What is your Candy Corn?

For those not familiar with the reference, Candy Corn is a sweet confectionery candy which is quite sugary and shaped like a triangle with 3 colors in it. Wikipedia explains it this way. The picture below is from Wikipedia as well.

I could eat a mound of it and not think twice about it. To me Candy Corn is one of the best candies. It is a happy candy, for me, and I enjoy eating them, in many ways which I will not bore you with here. Sadly for me the only Kosher ones I know of are from the Jelly Belly company. When I shared space with my friend that had a candy business, the smell from a freshly opened 10 pound bag was just heaven. Like being in a doughnut shop when the first ones come out of the oven.

When you get sucked down by the world, what makes it brighter for you? As a parent, the natural answer would be my kids, but being realistic, we all want something to brighten our days that just exists. Coffee is not my thing, chocolate is okay, peanut butter cups are a crutch for me, but I have been known to go way, way, way, out of my way, just to snag some candy corn, and keep it for when I need it most.

But it is not always available. Thus, it becomes a really big treat when it is available. Like having my own time machine to just be a kid again.

It does not provide creativity, my friends provide more than enough for me. It does help bring the fun, the kid in me wants to have that the adult in me may not have time for always.

What sparks you to do something? What helps you get your work done? What makes your boss disappear?If you don't have something that brightens your day, what do you do to get through it? The goal, the item, whatever it might be that works for you, keep that with you always.

Be a kid! Have fun! If YOLO then you should enjoy as much as you can.

What Are You Doing, HAL?

My friend Chris Toohey posted this on Twitter:

Ever have one of those mornings where you just want to blow off billable work & code something fun?? #stayOnTarget!
— Chris Toohey (@christoohey) September 3, 2014

I replied, I just want my servers to talk to me.
What would you have your server say, if it could talk?

"My Router hurts, are you spamming people again?"
"Drive C has eaten all the chips and needs a bigger belt (no free space)"
"That agent you ran just now, were you seriously trying to crash me?"
"Things would run faster if you shut off service x,y, or z...or just buy me more memory"
"I can't see the Internet, is it a zombie apocalypse or did you unplug a cable?"
"Some one just attached a USB drive to the network with a virus, would you like me to dispose of it?"

I can dream of a smarter network, can't I?
Yes, monitors and notifications work, but I would like to hear form my server. It could call me over VOIP if it wants as well.

If the Internet of Things, as various places claim will take over, when will the computers get voice boxes and properly talk to us?

Please vendors, app designers and developers stop it with the crazy error messages we get onscreen that are meaningless and speak English. Or translate the errors to whatever language one needs them.

The Social Zombie

I was working in the lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie site, a new social site popped up asking me to join them.

What crazy thing is this I thought? Join us it said. Join them? There must be social sites I bet even for vampires, werewolves and zombies. (Yes they are real sites, may not be safe at work for obvious reasons.)

Social sites? Don't they know people have work to do? Talk to your buddies after work or on the weekends.

It was then I heard a knock on the lab door and opened it to find one of the guys in a vampire costume. It being Halloween and all, I laughed and asked what he needed, aside from my blood.

He replied, "we don't do that anymore". We suck people's lives away by their social sites they visit. It's much less headache for us.

Okay, how can I help you again I asked?

We have noticed you rarely use any social sites. It is your prerogative, but you are hurting my fellow, shall we say, comrades. I was sent to outline to you all the great things you could be doing and helping us at the same time.

I'll bite, what do you want me to do? Post a picture? Tweet?

Nothing that simple, he said. We need you to help our zombies mobilize.

Huh?

You heard me, we need the zombies to organize. They have started bugging us, we the undead, but we have better things to do. Since the zombies all follow whatever the hottest social site is, we want you to start posting misinformation. Something like how Google has Zoggles, some reader for zombies that have lost their eyes.

Are you crazy? Why would I do this? I would be lying and not be authentic at all, which is what being social is all about.

At this, he fell over laughing.

That's a good one, authentic, nice, who put you up to that? Some politician?

Look, try it, you might have fun, anything is better than hanging out in a lab all by yourself waiting for a vampire to visit.

He had me there. Off I went to wreck havoc with the zombies.

Happy Halloween because even Social Media deserves some fun.

A Consulting Company called me on the Way to Dinner about Infections

We can save your PC! They bellowed. Right.

Evidently one of my Windows machines was infected and I should listen to the oracle on the phone to save my pc's soul, er, files.

This was my lucky day! And for some lucky contestant on robophone Americans it was their crazy story of the week.

I had them on the phone for at least 15 minutes and it was fun. My wife and kids were laughing through most of it.

Listen, when you need a repair person, any repair person, they are nowhere to be found. So if a PC support person calls you totally out of the blue and you have nothing wrong with your pc, please just be a smidge curious what scam they are pulling. Just do not take these people seriously.

Here is a rough idea of our conversation:

Hello Mr. Brooks glad we caught you, your Windows PC is infected.
Me: okay, did it call you?
No sir, how could a PC do that? (I had to laugh at this one) Your windows PC is infected, they repeated.
Me: Really? Which one?
(Long pause while they searched their database for what to say next)
Your Windows computer
Me: Which one? (they seemed to not grasp my question)
Sir, you have a Windows Computer, yes?
Me: Yes I do, a whole bunch of them, which one called you? I hate when they look for new owners like that.(humor lost on my caller)
Ah, er, how many Windows computers do you have?
Me: About 4-5 are usually online during the day. Which Windows version called you?
Sir, your computer can not call anyone, your oldest Windows computer is infected.
Me: Interesting, would that be the oldest Windows version or the oldest age of my computers?
(more frantic searching database) Er, sir, your oldest computer.
Me: Windows XP, does it matter which version?
No, it does not, they are all infected.
Me: Sorry, are we discussing SQL injection hacking?
I am unfamiliar with this, can you turn on your windows PC please?
ME: Are you calling from Microsoft?
No, sir, we are a computer consulting company
Me: Are you calling from IBM because my pcs are IBM editions
No sir, IBM and Microsoft are vendors, we are a consulting company.
Me: Which consulting company would you be from because it is amazing you can call when I have a problem before I even know it on my turned off windows PC!
Sir can you turn on your PC please?
Me: Hold on a sec, are you from AVG?
No
Me: Symantec? MalwareBytes? Because we use all of those and that Microsoft malicious Removal toolkit thingy.
No sir we are not from any of those.
Me: Well, then why would my PC have problems if I use all of these things?
Sir there are infections online that got into your PC.
Me: Really? And how do they do that?
That is what we want to help you with sir. Do you use Social networks?
Me: sure all the time...from my phone.
Oh, not from your PC? But you do go online, right?
Me: Sure, Amazon is my friend.
Well you know Best Buy has a screen that pops up before you shop?
Me: So we are talking about cookies?
No sir, something much more malicious.
Me: I don't know cookies can be malicious you know.
Sir can you turn on your PC.

At this point I wanted to find out what they do so I opened an XP machine where they proceeded to have me open the event viewer and look at my application list which happened to be mostly information rather than warnings. No doubt any of the warnings or fatal messages they would jump on and say I was attacked.

In any rate after about 15 minutes I had enough of fun and told them, well I guess my PC is safe no warnings, thanks and enjoy your day I am going to eat dinner now.

The moral of the story is your own support desk should be this helpful and responsive to you but as usual if it is too good to be true, it is not true. people have been taken for money to buy fake anti-virus programs as well as provided full remote access to these people and all kinds of other things.

Some things I could have asked for more fun:

Which version of windows does it affect? International English or US English?
I'm okay my PC runs Hebrew Windows, it is bi-directional just to see what they say.
Can I have your number I have friends that need to talk to you, like the police.
I saw Sneakers, and I encrypt all my files, and go through zombie proxy servers just to evade the NSA, you're not from the NSA are you?

It was just fun and how often do we get to have this much fun with telemarketers?

Too Funny not to Post(see pic)

While posting a comment on John's blog about the sad state of company DRP I was then asked to prove I am human by typing this.