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This is the main blog for Mike McBride Online, where you can keep track of everything I'm in to in one place.

Friday, August 06, 2004
 
How to surf at work

Kevin was kind enough to point to an article that tells people how to get around all the firewall and content restrictions we put in place on our work networks! Thanks a lot! :)

Seriously though, I've always been of the opinion that if you are technically capable enough to do all that, you were going to find someway around all the firewall restrictions anyway, so I'm not all that worried about anyone reading it. Now the ban we have here against installing any software not pre-approved and tested by me, that one is much more important to me.

Here's how I figure it, you want to do some personal surfing at work? Fine. As long as you are getting your job done, how you spend your time is an issue between you and your boss, not me. But, if you're doing something that is going to damage your workstation or the network in any way, well that's MY problem, and you won't like me if you cause me problems!

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Thursday, August 05, 2004
 
News articles

Phil's got a complaint about an article he was reading. Some of it wasn't accurate:

But what really gores my ox is the awareness that, since every news article I read about something I actually know is completely, utterly, absolutely, factually, wrong, I have to assume that all the ones I read about things I don't know are just as wrong. Maybe they get eight out of ten facts in the article right. How do I know which eight, or more importantly, which two?

It's something to remember when you read news accounts, and it reminds me that a few weeks ago Angela pointed out a little feature story about the local place where I regularly get my hair cut. It was just a little puff piece and it was interesting to read the interview with the owner of the shop, but how much time, since you were already doing the interview, could it have taken to get a few facts straight? The article in question had the wrong number of people working there, and claimed that the women who cuts my hair all the time, only does women's hair. (Or maybe I should be offended by the insinuation? *L*)

Just because a "journalist" wrote it, doesn't mean it's accurate.

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Wednesday, August 04, 2004
 
Free Microsoft Small Business Guide to Security

Thanks to a tip from The Office Weblog, I'll probably be spending part of my day reading this document (PDF) and seeing what sort of things I can pick up.

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Tuesday, August 03, 2004
 
Former Mets broadcaster Murphy passes away

Former Mets broadcaster Murphy passes away.

I watched and listened to him broadcast ballgames many, many times as a youth growing up in NY. He was an icon. More of my thoughts over at the other blog.

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Bored meetings

Next week we're having a Board meeting. Normally, we have our Board meetings onsite, which I hate. I always end up having to help one Board member or other check their email using their laptop, and our network, and then making sure I reset all their network settings before they leave and can never get on their own network again. Not to mention just the hub-bub and other assorted things you have to deal with when 50 people are in for a meeting.

But not this time. This time they're having the meeting offsite! That became official a few weeks ago, and I've been spending the last few weeks looking forward to the peaceful quiet that will be our office building that day. None of the senior management will be here, none of those Board members will be here, I'll be able to focus and get work done with few, if any, interruptions. Oh how nice it's going to be!

Then this morning I found out. I'm expected to attend this meeting. In almost 7 years of Board Meetings, almost all of which have been onsite, I've never had to attend one. They finally have one offsite, and I have to be there! All because of that freakin' ethics policy!

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Dave's spam attack

From Scripting News, Dave's followup to a post about suddenly getting 1000's of copies of the same message:

"Postscript: I hadn't opened any of the emails, I just did, and saw that he's marching through all four-letter combinations of email addresses at one of the domains I own. I turned off email forwarding, hopefully that should cause all the emails to bounce. Post-postcript: It did.)"

I watched something similar happen on our Postini setup. At first I let Postini process all email addressed to our domain. We got anywhere from 15-18 thousand messages per week. I changed it to drop (not bounce, just drop) all email not addressed to an actual, existing account or alias, and that dropped down to 2-3 thousand per week. The rest had been addressed to accounts that haven't existed for years, or were hitting random name combinations in hopes of finding an actual account. Insane.

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Monday, August 02, 2004
 
In case you missed it

On Friday, MS released a patch for three critical holes in IE. They released it out of the normal patch cycle, which should tell you how important it is!

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