Windows XP Is The Suck

It's funny how when I actually want to enjoy my computing experience, I always end up back on my laptop. I really am beginning to hate Windows products. It's not a good thing. I have been asked by my employer to persue my MCSE certification. And if I expect a raise anytime soon, I had better do it. So even as I study for this exam, I am reinstalling multiple times to pull together a usable installation.

I reinstalled XP a few days ago when Explorer.exe kept crashing on me. It had been several months since I had reinstalled, but in those past few months I have barely used that computer. After reinstalling, I was back to being stable again. I reinstalled all my various software like Spybot S&D, Kazaa, etc. Yet, my video driver just wouldn't take. I went out to VIA's website and got the latest and greatest driver, which turned out not to be right, and after a reboot I was back to the old "lack of color" display. From that point forward, I couldn't seem to shake this bad video driver. I would uninstall it, reboot, and it would be back in place. Thanks Microsoft! YOUR DRIVER HANDLING IS THE BIZOMB!

After about an hour of fucking with the video driver, it became aparent that I had other issues. Namely, that I had all ready been infected with Spyware (reguardless of Spybot's resident program running). After a few scans with Spybot, I still had not gotten it all, and Internet Explorer didn't "work" anymore. Now when I double clicked it, I got a big white window, and a loss of resourses. NEAT!

All I really needed to do was get to my mortgage information so I could pay my monthly bill. But I had stored that away in MS Access, and I hadn't loaded MS Office yet. So I grabbed the latest and greatest copy I have which is 2003 Enterprise Edition. After installing it, you are forced into an Activation. The activation tells me that I have used up all my lisences for that product. BUT ... we are a Microsoft partner ... and a training center. Shouldn't we have an unlimited number of activations? Aparently not. I guess I will uninstall Office and reinstall an older version like XP. So I start the un-install and I immediately get errors. At this point, I extend my left hand, and flip Windows XP the bird before shutting it down "improperly". Now I am formatting, and reinstalling again.

If I weren't studying for the Windows XP exam this week, I wouldn't reinstall it at all. It suck.

Current Mood: Frustrated
Musical Inspiration: Whatever I have on my Laptop. ;-)

SLUG-BUG!

I was rolling down a local road this morning on my way to work. Approaching me was a large furniture truck with one of those really big windows for a front windshield. In it, I see the passenger make eye contact with my Bug, and immediately lays a punch into the driver. He just about stood up to deliver the blow. The driver jerked the wheel, and the whole truck slid about a few feet into the shared turn lane and then yanked back into his own lane again. Man, I love this car. I start fights everywhere I go.

Okay, back to teaching Security Plus. Whee!

Current Mood: Tired
Musical Inspiration: Silence

The Knee Is Damaged

My wife went for her MRI yesterday. It would be her second MRI in two days. They sent her home the first time because they said her knee was jittering too much. The solution? Dope her up on a valium! So with against her doctors wishes, they prescribed her a single valium costing us only 6 bucks. Not bad. At that price, I should have gotten a couple for myself! So the next day, one hour before the appointment, we got her doped up and sent her back for more shots. While we aren't able to gain access to the MRI photos, I can show you her knee.


The Knee. 

And here is my artists rendition of what her bad knee might look like.


Artists rendition of the knee damage. 

Aparently, from looking at the MRI they can see that she has some signigant tears in her cartlidge. It's almost certain to require surgery. But, we have to wait until Monday before her Doctor can have a look and give a next course of action.

Dishing Out A Waste Of Time

I have thought a long while about creating a parabolic dish antenna for Wardriving. Having never attemped this before, I thought I would pull together some scraps and see what I could do. A few months ago I found this ugly table ornament at a thrift shop for two bucks. I grabbed it planning on ripping it apart and using it for an antenna. So I bolted a coat hanger onto it, and then seated half a cantenna on the end of my hanger, and pointed the can into the dish. The idea here is that the dish will catch the signals and the can will pick them up. It widens your signal grabbing area! Or so it goes.


The dish-tenna in all it's worthless glory! 

My dish probably wasn't curved enough, and I'm sure the physics were way off. I walked to the window in my living room to see if I could get a stronger reading with the antenna, vs. without it. As you might have suspected, I was better off without the antenna attached. It was actually distorting my signals and making things worse. I guess I will stick to my soup can for now. Just more research to put into this book that I will someday finish.

Vioxx Is Gut, Ja?

So I scored some Vioxx for my wife today. We bought her four pills a few days ago, because the insurance company was giving me shit. They charged us $17.99 for four pills. At two pills a day, that seems pretty high. But it's really not bad. It works, and $8.00 doesn't seem like expensive pain relief to me. But ... to keep buying it at that price might put us into the poor house. After a talk with one of the brighter pharmacists, we learn that my insurance company would rather deal you larger amounts at a time to save themselves a few bucks. So their deal is, $50 for 30 pills, at one a day. These are higher dosage pills, that our old insurance company refused to fill. So that's settled. We can expect to pay about $50 a month for the meds, unless they decide to lower the price of Vioxx. It still seems odd to me that the makers of Vioxx (Medco) are partnered with my health insurance company (United Health Care), and yet they can't come to an agreement on the Vioxx coverage. Assholes!

I was indeed stood up yesterday for my morning class. So I wasn't going to cry over it. I used the time to work on "my book", for which I rambled out almost two entire sections. One section describes how to create the poor mans cantenna. Another that I decided to write up rather on the fly was "how to hide" while wardriving. I have been doing a lot of running, hiding, and lurking in my wardriving adventures. Combining that, with what I have learned about human nature I think I have become pretty good at working into an environment and not get noticed. I am pleased with the way the chapter rolled out. If nothing else, there is a speck of humor in there as well.

I am holding to the promise that this book will be entertaining first, and educational second.

And now I will go back to slaving over setting up my class. After about two full days of working on it, I am still not done. I guess it does take three days to set up this five day class. But then again, it's Security+. Probably my favorite class to teach, so I will stop bitching.

Current Mood: Content
Current Blood Pressure Level: High! What the fuck? I ate healthy all day!
Musical Inspiration: Sarah McGlaughlin - My wife is playing it, and I actually like this girlie shit ... hell, I DOWNLOADED IT!!! So bite me you Limp Bizkit fanboy! :-)

A River Runs Through It

I have been feeling very out of shape lately. My blood pressure has been running wild. So I decided to start watching what I eat. Last night I tried to get some exercise by mowing the yard at top speed. That seemed to work. When I was done, I grabbed the weed whacker and kept moving. By the time I had finished I felt I had accomplished some good moving around because I felt exhausted. That seemed to raise my blood pressure, but then it generally falls after I rest a while.

So I went to Krogers and fought with them about my wife's prescriptions that they don't want to cover. Then I hit the produce section and picked out some snack-age. Banana's, a honey-dew, and four cans of "low salt" peas to put in my salads. Yummy. I had a salad for dinner and it was good. But I was still really hungry. Not wanting to ruin my active healthy day, I ate some Cheerio's with skim milk. Man am I healthy!

Now this morning I arrived in Tiffin. I had plans of back-packing into town between classes with my laptop in search of a hotspot somewhere. So as I drove in this morning, I had KisMac running, and I slowed down when I cruised through the populated parts of town. There are several public parks in this little town that would be great to camp out in. Unfortunately, none of them are close enough to an AP for me to leech in peace. It seems all I was able to find was residential access points. In this town, the public streets are very small, and houses sit pretty far off from the main road. That's a problem when you want to camp out for an hour or more and not be noticed. I seriously think I should write a chapter in my wardriving book on "not getting noticed". The more I wardrive, the more I sharpen my skills of not looking inconspicuous.

Now as I sit up here in this vacant building, I can actually hear the Sandusky river flowing to the North out the open windows. There has been a lot of rain in this area lately, and the river is running right up to the side of the winding road that leads into this complex. With my luck, these heavy torrential storms will begin just as I try to head out of here for a wardrive. Although, I have found that rain or snow can cover your windows, and keep people from looking in at you. And if you are parked at the side of the road, waiting, while it rains ... people assume you are waiting for the weather to let up before you move on. While I might not get any exercise today, I might just gather some book material!!

Oh, and it's now 10:35AM. Class starts at 10:30AM. Are my students showing me up? That would suck considering that I don't have class again until 5:00PM this evening. I need to find a bar in this town.

Current Mood: Bored
Musical Inspiration: Country Joe and The Fish - I'm a Fixin' To Die Rag

Pain In The Knee

My wife woke up this morning with a nasty pain in her knee-cap. It's been there for about a week now, but this morning it was especially bad. Now we are in the ER awaiting X-Ray results. It's as good a time as any for blogging. I came prepared with a palm pilot since my laptop would never make it through the security here.

Wardriving Companion Wanted

Last night I really wanted to go on a wardriving expedition, but Discount Man wanted no part in it. He had homework he was supposed to be doing, but he didn't have the software he needed and my cable modem connection was fucked up as usual. So for a few hours I watched him struggle to download files of less than 100k, and I made several attempts to install OS's through Virtual PC on my Mac. I begged and pleaded to go out for coffee, or any other activity that might get us on the road. DM says he is just not up to driving me around and being my lookout. Understandible I guess, but one man wardrives just aren't much fun.

The Book

The longer I spend not working on my book, the more anxious I get to put something down. Looking at next weeks schedule it seems I will be driving out to Tiffin once again to teach A+ and MS Acess. I will of course have several hours of waiting inbetween classes, so perhaps me and Audrey (my lappy) will have to go for a spin through town. I should also be thinking about what I will say to my new boss on Friday.

My boss since the company merger put in his last day on friday, and they named his replacement that same day. My new boss, Kim, was previously the marketing and sales manager and is now the active training manager. I'm very pleased with the decision, and I think she will do much better than my old boss. In my short time working for him I watched him lose his cool on multiple occassions, and drive one staff member out of the company. Kim on the other hand seems to keep cool under crisis, and isn't afraid to bare her teeth. Seeing how she will be our mediator to upper management, I have a much greater confidence in my advancement (not to mention job security). I wasted no time asking for a meeting with her to discuss my "career path". In a very polite manner I said "give me something to teach and maybe some more money too". She was quite receptive to any ideas I might have about my 'advancement'. I meet with her next Friday to discuss the matter. Wish me luck!

Wireless Script Kiddies!

It won't be long before you will have punks screwing up your wireless networks. It was only a matter of time until someone figured out that you can jam a wireless network by sending endless frames into it. 802.11 works by process of "Collission Avoidance". Which means that one wireless card will not talk while another is speaking. So if one node "doesn't shut up", nobody can get a word in edgeways.

It's nothing technical. Nothing new. But I thought I would throw it out there anyway. You can read about it on AusCERT, that's "Australias Computer Emergency Response Team". They have rated this threat as "medium" which is one level higher than I would have rated it.

http://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=4091

SST-PR-1 Phenomenon

I started a KisMac scan on my iBook over lunch today. To my delight I started finding roaming beacons from the highway. It seems if you travel with your laptop open and a scanner running, you will find many of these wireless devices all with the same name.



I have never found a satisfying answer to my question of, "what the hell are these?". They pop up everywhere, with different MAC addresses, and it seems to be that they are coming from random trucks. I did some Googling and found several different running debates on just what these are. Many theorize that it's a sears repair truck/van. "SST" stands for "Sears Technician Truck", or at least that's ones guess.

Others theorize that this just happens to be the default name given to a device installed in trucks to relay information to the trucking company when they come back within range of the access point. When found, these WiFi devices are always set into Ad-Hoc mode (one wireless card to another, without an Access Point), and they always seem to have WEP enabled. It seems to me that these are not only in use by Sears.

Another guy thinks that your wireless device may be picking up these signals, and then broadcasting them back around, and keeping them in circulation. In other words, a truck might pass a Sears van and pick up the access point named "SST-PR-1". It would then make attempts to find this network, or start advertising this network itself, even though it has long lost touch with it. The idea being that one truck might be in range of the access point, while others are just outside of range. By acting as a repeater the truck could carry the signal a little further, so the other trucks could be part of this network for a data transfer. Interesting theory. Here are "Greg's" words which I copied from a Wardriving forum.

Your laptop is repeating a signal that it at one point DID come across but has since lost. In fact, case in point, if you "hibernate" your laptop you will occasionally find that pre-existing networks still show up on your laptop / handheld strong as ever... This phoenomenon can also be exhibited after powering your laptop off and back on again while it attempts to re-acquire lost signals.

All of these are good theories, but as of yet, this seems to be all they are. People keep dismissing the claims and saying "it's a Sears truck, stop investigating", but from what I have seen, there has to be other possibilities. I have chased "Yellow" trucks, as well as "Wal-Mart" trucks that emitted this same SSID. Have you all found anything interesting?

Tired As Hell

Discount Man stopped by last night. He brought his bosses laptop with him, which happened to be a new Thinkpad. It was a lot nicer than the junkers that the State of Ohio got stuck with. For the record, the model they had was the G40. It's uber-shitty. The model DM's boss picked up is a T41. The T41 was impressive. Thin, lightweight, decent processor, etc. My only complaint? It's just as ugly as any other Thinkpad. I know that the average PC user is not concerned about appearance, but I mean ... come on. You could at least try to make a new laptop look appealing. Look at any other manufactur's laptop and it will look "sleeker" or more attractive. I am not down with the "flat black look". DM complained that his boss kept leaving 'greasy marks' on the wrist rest area. This was a complaint that the State users had too. Any kind of smudges, or greasy hand marks gleam like mad on that flat black matte colored plastic. Crap, crap, crap. I would still buy an iBook. :-) Go on, flame me.

We had a decent night of exchanging music, bullshitting, and the usual basement activities. At one point, my Pet Monster came down, and sat down with DM. They get along most of the time, but my Monster was a little grouchy from being couped up in my car all day. Some words were exchanged. I think DM said something about my Monster's mother, and they were on the floor fighting like children. Rather, DM was on the floor being beaten like a child. I snapped a few pictures of the event, and you can see them in my Monster's Blog.

I got a hold of two albums that I didn't have thanks to packetnews.com. After sampling them, I was glad I hadn't run into the record store to buy them. Robert Miles latest album was just sad. It makes me mad because his second to last album (Organik) was amazing. I also picked up an incomplete copy of Death In Vegas's latest. Horrible. Simply horrible. Thanks to file sharing, I saved a few bucks on two awful albums. :-) And so, the only good music I have picked up lately is the Daft Club album, and some "Scissor Sisters" tunes that DM gave me. This group is bizarre. You need to go download some.

I also learned something interesting about Access Points today. Every once in a while I come across a "Hidden SSID". I hear that if you are watching when a client connects (which is rare) you will see the SSID exposed over the wire. Kismet claims to pick up on the SSID probe, and report it. KisMac, aparently, also does this. The chances of being around when a client associates to the access point are slim and none, so I asked the KisMac mailing list if it were possible to spoof a "de-authenticate" frame to the Access Point, which would effectively disconnect the client and force them to reconnect (which you could then watch and pick up the SSID). It sounded a little far-fetched. But it turns out that this has all ready been thought of, and is a feature built into KisMac. So now I need to go find a hidden SSID and crack it for documentation purposes!!

Okay, I need to go clean up the mess I made making dinner for the kids, and then crash out a for a bit.

Ancient History

So around noon the other day, my wife says "wanna go see a movie? I need to get out". I was a little stir crazy too, so I recommended we check out the Ohio Historical Society (the museum). We haven't been there in years and the weather was perfect for the outdoors "Ohio Village". The village is a small town constructed to mimic the later 18th or early 19th century. It has actors wandering around their shops or homes in character. Some of them were restuffing their matresses, washing their clothes, mowing the yard, etc. Others would tell you all about their course of business, and how miserable life was. The kids were bored, but I found it pretty interesting. At the "Doctors Home" we were greeted by a Butler who explained that it was common courtesy to give him a calling card so that he could let the Dr know that you had arrived.

Calling cards, as he explained were like the modern day business card. It was a heavy stock card with your name on it, and maybe something decorative. But that's all. When you visited your friends, you would hand the servants your "calling card" and they would take it to the home owner. The person would then turn up, or "turn down" corners of the card and send it back to you to let you know if they wanted to see you or not. It made me want to print up some "calling cards". I have business cards, but I hate them. The address is wrong, my e-mail address has changed, and they are pretty worthless. Since I hand write everything on the back anyway, I am thinking about having some printed up. Nice ivory cards, with simply my name across the middle. Classy, right?

The Forums Die

Just as quickly as they appeared, thebroken forums have vanished. We don't have to wonder why. Certain parties found the need to register dozens of names, and create endless retarded topics. The moderators were aparently not ready for such a rush of moronic activity, and could only stand back and watch the forums go to hell in a handbasket. The end. It's unfortunate, because this kind of reaction may have just delayed the release of "the real forums", if not cancelled the release all together. Time will tell. Hopefully next time they do something with the forums, they will send out a newsletter like they promised. ;-)

Another Book Idea

After working on the Gloop website a couple of hours, I decided that I should write up a cook-book section in my Home Invasion book. The recipes? Home-made Cantennas (that work better than store bought), and how to alter a network card for an external antenna (without breaking your card). I have modified a couple of cards now under different brand names, so I can include lots of pictures in the book. In fact, I did a short video with my buddy Discount Man that was never released by "thebroken". I may just make that available on Gloop.net, and use some footage as illustrations in my book.

Would you all want to see Gloop videos? I'm not trying to make my own "thebroken" following. In fact, if we do a show, I plan on appealing to what I consider the "technically inclined". A while back I put together a rough 'script (?)' for the show, and passed it onto Discount Man (who would appear in the show) and Chuckman (the producer). Chuckman recently called Discount Man and asked when we were shooting. I guess I kind of dropped the ball on the project, because I didnt have the time to spend on it. I would rather be working on my book. I'll see what you all have to say (leave me some comments). Would you be interested in "the Gloop Show"?

The Broken Forums Return

At some point, thebroken brought it's forums back. I missed the release, because it doesn't look like they sent out a newsletter as planned. Someone picked up on it pretty quickly, and registered all the old forum names. So now there are dozens of imposters, such as "Ray" who is not me. And there are all ready thousands of "how do I hack posts" to boot. I'm glad I am no longer a moderator. It looks like those new moderators have a lot of work to do if they plan on turning the forums around into something useful. I registered a new account "Ray Haque" and then decided that I really didn't want to put myself back into that chaos. I think I will just stand back and observe.

I also learned that TechTV was sold! I hadn't heard. I will keep my fingers crossed for Kevin. I'm sure G4 will keep him on board, and continue to run the Screen Savers show. It was TechTV's best show, and for many folks it was the only thing they watched. But now Kevin will experience a "merger" first hand. I'm betting it's the same kind of merger I am now part of. They call it a merger, but it's really an acquisition or a "buy out". The advantage of a merger is that employees who are kept on board will not lose things that they need like 401k, health insurance, etc. It also generally means "no pay cuts", which is nice. My heart goes out to the staff of techTV. They really have a family atmosphere around there, and that may be something they lose with G4.

Lastly, I forgot to mention some good news I got on Friday. I will be getting a new company laptop. From what I hear they are 2Ghz Pentium machines with some nice upgrades. Such as 512MB of RAM, and an 80 gig hard drive. These are a result of the complaints we had about not being able to set up classes easily. So now we can build our classes quickly, and store PC images on our 80 gig drives. It ought to be nice.

I also like that news because I had planned early on with my 'Home Invasion' book to demonstrate OS X as well as Windows hacking. I don't really have a decent Windows notebook around, so I have never done much with that plan. Having a PC with Windows XP ought to provide me with some new fun, and new material for the book. Time will tell though. I am not holding my breath waiting for these laptops to fall into my lap. Although, I heard one rumor that they laptops were all ready purchased, and had arrived. They just needed to be set up. Now, do Instructors such as ourselves really want someone setting up our laptops for us? First thing I'm gonna' do is wipe the partition table and make room for BSD. ;-)

A Long Friday

I hopped out of bed Friday morning and rushed to work. The plan was to pack a van with PC's and drive them to Cleveland for a class setup. Naturally, I get to work nice and early, and the van hasn't been rented yet. So by the time we ripped the seats out and hit the road, it was all ready about 11 in the morning. We drove to the old office to pick up duct tape, network cabling, etc. and find that we also have to take the student books for the class with us. We had all ready packed the van *FULL*. So we ended up taking the microsoft kits and whipping them overtop all the packed in junk. We made it fit.

Then we hit the road, me and Dustin. Dustin was the last instructor hired onto eKnowledge Concepts before we were merged with the larger company we now both work for. We typically work at different ends of Ohio so we have never really hung out. Seeing how we had a 3 and a half hour drive ahead of us, we did a lot of talking. Once we arrived, it would take us a good two hours to set up. And by then it was almost 4:30 in the afternoon. We still had to drive to another location, and set up another class.

So I asked Dustin, "do you ever expense your meals?". And he says "not really ... what did you have in mind? Hooters?". I didn't really want to go to Hooters. And I can't imagine expensing a check for Hooters anyway. So we hit Don Pablos. I went straight to the restroom to wash my hands, and he went straight to the bar. When I came back out Dustin was sucking down a tall dark mexican beer. "I'll have one of those!". It was nice to sit down and take a break. And drink a beer. When the check came, we suddenly realized that you can't expense a beer. The bartender was nice enough to take our drinks off the check, and split the bill. Good call. Nothing like a good meal, thats free.

Onto the next spot. We headed into Warrensville. It was only about a 45 minute drive. And then an hour or two to set up. And then a 4 hours drive home. In the end I walked in the door at about 10:30PM. I was supposed to hang out with the Discount Man, but I fucked that up. He ended up going frat party hopping, and I ended up going directly to sleep.

The New Gloop

When I completed the Gloop flash page a few months ago, I was pretty pleased with it. But it loaded very slowly, and it was a pain in the ass to update. Also, my interface sucked. People didn't like it. I decided my next website would be very simple. So simple, that I built it in Front Page. I'm not a big Front Page fan, but it lays tables out really nicely. And I can get back and forth to the actual HTML code pretty easily. The result was a quick, simple, and slick looking design that I can easily update.

This morning and this afternoon I rushed to finish it, so that I could replace the outdated flash site. Check it out. I wanted to put something out there with information about my projects and such.

I also got pretty bored, and made a new Blog for my Pet Monster. Rather, my Pet Monster made his own blog. You can find the link off to the left in my "friends blogs" bar. Enjoy. :-)

And now, I think I shall go to bed. My kids will be dragging me out of bed at 7:00AM to make them breakfast.

I've Been Probed (repeatedly)

As I sit here, typing to you, I am getting probed by ten different sources. As painful as that sounds, you can see no signs of penetration. I am teaching a Windows XP class all week. My students are learning XP on their new laptops. These Thinkpads all have internal wireless networking cards. So out of curiosity, I fired up KisMac and found ten different active probes. Neat.

Thinkpads suck though. I mean ... really. I think IBM gets FAR too much credit for these thick-ass paperweights. They have a good chunk of RAM in them, and Pentium 4 processors .... oh, and a DVD/CD-RW drive ... that's about it. What I don't like is the OVERSIZED power supply brick. It's huge. Or the sticky thing that they call a mouse. That thing is retarded. You have this tiny out of control erasorhead in the middle of your keyboard, and the buttons for it are under your palm. Who the hell designed this piece of shit?

In general, these laptops are UGLY. Big, thick, black objects. The only color on these junkers is the ugly IBM logo stamped into the corners. This is why I will never buy a Thinkpad. In fact, I think my next laptop will be an iBook. OS X and an iBook is just better in so many ways.

All you Thinkpad fanboys can bite me.

Daft Clubbin'

Last night I went out to see if any of my favorite artists were releasing anything new. I always start with Daft Punk. To my delight there was an album out that I don't have yet. It's called Datf Club. It's actually just a whole album of remixes, but they are GOOD remixes. It might as well be a brand new song collection because the remixes are so different than the originals. This album had been released before to anyone that bought the "Discovery" album. If you have that album, you get some magic key and a URL to go download the songs for free. For everyone else you will have to order this disc ... or "acquire" these songs. ;-) IT ROCKS.

Okay, lunch over. Back to work. *smirk*

Current Mood: Content
Musical Inspiration: Daft Punk - Daft Club (album)

Thanks!

First, I want to thank everyone for leaving me some comments about my book. It definitely drives me to keep working on it. I have some doubts about it ever getting published by a "real publisher", but what I am finding is that I can put together a pretty nice "on demand" published book for around (or less than) $20. That would be a black and white book, with a color *hard bound* cover. So if it comes to me having to publish my own book, it will still cost about the same to those who purchase it.

In the meantime, I am still learning, documenting, and recording my findings.

New Findings!

I had to drive up to the grocery Sunday night. I decided I would bring Audrey along (the laptop) and we would do some adventuring on the way there. It's been a while since I cruised my local neighborhood looking for networks, so it appears a few new ones have popped up. I was really interested in some classy apartments up the street from me because of the parking lot design. You drive into the middle of the complex, and apartments completely surround you from all directions. Its the perfect place to park and have fun. Although, I only found about 3 networks, and two of them were WEP protected.

I jumped onto the unprotected network which must have belonged to Shawn. How do I know? Because he named everything after himself.

• The Access Point - Named "SHAWN'S WIRELESS". Thanks Shawn.
• The Shared Items - Shawns Documents, Shawns Music, etc.
• The Filenames - Shawns Report on ... (you get the idea)

Shawn was sharing his entire C drive, and yet, had nothing interesting to share. I spent a good five minutes poking through his stuff, and even his music collection bored me. Did you know that some people actually like Tori Amos? I ought to have a talk with Shawn. Shawn, I will e-mail you later so we can talk about this. Or maybe I should message him through AIM. I have his screen name too.

NEXT! I started driving up the street and decided I would go to Krogers and get my food before doing any more snooping. As I drove along the store fronts of the strip mall connected to my grocery store, I found an access point. I parked my car to check it out. I had seen this unprotected access point before but from the other side of the parking lot. I had always wondered where the signal was coming from, and couldn't pinpoint it. It turns out I had found an Access Point belonging to a "C.D. Warehouse" store.

CD Warehouse is a shop that buys and sells music, video games, movies, etc. Their computer is apartently on a wireless network. This computer is the one behind the counter that contains all of their sales data, and inventory. I have always been curious about how the store does business, so I snooped a little.

I was able to easily locate their database (in some odd format) and many transactional records with Amazon (the online bookseller). It looks like Amazon and CD Warehouse do quite a bit of business together. Amazon will sell used items from their website, for which CD Warehouse has the inventory. It's not a bad business. What I found is that Amazon has a much higher cost per item than CD Warehouse does. What a racket. From looking at their sales records, I would say that CD Warehouse easily makes five to eight bucks per item, and doesn't have to maintain an online store.

I also found transaction records with items bought and sold for the past few months from online customers. Nothing to do with payment methods (no credit carrd numbers, etc) which was good. If I ever run into credit numbers,
I'm splitting. I do not want to go to Federal prison. :-) What I did find though was customer names, addresses, e-mail addresses, how they had paid, and what they wanted in the way of a CD, movie, etc. The data was a tab delimited file that was probably output from some odd database application. You have to love Microsoft Excel, which was able to import the data and arrange it very neatly into columns. What could I do with this information? Nothing. But it does give you an idea of "what people want". You see what you think. Below is an example of the unorganized mess of data. Some personal details edited out with *'s

cancelled 2002-02-24 14:16:31.0 700807248581 Eight Arms to Hold You [Audio CD] Veruca Salt 0207H565152 607703000124 6.99 2.29 1 9.28 02-24-2002:14-16-31 805613 b***@cfl.rr.com Bre-elle Ishtar Bre-elle Ishtar **** Harmon Ave Winter Park FL 32789-5420 United States 607703000124 standard
cancelled 2002-02-26 22:35:38.0 700104269601 The Secret of NIMH [DVD] (2001) Bluth, Don; Jacobi, Derek; Hartman, Elizabeth... 0125A712902 027616703729 12.99 2.29 1 15.28 02-26-2002:22-35-37 785376 h***@hotmail.com h*** **** **** 21st ave san francisco CA 94122 United States 027616703729 standard
cancelled 2002-02-27 17:55:16.0 700907212751 Insane Clown Posse: Big Money Hustla$ - The Movie [DVD] (2001) Cafiero, John; J 0227T055532 044005380996 8.99 2.29 1 11.28 02-27-2002:13-30-46 837835 b***@rocketmail.com Charles J. Day charles j day **** lowry rd indianapolis in 46222 United States 044005380996

Did you notice that they had cancelled the order for the Veruca Salt album? Good call.

I also found a ton of uninteresting items. Documents created on accident, a hundred folders named "New Folder", and zip files with random character names (that were empty). It's the sure sign that a fucktard has been using this computer, and repeatedly makes senseless mistakes that leave behind empty files.

Other than satisfying some of my curiosities, I didn't find anything of interest and I moved on. It was a short adventure, and a bit unfilfilling. I think my next adventure is going to be heading into a better populated area. I have been wanting to get back to the local University campus. But for that, I should wait for my buddy The Discount Man to heal from his recent eye surgery. The last time we went Wardriving on campus, he was upset that he could not locate any "booty pics" as he so desired to steal.

Yet, the most interesting items I have found have been from business parks. I ought to head out this weekend and just "gather".

Work, work, work

Writing a book is real work. I sat down this morning with my laptop and a full battery charge. Here I am about 5 hours later, and 27 percent of a charge left. Oh, and I have some material to show for it. As I write sections to this book, new ideas keep popping into my head and I am writing them all down.

My first thought is to devide the book into two equal halves. One half will be strictly for entertainment value, while the other half will be a "how to" on invading networks. From there, I have a pile of ideas that may or may not develop into sections of the book.

This morning I sat down and wrote a chapter on my iBook. I want people to see why I bought this laptop, why it's a great Wardriving tool, and how I modified it to make my Wardriving results better. It's also packed with pictures of my laptop as I have modified it over the past few months.

What I am missing now is the actual Wardriving. I need put aside some time that I can go out with my laptop and a couple hours to blow so I can gather some fun new material. In the meantime I will organize the educational stuff, etc. It's certainly a work in progress.

I was planning on putting together a mailing list for those who are interested in this book. But then, I don't really need one. This Blog serves that purpose. Once this book goes 'live' I will set up a website for those who have bought the book (or people that have followed my adventures in the past), and they can continue to get free updates, and new adventures as they happen. Sort of a free update to an ongoing book of adventures. That's the idea anyway. Then I figure I could always print a new copy of the book, but if you bought the book from a year ago, you could just go read the new stuff online.

So what do you all think? Leave me some comments beyotches.