Annisa Played Rugby!

Annisa had a Rugby Game today, and she played nearly the entire B game.  Next week they travel to State College.

She is number 12, with the red forearms. 

Alan Jacobs: It's all About the Browser

Alan Jacobs: It's all About the Browser: "So it seems like the world is Browser happy these days. Here's my take on some of the more popular ones. Internet Explorer 9 - Fast an..."

Post to new Blog

When I post to my new blog, I'll almost always send a copy to this blog.  It will look like the one below.

Alan Jacobs: Running the Greenbelt

Alan Jacobs: Running the Greenbelt: "Today, Jody, Dan and I, ran most of the Greenbelt. We are in training for the May 1 Gettysburg Marathon. The Greenbelt is a 20+ mile..."

New Blog

At Isaac's we are slowly building an on-line presence for the company, which includes Facebook.  I need to contribute to our Facebook presence, so I started a new blog that I will use linked in to Facebook.  It will be a public blog, and it won't link to this family blog, or my photos.


You can see it here http://alanrjacobs.blogspot.com/

Mustering the depths of creativity, I named the new bog "Alan Jacobs".  If I could have managed this evolution better, I would have named my work blog The Sandwich Board and my family blog Alan Jacobs.  But sometimes things just work out in unexpected ways.


In general, The Sandwich Board will be my private family blog that isn't found when searched by search engines, and my new blog will be public, but not have obvious links back to our private family stuff.  The new blog will be a lot more boring!


It seems like a good plan to me, but it might involve twice the time to blog.  As it is, I sometimes go weeks without posting to ONE blog.  Oh my.  We'll see how it goes.


You can see on the new blog I already linked to my Jacobs Family Recipes blog, but that blog doesn't link back to our family blogs, so I think it's OK.


I'm probably taking this all much to seriously.

Rugby

I went to Annisa's rugby match today.  She is still recovering from an injury, but we hope she can play next week.  She was an awesome water girl!

Perigee full moon

Last night the moon was at it's closest point to the earth, due to it's elliptical orbit, and it was also a full moon. Evidently that's an infrequent event. This graphic shows the orbit, although the comparative sizes or the earth and moon are not accurate - they would be much smaller.

Here is how the size of the moon appears when photographed with the same lens, when it's near and far away.

My brother Paul took this fine photo of the Perigee Moon last night.

We saw it from our house, too.

One side of the moon always faces the earth. The other side is exposed to space, and never seen from the earth. Humans got their first look at the other side in the 60s, when we sent lunar orbiters around to take photos. The far side looks totally different from the earth facing side.

I think the far side gets hammered by space debris, while the side facing earth is somewhat protected. Or perhaps it has something to do with how the gravity of the earth affects the geology of the moon. I like the far side of the moon. It's wild and scary. Aged and wizened.  Gazing out beyond.

15 Mile Saturday

Today was a GREAT day for a run!  We stopped at my house during the run to refuel.

We saw this guy who was training for Boston.  This was his final 20 miler before the marathon.  Boston runners are elite.

These are the qualifying times runners need this year to get in to Boston.  I'm only an hour plus off pace!

Computer Virus Fun

I had a fun computer virus on a Windows 7 PC today!  It was delivered to a user in an email that looked like a UPS package tracking email.  When she opened it, her computer pretty much shut down, and when she tried to log on, she would get to a screen like this, except it said "CleanThis", instead of "ThinkPoint".

So we went to work!  Initially, I always assume the Virus has the upper hand, and it's best not to let it know that you are hunting it.  If they know you are on their trail, that just makes them mad.  Be stealthy!


Rebooting brought us back to the same useless screen, as did rebooting in safe mode.  Task Manager did not work, so we couldn't shut anything down.  We couldn't do anything on this computer.  It was dead.

I noticed that as we were shutting down, we received what appeared to be a legitimate Windows 7 message saying it needed to stop gog.exe in order to shut down.  A clue!

We restarted in safe mode with command prompt.  Regedit brought up the registry editor, but I didn't think to search that (missed opportunity).  Typing explorer.exe brought up Windows Explorer!  I searched for gog.exe and found it in the user's profile under "Roaming".  We opened that folder, and I created a new text file called gog.ex3.  Then I renamed gog.exe to gog.old, and quickly renamed gog.ex3 to gog.exe.  It's possible this would give us the advantage in the battle for control of the PC.

The theory is to hogtie the virus by removing the "exe" extension, but replace it with a lobotomized exe file that can't do anything.  The lobotomized exe file looks like a legitimate part of the virus, just in case any of the other pieces of the virus are trained to look around and repair itself.

We restarted in to normal mode, and everything looked fine, except the background was black.  This was a sign we had scored a hit, and we could begin coming out of the shadows!  

I quickly started Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), and updated both successfully.  This was a sign that we were gaining the advantage, because good viruses block those updates.  Obviously we had wounded our foe, but may not have delivered the fatal blow.  We decided it was safe to step out in to the open and show our weapons.  It was time to go for the kill!


We ran concurrent scans with Malwarebytes and MSE.  MSE found something "severe" and removed it.  Success!  I know the official word from experts is a computer should never have more than one security package at a time, but I often run two, with nice results.  Who's to know?  I'm not really an expert, so I'm allowed.

Then we browsed to the folder where the offending gog.old resided, and deleted that, and three other files that had the same "modified" date as the original gog.exe.

We did not remove our neutered gog.exe, which is an empty text file.  My theory is that a trojan mother might still be sleeping deep in the computer, and her job is to wake up periodically and see if gog.exe is there, and if it isn't, she birth's another, reinfecting the PC.

So that's my story of the day!

So, beware of opening tracking emails that appear to be from

or your computer could be recruited in to service in a worldwide botnet!

March Activities

In 51 photos

Japan

My running buddy, Dan, has a daughter who recently went to Japan to live for a few months.  She was in the earthquake, but is safe.  She wrote about it in her blog.

http://bear-in-japan.blogspot.com/

The IT Manager's job is never done!

This is the coupon dispensing kiosk in Giant on Centerville road this morning, being attacked by malware.  I sure know what that's like!

Running in the Rain!

Warning:  this post is long, and it really has no redeeming value.
My friend Dan and I continue to train for the Gettysburg Marathon.  Today's goal was a 15 mile training run.
It was raining, but we agreed that maybe it will be raining on Marathon day, so we need to train in all weather conditions.  Plus, we aren't wimps.

Compared to Jody.  He's a wimp.  He originally said he would run with us, but then was too afraid of the rain.  He's a wimp.  And his indoor cat's a wimp, too.

We ran through Landisville and Salunga.

We left the towns and headed out on to the open road.  This is a video of us running on Harrisburg Pike.  It's not exciting.  It's just us running.  But that's what it feels like.  Except it goes on like this for two and a half hours.

We saw Sea Gulls.  Mom and Dad, have there always been Sea Gulls around here?

Dan described conditions as "not ideal", "challenging" and "harsh".

We saw these chains at a bridge.  My guess is they are to keep animals like cows from going under the bridge.  It just seems like an elaborate setup for that.

We went up Prospect Road by Groff's farm.  Again, this is just a video showing running.  I suggest you skip it.  You'll never get that couple of minutes back - they'll be wasted forever.

We look happy, but we weren't.  It was a difficult day.  But this picture shows a couple of half-century aged men giving it the gass around mile eleven.  Ha!  Take that, world!

 

After running thru Silver Spring, we both just about had enough.  We decided not to do the last mile, and instead ran the direct route home along the row of trees beside Ivy Drive.  We have a video that captures the excitement.

If you are still reading, then you have almost as much endurance as Dan and me.  Congratulations!  Here's our route summary, as recorded with Endomondo on my Blackberry.  As we stepped on our driveway, the phone robot announced "Fourteen Miles!"

When we got home I roasted a chicken.

The Quickening

You can say you knew them when.