For the next three days or so. I’m off to Huntsville for a workshop on VSE, but also, I burned the fingers on my right hand on a hot dish tonight, so typing is problematic…

I’m hoping they’ll feel better on the morrow.

[Tuesday morning update]

I was being a baby. Just the middle finger has a little patch of blister on it, and not where I contact the keys–the others are fine. But I’ll still be busy.

I’ve found it useful whenever suffering a minor injury like that (and it really was trivial, though it hurt like hell for an hour or two) to think of the vastly more horrendous, almost unimaginable things that happen every day to people in regimes like Iran (and no longer, for the most part, in Iraq), in order to stop feeling sorry for myself.

Sorry, just one of those days. Or weeks.

Working on a book, and feeling a little burnt out.

Is there a Samba expert in the house?

I’ve got a machine running Fedora Core 3, and I can’t get Samba, or Swat to work properly. The Samba server seems to be running, and the machine shows up in my network neighborhood from the Windows client, but when I click on it, I get a “network path not found” message. The smbd and nmbd services seem to be running on the server.

When I try to log in to Swat from the server (even as root), I get a “connection refused” message.

I’m looking at the configuration. According to the troubleshooting guides, the xinetd.conf file should be looking for it in /usr/sbin/swat, but that file doesn’t seem to exist, even though I installed the full Samba package. When I do a “locate swat” the binary doesn’t show up anywhere–only the configuration file of that name in /etc/xinetd.d. The config file right now actually has this line (which I probably inserted as a result of some other troubleshooter):

swat stream tcp nowait.400 root simberg /usr/sbin/tcpd swat

Is that right? There is at least a program “tcpd” with that path.

The troubleshooting guides I’ve found all leave much to be desired. They will tell you to check if something is happening, but no guidance on what to do if it isn’t.

Anyone know what’s going on?

Oh, and yes, before anyone asks, this (among other reasons) is why posting is sparse.

[Update at 12:45 PM EST]

OK, thanks to help from the comments section, I’ve theoretically got swat installed. But still no joy–it refuses the connection. Now what?

I’m running a few private blogs, for business purposes, that are password protected via .htaccess on the main and archive directories. There are no external links to them from the open net, and they haven’t been archived by Google. Yet somehow the spammers have found them. A couple days ago, we had dozens of poker spams in the comments.

Anyone have any idea how they’re doing this?

On and off, for weeks, I’ve been getting comment spam similar to this:

<h1>You may find it interesting to check out some helpful info in the field of- Tons of interesdting stuff!!! </h1>

There’s no URL associated with it, only an email address, usually from something like absinth968@hotmail.com, or absolut4806@freemail.com, though the numbers might change.

Although MT Blacklist will remove them, they have to be done individually, because there’s no common URL or IP address to key on (fortunately they only come a few at a time, never, so far, in a flood). And also since there’s no URL, there’s no way to blacklist them in the future.

I don’t understand what the purpose is. They’re not getting any google effect, or even link through, since there’s nowhere to link to. Are they just clueless comment spammers, who don’t get the concept, or is this harassment, or what?

[Update a little while later]

Well, here’s another one:

<h1>You may find it interesting to check out some helpful info about… </h1>

This one’s from a ” jane_doe7117@work.com.”

No URL, no idea what (s)he’s talking about, or why I’m being spammed with this stuff.

Had a good time in the Keys. I’d never been there before, and I liked it both more and less than I expected (in different ways, of course). It actually seemed the most like Hawai’i of any place that I’ve been in the continental US (if you can consider the Keys part of the continental US). Except without the spectacular scenery, of course. And the Hawai’ians.

And note, I can quit any time I want. I didn’t even go to a cybercafe, though there were plenty of opportunities.

More later.

Had a good time in the Keys. I’d never been there before, and I liked it both more and less than I expected (in different ways, of course). It actually seemed the most like Hawai’i of any place that I’ve been in the continental US (if you can consider the Keys part of the continental US). Except without the spectacular scenery, of course. And the Hawai’ians.

And note, I can quit any time I want. I didn’t even go to a cybercafe, though there were plenty of opportunities.

More later.

Had a good time in the Keys. I’d never been there before, and I liked it both more and less than I expected (in different ways, of course). It actually seemed the most like Hawai’i of any place that I’ve been in the continental US (if you can consider the Keys part of the continental US). Except without the spectacular scenery, of course. And the Hawai’ians.

And note, I can quit any time I want. I didn’t even go to a cybercafe, though there were plenty of opportunities.

More later.

Patricia’s taking me to Key West for my birthday. I’m not taking a computer. I offer my best wishes to Iraqis on their first taste of democracy, except those who would wantonly and cruelly murder to prevent it.

See you Sunday night or Monday.

In light of the Armstrong Williams and Kos controversies, and now this story about Maggie Gallagher, it occurs to me that I should disclose formally that I’ve been doing some consulting for one of the CEV/Exploration contractors (Boeing) for the past few months. I don’t think that it’s influenced my blogging at all (other than reducing the volume, because I’ve been busy), though it’s possible that I’ve been a little more reticent to rant at some things than I might if I weren’t in the middle of them.

I’ve hinted at this in the past, but I just wanted to make it clear. I certainly haven’t posted anything here with the intent of explicitly aiding Boeing’s strategic efforts, and I in fact continue to believe that CEV in anything resembling its current form (entry body on an expendable rocket) is a huge mistake (not a position that Boeing would ever publicly take, I suspect). But I did want to avoid any major payola scandals that might get reported by Howie Kurtz.