Well I've got installs again today. I had some on Saturday but the buildings I was in were all air conditioned so it wasn't as bad as it was on Thursday. We'll see what today brings. And I'm going off oncall today so I won't have to deal with everyone's emergencies!

(That's a reference to a book I once read written by a fellow who was a lieutenant in Vietnam. His take was that if someone wasn't rolling around on the ground bleeding it wasn't an emergency.)

A guy a few days ago was promised by the help desk that one of the sysadmins would be able to restore a folder he deleted. Our backups happen overnight so if things don't live on the system more than one day we can't help you. He (of course) created it and then accidentally deleted it on Friday evening. d'oh

And the Windows Gurus got a slick little script tweaked which allows the kids to innoculate themselves if they have the blaster worms as well as installing the RPC patch, turning on the personal firewall in XP and setting automatic update on so they won't have this happen again. Kudos to them.

WHOA!

Back in July, Microsoft discovered a vulnerability in Windows XP and 2000. It was a hole in the RPC (remote procedure call), a widget which is used in way too many things in windows. So this was pretty bad. They immediately released a patch for it. Server administrators everywhere scheduled patching and fixed their servers. Smart tech people updated their work and personal desktops and laptops. At the beginning of August someone wrote a virus and let it loose. So far nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that hadn't happened countless times before. (NOTE: If you had patched your OS and had AV software running with current definition files then you ARE in NO DANGER whatsoever)

However even people's home machines use RPC calls (windows uses it to let you drag and drop on your desktop, for example) so they are vulnerable too. And the virus doesn't propegate via email so the network and server fixes put into place don't help keep people's home machines virus-free. So quite a few people's home machines have been infected with this MSBLASTER virus or variants of it.

A lot of those people (kids, students) came back to college today. And brought their infected computers here and hooked them up to our network. So word came down from on High to gather together all the technical people and send them forth into the wastelands to sheppard to the masses and disinfect their computers. So I spent all yesterday afternoon knocking on doors, taping up fliers telling them to get help and running fixes, patching OSes, installing AV software, etc. I won't say a few ideas here that I have which might have helped the situation before it turned panicky because others here have been lambasted for posting to blogs and it's not too cool to critisize people behind their backs, no matter how much we think they may deserve it.

But the situation didn't breach my number-one-rule-for-deciding-if-things-really-suck. I got to take a shower this morning so I'm golden (which doesn't allieviate my desire, nay right, to bitch about things in general!). And while we were out there helping the masses, networking gurus came up with a pretty good plan to fix things, or at least to make it more bearable until we get these kids fixed and set to autoupdate. (And for the record before I got my cable modem at home I didn't patch my OS either, a 40Mb download from Microsoft takes FOREVER over a 26.6 modem connection! <looks at MS for the lack of an easy way for modem users to patch OSes>

I wonder if I can convince anyone of the value of CONTINGENCY PLANNING?

Well it's begun.

Every year about mid-August the students start coming back and the Help Desk and other front line tech support starts to get swamped. So those of us who have been-there-done-that offer to help out. I'm having to re-discover old, unused skills in desktop (and now laptop) support. <sigh>

Well I finally got around to installing one of my standby-work video cards into this machine. We'll see if it let's me do what I want.

So, did the virus/rpc vulnerability hit you? I recall seeing a note go around the department and one out to all of campus saying "patch your systems, MS has found a hole again". Do they listen? Noooo. Do they scream when their infected machine flood the network and they can't get to their sports websites (well okay, a couple of them may actually be doing research!)? Sure thiiiing. Users (it's not quite a four letter word but perhaps it should be).

Well I meant to post. I really did.

But that Eeeeevvviiiiilllll game has possession of my soul so I had to sneak out. I logged out last night at 10 because I knew I had the Op Center duty this morning. Very good of me I thought. But I didn't get back to my harvesters to pay maintenance and replenish power. So I woke up at 5 this morning and decided to do it then since if I didn't I was afraid that they would decay and I'd have to put them in place again. The ultimate in gamegeek!

I've got some really evil ideas for my Iron Kingdoms game. They are running the Fool's Errand adventure, which takes place between books one and two. They should finish it next time and start on the second book. Two of the players had run though that adventure at the 2nd Annual All-Star Gamers Retreat so I figured I'd have to modify it. I had some pretty decent ideas but after rereading book two I decided to link the two. So now I have some really good ideas for the adventure and how it links to the 2nd book. BWahahahahahahahaha!!!!

It's EEEEEVVVIIIIILLLLL!!!!!.

I'm speaking, of course, about Star Wars Galaxies. Erik had gotten into one of the betas and some of the things he could tell me (during development) made me decide that they were going in a direction I wouldn't necessarily like. Placed in between two of the movies, becoming a Jedi would be difficult (although the path would be individual so there wouldn't be website about it) and once you did if you used the Force you were subject to permadeath. Never something I wanted but some people do so I could understand it. Only one character per server and a few others.

So the game came out and I was wondering how many of those questionable decisions had survived. I decided that if one of my buddies would go into it with me I might check it out for a bit. I got in there and discovered they had made some really good decisions. You can get xps and advance (but there aren't any levels) for crafting. If you make a blaster carbine and give/sell it to someone then every time they use it you get XPs. If you're a medic then every time you heal someone you get XPs. So as a scout/artisan I can go up into the hills, find a good spot to mine, set up a camp (to keep the creatures away), sample and get XPs for mining and XPs for wilderness survival (for being in my camp) going up two skill trees at once. Or I can mine in town and in both cases be safe from wandering monsters. Or I can go out and find a nest and hunt creatures, harvesting their corpses for bones, hides and meat and then make traps and other things from the materials. Or I can join the Rebellion or the Empire and engage in the Galactic Civil War (haven't done any of that yet). Lots of choises. Which makes for a good game if the other things are done well. And in this case (so far) they are done very well.

But things are pretty laggy, especially in larger towns. So we'll have to see how well the optomize the servers. For now I'm sucked in (oh, great, another game and I hadn't even finished Knights of the Old Republic yet!).