I am seriously considering cramming and taking W2K server exam before Net Inf as this exam is supposedly much easier and should serve as useful exam technique training.
After a bit of study I'll see how I get on at the Transcenders et al.

How do these people get jobs?
Although I don't work in I.T as such, I have to deal with a lot of the clients I.T people some of which are less than impressive.
The I.T girl sent me the following configuration for a new printer, I always ask for the info to be sent in an e-mail so I'm sure it's correct and so that I can blame someone else if it's not,

Hi Mick,

As per our conversation, pls find below the details:

ip: 172.016.067.155
gate: 255.255.255.0
subnet: 172.016.067.155

I reply to her mail asking her to re-confirm the details as it appears she has made a typo*, within 5 mins she was on the phone asking me to point out her mistake as she can't see one!

This should have been blatantly obvious to any one with a basic knowledge of TCP/IP.

SNAFU.
On saturday I had to load some security and update patches on some of our print servers that run Xp embedded.
The first one went ok but the second and third went completly tits up and started giving the BSOD after applying the last patch. I discovered that somehow I'd managed to delete most of the files from the patch, which was on a memory stick, after applying it to the first machine.
fortunately I was able to restore both servers from back up and only had to reload the extra applications but I was still here 'till nearly 4 o'clock tho'

I just came across this when trying to find out why the latest Nvidia drivers have screwed up video platback on my PC

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed FireFox up:

1.Type about:config into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves. If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

I have no idea if this works but I'll be trying it tonight hopefully.

Gone Phishing
Which web browser do you use? Gone over to Firefox have you, to be safer? Think again.
The Register has an article about the rise in trojan horse programs. highlights include;

Of the 13 vulns affecting IE in 2004, nine were classified as "high severity". Of the 21 vulnerabilities affecting the Mozilla browsers, Symantec classified 11 as "high severity". Firefox users enjoyed an easier ride with just seven affecting "high severity" vulns over the report period.

Symantec says there have been few attacks in the wild against Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Safari, but the jury is still out on whether these browsers represent a more secure alternative to IE.

The article also comments on the rise in Phishing scams, this is where you get an email asking you to confirm your account details for internet banking etc, I get a lot of these pretending to be from ebay. The email will ask you to click a link, which takes you to a fake version of the website you think you are visiting, and then log in to reset your account, at which point they grab your password etc and steal all your money.
I would imagine that a lot of even fairly web savvy people get caught like this and it is obviously lucrative judging by this statement;

Symantec also noted a marked rise in email scams over second half of 2004. The firm's BrightMail anti-spam filters blocked an average of 33 million phishing emails a week in December 2004 compared to nine million a week in July 2004.

So get yerself a firewall and antivirus software, if you use broadband get a router/firewall, visit www.grc.com and use their "shields up" utility to find out how secure your pc is, and remember no proper company will ask you for passwords etc.
Be careful out there on the interweb because here be dragons, and thieving bastards.

I will be resuming my studies after Easter so hopefully this blog might actually start having some useful content.

added link to an excellent resource site for windows security .

Information super highway.
I 've done it. I've taken the plunge. I've signed up for broadband. I actually signed up for it a few weeks ago with Tiscali as the provider but I realised afterwards that I wasn't getting the deal that I thought I was and I read a lot of bad press about Tiscali so I decided to cancel my order. I have now signed up with with Bulldog who have got a very good deal on at the moment for an unlimited 4meg connection. I should be up and running in about a week.

I really should try to get back into my studies. So busy at work, so busy at home (3 kids now!)
I spent a lot of money buying my course so I really should complete it. This year.

Here's a very worrying article about Spyware at the Register. It would seem that if you're running internet explorer you are pretty much destined to get spyware at some point, even if you are a child surfing for things of interest to an 8 yr old.
Also at the register is BOFH episode 20 , very funny.

Haloscan comment test

Trying to get a name resolution services guide written up and posted, hopefully next week.

Subnets, Subnets, Subnets
This week we covered subnetting and VLSM. Subnetting is the bane of my life, it involves maths, my maths is shite therefore my ability to work out subnet masks, no of networks, no of hosts etc is also shite.

On a plus note the redesign of my website is coming along nicely and by the end of next week I hope to have the design finished and some networking content added as well.

Carried out a bit of template changing and updating

Security
Here's an excellent article on the register from security Focus about e-mail worms / virii

testing testing testy test test