I saw a preview this weekend for a movie called The Underworld. It looks like Interview With The Vampire meets The Matrix, which is to say, fucking awesome. Vampires vs. Werewolves in a dark, digitally-enhanced action flick? Count me IN.
Jenn’s like, “Eh. Whatever.” I’m like, “I’ll be the first person at the first damn showing!”. Some people just don’t get it.
Well, gang, today’s going to be a busy day. But first, the weekend.
Went to see American Wedding and liked it quite a bit. It wasn’t by any means original - I mean, you’ve got the first two, and this is a sequel - but it was enjoyable.
Watched a few DVDs at home, washed the car, did the usual house-oriented stuff. Nothing too exciting.
Today, though, is going to be a big day.
First, we have my “Programming Windows Apps in C#” test, which I don’t anticipate being too difficult, but I’m always leery of things that seem too easy.
And second, I’ve got space on a new server and I’m going to try to move the blog over there. I don’t think it should be too hard - basically a copy/paste style operation - but, again, I’m leery of things that seem too easy.
Anyway, the net result of that all is that I’m a little anxious. Plus, I probably won’t post again (and will be turning off the comments feature so the site can’t change) until I’ve gotten the site moved over, which should hopefully be by the end of the day. I’ll throw redirectors and notices up here for folks that have stuff bookmarked to ensure that everyone can get back here.
Wish me luck!
Okay, here’s another of my million dollar ideas that I had yesterday in the car:
You know how you can go to sex shops and joke gift shops and get that penis-shaped pasta? Well, what do you put on that pasta when you want to eat it?
The Answer: Bearded Clam Sauce
You read it here first, folks. Just get a bunch of cans of prepackaged white clam sauce, slap a new label on (or, better, partner with the manufacturer), and voila! you’re a millionaire.
Jenn told me that if we had the money to throw away, I could hire a full-time personal assistant to follow me around in a French maid outfit. This, my friends, is the key.
Well, folks, things seem to have worked out reasonably well for me today. I have:
The Test: I actually thought I failed this while I was taking it. Seriously. There were 58 questions, and only around 35 of them were on my practice test. The rest were pulled out of someone’s ass and I had no clue on them. Obviously I’m a skilled guesser (thank God they’re multiple choice tests) because I passed. Honestly, I don’t care how I passed, as long as I did. So, moving on to the next test, right?
The Site: If you’re here reading this, you can see that the site move went acceptably. I’ve put up a redirector page for folks whose name servers haven’t updated to the new location. Hopefully that will propagate through within the next day or three. Regardless, I’m here now, with some ample breathing space, meaning I can post pictures of my stupid neighbors and their fucking Titanic car parked in the fire lane and all the other shit that gets my goat. I’m stoked, and you should be, too.
Sour Skittles: I think they speak for themselves. Though I should probably take some time and eat something substantial.
All in all, not a bad day. Now maybe I should get some work done…
The day started off so well, then about halfway through took the biggest nosedive in the world.
I’m working on building up a new corporate web server at work to replace the existing site and server with. It’s a Windows 2003 box that it took me like three days just to build and secure (it was locked down, man) and get so it could be remotely administered from our corporate network yet not be a threat if it was compromised. It was solid.
Well, we put some security patches on it that came out recently and the web server portion of the machine started denying everyone access to the site. I mean, not even ask you for username and password - just straight up denying you access.
After fucking around with it for like two hours, I come to find out that it’s a sort of “intelligence” that’s been built into the system.
For the technical: The machine was a domain controller (on its own domain) with a one-way trust between our corporate domain and itself. The machine also ran IIS for the web site stuff. It turns out the security patches we did (or something related, though I couldn’t say what) made it so that only Administrators were allowed to log on locally to the box. Even if the Domain Controller Security Policy said otherwise. Even if everything else - all other policies and settings - said otherwise. It just wouldn’t let anyone in. That includes the IUSR_MACHINENAME anonymous user account. Which means you can’t run an anonymously accessed web site on a domain controller - even if you want to - unless the anonymous user account is a local administrator. Fucking brilliance.
For the non-technical: Microsoft decided to make things more “secure” by not allowing you to “accidentally” do certain things. Even if you specifically want to do those things.
Thank you very much, Microsoft.
So now I have to build up a whole new domain controller machine and a whole new web server, reconfigure and re-secure both machines, reinstall the web site (thankfully written in ASP.NET so it’s easy to deploy), and hopefully be back at square one by the end of next week.
Bah. How irritating is that?!