(no subject)

[which_chick]

Went out last night and, among other things, slept on couch. Note to self: You do not especially like sleeping on couches. In the future, it might be a good idea to see to it that you can drive yourself home at bedtime.



I also have a headache from following the Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants ultimatum from the NYT. While I don't love the near-starvation thing, it does wear off in about a week, so I look for that to improve about next wednesday.

I spent the bulk of the day fixing a virused laptop. The laptop came from someone's work and was handed to his nephew to take to college because the someone would apparently rather eat his toes, braised in red wine, than actually run Excel or do his own wordprocessing. For assorted reasons, the main one being that the someone's Network Admin is not a total wanker, the laptop didn't arrive in my hands with a functioning Administrator password. It, er, has one now. :)

Here's what I learned:

1. Executives (who are the only people besides techies who qualify for take-home laptops at most companies) are the sort of people who write their BIOS password on a post-it and then laminarly tape said post-it to the laptop. (It's not in the sprout's handwriting...)

2. If anyone can press F10 or whatever and get into the boot options so's to force booting off of a handy CD or similar, whatever passes for security on the machine is gone, gone, gone because there exist some VERY helpful (and free -- did I mention the free part?) bootable CD options out there on teh intarwebmotron.

3. I like that the network admin didn't let there be a list of people-to-log-in-as on the 'doze splash screen. That was nice and counted as a useful effort. However, refer to points 1 and 2. By the time I got to the 'doze splash screen, I'd already seen the list of available log-in options and taken that opportunity to reset the admin password (and full marks for calling "Administrator" something other than "Administrator") to something I knew-what-was.

4. Almost any data is insecure if people can get physical access to it and hammer away at it long enough. Removing physical access is Job #1. With a laptop, the network admin is going to fail because the damn things are DESIGNED to be picked up and carried off by unauthorized persons.

I took notes on what I did and left the (invisible to the sprout) admin stuff in place so that if it gets killed again, I can fix0r again.

Comments

[galena417.livejournal.com]

I have yet to find a couch that is comfortable enough to sleep on - pull-out, futon, or otherwise. Of course, as I get older, it seems less likely that I will ever be comfortable sleeping on a couch.

I never understood people who prominently displayed their passwords on or near the computer - how hard is it to either hide it or *Gasp!* remember it??

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

There are several decent encryption programs out there that are shareware (http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/), and I have no clue why more people don't use them. That would take care of the government's problem of always losing laptops. Granted, if you have a powerful encryption tool and then write your password on a sticky note on the monitor, you're still out of luck, but at least it'd be a decent try.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I slept on my own couch for several weeks until the then-landlord fixed the water-damaged ceiling over my ex-bed & I felt secure in getting a new mattress. It didn't completely suck, but that couch was nice & wide & well-padded with all the surviving blankets & sheets on hand. Of course, I'm usually the one to opt for the covers & floor when we go four-to-a-hotel-room for con events, so YMMV.