Church IT Help

  Normally New Year’s Resolutions is not something I do. However I could really use a post on this neglected site, so here goes.

Family: This is one area I feel pretty good about myself. I spend a lot of time with my girls. If anything maybe I will try and spend more time doing more physical activities with them like just playing in the yard or bicycling like we used to do. Mostly I need to try and “date” my wife more. We are both home-bodies who enjoy spending time with our kids, but we do need to go out more just the two of us.

Read My Bible More: This is something that I really need to do and neglect more than anything else in my life. I always have good intentions but… I have been reading it more, but admit some of that was due to some arguements with an old friend of mine about certain scriptures. I don’t enjoy arguing  but did enjoy my research and I learned a lot.

Lose Weight: Duh! This is pretty standard resolution stuff, but sometimes you have to go with the classics. The problems is food just tastes so darn good! I guess about all I can really commit to is maybe trying to eat better food.

Work:  Improve my work attitude. This one is something, unlike the one above, I actually plan on doing. It is too easy in my job to forget it is actually a ministry. Between me being impatient with my users, and my users creating new and unique ways to break their computers it is easy to get caught up in frustrations. I plan on being more patient and nurturing in the coming year. On the same note I also plan on spending more time with our users just getting to know them again. Expand my IT skills. Network more with other church IT professionals.

Post more often on this site:  This one may be the toughest. Seeing as it is already the 6th and I’m posting for the first time this year. Plus the fact that this is my resolutions post and it is a bit late.

My Cartoon Site: My main goal on www.dontfeedthegeek.com is to finally get on a schedule of posting. My current goal is to post a new cartoon every Tuesday and Thursday. You may not be able to tell from the quality of my work, but each of the toons take me a bit of time. Sometimes it is real work for me to complete one. I also want to improve my quality of work and implement more professional techniques. I really enjoy doing the toons, I just want to do them to the best of my ability. I also want to start a new cartoon that will be more story driven. It will be more of a project at first and my kids will have some involvement.

Get a Hair Cut: This is something I did not do all last year, believe it or not. My hair is nearly long enough to donate to Locks of Love now. Just a few more months to go. I really like having long hair, but it is a lot of work. I look forward to having short hair for a while.

General: Be less critical. Learn more. Watch less TV. Read more. Improve myself. Get my CHL. Recycle more, but reduce even more. Call my parents more.

Anyways, happy new years to you all! I hope 2009 is the best year you ever had, until the next year rolls around.

This is the first post by my co-worker James Bentley. I have really been wanting James to post on my site for a while. He has some great insights and I have always wanted this site to be a great resource to all who read it. Hopefully there will be more posts from James in the future. BarryB

Last week I fixed an issue for a Mac user up here at work.

His profile (KennyC) would not load and he had no desktop icons.

It let him login, but after that all he got was a blue screen.

Other profiles (Administrator, SusanJ) logged in and applications worked fine.

The user had no input on what he was doing or may have happened to cause this condition.

I Googled a bit and found this:

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

Make sure you install AppleJack and then reboot into “Single User” mode (hold down Command + S when you start the Mac).

Once in Single User Mode, I used AppleJack in manual mode (type “applejack” [no quotes] instead of ”applejack auto” at the prompt)

I then selected items 1-5, in that order.

Do look at the options available (such as auto, restart and shutdown) as these can be added to the applejack command you type in at the Command Line Interface (black screen, white text and flashing cursor).

If you only have 1 profile and want to let AppleJack do it’s thing, type “applejack auto restart” (no quotes).

I used manual mode because it let me choose what user ID to repair (I have 3 ID’s + Administrator on this Mac).

Selecting “auto” will do all user ID’s (but I only had issue with one of them)

Anyway, some more info and a Handy PDF are here:

http://creativetechs.com/tips/tip_resources/PocketMod/MyMacWontStart.pdf

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2005041817191411

I was pretty amazed at how easy and quick it was to fix the issue.

I am guessing this user crashed his Mac (is that possible?) or tripped the circuit on his UPS while he was working and that hosed his profile.

It has been a week and I have not heard good or bad from him…so I guess it really is fixed and working.

The computer details:

MacPro with 2 - Dual-Core Xeon 2.66Mhz

OSX 10.4.11

6gb ram

   If you having been reading may last few posts, you know the troubles I saw recently. I found this plug-in I should have been running long ago. I did have some of this set right but there was a few things I missed. I have now plugged the holes that theWP Security Scan Plugin found.

  It is a very nice plug-in that I would say is a must have these days, especially after the issues I found on my other site that are now fixed. The nicest thing is is checks the permissions on critical files, which sure beats a “stare and compare” of all the files. Get the scanner at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan/

   So if you have a WordPress site and you do not have this plug-in, why are you still reading this? Go install it already! Do not get burned like I did. It was not much fun cleaning up my site after been hacked, even though I learned a lot of useful information.

   The last few days have been a time of frustration and learning. A few days back a friend of a friend told my wife they got some kind of pop up when going to my cartoon site. Since she had no details and I could not recreate it I figured it was something else on her system or a false positive. Then this weekend one of my good on-line friends, Rasmus the artist behind the very fine webcomic glitchtown.com, told me he got a popup saying his AV software detected a trojan/malware on my site! I knew something must be up.

    I ran my site through Google’s safebrowsing tool but it came up safe. google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=dontfeedthegeek.com

   I really had a heck of a time recreating the issue and finally with the right tools on my laptop I saw what Rasmus saw. However, it was not consistent and I could not recreate it every time. I did find a site to test webpages and it also found the problem but was able to catch it every time. Find the page here. I suggest you run your site through it right now! My site still pops up even though it is fixed, because it had the exploit in the past.

   First I killed everything and started troubleshooting. One thing I had not paid much attention to was all the little bells and whistles I have added over time, putting many cookies on browsers. Some of this cookies were blocked but these were not the issue in the end. After much digging I did find some php and html files with the same malicious code in it. The code was encrypted but had a reference to an old site I used to have but have not used in a very long while. I removed all of this code and re-ran some of my tests. The exploit site I mentioned above no longer showed the active trojan but indicated there had been past issues with my site and advised caution. I don’t know if that will time out or I have to request to be removed. Regardless I’m confident my site is fixed. I have ran it through a barrage of tests.

   I have decided not to turn on all the bells and whistles as I want to put as few cookies out into the world as possible. I had several links to pages that showed my webcomics rankings. I will not put those on a seperate page. I have also killed SiteMeter. It is a nice tool but I want to be more careful running so many things going forward. I still debating about killing “ShareThis” as well. It’s not like anyone uses it anyways.

   The exploit did not actually download and trojans on any of the systems I have checked. It looks like it was mostly a link stealer and taking all of my stats. I had noticed a few weeks back my visitor numbers were way down. Since cleaning up the site I have seen a huge increase in traffic. I guess I’m lucky it was not worse. I never actually re-directed my site as many other expoits have done, but I could see the link of unknown sites come up when my page was loading. From what I could tell whoever did it wanted me not to know they were there, they did a darn good job of it too.

    Ironically I just upgraded my version of Wordpress to the latest version before I even knew there was an issue. So I do not know if the hacker exploited some of the older code or took advantage of some of the permissions I had set on some files. I have audited both of my sites and have corrected all of the permissions on folders and files. The odd thing was this site had a very old version of Wordpress, over a year old! This site was not hacked though. In the past I have been laxed on updates but no more. If you have a site you have an obligation to keep it up to date and not expose your users to potentially harmful trojans, malware and other nasty stuff.

   Again as far as I can tell there was not harm done. On the 3 PCs I regularly use to check my Don’t Feed the Geek site I have not found any malware or trojans. I think I was very lucky. A special thanks to Rasmus who is currently ill for taking the time to watch out for friend, even though he was not feeling well at all. I have no idea how long this may have gone on had he not said something.

   During my research on this I now imagine there are many many Wordpress that are infected and they don’t even know.  IE never indicated any issue. Rasmus caught it with Opera. Rest assured I have now tested my site with Opera, IE, Firefox, and Chrome. All show all is well. If any of your brave techy types out there would like to visit dontfeedthegeek.com to verify all is well I would appreciate it. I am confident all is well but certainly not over confident anymore. What is really funny is what several folks around here, including my brother, asked. “Why would they hack your site?” I tell them because it is so popular :) (not even close). It is because they could and my site was open because of some exploit or bad permission setting.   If you have not already done so, go test your site right now at http://linkscanner.explabs.com/linkscanner/default.aspx

   I’m sure there are several cartoons I’ll get out of this. I have not even had time to post one this week because of some stupid hacker!

   The other day I heard from someone that someone else said “something” loaded when they went to my site www.dontfeedthegeek.com. “Something” is much like what we all hear all the time, “My PC had an error”. Users always seem to miss that little step of gathering even the smallest details. I suppose they have such confidence in our abilities that just telling us there was an error should be enough.

   I had serious doubts that my site had any malware or anything else since I built it. However, after 22 years working with computers I know that oddities happen and some things cannot be anticipated. Long story short my site is fine just as I thought.

   In my research to verify all was well I came across a not very well publicized Google feature on a post at http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-23-n62.html. Philipp Lenssen  wrote about it and explains it better than I could. You just put in google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=urlyouaretesting and it will show you Google’s past experiences with the site and when it was lasted scanned. It works really well and you should check it out. Phillipp also had some code on his page to make testing even easier. I’m adding it here since I could never write such a thing and I think this is an important tool. So here it is and enjoy, because I know you’ll check it out. Thanks Phillipp for your insights.

Just wanted to let you guys know I was asked to participate in guest cartoonist website. I was asked to do a Christmas theme and had to use at least two of the established characters. Mine will be posted on December 3^rd at http://www.moovok.co.uk/gsp/index.php

They are to have a Christmas theme toon everyday this month. Be warned that some of the cartoons previous can be very tacky and/or crude. I almost did not do this because of some of the previous content but it was too good of an opportunity. I also wanted to at least have a cartoon with a bit of a message at least. I even reference Jesus. So have a look if you would like. The site is in England so it may even go up later today. There have been some very well know web cartoonist and print cartoonist featured on the site so it is a cool thing for me to be asked. I hope you like the cartoon I did. It amused me, which is really my true goal.

 After they publish it I’ll put it up on one of my sites.

   Despite the cheesy commercials, that look like a bad info-mercial, I was intrigued by the concept of the MagicJack. If you have not heard of it, it is a USB device that plugs into your PC and with a regular phone becomes a VOIP service. It allows you to call and receive calls to/from anywhere in the US. It includes all the normal extended features of a phone service, including a local number. What really got my attention after researching it, besides very good reviews, was that you could take it anywhere in the world and it would still allow you to receive and make calls to the US. The possibilities for the Missions department here immediately jumped to my mind. There is a short term Mission to China coming up and I plan on sending the Magicjack that I purchased for myself with our Missions Pastor Mark Young. Pastor Young currently uses Skype and I have written in the past about Skype for Missions here. I think the MagicJack potentially could be a much better solution.

   I bought mine at Radio Shack. It costs about $40 and includes the first year of service. Each additional year after that costs $20. I installed it and set it up, the process was very easy and done in a matter of minutes. My initial tests were all relatively good and the quality was OK, despite a slight delay. The quality of the itself phone seems very important. My first tests were done with a very cheap phone. I wondered how easy it would be to move the MagicJack to another computer and what that would require. I took the device to work and plugged it in to my PC. It takes several minutes to set itself up but the setup works well and I got the interface I had at home with the same number and call log I had before. Clearly there is a flash drive component of the MagicJack that makes the setup very easy. I must say the quality on the MagicJack on my PC was not very good, but believe the majority of the fault lies in my over-bloated Vista PC. I think a reboot would have helped as it has with my personal laptop. It worked fine on other PCs.

   Since my tests were not good on my work PC I brought out my laptop and tested using our wireless network. It was much better on my laptop, though any time my laptop went into sleep mode the device did not recover well and usually had to have a reboot to make it work. Again the quality of the phone I used made a big difference, especially when dialing out. You can use the interface to dial rather than the phone, but despite an earlier review I read, you can use the phone to dial. I wonder about the quality of the phone the other reviewer was using.

   The interface is decent and clear on use. The interface pops up on use. It can be minimized but must be running in the background. Your voicemail is emailed to you which works rather nicely. I did not mention this before, but a broadband connection is a must. This may be an issue on some mission trips but I’m always surprised at the availability of broadband in places I would not dream it was possible. 

   Here is a screenshot of the interface:

   So, what do I think? I think for the price this device could be a real winner for some situations. I would not want this as a primary phone as it operates today. I’m disappointed it does not want to play nice with my work PC. However, I’m even more surprised it works so well on my laptop across wireless. So I have a feeling it may be flaky depending on the hardware combination. I do think it is worth tweaking in. There is a possibility I will get to find out how well it works in China next month , via Pastor Young’s trip there. I will write another post on his experiences there if I can get some feedback. This device has so much potential. I’m seriously thinking about sending one to a missionary friend in Taiwan and would be curious about the setup process there. It requires some local address information, but I don’t think that will be a show stopper as he can use information of a relative. I would love it if he could pick up the phone and call back to Indiana and he could be called via a local number. Skype has been good but this would allow more options. I have another friend who’s daughter is in England and think this would be good for them as well.

   I’ll still test it out for a while. Ironically this would be much handier were it not for cellphones allowing free calls in the evening. I suppose it would be good for daytime calls at least. It is a fun device despite a few flaky things here. So far I do recommend it because of the price. If the price were any higher, I’d advise caution. I really wish the commercials and website  were not so tacky but they are. The commercial and site make it feel like some sort potato peeler type ad. The packaging of the device also seems a bit cheapish, but again it is an inexpensive device. The next time my family and I go on vacation I will forward our home phone to my Magicjack number and we will be getting our messages via email which could be very nice. There will be more to come on this to be sure.

Today on my other site dontfeedthegeek.com I have published my 100th cartoon. I’m posting it here because I would guess all of you IT folks out there could relate. I have really enjoyed doing these cartoons because it is a way to vent about things that annoy me, use my creative side, and display my odd sense of humor. Of the 100 I thing there are some actually funny ones in the mix, some are not funny at all and some are just plain old ‘true-isms’. I’m going to keep doing them despite the fact I have seen a slight drop in the numbers of hits. Let me know which cartoons you liked the best so far. I have plans of launching a new story driven webcomic that will be a bit of a departure eventually but that will come. The new one will be for the kids out there and the die-hard geeks.  

   Anyways, I hope you enjoy today’s cartoon it was fun to make. I will be doing a webcam there so I can at least see if there is enough coffee for me before getting up. :)     

This is me and my girls on Spring break 08 in the Rockies. We had two cameras and no way to get all four of us n the shot at once, so my wife and I each took a picture of the other 3. Once we got back to the cabin I used paint.net to edit us together. Gotta love freeware in the hands of a geek. The other is recent photo we had taken. It is low resolution but you get the idea.

  For full disclosure I am a life long Democrat. I do not agree with everything my party stands for, but that is another post for another time. I know many people who are very upset about Obama winning and scared.

  Here is my advice: Do not panic do not lose heart. God is still on His thrown. The constitution is still in effect. Remember Barack is a Christian.

  Trust me, I understand the pain having watched the Republican’s take the presidency the last two times. During Clinton’s time as president many people hated him and still have bad feelings for. Then when W came along we did the same thing for 8 years and I suspect many will still hold their grudge against him. I myself admit to negative feelings towards him, but I have prayed for him over the years because he was my president. I hope we can all work together and get over our partisan feelings, me being guilty at times as well.

   Now something I think we can agree on, this is a great night for America. To think how much has changed in the last few years. I am in my mid 40’s and even in my time I have seen much improvements in race relations. I’m excited that we have come so far.

    I think the one thing I’ll remember most on this night is the images of Jesse Jackson. I like Jesse OK but have not always agreed with him. I have always felt he was a little fond of the camera. Tonight however, Rev. Jackson was just standing in a group of people. When the camera zoomed in he was just standing there with many tears pouring down his face. He was not talking, nor was he trying to get noticed. He just seemed to be caught up in the moment just soaking it in. It was subtle yet powerful.

  My post from last week predicted tonight’s race at Obama 326 electoral votes to McCain’s 212. We will see if I was right when all the totals are in. I don’t think I’ll be too far off the mark.

   McCain’s concession speech was awesome and he showed what a class act he is. He fought a good race and was very gracious. I’ll over look the crowd booing evertime Obama was mentioned. I think it nearly took away from a very powerful speech.

   This has been a great night, much better from the last few years. Just make sure that you pray for our new president. Obama is your president, he loves God and country so don’t worry. Be proud America.