about what I’m doing and am not your average user that would be more careless, but I still think that everyone should have SOMETHING.  You never know when you might accidently hit a malicious web page or a site that has been hacked and infected and get hit with a Java-based worm or something.

I will write a follow up article about AntiVir after I’ve got some play-time in with it and see how it plays with my systems.

Until next time.

I made a quick little war drive tonight between my Girlfriend’s parents house to our place (only a mile or 2 apart), and I was surprised at the number of Wireless Access Points… not only WAP’s, but completely open and un-secured WAP’s!

Take a look:

All of the Green flags represent completely open WAP’s.  The Red ones are using some type of encryption whether it is worthless WEP or one of the nice WPA’s.

I used my HTC Fuze and it’s built in GPS running Wififofum to generate the Google Earth file loaded in to the image above.  Pretty neat stuff.

Just an interesting little image I thought I would post.  It kind of tempts me to do a more detailed drive of some surrounding blocks, just for the fun of it.   Plus there is one network that is just DYING to be cracked… “ZeroCool”… what a tool.  I may have to break out my bootable BackTrack USB thumb drive on that one…

Some people may think keeping a 55gb archive folder with program installers dating back nearly 10 years is a bit excessive.  But when you have the disk space, why not?

Today, it just saved me a TON of head ache and trouble.
Since 2005 I have ran a USB Power Commander 3 on my motorcycle.  It connects to my 2004 Kawasaki ZX6R’s onboard computer and basically allows me to remap air/fuel ratios.  This is necessary because I have an aftermarket exhaust system on my bike, and if I didn’t remap my air/fuel to add more fuel the bike would run lean, which is VERY bad for any motor.

And since 2005 I have not messed with it.  I loaded a custom air-fuel map, made some tweaks, and have left it alone ever since, which is exactly what I should have done.  Except that my buddy Jon was FINALLY putting one on his 2004 Suzuki GSXR 600 after just getting his exhaust on, so it was time I play with it again.  Since 2005 I have gone to a new laptop then the one I originally used to program the unit on my bike, so I needed to reinstall the software.  I headed off to the Power Commander site to download the latest version.  I got it all installed and off I went to test.  It seemed to work except I noticed something odd… the throttle position values for Closed and Open were way off and the software wasn’t displaying my TP value.  On top of this, the map was showing all 0’s where it should be showing percentages…  I didn’t mess with it any more after that.  I went over to Jon’s, we got his all set up, got the map loaded, and the TP values worked exactly like they should have on his bike.  That puzzled me a bit, but I figured it was due to his Power Commander having a much much newer version of the firmware on it then mine did (which is the cause…)

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No, this post is not about my Fuze.  My Fuze has actually been a very good phone.  It has yet to really piss me off, especially like the 8525 did on a daily basis to me.

Today I got the urge to play with some different Windows Mobile builds, and since I have had my 8525 laying around not doing anything, I figured it would be the perfect little test platform.

As a side note; from what I saw from Windows Mobile 6.5 I didn’t care for it.  I like what HTC is doing with their TouchFlo interface MUCH better then the stock WM 6.5 scrolly interface.

Aside from that the OS seemed fine… but the hardware…. oh how the hardware pissed me off so badly I wanted to throw it against the wall again and again.  With in the hour I played with it, the phone randomly locked up on me… and when I reset it, the device acted like it was a HARD reset.  All the stuff I had done (thankfully not much really) was gone?!  WTF?!

I am thoroughly convinced this was not a ROM issue as there are hundreds of other people using this ROM with out issue.  I am positive that this is a hardware issue.  I believe that there is something very wrong in the land of the 8525.  Who knows what it is… I want to blame it on the Samsung processor and accompanying chipset, but I have absolutely zero proof to back that up… it’s just a theory.

The 8125, which I loved, had a Texas Instruments processor.  The 8525 had a Samsung, and my Fuze has a Qualcomm.  I have also seen other Windows Mobile (Verizon) phones with Qualcomms, and they always felt so much faster then the Samsung and even TI counterparts.  I think that the Fuze is really benefitting from the Qualcomm as it always feels snappy, and can go for a week or more with out a reboot.  That is iPhone-stability-level right there.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this.  I am just posting up some experiences I had today which further push me to believe that the 8525 line of HTC devices had a lot more problems then just underpowered hardware.

I’m thinking of a fitting way to destroy the 8525.  Perhaps some shotgun blasts?  God forsaken hardware…

On June 16th the new Ghostbusters Video Game came out.

Being a HUGE fan of the series for the majority of my childhood, I decided to do something fairly rare (in my world at least), and that was to actually purchase the game.

Luckily it was made available on Steam, which I already have an account on and is where I’ve been buying the majority of the [few] game I actually purchase.  Steam has so many advantages to it, I feel it really adds value to a game when you can buy it through Steam.

But anyway, I was playing some Ghostbusters tonight having a complete blast.  After destroying the Stay Puft Marshmallow man, it was time to return to the Ghostbusters HQ.

Upon arriving I decided to take the spare down time I had and explore the HQ a bit.  I mean, what child of the 80’s WOUDLN’T want to walk around the GB HQ?  And let me tell yah, they got it PERFECT.  Not only the HQ really but the whole game is done very very very well and you can really tell while playing it that they put a lot of time in to the story and game play to make it an authentic and enjoyable experience.

During my wondering around I noticed Winston hunched over a computer screen.  I looked at the computer screen and started laughing… here is what I saw (cropped image):

I know it’s a little hard to see… but it is the final screen from the absolutely ABYSMAL original Nintendo Ghostbusters video game!  Complete with misspellings and completely fucked grammar.  I couldn’t help but laugh, and it really made me appreciate the detail put in to this game even more… even giving a little jab to the complete abomination known as Ghostbusters on the Nintendo.

I’d also like to say that if you’re a fan of the movies, a child of the 80’s, you will LOVE this game and I really suggest you buy it to show your support for projects such as this one.  The game isn’t just a game, it feels like you’re part of the movie.  It really makes you want to get out your little plastic proton pack with yellow foam confinement beam, run around the backyard, and bust some ghosts!

So I finally caved and signed up for a Facebook account.  I like to think my account was the one that put Facebook over top of MySpace, but I doubt it.

Why did I finally get one?

Was it because of certain people hounding me about it?

Nah… as much as he wishes 😉

It started off because I wanted to look at other people’s picture, which you can’t do unless you have a profile AND are their “friend”.  So off I went.

Now that I have actually used it, I am ashamed to say I actually like it.  Not only is it a very nicely developed web app, but it is actually somewhat useful.  I have already stayed in better contact with my sister who lives far far away now (miss yah), and got me in touch with friends I hadn’t spoken with for a long time.

Unfortunately it has also allowed people to find me who I rather not have contact with, but for them, there’s the ignore button.

The ability to easily share photos with friends, set up events, and just generally stay in touch is surprisingly useful.

So here, I finally admit it.  Facebook isn’t all bad, and it is somewhat handy.  So, if you haven’t tried it yet, get on the bandwagon finally and get yourself an account.

Around a year ago I wrote about getting 800mb of space back after installing SP1, and I come to you today with a similar tip for SP2!

This one is not as dramatic as 800mb, but I did gain back around 400mb of disk space.

Just as with SP1, this works by removing backup files made during the service pack install, making it prememnant and impossible to remove.  Just keep that one fact in mind.

Just pop open your favorite command prompt, and issue compcln

It will ask you to confirm, and then it’ll get to work.  After a couple minutes you’ll have your reclaimed space!  (And a permenent SP2 install!)

For nearly all servers you don’t really need to worry about configuring this since most servers can keep their time by themselves.

But every once in a while you run in to one of those black sheep servers that seems to lose time every time you turn around.  The particularly annoying thing is that if the server’s time is incorrect, all computers attached to that domain will be incorrect.  This can make troubleshooting difficult if you’re going off of times in logs, and log times are completely wrong.  I ran across such a server today.  I KNOW I have set this server’s time in the past and it seems every time I get back around to checking it, it’s is out of sync by 10, 15, 30 minutes, or even more then an hour!

So after digging around and trying a couple different things, I came across some instructions and a handy utility that got the server’s time sync’ing to the NTP’s time servers reguarlarly to ensure the server never loses time again, which I’ll share with you.

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