http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2004/04.php .
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IMPORTANT: I spent about 24 hours in the past 3 days, diagnosing, researching, and then removing a nasty piece of malware from the home computer of one of my cousins -- all through long distance phone calls, since she lives 3,000 miles away. The villain in this case turned out to be a trojan browser hijacker called CoolWebSearch or Search Town, which an expert who was interviewed by Wired called "the most complex, invisible and devious hijacker ever programmed." Basically, CWS completely takes over your entire computer; it changes your default home page to a porn site; it pops up porn ads all over your screen; it sends any personal information that it finds on your computer to someone on the Internet; it redirects you to porn sites against your will; it redirects you to strange search sites against your will; it attacks and disables your PC's software firewall; it goes out on the Internet and invites several of its "friends" to join it on your computer; it hides itself so that you won't see it running if you open your Windows Task Manager; and it does everything it can do to prevent you from getting rid of it, such as blocking you from visiting Web sites that tell you how to get rid of it; blocking you from visiting Web sites that provide the tiny and free CWShredder software that can get rid of it for you; and installing files that attempt to re-install CWS on your computer after you have removed it. In fact, now that I finally removed CoolWebSearch from my cousin's computer, we'll have to wait to see if it comes back. If it does, we might have to format her hard drive and then reinstall all of her software and data in order to make sure that CWS is gone for good. I can only imagine the hundreds of millions of dollars that CWS is going to cost businesses and individuals around the world as it continues to evolve into even more intelligent and malicious variants. I hope that someone catches the sociopath who created CWS, and s/he ends up doing some real prison time. In the meantime, you'd be very wise to read and follow the advice found in ComputerBob's Guide To Firewalls, and in Why Did I Get Infected In The First Place? To find out how protected/unprotected your browser currently is, visit Jason Levine's Toolbox and run his free online browser security tests. I have no browser security software on my PC, but with only the secure browser configuration settings that I've been using for the past few years, my browser passed every test. It might seem like it will take a lot of work to make your computer more secure, and maybe it will, but I guarantee that it will take a lot less work than it would take to repeatedly try to get rid of a piece of malware after it and its friends have completely taken over your computer. Just ask my cousin.
Several days ago, my wife and I went with Jim and Linda to Clearwater Beach, a popular Spring Break
destination that's rated as one of the 5 best beaches in the state. The sand there is brilliant white
and powdery, almost like powdered sugar. I picked up a handful of it to inspect it, and it felt almost silky.
After dropping it back onto the beach, I brushed my hands back and forth together to clean them, then wiped them
onto my shorts. When I looked at my hands again, there were little sparkles on my fingers, like microscopic glitter.
Closer examination revealed that there were still tiny grains of sand inside the ridges of my fingerprints. Now
that's what I call fine sand.
Yesterday, on her first day at her new job, my wife learned that she does not work from 8:00 AM until 4:30 PM, as she had originally been told by a member of the hiring committee. She actually works from 8:00 AM until 4:00 PM, including a 30-minute lunch break. That shorter work day, combined with the fact that she has a very short drive to this job, means that she will have 1 1/2 more hours of free time every day, compared to her previous job in the Frostbite State. That adds up to 7 1/2 more hours of free time every week!
Today, I updated
ComputerBob's Guide To Web Hosts to include the things that I learned
during the past few weeks, while searching for a good reseller webhosting account.
Last night, I happened to find a very thoughtful and entertaining piece, written by documentary filmmaker, Stephen Talbot, in 1997. You don't remember who Stephen Talbot is? He played Beaver's best friend, Gilbert, in the old TV sitcom, Leave It To Beaver.
Today, I signed up for what appears to be a great free Web site monitoring service offered by SiteUptime.com. This site and its email server will be checked every 30 minutes, and I will be automatically notified if either one ever stops working.
If you're interested in new technologies, here's
the latest poop.
I know several people who could become billionaires from it.
Scientists in Africa hope to eradicate the deadly disease, malaria, by
using radiation to sterilize male mosquitoes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that how Godzilla was created?
Today, my wife accepted an offer to be the full-time secretary for a church about 15 minutes from home. After sifting
through close to 100 applicants for the position, the church interviewed 12 of them. Of those 12, they gave a second
interview to 3 of them. Of those
3, my wife was their first choice. The bad news: While the salary is very good for the Sunshine State, it's not
even close to what she was earning as a secretary at a university in the Frostbite State. The good news: We don't
live in the Frostbite State any more.
If you're reading this message, you're seeing this site running on the new server, in my new reseller
account. It's
been a huge hassle to look for a new webhost for the past couple of weeks, but I think it's going to be fine from
now on. I'll write more about
the new server in a few days, when the whole Internet can see it.
If you've read this Journal lately, you know that, in the past several days, I spent a lot of time researching
many webhosts, and even trying two that turned out to be awful, in my quest to find one that offers an affordable
and reliable webhosting reseller account.
I'm happy to announce that, after doing much more research, I think I finally found a great one. In the
past few days, I set up my accounts there, after they agreed to copy my two Web sites and two databases from
FluidHosting.com to my new server at no charge. That will save me about an hour of downloading my databases and
about eight hours of uploading all of my data to the new server over my dial-up Internet connection. If all goes as
planned, they will do that copying some time this evening. Then, it will take me a day or two to change a few
absolute paths in my Web pages, make sure that my databases are connected, and make sure that
my Web pages are all working the way they should on the new server. Once all of that checks out, I'll point my DNS
records to the new server, and a day or two later, people will start seeing my sites running on the new server. At
that point, I'll finally be able to start offering webhosting services, as I described on April 6th.
In my search for an affordable and reliable webhosting reseller account, I've spent many hours at the WebHostingTalk Forums, a site that I've trusted for years to provide valuable information about webhosting companies. One of the webhosting companies that is consistently rated highly by users at WHT is Dathorn.com. Today, following my own advice from ComputerBob's Guide To Web Hosts, I researched Dathorn's server and network specification and reseller account features and prices. I also read many posts in their support forums, to see how many problems and what types of problems were reported by users, as well as how Dathorn handled those problems. Finally, I wrote to their sales department with a few simple questions. Because their replies were rude and evasive, they will never get my business.
After all of the bad experiences I've had in the past week, it's starting to seem like every day, another block of
the Internet neighborhood is being annexed by spammers and scammers.
This site is back on its original server again. While I keep searching for a webhosting reseller package that is both affordable and reliable, I'll continue to buy my sites' web space and bandwidth from FluidHosting.com, the same webhosting company that has hosted my sites with no problems for the past 13 months. It turned out that my domain name, ComputerBob.com, never worked on the other server, probably due to either a configuration error on the part of the server administrator, or a router failure in the datacenter which houses the server. About 38 hours ago, when the transfer of this site's "address" to that other server was finally complete, I stopped receiving any email messages. A little while later, I stopped being able to reach the server itself by ping, traceroute, HTTP, or FTP. About that same time, most users around the world started seeing an error message instead of this site, because the world's servers were expecting to see this site on that other server, but that other server was down. For more than 36 hours, I was unable to reach the server administrator. After more than 36 hours, I finally cancelled my account with that other server's company and changed my DNS settings back to this server. Four hours after I had cancelled my account, and more than 40 hours after the server had stopped working, its system administrator finally got it up and running again. Despite the fact that it costs significantly more to do it here, I'm still going to offer free webhosting to my relatives and to Christian ministries that I want to support. If all goes well, my email should start working again some time tomorrow, and I'll have about 600 new email messages to wade through. If all goes extremely well, I'll find an affordable and reliable webhosting reseller package in the near future.
And for those who are curious, yes, in the midst of all that trouble, I finally did both our Federal and State taxes
yesterday.
It's hard to know for sure when the rest of the Internet will finally be able to see this site running on this new
server. I registered my nameservers last Friday, more than 79 hours ago. According to my domain registrar,
(RegisterFly.com), newly
registered nameservers should start functioning in about 36 hours. Unfortunately, after all this time, I see no
evidence that they're functioning yet, and I've received absolutely no feedback or support from RegisterFly. I
tried to do a "live support chat" with RegisterFly this morning, but nobody showed up at their end of the chat for
more than 30 minutes, so I finally gave up and disconnected. That's the second time in the past month that I've
wasted more than 30 minutes waiting without ever chatting with anyone in RegisterFly's "live 24/7 chat" support
area. After disconnecting from their chat area, I opened a support ticket with them, describing my entire problem
in detail. As I type this, it has been more than 12 hours since then, but they haven't replied, or even acknowledged
that they received my support ticket. These are the kinds of infuriating but totally preventable delays and
problems that drive webmasters crazy. In fact, this whole experience has made me so unhappy with RegisterFly
that I will be shopping for a new domain registrar once these current problems are finally solved. In the meantime,
I'm going to go ahead and change my ComputerBob.com domain's DNS settings to my new nameservers and hope that they
start working. If they do, then it's possible that parts of the Internet may start seeing this site on this new
server some time tomorrow, and that the whole Internet would be able to see it within a few days. I sure hope that
happens.
I'm typing this, even though I'm the only one who can see this site on its new server right now. The only reason I can see it is because I'm accessing it through its new IP address, instead of through my ComputerBob.com domain name. The rest of the Internet should be able to see this site on this server in about three or four days, due to the technical delay that was automatically introduced when I registered my own webhosting nameservers, and due to a second delay that will start when the first delay has ended, caused by physically moving this site to a different server. In the meantime, I got everything, including my Forums and User Ratings pages, working on this new server.
The sale of our home in the Frostbite State finally closed this afternoon, after we spent the past several days
solving several major and minor glitches that threatened to postpone the closing. So, we are now officially the
proud former owners of that home, and the current owners of lots of money. Hallelujah!
This will be my last journal update at my current webhost. I am in the process of moving my sites to my new reseller account's server, and making sure that all databases, forums, ratings, etc. are working. The next time I update this journal, this site will be running on a different server.
For that same reason, you may experience some weirdness with this site in the next several days. I hope to accomplish the move without any significant problems or downtime, but if there are any problems, this site may disappear and reappear, or email messages sent to me may bounce back to you. If that happens, please be patient and try again in a day or two. See you on the other side!
And for those of you who are curious, no, I haven't done our taxes yet. A man has got to know his priorities.
About a week ago, I said that I'm going to be making some changes to the webhosting of this site. Here's a little more detail on that. I've decided to become a webhost, but a very unusual one. Along with hosting my own Web sites, I'm planning to offer free webhosting to my relatives and to Christian ministries that I want to support. I'll also offer commercial webhosting services to companies who ask me to design their Web sites. I hope to finalize the details of my new service some time next week.
Our realtor called today to say that everything is all set for us to close on the sale of our house in the Frostbite
State this coming Friday -- except for one thing. By tomorrow morning's overnight mail pickup, we need to find
someone to endow with the power of attorney, to physically be at the closing and sign the papers in our place.
After spending the whole day thinking about who we could trust with that responsibility, I called my old Frostbite
State friend, Boomer, who agreed to do it for us. Thanks again, Boomer -- you'll always have a friend in the
Sunshine State! Also, we checked out your RAFA photos, and they're very impressive and hilarious!
I'm still really busy with settling in to our new place, and I still haven't done our taxes, but it's been a few days since I posted here, so this morning, I took the time to add 4 gorgeous new photos to my Florida Photos section. It now contains 165 photos, with many more waiting to be added when I have time.
There's good news on the home-selling front. Though the buyers of our home in the Frostbite State originally asked
for a closing date two months from when they had made their offer, our realtor now tells us that we might close this
coming Friday, two weeks early. If that works out, it will save us a few hundred dollars of mortgage payment on
that house.
Our latest move, though less than 1/4 mile, was exhausting. It took 2 of us 2 entire days to move nearly all of our boxes, one carload at a time, and to clean the old place. Then last night, after he had worked at his job for 10 hours, my excellent brother-in-law, Jim, stopped by with his pickup truck and helped me move 2 truckloads of the heaviest things, while my wife stayed at the old place and continued cleaning until well after dark. My wife and I both woke up in pain in the new place this morning.
Today, I received yet another batch of great photos to add to my Florida Photos section. I'm very happy that that section has attracted so much photographic talent. I was correct when I wrote that it would probably be next week before I'd have time to add any new photos to my site. As I type this, I'm sitting in my new office with a 50-foot phone extension cord running from my modem down the hall to the master bedroom, because the phone line to this room needs to be replaced. Plus, I'm sitting on a kitchen chair, leaning way over a too-small cardboard box that's barely holding both my keyboard and mouse, while my CPU sits on the floor behind that box, and my monitor sits on a nightstand behind that. Besides having to clean the new place and do our taxes, I'll also have to find a new computer desk or table before I'll be able to do any real work on my computer.
If you're looking for an April Fool's Day joke, I didn't have time to do one this year, but here's
one that I played on my students back in 1999.