The personal blog of Peter Nikolaidis
By now, many of this blog’s readers have already heard me tell them why it is bad to click on links in email. Without going in to detail, it is because links can very easily be forged in email, just like they can on a web site.
Here’s an example: Where do you think this link will take you? Go ahead and try, it’s safe (I promise).
Continue reading “Security Tip: Don?t Click on Links, and Don?t Send Them Either!”
This week I launched a new blog over at http://blog.paradigmcc.com. This is to be the “official” blog of my company.
Nikolaidis.com isn’t changing, and there will definitely be overlap between the two – I envision a lot of cross posts. But the other blog will have other contributors and will also be a tad lighter on the rants, heavier on the business.
This morning, while attempting to log in to my Gmail account, I was pleased to see the newest feature they are offering, Gmail Autopilot?.
This weekend, after finding out just how easily one can accidentally invoke the option to “recover” a Windows partition on an Asus eeePC (hint: “too easily”), I decided to take the opportunity to try out a couple of different Ubuntu distros for the eeePC. Continue reading “Crunchbang, Eeebuntu, and an Etch to Lenny Upgrade”
Today, we are working with Fair Point on yet another outage. This time it’s a T1 line from Brandon to Middlebury, Vermont. After the standard “It’s customer
equipment” line (which we now believe is a standard response), and a full day of down time, Fair Point finally dispatched a technician…. to the wrong end of the T1. I realized this only when he was asking about “the other T1 line” in the router. When I said “there’s only one line” I realized he was looking at the Brandon router, not the Middlebury one.
Here’s how I imagine their troubleshooting process looks:
Today I decided that, since we never use it, it was time to ditch our toll-free phone number. Why should I continue to pay $30/mo for something we never use? So I called Fair Point and after re-reading the account number twice was able to get the account canceled “on one end.” However, I was told I needed to call another number to finish up the cancelation.
First question: why do I have to call two numbers?
So I called the second number and, when it asked what number I was calling about I keyed it in. Of course, there was no record of the 800# in their system.
After being on hold for 16:55 minutes, and repeated “Thank you for holding. Someone will be right with you,” messages, I finally got through to someone. I was very careful not to give out my main phone number, for fear of them disconnecting that instead.
Conclusion: Fair Point is overworked/whelmed by the northern New England Verizon acquisition.
This weekend I checked out of the hotel I stayed at in Boston. Thinking I wasn’t going back to my room, I left my keys and other miscellaneous (non-personally-identifiable) paperwork in the room. Among said paperwork were a few complimentary drink coupons, which I realized I could use for coffee at breakfast. Continue reading “Social Engineering Win, Hotel Security FAIL”
This Tech Target article explains that RBS and Heartland have “got some splainin’ to do.” Continue reading “Heartland and RBS De-listed From PCI List”
Something about this post seems really familiar, but I can’t place my finger on it. No really, it reminds me of something. I could swear I’ve ranted against the phone company, whether it was Verizon or Fair Point, before… why could that be? Continue reading “Fair Point and Noise on the Line”
While looking for hardware upgrades for a client’s server this morning, I decided to run the Dell hardware analyzer via their website to save myself the time of digging up the Dell Service Tag or running a one-line PowerShell command, I watched as the system installed an ActiveX control in the browser (always a pleasent feeling…)? and identified the server as…
a P703w All-in-One Printer
OR
V505 & V505w All-in-One (PRODUCT) RED (tm) Printer.
Uhm. Okay. Right… That was helpful.
