Customer Service Sucks.......

Yes, I work in Customer Service.....and yes it sucks, especially today. I just got another "monitoring" form today for a call I received yesterday. Did not offer further assistance, Did not give a reference number, Did not thank the caller for calling, and did not log the call at all. On a normal call with a normal customer I would have probably did all of the above things, but this call was from another customer service rep at another company we deal with frequently. They called to say "Hey, these files are bad... send them again", so I find out what's wrong and resend them. It becomes tedious if I have to say that long drawn out speech everytime I work with these people. I guess really I was taking a chance and hoping the QA Monster was not listening in on the call.

No such luck, I had a visit quickly after logging into my phone brought with her was a form with a list of all the things I did wrong on it. She began to go down the list of charges while pointing to the various pieces of paper that have taped to my cube with the scripts that we need to remember. Blah...blah...blah...blee...blee...blee...Just give me the paper so I can sign already. SHEEP

On an up note my son should be here next week, I still need to finish some things around the house though before he gets here. Like hmmm getting another bed to put in the other bedroom and maybe getting the shower fully operational. The time seems to be running out so I need to get a move on.

What are the odds of buying someone the same exact card for a holiday like Valentine's Day or on Sweetest Day? This happened to my girlfriend and I on Sweetest Day this past Saturday. We had bought the same exact card, it was pretty funny and interesting all at the same time. I guess that does show that we pretty much feel the same way since the card probably best said the way we feel about each other.

Trip to Chicago
Well I drove up to Chicago with my girlfriend with the intentions on bringing back a rat terrier puppy. Well we didn't get the puppy, but I think we still had a good time regardless.
The hotel was pretty nice, even though they tried to stick us in the same room as someone else. Yea that's right, right after we checked in this other young couple had checked in and we happened to follow them into the parking garage and happened to follow them onto the third floor of the hotel. We almost happened to follow them into room 325 on that same floor but we both found that kind of odd. We went back down to the lobby to tell the front desk person that there was someone else that just walked into our room. After he checked to find out who checked the people in, he apologized and set us up in a "nicer" room. So we hurried off and went to our room before they changed their mines about the nicer room. I'm still not sure how much nicer it was since I didn't get to see the other one though.
I even attempted to see my best friend in Milwaukee since we were so close. I had talked to him prior to coming up there and he sounded pretty happy we were coming. He did mention that he was drinking some Paul Mason and some kind of 211 beer that I have never heard of, That was pretty much the last sentence I heard from him. When we got there his girlfriend answered his phone and told me that he was pretty much trashed and not responsive to anything. We went over his girlfriend's house and there he was just spread out on the bed....not going anywhere for a long while. His girlfriend attempted to wake him when we got there and when that worked attempted to have me wake him... even though I knew that was gonna have the same effect as me poking him with a q-tip. So not to totally ruin her Sweetest Day, we all went out to CO2 Ultra Lounge it was a pretty nice place and a nice change from the places here in Dayton. After that we left and went back to Chicago.
Even though we didn't get the dog while we were there, I really enjoyed the time we had. To be able to spend some time away felt pretty good. I'm really looking forward to the next trip to NY.

Before I get into the detail of my weekend there are two things that I need to be sure to write about. They both have to deal with two small problems I had when using my linux box a couple times. One has to do with eth0 not starting up on boot and the other was a problem with the cdrom drive refusing to open.

Eth0 not starting on boot

Well for a few weeks now I have been having this problem, It probably happened the last time my cable internet went down and didnt come back up. I went in and changed something on my network settings to get my network connection back up but never changed it back. Not really sure what it was, and I really didn't notice the problem till I tried to run Nmap recently. It kept telling me that I had to specify my source address because it could not find it. I found it interesting since I have DHCP running and I should have had one.
After the ifconfig indeed showed me that there was no IP specified for eth0 I had to try to resolve that. Since I use redhat I went into "neat" and saw that my network device was eth0:1 instead of eth0. To get my network connection working on startup again I copied the ifcfg-eth0:1 into ifcfg-eth0. When I did this it showed eth0 as a selection for one of the network devices. I deactivated eth0:1 and activated eth0, did a restart, and it came up on boot this time. I also did an ifconfig and saw that I also had an IP address. I think this also caused me some network congestion problems, but that had to do with my gateways. On to the next problem...

Cdrom drive will not open

This was a very interesting problem since at the time I thought I had no programs running and I wasn't currently doing anything to the drive. Every time I tried to unmount the drive though it gave me the "device is busy" error. So I had to figure out what in the world was going on, so I did a google search for possible solutions to my problem. I found that in LSOF, I did /usr/sbin/lsof /mnt/cdrom and it showed me a process that still had a hold of the cdrom drive. After I killed the process I was able to unmount the drive finally.

::: GMAIL invites to anyone who needs one, I have 3 left :::

I had a pretty good weekend I just got in from Chicago.... I'll fill in the details tomorrow.

How many people actually know someone with the first name Tillman? ...... Don't count me

Read MAC disks on your PC

I have to say that this free utility to read mac disks was pretty easy to use. The only thing I did was basically download it, run the program, and drag 'n drop the files into Windows Explorer. That's it.... and it's free

To be able to read MAC disks - Download it from here
Visit homepage

I stopped by my parents house today to kill some time before I had to go into work. Shewas talking to me about things I needed to finish doing to my house to get it together and stuff she wanted to do to their house in the near future. Then she happened to mention a message left for me from a Congressman Thomas Reynold's office inviting me to an Annual Dinner with President Bush. Now first off, how in the world did they pick the people to come? and why me? It is pretty interesting though, I'll probably call them to find out what its about. My dad got one for Kerry, so I am interested in hearing where they are getting the names from. Now onto something else...

A digital home is something that I have been thinking about for a little while now. There are so many different things that I want to do to my house and to put in my house that I felt I could write for days on all of it. Well the story that I saw in this month's PC Magazine was pretty much exactly what I've been thinking of doing and wanting to do. From DVRs and Video Games to Wireless Networking and Security Cameras, I basically want to do it all. I think this could function as a guide and inspiration for all of it, of course I'll pick and choose what actual technologies I would use in my personal project.

Even though a lot of the products that they choose to use in this guide are pretty nice and slick, I don't have pretty nice and slick money. So I'll more than likely begin finding different open source and free software alternatives whenever possible. For the hardware I would more than likely have to see how low and I can and still have some relatively decent equipment to work with.

So I guess I can now combine my dream of an Uber-network into my plans for my Uber-house. I'll provide links later for everything.

I know what I always sit around and think about.... What if they made movies that I like into Hip-Hop musicals, that would be interesting. Ok, I really don't sit around and think about that but I did find something that was pretty damn close and pretty damn good.

Star Wars - Gangsta Rap Special Edition

The intergalactic gangsta rap now has a whole new flava in this Star Wars Gangsta Rap Special Edition. This remake features all-new and improved animation that would blow away any Death Star. Check it today.

Thanks to Muts for dropping through, He's the one who brought you the Whoppix that I seem to be talking so much about lately. You can find him here. I'll be sure to send those videos to you when I'm done.

Man Melts Pot While Boiling Water

I guess today is just one of those days, a day where it is just extra blah for one reason or another. Well I guess it really didn't get that way for me till I had an accident trying to boil water. I know....accident and trying to boil water should not be that close together in one sentence, but that's the way it goes today.

I poured the other half bottle of Drano down the kitchen sink in another attempt to try and dislodge this stubborn clog. I'm really not sure if it is even a clog, the way the water is moving it seems more likely to be a small body.....well not really, but its moving pretty damn slow. Well since I'm getting just getting my gas cut on since I moved in the house I currently don't have any hot water. As per the instructions on the back of the bottle I needed some hot water, so as I did just the night before I put a pot of water on the stove ..... on high. (Mistake #1) Then me being me I left the room and became distracted by computers and video games. (Mistake #2) After becoming so distracted I forgot about the pot of water in the kitchen sitting on the stove on high.... so I left.

I come home about an hour and a half later to house filled with a smell similiar to a factory. As I went into the kitchen and looked at the stove I see an empty pot with a red bottom. I know that's bad for the simple fact that I have never seen a pot get that color before. I knew it was really bad when I picked up the pot and liquid metal came pouring out onto the stove. Of course, when the metallic liquid came out it began to harden on the stove surface. After all was said and done the casualties were two of the silver plates under the eyes on the stove, and alot of burn marks on top. I'm just glad the stove was the only thing to get burned..... but I honestly do know how to boil water. Oh, and cook.

HACKER:

[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.
2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
3. A person capable of appreciating hack value.
4. A person who is good at programming quickly.
5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a UNIX hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.)
6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.
8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker". The correct term is cracker.

Where I found this HERE


:::EDIT::: I did not see that this post really messed up the browser under IE, So I changed it.... Should be good now.

While you're out and about go pick up yourself an email icon to show off to all of your friends. They currently have Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and MSN.

"If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater."

Been kinda quiet lately, I guess that's good.... no problems to report .... Everything is O.K. Well I'm supposed to be going with my best friend to go pick up a dog this weekend. I guess that means I still have time to add my input into the name thing, although any names that I really thought up would either be tech related or just dog. I'm not sure everyone would appreciate "Dog" as the dog's name though. It's gonna be a long trip to go get the dog, but hell I'm all for a getaway even if it's to the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. Illinois).

I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with the other bedroom, my son should be down here at the end of the month and I need to have something in there for him. I either need to make it just a kids room or a room that "big" people can sleep in..... hmmm we'll have to see what I do.

Sweetest day is coming up, this will actually be a year that I will remember the day before its actually over with.

A site I came upon awhile ago that I'm not sure if I mentioned or not: Cooking For Engineers.

Well I downloaded my copy of WHoppix - 2.4 and have gotten to play with it a little bit..... good stuff. I was also trying to look around to find some more stuff on the pieces that went together to make WHoppix what it is:
MetaSploit Framework, Part 1
MetaSploit Framework, Part 2
MetaSploit Framework, Part 3

K-OTIK Exploits & Code

PacketStorm

I'll start making up some videos of WHoppix in action when I get a chance.

Well it seems as if they've pushed back the realize of Whoppix 2.4 till the 10th, the more I read about it the more I get interested. The Demos that they have are pretty interesting to :D
*These Flash movies are fairly large and will take awhile over dial-up*
Metasploit in Action
Cisco HTTP Bug
Wireless WEP Attack
Getting NESSUS to Work

I got an older laptop that I can use this with, I can't wait for it to come out.

WhiteHat Knoppix (Whoppix) is a knoppix 3.6 remaster designed to be a standalone penetration testing toolkit. Heavily modded by muts, Whoppix includes a full set of penetration testing tools and a huge repository of exploits (Framework 2.2, Packetstorm and Securityfocus exploit archives).

Dowanload will be available on the 10th Oct HERE

MD5 Checksum d87e7e90f9a1f80bb2954e1db865a130 *Whoppix-2.4.iso

A friend had just called me all in a panic because a disk holding all of her papers for class just crapped on her. She stuck it in the machine and it told her that it can not read a MAC formatted disk. Unfortunately for her she has only been using PCs, so when she asked if I could help my first reaction was like there is no way windows can read a MAC disk. Well I checked and they actually have software that can do it, Executor is one solution. Executor is a Macintosh Emulator, I'm not really sure of all of its capabilities but I'll download it and test it out at home. Well hell....If Windows can do it then Linux obviously can do it better :D and damnnit it does. Besides Executor being able to run on Linux, you can read Macintosh Hierarchical File System (HFS) thanks to kernal 2.x.x. I can prove it too..... See. So we'll see if I can open the file from home, then we'll see if she's really hosed or not.

I couldn't really tell you why I'm up so freakin early, I did fall asleep on the floor again. Another one of those nights where a talk on the with my best friend turns into falling asleep next to the phone while its on speakerphone. I think it was a weird dream I had that woke me up....ormaybe just the frog in my neck that was killing me while I slept. Anyways, I've been up for about 40 mins though...got up and got some cereal...transferred my space heater to my bedroom from the computer room...try to figure out why my network seems to act up when there is something plugged into port 3 of the switch...do another base-config on my fresh debian install....see, just typical stuff people do when they just happen to get up too early.
I've been joining a lot of different websites lately, all of them dealing with hacking or technology. They all seem to be good sources of information and if they are new they seem like they will one day develop into that. I think I've joined a few too many though cuz I think I may have forgotten which ones I went to already.
I'm kind of tired, but that still isn't keeping me away from this computer. I wanna lay back down but I know that if I lay back on the floor that I'm not gonna be comfortable in any way. Right now my room is too cold to be of any comfort either, so I guess I'm stuck here for now. I applied for this "Desktop Support Analyst" position and the guy keeps emailing me back wanting more detail in my resume. I guess I can work on that but the problem I'm having is figuring out what to put and how to put it. Anything that I've learned about computers has been self taught, I've only taking one computer class that I didn't know what I was doing. (That was high school in an IB Programming class that I hated) So trying to put down my experiences and trying to some how make them look a little bit more formal is what's killing me. I guess there is nothing more that I can do except do it, so we'll see what I can cram into there.

I keep forgetting these simple commands for some reason, so I'll put them here (Redhat 8):

Burn the ISO after I've downloaded it
cdrecord -v speed=8 dev=0,0,0 blahblah.iso

Burn the VCD after I've downloaded the .cue and .bin files
cdrdao write --device 0,0,0 blahblahblah.cue

Create an ISO image from directory
mkisofs -r -o /image.iso /dir_of_files_to_use

Reference Page
How to become a Hacker

:::EDIT:::
I just finished a Debian 3.0 (Sarge) net install that was fairly painless, however, the machine on it is too freakin slow and my retarded self downloaded the desktop environment when all I really needed was a file server. I'll figure out how to take all that other junk out later.

You think you know what cool is..... but you have no idea

See what cool looks like

....and I definitely know you don't what being "too cool" is.

You know what, I think I may really have to try out that Whoppix but I'm gonna wait for version 2.4 to come out this week. I think I'm gonna have a lot of fun with it.