TMI….

Sometimes there are things you just shouldn’t know…. don’t want to know… wish you didn’t know. Oh well…

We are coming up on the three month anniversary of our hack attack. To date, the FBI has done diddly squat, and now I know more about George than I think I ever want to know. I knew he was a member of the 2600 guild. I knew that he had some pretty good tricks up his sleeve. I know he is the fastest network admin that I have ever seen in my life.

For example, I had him run me to the store because my pickup is acting up again. I get what I need, head back to the car and he is all kinds of antsy. I ask what is wrong and George asks if we are done. I mention that I have one more stop, but it could wait if it was necessary. George nodded and hands me his phone. Kevin had called. Our firewall at work had been breeched. So, we headed back to the office. My computer was shut down already, so I wasn’t worried about that. However, until he dealt with the hacker, I couldn’t get back online. So, I went back to the storage room and cleaned.

I came out because I could hear him talking in a loud voice into his phone. One look at his face, and I went back to my cleaning. About 40 minutes later, he came in and I asked what was wrong. Seems that whoever has been hiring hackers hired one of his fellow 2600 members. Someone he personally knows. Now, the guy didn’t realize who he was being hired to hack. So, that pissed them both off. I think they had some sort of hacker fight, because George was growling and working on his computer. Then I heard him say “Goodbye &())(*_)(^^!!!!” as he hit a series of keys. When I asked him what that was about, he said he had just gotten rid of the hacker. I didn’t get a better explanation, because the phone rang. Apparently, it was the hacker he had just disemboweled.

At that point, I waved goodnight to George and left him to his phone conversation. Pete met me for dinner and while talking about our day, I realized that Pete knows more about George than I do. Geeze!!! Pete really respects George for his ethics. Said that George could have been a lot nastier and has the capabilities to do so. Also that George use to be some sort of bad ass in the military. hmm…… Guess I aught to be good…

Meanwhile, I am bored silly with my latest class. Pete promised me a trip to the mountains if I’m good and manage to pass the class without screaming. I’m working on it.

OH!!!! Mustn’t forget the movie we watched. Demolition Man. Sylvester Stallone, Wesly Snipes… Oh my god it was a riot. Sandra Bullock singing commercial jingles……. LOLOLOLOL!!!!!

La-La-la-La-Laaaa…. I’m on the Dean’s List!

GeekgURL has a 4.0 average! Yes, I made the Dean’s list. Pete was so proud of me, he to us out to dinner at this fantastic seafood place. Oh My Gods it was good!!! I pigged out on shrimp, scallions and lobster.

George and Kevin are acting like proud brothers…. all their fault that I’ve done so well in class.

Meanwhile back at the job,…. the hackers are still circling the wagons… um… the office. The FBI didn’t do squat. Or, if they did, they just hit one set of hackers. We had another attack last night. George is just plain tired of it. He shuts off everything he can and then treble firewalls the rest. He sets the alarms and then off he goes. In the morning, he clears the files, checks on the computers and fixes any damage the hackers may have done. He is really tired of this.

What we aren’t certain of is whether the network trunk line going down was due to the hackers messing up or just some farmer hitting a line with a backhoe. We may never know. All we had was nearly a day of downtime and a week of repairs after that.

Sure hope whoever it is that is paying the hackers runs out of money soon! Or, that they get caught.

Oh….. and as a final note,…. Mr. “I can’t remember how to clean my cookies” called again. 400th time! since I started working!!!

Back to school

Good thing I like him… Pete and George were talking and the two of them ganged up on me… About college. Granted, Pete has an unfair advantage. He is a college professor. Don’t know how I missed that at first. I guess I just figured he was a high school teacher when he said he taught. Never asked where… But George did! (sigh….) Pete picked me up at work one afternoon and George started talking to him while I got ready. George found out more in 15 minutes than I had in five dates! Pete teaches political history, and governmental studies at the college. Which is why I didn’t run into him when I was taking my accounting class.

This of course lead to a conversation as to why I hadn’t gotten my degree… Now they are trying to talk me into getting a Bachelors in Business management. I’m still trying to resist.

I also learned a lot about George listening to the two of them talking. George did stuff in the military, which I suspected he was in, but never had any conformation. He and Pete were talking about the job George had last month. The one where the government was milking techs for information and not paying them. It was this whole scheme where they’d call you up, and give you a few trial jobs as part of the interview process… You’d fix the tech issues and then have an interview. Next thing you knew, after maybe 20 hours of work, you’d be waiting to get a phone call saying you had a job…. Instead, you got a call saying “no thanks!”.  George billed them for 50 hours with most of the the work done on this virus, Ghost.rat. They did the whole “yeah, get the contract signed and paide at the end of the month…” I don’t think he even got home before they called him and said “thanks, but no thanks!” Oh he was furious. Once again, there was military crap that he couldn’t talk about and that kind of thing, but oh… He was so angry. The only good part of the whole deal is that he made a patch for the virus, but didn’t give them all of the documentation. This way, they can’t do anything but let his repair work. No source code to play with or anything else. So, if Ghost.rat  eats them for lunch, they are just screwed.

The other thing going on around here is an effort by George and Kevin to revamp the business. Repairs are going down the tubes. People rather just throw things away than fix them. Expecially if the fix is going to cost almost as much as a new computer. The guys are trying to figure out how to make the business work without the repairs section bringing in as much revenue.

argh……

rePete or is that Repeat?

I haven’t posted much, because I feel like I have nothing new to say. Gads, that sounds lame, but it is true.

Viruses… I am still doing all the low level tech work because George is gone so much of the time lately. He’s up working with this company that has a defense service contract about 100 miles from us. George actually got ahead of the big boys on this monster and now he is being tapped to help kill it. Makes me really wonder what George did before he ended up here. Oh well, I’ll never know. Not unless I get George really drunk… (ha! like that will ever happen)

Frustrating part is that George can’t talk about a lot of what he is doing because it is “classified” stuff. sigh… No juicy stories… pout. I’m not sure what is irritating him more. The work, the stupidity of the people he’s working with, the hush hush games or the virus. Either way, he is antsy as all hell when he goes up and must call me 8-10 times a day while he’s gone. Mostly to let off steam. Last week he called and asked me if I had those laptop parts yet. I said “Huh?” because I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he said, “You know, the one for the Yarr’s computer.”  The Yarr’s have a desktop pc older than dirt, which is when I figured that he wanted to come home. I replied that I had it and he had better get back quick, because they wanted it yesterday! George then said he’d be back in 2 hours. Found out later that he’d had enough bullshit, and needed a way out. Whee!!!

George left this morning in the snow, and I’m sure I’ll hear from him once or twice before the day is over. This is one job I just wish was over and the invoices paid. Over 75 hours logged and not a dime yet, because it is a sub-contract. grrrr.

Our other two techs, Dan and Kevin have only been working part time. Not enough work. The only reason that I still work full time is because George is out of the office so much that someone has to answer the phones. Hughes, our competition we love to hate has closed his shop. Still working from home, but no more storefront. They had a picture of the guy in the newspaper rewiring a phone system. Oh my! What a mess… George figures it will be about a month before they call us in to repair his “repair”.

Then there is Pete. sigh…… Ah, the way to a g33kgURL’s heart. He likes that I’m computer savvy. That I have a brain and I’m not afraid to use it. We went to the local bookstore’s chess night last week. He played. I watched. It has been way too long since I played chess. I could have sat down and played with the beginners, but it was nice to just watch. Afterwards, we went out for chinese.

Mr. Clark likes Pete too. I guess that is a bonus as my sister and brother suspect him of some dire deed. Can’t figure that one out, but neither one really likes him. Oh well. They aren’t dating him.  Maybe it was the fact that the other day I missed a family dinner because Pete and I were too busy smooching on the couch!   Oh well. Don’t care. And for the record, this blog is staying G rated. I so am not publishing my love life online.

Install goddess-hood!

We got this laptop in a few days ago. Totally virused and the owner wanted a new operating system on it. No one had time to do it what with the work load we’ve had. The owner called and asked how it was going. I didn’t want to lie, but said that it was being worked on and should be ready by the weekend if all went well.

I gave George an update when he came in that evening and he said that starting tomorrow, I could back up all the data and start working on the computer. I flustered. He said I could do it, as I’d done it on my own machine. He had me there. So, I got started on copying the data to these little thumb drives that Patriot makes. 8gb in a drive the size of my thumb joint. The guy had about 14gb of data on this thing. I got it done and then told George it was ready for him to put on the new operating system.

George laughed and told me to get on with it.  huh??? George smiled and told me I could do it.  yeah, right! He said he’d walk me thought it, but I had to do everything.  Okay…. The guy wanted Fedora 10 on the laptop. I got on the web, and went to the Fedora project page. I started downloading the iso image and answered a few calls while that was going on.

Then, I burned a cd of the iso image. George just smiled. After that, I checked to see if the laptop could boot from CD and then booted the disk. Up it came, and I did the install. It was a LOT easier than I figured it would be! After I got the basic install done, I got the updates and then loaded some of the programs on that were needed like Open Office, Gimp, Scribus and such. Then I re-installed his data, restored his bookmarks on Firefox and his email on Evolution. Wow that one was easy! Everything worked!

Today, the guy came to pick it up. (a 7 on the cute meter!) He was very happy with it and told me to give the tech his thanks. I said, “Your’re welcome.” and he gave me a puzzled look. I then had to explain that I was the tech who did the work. Oh was he surprized. He paid his bill and even gave me a $5 tip! Wheeee!!! I could get use to this.

What I didn’t know was that George and Dan were watching from the breakroom. After the guy left, they teased me about flirting with the customers! argh…. However, even their silly Boyz behaivor couldn’t spoil my day. I wouldn’t share my tip either!

Wheeeee!!!!

ps…. George wants me to go for my A+ exams now…..

Ummm…..

The computer ate my homework?

I lost the story in a handbag?

I was lost on a blind date?

I couldn’t come to work because I didn’t have anything to wear?

Ok, fine. I fell off the blog wagon. I’ve been working my butt off, and barely remembered to call my mom or my sister for the last month. Gahhhhh!!!

We did the worst job I have ever worked on in my life last week, and we are still trying to finish up all the bits. It wasn’t difficult in many ways. It was just horrid because of all the things that were done wrong. Things that we had to fix. And yes, it was our favorite competition. Hughes.

They did a job for a non-profit group. Six months later and lots of tears, one of their volunteers told the boss about us. George bid the job at 4 hours. It took 8. On the day after Christmas. This is just a partial list of what we found and fixed:

• used boxes with reused double sided sticky tape. It still had paint on it from another job!
• Bad wiring!!! OMG’s. You know, the jacks have a wiring guide on the side. They didn’t follow it! Crossed wires that wrapped around other wires and cut wires because they used a pocket knife instead of a punch down tool!!!
• a phone jack splitter and phone jack used to splice phone cable together!!!!
• Cat 5E jammed in a triple loop inside of a wiring box. 4 strands in one box and 2 in another. Some of the wire was so tight, that it was bent in half!
• wall plates not mounted.
• extra cable race-empty!!!!!
• boxes not wired.
• 4 wires where 1 was needed
• 1 wire where 4 were needed

Oh it was a mess. I knew things were bad when George started cussing in Russian. He was so pissed. Worse yet, Hughes charged this group over $1300! George gave them the non-profit rate and the whole repair cost them $350. Plus, it was done and tested on time. The head of the charity was so shocked that she about cried. Didn’t know what to think. He still fumes every time he drives by the place.

Mr. Clark is no longer mad at me for fixing him. He still hollers at me when I am in the shower, but he also knits my hair when we snuggle up in bed.

Oh, and it’s movie night again. George and my brother are coming over tonight.  I think we are watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.

Domestic Goddess Where Art Thou?

All I wanted to do was make a cake. A birthday cake. It’s George’s birthday next week, and I figured that I’d make a cake, stick it in the freezer, thaw it the day before and then have it ready for the big day.

I’ve discovered that I am far better with computers than I am with cakes. So far I have a very interesting brownie sluge thing in a pan. High at one end, flat in the middle and burnt on the bottom. I’m calling Kelly once she is off work to see if she’ll make the cake. If I ask my mom, she will take things all the wrong way. I don’t want to date George, just work with him. sigh…

Work finally mellowed out this week. George has a side job doing a brochure for a local group in town. He’s been working on it the last two days. Lots of cussing and swearing when the graphics program ate his work.

Meanwhile, I’m adding in data to Evolution. That’s my email/calendar program. Pretty cool. I also got my first side job editing a website. Not a very difficult one thank goodness. It is a WYSIWYG site. (what you see is what you get). I was amazed at how easy it was. Wheeee!

Oh… Saw the handsome giant again. Oh my…

A quiet day

Once again, I was the only one in the office on Thursday. Jake, Kevin and George all had jobs that kept them out and about all day. Wheeee….

I expected the phone to ring off the hook. It didn’t. I figured that there would be people dropping by as they had last week. Nope. It was almost too quiet. I have to admit that I finished my work and then curled up on the chair in the brake room. I read my book for most of the afternoon.

When George finally got back to the office, I told him that I aught to log in for only part of the day as it was so quiet. He looked at me and laughed. I was trying to be honest, and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t seeing that I felt I’d just goofed around all day. However, he explained that even though I sat here all day, I had been here and therefore should be paid for my time. Feels weird, but I guess I’ll log the whole day. Jake backed George up when he got to the office this morning.

Today we have been re-arranging the office again. We had lots of inventory come in and now we have to find a place to put it all. And here I thought we had enough room on those shelves!

Boring I know, but… it’s still better than flipping burgers!

Techs blowing in the Wind

George and Kevin went out on at least two service calls where the wind had blown over the customer’s antennas. I thought they were joking at first, but no! Winds hit nearly 45mph at one point. Of course in the middle of this, they had to go up to the NOC as well. (Network Operations Center) Pretty fancy word for a 10ft X 10ft Tuff shed. Kevin thought that they were going to have to go up the tower, but luckily, all they needed to do was reset the server. The T-1 hiccuped. Not surprised really. Any time the wind blows or there is too much rain, all the phones in town stop working. I think that Mr. Bell put in the original lines! I’ve learned that the company does almost as many phone line repairs as they do computer repairs because the local service is so bad. Wiring that looks like spaghetti or so brittle that when you go to hook it up, it turns to powder in your hand.

George had to crawl up a ladder at one house and ended up hanging onto the roof with one hand and adjusting the antenna with the other. Kevin held the ladder still. They finally called it a day when they put the ladder up at one house and before they could climb it, the wind knocked it off the building. When they came in, George’s hair looked like someone had given him electric shock treatments. It literally stood out at all angles.

Meanwhile, I got to chase papers all over the office. I had my window open to catch a bit of the breeze, and before I knew it the wind had literally swept my desk. It took me twenty minutes to pick things up. Oh, and ten to close the window. It stuck!

Today was the busiest phone day as well. All the monthly subscriptions were up for the wireless service and everyone was calling in for instructions on how to sign in again. I don’t understand what is so difficult. You pay for the Internet on a monthly basis. Every month you sign in just like you did the month before. Idiots! Or, as Jake says… “It’s a Pebdac error.” (problem exists between desk and chair) Jake’s other favorite is an Id-10-T error. (idiot) Yes, more of those fun acronyms. Whee…..

When I wasn’t chasing papers and answering the phone, I actually got a set of minutes typed and some figures loaded into a spreadsheet. Wheeee!

Now it’s off to bed with a good book. I’m worn out.