str[bits]

We got one “smart-talking” computer user here and she said, “Sandro, I have some doubt! My manager gave me a document in CD to edit, but when I’m saving it, it gives me error - Read Only! Why?”

And here’s another one: This morning I was also in one user and he complained, “My computer really very slow, you need to expand it!”

route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 10.10.1.20

One of our employees called me this morning, “Sir, my computer stops following order!”

We have a new Indian tea-boy here in our office, his name is Rosario Fernandez. I know it’s almost impossible for him to find this posting so I really have a legitimate purpose in writing this.

I just couldn’t believe how best Rosario in his nature of job. Since I started working here in my company, we had maybe 5 different tea boys already and I dunno how to describe their performance. I’m not against them; of course it’s understandable that they are limited as far as professionalism is concerned (hey! I’m not seeing their job that small, I respect them very much). But when this new guy Rosario replaced our old tea boy recently, I cannot stop myself to admire his working attitude and his service is really exceptional. He never stops going around to each offices and offering drinks. He truly makes sure that everything in pantry is clean and order. And one thing really noticeable for me is how he’s doing his service. You can feel that he truly loves his job and he’s giving his best. His attitude is communicable and it serves as another inspiration of me.

I just remember one thing while writing this, couple of years ago, when I first came here in this company, I’m really surprised that we have someone offering for drinks. Ordinarily in the Philippines and maybe in US or in Europe’s corporate world, there are no such people that will do you coffee thing. Its quiet awkward for me that someone will prepare my drinks and so from that time until today, I guess I’m the only person here in the office who’s not asking to prepare drinks from our tea boy.

Instead I often interact with them including our “cleaners”. Specially if I’m kinda tired and want to talk something out of my working horizon, I’m going to our pantry to have some laughing moment with our tea boy or go down stairs to the cleaning boy small room. Most of the time they will talk about there country (i.e. India or Nepal) and sometimes there family’s situation. We usually eat together “pratha” and “khobes” – their local bread (gosh! I’m used to the taste of it already and start liking it), it became now the daily food I’m eating here.

Moments with them are really interesting and I’m learning a lot. They are all away with there respective families and usually there contract is 2 years, and after that they are not sure whether they can continue their work or they need to find another employer. Very tough situation since they are only getting very low salary. So within that span of time they need to prepare there life and save as much as they can.

Sometimes I’m feeling pity with them especially how they are treated by other nationality and even sometimes their own countryman. They are not receiving the respect they deserved.

While when we are talking about life, I’m always challenging them and let them realize to aim for higher goals specially after their working contract here. Sometimes they are interacting positively but most of the time they think in limited way and they are already contented with their present life situation and willing to just to continue again the cycle of their life.

For me, they are big part of my working life here. They don’t have much difference with other executives and even sometimes those tea-boys and clean-boys are better than those men-in-ties as far as attitude and humanity is concerned.

I’m always hoping and I’ll keep on doing this that in one way or another, I’ll touch there life by opening their mind and spirit to the unlimited world.

A very busy week for me… but it was satisfying.

Right now I’m still here in the office studying some new things. I have now the “toy stuff” I needed for so long; Oracle 9i and Slackware 8.0. All I need to do now is to start the first big step – installation of it.

I’ll not go home until I successfully do it…

Good early morning, here’s my “Friday the 13th Security Fix”.

Microsoft released yet (another) patch that fixes a mail relay issue in all installations of Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server as well as in some configurations of Windows 2000 Professional. While not a huge bug, but it could allow unauthorized people to send e-mail via the server — and we don’t want to help the spammers now, do we?
[FAQ and Patch]

A vulnerability has been found in CheckPoint Firewall-1 and VPN-1 version 4.1 that would allow a remote attacker to pass arbitrary UDP packets through the firewall by including a particular malformed trojan RDP header in the packet.
[FAQ and Patch]

Linux Mandrake has released updated fetchmail packages that fix the vulnerability in fetchmail large header buffer overflow.
[Updated RPM]

Caldera Linux has released updated Webmin packages that fix the vulnerability that leaves auth data in server environment.
[Updated RPM]

Also Caldera released updated openSSH packages that fix the vulnerability known as “OpenSSH ‘cookie’ file deletion”.
[Updated RPM]

RedHat Linux has released an advisory indicating a buffer overflow in the xloadimage/faces reader, which is called from the Netscape ‘plugger’ plugin. It’s possible for malicious Web sites to execute arbitrary code on a user’s system if they have installed various packages from the RedHat Powertools version 6.2 collection.
[Updated RPM]

A recent advisory indicates a problem in poprelayd’s handling of log messages generated by qpop, which could allow a remote attacker to bypass the authentication mechanism needed to relay mail through the target system. Cobalt/Sun has confirmed this vulnerability. An updated version is available now.

phpPgAdmin CGI versions prior to 2.3 have been found to contain a vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to view files readable by the Web server’s uid. Combined with several possible tricks to upload valid PHP code onto the Web server, this could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary PHP code on the server, as well. The vendor has confirmed this vulnerability and they released version 2.3,
which is available here.

The SquirrelMail PHP application versions 1.0.4 and prior make insecure calls to the PHP include() function. A remote attacker can execute arbitrary commands (and PHP code) on the remote Web server with the permissions of the Web server user, typically ‘nobody.’ The vendor has confirmed this vulnerability and released a patch, which is available here.

That’s all for today for my collection of latest security alerts and available patches. I hope this will help to informed some people concerned specially the Network and Systems Admin to upgrade their system. Remember: Security is not an option… it’s a must!

Take care everyone. Today could be your unlucky day? Read this and this.

Enjoy a worry-free day today.

This afternoon will start my Oracle Developers Track. I’m pretty excited about these series of short courses because they are more on programming and developing side which are quiet afar from my exposed disciplined in work.

Well, programming is my first love and I really fond of doing this thing (before). Back in my college days, programming is one of my strength and I excel a little bit in this area. I always got high grades in these subjects without studying much.

By that time my concept of Computer Engineering course was only limited in combination of hardware and software discipline which means either to be a Repair Engineer/Technician if you will focus in hardware or a Programmer/Developer if you will focus in software.

And it is like traditions that Computer Engineers are going for hardware stuffs while Computer Science graduates going for software stuffs. Almost all of my classmates and friends are going in that bandwagon and of course this is the right way since we are CompEng not CompSci – except for me as I said.

In my graduation year, all of us were busy applying for “startup job” and as I’m anticipating, I’m in different track than others. Without my intentions, I found that I have great advantage in each of my job application and interview since my competitors mostly are CompSci. In my interviews, the interviewee always ask me why I’m going for programming job, and this brings me always in plus after I explained to them that I can be more effective programmer and analyst since I also understand the hardware part.

Eventually after weighing and considering all options and opportunity from each company I applied, I landed my first job in Acer Philippines as a programmer – my dream “startup job”.

As what I’m saying in my interviews in order to be an effective programmer and analyst you need to understand the hardware part of the systems you’re developing. Rick Tsai my (ever best) manager by that time give me time and chance to study first the non-software part of our system. I studied all the hardware we were using including the workstations and servers; networks infrastructures like router, switches, hubs; voice and data communications like PaBX and Multiplexers.

That time I was exposed to environment more than I’m thinking before back in my college days which were limited purely only to hardware and software. I tried my best to learn all those new things still as my preparation for my future programming chores.

After of maybe more than 2 months of working outside the software team that I suppose to be a member – my manager decided me to stay in Office Automation and Networking Team for longer time and if I’ll be effective in this team, I can stay here as long as I can.

Rick convinced me that even I’m outside of software team, I can still develop standalone programs that I feel usable based on my ongoing experience.

After that, all gone in blast… I never had a chance to return back in my first love – programming. I spend all my time in network and systems administration. Yes, I’m doing short programs also in form of scripts or modifying some systems libraries but I never been back again in real hardcore programming discipline as we’re doing in my college days (with Nathan and Rodel, hi guys!). Now, with the advent of 4th generation programming tools, it seems that the hard coding days wherein you need to write all the codes from zero including all the interfaces how it will looks like in graphical windows when you run it were all superseded by new tools and techniques.

That’s why I’m feeling extra excited today what I will gonna learn and feel in this Oracle Developers Track. Before I’m starting these series of courses, I already read some documents and it seems they really improve a lot.

Well, let’s see if first love really never dies…

What a way to start my working week and month of July yesterday… Our new 15 Acer Veriton came and I need to receive all of it. As the end users are all craving to deliver that machine immediately to their desk. The problem is those machines are all preinstalled with Windows 2000 in a single huge 20GB partition – and that’s not the way we want to configure the machine here in our company.

Windows 2000 Operating System is OK but the problem is we need multiple partitions for that 20 GB hard disk. One for the system files, one for the application installation files, and one for the user’s data file. It means we need to reformat and reinstall all those machines to repartition the hard disk into three.

Also, the computer was installed with lots of fancy programs that we don’t need, so it’s good for us to configure it in minimal configuration and only the needed software the user needed.

Hopefully the vendor will help us in doing these…