helping you stay protected in the digital age

This is a speed test I just ran from Speakeasy…. I’m left speechless!

I try to avoid re-hashing or re-posting news stories as I feel that a website that just republishes the same story doesn’t accomplish anything.

With that out of the way, my most favorite site in the world, Dslreports.com wrote about “Friendly Zombies” and legit computers being used as DDoS bots against bad or malicious bots.

You can read the story at http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Using-Friendly-Zombies-To-Fight-DDoS-Attacks-93820

I’m on a lunch break and I’m so glad, but I’d rather be sleeping. I have to work today through Wednesday (and I’m not going to say what about for OPSEC). HOPEFULLY I can get off at a decent hour today since I’ve been up since 0400 and maybe I can squeeze in a few hours of down-time with my fiance’ and maybe some sleep before I have to report to duty tomorrow at another insane hour. Oh well.

I called my dad to see what he was up to and he said something along the lines of hard work = good rewards. That is true, but right now I’d rather be sleeping. I haven’t cleaned my SUV in weeks; it definitely looks it too. I thought about pulling out the car wash stuff this afternoon but thought to myself that as soon as I got it all out I would say “I’d rather be sleeping”.

Back to my lunch break. I got about an hour off for lunch, not enough time to go home, make a pot of coffee, and fix lunch so I headed on down to Maple Street PJ’s (one of my favorite hang-out and study spots). I’m sitting here right now, just finished off a cinnamon scone and I have a chocolate muffin with orders to be on standby if my stomach decides to rumble again. The coffee will help, I think I’m going to get another one before I bỏ đi (thats leave in Vietnamese [thanks Joe] talk about a random word). Regardless of my circumstances, I’d rather be sleeping.

I have another 15 minutes to kill and I know I can’t ramble on with this post for that long because I would have all of YOU saying “I’d rather be sleeping”. In other news I’m looking to get a coffee table. I found this one with an end table on Craig’s List: http://neworleans.craigslist.org/fur/647951731.html and if you go and buy it before I do I’ll be very upset. I’ve been trying for two weeks to get a coffee table and every one I find has sold what feels like a few minutes before I showed up.

I’ve rambled on long enough. Time to go finish out the afternoon. I seriously, seriously, pray that I don’t have to work very long this afternoon.

I’d rather be sleeping…

I finally upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. This new version is VERY nice! If you haven’t already upgraded then I suggest do it soon because it is nice. If I didn’t have to get up in 6 hours to go back to work then I would ellaborate on my upgrade experienace but I don’t have that liberty.

I guess I’ll have to give the full skinny on the upgrade Saturday when I actually have some down time.

Thanks to “Tony” who posted a comment on one of my entries:

“Like many of you, when I saw the UPS train derailment notice, I think of all the UPS packages that were probably damaged or destroyed during this accident. Apparently there was a train derailment on April 3rd. But it was not the UPS train with all the packages on it. A coal train derailed, causing the rails in that area to be shut down affecting all trains using that railway. So while indeed there was a train derailment affecting the on-time UPS deliveries, as UPS claims, what they don’t tell you is that is was not their train. So this “train derailment” was nothing more then a traffic jam as far as UPS is concerned. Leave it to UPS to make it sound worse then it really is.”

I also created this thread at DSLreports.com http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20286124-UPS-Train-Derailments looking for answers and this seems to be the general consensus. I agree Tony, UPS could be a little bit more specific in their answers like “Non-UPS trained derailed causing traffic jam” or something instead of leaving ALL of their customers thinking that their shipped packages were destroyed.

Thank you to EVERYBODY who has replied. The traffic generated from these posts has also helped some of my other articles getting attention so thank you once again!

~John
aka: exocet_cm

Apparently I’m “derailment central” for all news related to UPS train derailments. I’ve gotten e-mails and comments about more UPS train “derailments”.

I’ve sent a news submission to CNN to see if they have any information or would want to do a story on these derailments.

Maybe CNN will find something out, maybe not. Who knows. I just wish you guys didn’t have to deal with package delays. In the mean time, read some of the comments on both of the posts. Phil’s comment is pretty funny, sorry we’ll get a laugh at your downfall, once again I wish you didn’t have to experience any BS delay.

“Amazingly enough, my package was on a ‘derailed train’ at 7:00am which was then listed as ‘late’ twice also at 7:00am and then at 2:37pm listed as ‘arrival scan’ package in transit. What the hell kind of derailments are they experiencing? One wheel comes off the track and they stop till some fat guy can lean on the train really hard till it pops back on? I agree with the majority of you, this is all bullshit. It’s UPS’s answer to being able to be tracked everywhere and be inefficient at the same time. Fedex does’t tell you “sorry you plane has crashed, package is late’ and then later that day say “your package is in transit by dolphin that picked it up during the water rescue effort.”

No idea what I’m talking about? The very short blog post that started it all and The follow up that started drawing hundreds of website hits within a few days