$250,000 Bounty

Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars is the bounty Microsoft has placed on heads of the people who created the Conficker worm. (1)

I write that to illustrate the seriousness of this worm, which has apparently infected as many as 15 million PCs worldwide. (2)

It uses a flaw that Microsoft patched in October 2008, but as of last check, 30% of PCs have not yet installed this patch. (3)

On April 1, the virus is instructed to ask for instructions from its creator. We don’t know what it’ll be told to do — perhaps nothing. Perhaps something big. (4)

Don’t get caught up in it.  Pop over to a free online virus scanner, like Windows Live OneCare or Trend Micro HouseCall. Those sites should work for you, but I’ve heard reports that Conficker can prevent you from accessing sites like that. If you can’t do any of the free online scans out there, I’d be very suspicious. You could be infected. In which case, you’ll want to use another computer to find a Conficker removal tool (like Symantec’s).

You don’t want stuff like this on your computer, where it can be monitoring everything you do (grabbing your passwords, getting your bank account numbers, etc.)

Find it if you have it, my friends. Kill it if it’s there.

MacBook Pro

15" MacBook Pro

So, I’m crazy.  I just got done cleaning up my old MacBook, and I just went and ordered a MacBook Pro.

(The good news is, I’ll be able to hook the two up via FireWire and transfer all my settings, accounts, and data between the two.  There’s a great migration wizard in Mac OS X.)

Why did I go and purchase such an expensive, albeit beautiful, piece of hardware?  Power.  I’ve pushed this old MacBook now close to three years, and it’s served me well.  Very well, in fact.  And it’s still in great condition.  But truth be told, it chokes on processor intensive stuff, and I do like to play around with high definition video and high resolution photography.

And I can’t forget that I’m going to invest into an HD camcorder before too long, which, with its 24Mbps and 1080p resolution, would wreck this old notebook.

That, and it’s pretty.  And LED-backlit display and a unibody aluminum enclosure.  Sold.

I took the Pro over the standard new MacBook because of the higher power video card, as well as the extra screen real estate (13.3″ vs. 15.4″).  Trying to future proof myself a bit and get another 3 years (or more) from this next machine.

Specs
2.53GHz Core 2 Duo (Penryn) with 6MB (!!!) L2 cache on a 1066MHz bus, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD, 8x Dual-layer Superdrive, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M 512MB GDDR3, Wireless N, Bluetooth 2.1, Gigabit Ethernet, multi-touch glass trackpad.

I feel pretty set.  I might bump the hard drive to 500GB or more later, but for now, this makes me pretty happy.  Can’t wait until it arrives on Friday.

What happens to this 2006 MacBook?  Haven’t decided.  I might sell it, but my brother could use a portable computer, and I might give it to him to use for school.  (He has an impressive 3.06GHz 24″ iMac, but that’s obviously stationary.

Yellowstone 2008 – October

Sorry I’m so late with this one, guys.  Things have been hectic with work, and I actually forgot to do this altogether.  Enjoy:

-Michael

Thinner

So, in a bit of happy news, I’ve finally gotten a hold of myself with the weight problem. I’ve been radically out of shape since 2006 (although I’ve gone through a back-and-forth struggle with this since I was young teenager), when I started eating out all the time with my friends. This was further exacerbated by languishing in Ft. Lauderdale for a year after that, when I peaked at 240 pounds around Christmas 2006.

Sometime in early 2007, I began staining all the wood in my father’s yard: this was no short, easy task, since he decided to construct a split-level deck, complete with banisters and lattice around every edge. Add to that sectional roof over the hot tub, another sectional roof over the swing set (which was very high and long), five arbors, and a large plant shack — all of which had lattice — and, well, you can imagine what a task that was. Painstakingly coating every square inch of all that lattice took the better part of two months. I’m not joking! The actual boards of the split level deck only took two days, but all that other wood took forever. Parts of it required me to get up on a ladder for hours a day, for heaven’s sake. I got two things out of that: a nice tan, and 20 less pounds.

By the time I came out to Montana and went with Jared to Yellowstone in late-May 2008, I had gained a little back and was sitting at 225. After huffing and puffing the whole time, feeling like I was going to die on the Osprey Falls hike (Day 3, for those of you keeping score), I decided it was time enough for me to stop this nonsense.

After a month’s grace period, I joined the family in doing a sort of lax Weight Watcher’s program (with light exercise). This has worked very well: we’ve figured out how to eat in a satisfactory way and yet stay healthy. Since then, I’ve dropped another 42 pounds (and am now sitting at 183), and do I feel better than I have in a long time.

My target is 175 (or 170, depending on where I stand in terms of body fat), so I have a little ways to go yet, but I’m very hopeful that I’ll make that before Thanksgiving. Then I just need to be careful through the holidays.

I just wanted to throw that out there because I’m pretty pleased with what’s happened. I’m not endorsing any kind of diet program or anything, but I do want to make it plain that I credit Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with helping me with the willpower aspect of this regiment. There’s no way I could normally do something like this, but after seeking Him in prayer repeatedly on the matter, I do feel He has blessed me in this endeavor, and I am also confidant that through my faith in Him, that I’ll maintain a much healthier lifestyle than I have in the past. Amen to that.

In any case, we have just completed another visit to Yellowstone with an old family friend. Just a quick day trip in the northern part of the figure-8 loop, with notable stops in Norris Geyser Basin and Mammoth, a couple of places that weren’t explored in any detail in the last two trips from this year.

Pictures and video to follow.

Other interesting miscellany:

1. Sam Adams’s Octoberfest is pretty decent.
2. Zondervan’s Archaelogical Study Bible is very cool. I’m not a huge NIV guy, but this edition is quite spectacular.
3. The Heroes Season 1 (Blu-ray) boxed set is amazing.
4. I ordered the Elgato Turbo.264 encorder. Review coming next week.
5. The Canon Vixia HF10 has dropped to $700.

-Michael

Still Alive

I live. I’ve just come to realize that I desperately need to time manage my life a little better. With any luck, I’ll get myself organized and get back to my pointless blog posts before long. In the meantime, why isn’t there an option to put mini-eject icons on disk images (or drives) in OS X so I don’t have to drag them down to the trash can? Am I the only one who would find that useful?  Here’s what I mean:

I realize you can option-click (or right-click) on the drive or image and select eject from the secondary menu, but having a little icon like that would be way faster.

-Michael

Gaaah! Going Blu!

So, I bit the bullet finally and just ordered a PS3. It’s sort of a gift to myself (as if I deserve one, hehehe).

I’m excited to get into Blu-ray — in fact, I just switched my Netflix subscription over to Blu-ray, so that they’ll send me those whenever the titles in my queue are available in that format.

I’ll have some initial impressions after I get it this Friday.

-Michael Eric Brown

Firefox Success

Congratulations to the folks over at Mozilla for their success at setting a Guinness World Record: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/.

8,002,530 downloads!!!

-Michael

Yellowstone 2008 (June)

Finished editing the video from our weekend trip to Yellowstone. (This time, I went with my family.) The good news is that I was able to do the two trails that I was unable to do last time when I went with Jared and my brother due to bear management: Fairy and Mystic Falls.

That’s largely the focus of this video, even though there was more than that to our trip. (We spent quite a bit of time hanging out in West Yellowstone, MT — the town — and we also did the very scenic drive from Canyon to Tower through Dunraven Pass. Sadly, none of this ended up in this video. That stuff just didn’t fit well here.)

Enjoy:

-Michael Eric Brown

Back from Yellowstone…

Whew, it’s hot. Funny how much different the weather is from month to month. Last time I was there, it was snowing like crazy and we were all freezing. This time, I actually had to use sunblock (for the first time in many years — I have olive skin and don’t burn very often).

Anyway, pictures and video to follow soon.

-Michael Eric Brown

Boston Celtics – NBA Finals 2008 Champions

Yeah, so this is a couple days after the fact, but I’m going to go ahead and post this anyway.

Boom!  The Game 4 miracle comeback was when they really won the series.  Here’s the wallpaper from NBA.com commemorating that game:

I couldn’t have thought of a better consolation prize for the Superbowl.  Thanks guys!

-Michael Eric Brown