Category: Rant

I can’t believe IT departments allow Lotus Notes on their networks

I’m having problems installing new software in my CrossOver Office Windows (non-)emulator, so I’m trying to get a VMWare Windows virtual machine working. A coworker gave me an image that’s working for him, and suggested that I just use that.

First thing I did was delete his personal account and create a new one for me. Then I copied over my .id file from ./.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/data/notes/data/[foo].id to the appropriate place on the virtual machine. And when I fire up Notes, it says has my id in the drop down, and I can log in with my current password. But when I click the “Mail” item, it shows me my cow orker’s mail box. Just in case you missed that, let me spell it out for you – I used my password and accessed his email.

I mentioned that to our sysadmin guy (who takes care of the local Unix servers, and helps us work around the stupidity of corporate IT who are responsible for the Windows boxes). He said yes, you can put your Notes ID file on a thumb drive, take it to any Windows box in the company, log in with your password and read the email of the person who owns that box. Is it just me, or that just about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Now, I don’t know if that’s a deficiency of Notes, or a deficiency of corporate IT, and I don’t particularly care. I’m just boggled.

But accepting that bogglement for the moment, does anybody know how to make Notes forget about the person who used to read Notes on this box and now doesn’t even have an account on the box, and allow me to read mine? The sysadmin says the only way is to remove Notes and reinstall it, but when I try that I get a Notes that doesn’t ask for any password and complains that the mail file wasn’t found when I start it.

I just don’t understand how people’s minds work

I got an email this morning to my waypoint generator email address asking where the person could get “waypoints for eastern Canada”. I asked if there was some specific problem with the waypoints that my generator provided? He responded that he couldn’t seem to get them to work with this list of three or four programs that he’d tried. I had never heard of them, so I looked up the ones I could find, and none of them said anything about supporting any data format that I provide in my waypoint generator (although one was listed as supporting GPX on the page that lists programs known to support GPX). I got the name of the data file that he’d produced from him and looked it up in the logs, and it appears that he’d generated a CoPilot file, a GPX file, and an AeroCalc file.

So it appears he was just trying random combinations of file formats and programs to see if he could magically find a combination that went together. I asked if that was what he was doing, and suggested he find a program that does what he wants and find what sort of data files it takes, he said that he was a pilot and a photographer, not a database expert.

I tried to explain that was like trying to open an Excel file in Photoshop, but I don’t think it’s getting through.

I guess I’ll never understand how people’s minds work. And I’m not entirely unhappy about that.

I need sleep

Last night I managed to lie down a bit between 1:30 and 2:30, and then from about 3:45 to 9:30, and I probably slept most of both those times. The rest of the time I was pacing around, sitting on the toilet, or doubled over in pain. I just could not get comfortable. The pain was low in my guts. I don’t think I over-ate or anything, so I don’t know what the problem is. But I can feel it coming back.

Is this a scam, or is Make Magazine a bunch of scumbags?

Today I got three identical notices saying that my “recent order/payment” for Make Magazine couldn’t be “completed because the credit card you supplied was not accepted by the credit card company”. Only one problem with that – I decided some time ago not to renew because I never read it. Well, if their business practice is to fraudulently charge credit cards, I’m pretty glad I didn’t renew. Fuckers.

Maybe it isn’t them. The customer support email is customerservice@espcomp.com, which is not an address that I immediately associate with the magazine. On the other hand, they did have a the credit card number of an old card, the one I probably did use for that subscription.

I wonder if the Attorney General’s Office is interested in fraudulent credit card charges?

Yeah, that makes sense

For years now, my employer has not allowed ssh out their firewall. But they do have a telnet relay where you telnet to a particular server in the DMZ, and then telnet from there outside. Yeah, believe it or not, they think ssh isn’t secure (or more likely, have never heard of it because it’s not part of a default Windows installation) but telnet is ok. Of course, imap, pop and nntp aren’t allowed either. Heck, even DNS isn’t allowed – you can’t resolve any external domain names from internal machines.

And because I don’t run a telnet server on my home server, I have to telnet to their relay, then telnet to a friend’s server, and then ssh from there. But that’s what I go through in order to access my home email, Usenet, check files on my home server, and do a million other things.

Today I got the word – no more telnet access unless you can make a business case for it. The smarmy email from corporate IT says “please try to find a more secure means of communication”. Well, sure, I’d happily switch to a more secure means of communication IF YOU HADN’T FUCKING BLOCKED THEM ALL AT THE FIREWALL.