Hmm. My web server is down. I wonder what’s happening there. I’ll give it an hour and they start to rattle some chains. [update: it’s up again! yay! but I can’t ftp for some reason! Boo! the scribble of my dreamself holding a squirming, plucked tentacle eye will have to wait.]

{Update to the update…FTP is back!}

I’m on call this week… and need to find another person or two we can hire to help take up the slack when the Kahuna’s out of town.

Doc agreed with the specialist… I called to start the wheels in motion for a time for my surgery. I’ve also been discussing the idea seriously about buying a condo. I figure that even if I don’t keep it, I’m all for putting my rent toward equity rather than just in some other person’s pocket. The consultant I talked to said that I can comfortably work out a regional one at about $125k on my income and credit. If I decide to turn it around and sell it later, I should make a tidy profit, too.

Random mental wandering.

I’ve almost always dwelled near a large body of water, usually the shore of Atlantic Ocean. Between growing up near Cape Cod (note to self, write about the cranberry bogs sometime) and the summering in Florida Keys, I’d say that the furthest I’ve lived from the ocean was when we were in Alexandria, Virginia. (Even then, we were right on the Potomac, a *DANG COLD* river, even in the summer, if memory isn’t exaggerating over time.) Contrary to popular belief, I’ve never had a residence under a bridge, in order to eat passing goats or unwary travelers unwilling to pay a toll.

I remember folks being really afraid of the beach when Jaws came out. I was only about six years old, but the killer-shark hysteria was amazingly high. All of those shore-bound places where I’ve lived naturally had a significant amount of tourism by the beach, and the year that movie was released, the visitors began acting even more irrational than usual. Lots of folks were too frightened to even walk along the water… somehow, some way, a ravenous, blood-lustful, twenty-foot man-eating fish with triple rows of pearly white and razor sharp teeth was going to leap onto shore, grab them, emit a long, deep, haunting laugh of pure aquatic evil, and finally bite ’em in half, twelve feet away from where the water stops and the sand begins. The real telling element was how you could see people scanning the surface of the water, looking for that one dorsal fin that spelled total carnage for the poor victim splashing, flailing and generally having fun fooling in the “deep end.”

I figured they were *looking* for a monster to get them. Having spent enough time by the water, I was pretty aware of sharks, and knew something about their behaviors and mannerisms. I knew there was the merest likelihood of being attacked by a shark, even smaller by a colossal great white. Even in recent years, when there’s been a notable increase in the number of attacks along the East coast, the amount of them is still tiny. I had no fear of being attacked by a shark when I went into the water. Sure, if I saw them, I’d get out, but it’s not something that gave me pause. I had more immediate things to worry about: man-o-war stings, and mean ol’ crabs that pinched your toes if you stepped on them by accident Most worrisome was the undertow.. my brother’s surfing drove that point home one time when I was about sixteen, and he got pulled out really fast. I’m glad that my dad was a strong swimmer and was able to recover him quickly. I didn’t even realize he’d gone that far until dad was out there calling to him.

That said, I can’t remember the last time I went diving, surfing, or swimming in water more than chest deep. Perhaps that’s overdue. I’d like to float out and around Red Reef Park for a bit. I’d like to see some stuff from the snorkel perspective.

Again, this year, It’s October, and I’ve heard nothing about Oktoberfest (which generally starts in the last half of September). On researching, it looks like I missed it this past weekend. Ah well, there’s always Bavarian Village.

Handy dandy Admin tools recently discovered –

F.I.R.E. is the Forensic & Incident Response Environment Bootable CD. Its a downloadable ISO that allows you to gathers tons of information on dead and alive machines.

Offline NT Password & Reg Editor Bootdisk is a very simple bootable CD that lets you change passwords on a machine you have physical access to. The bootable CD version includes support for some SCSI cards.

Other handy ones –

Free IP Subnet Calculator from solarwinds.net
Free TFTP Server from solarwinds.net
Free GFI LANguard NS Scanner 3 (non-commercial)
Ethereal Protocol Analyzer
Free SSH Client
Free SSH/Terminal Client (Nags)
Free Angry IP Scanner