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	Welcome To My Home... December 2, 2002 Been One Week A whole bunch of post-worthy stuff has happened; I just never felt much like writing about any of it while at home. First of all, I need to say that you never truly realize how much TV you watch until you try to watch three weeks worth of taped programming in one sitting. Actually, Alias is decidedly better this way. It's more like a continuing movie rather than it's usual disjointed episodes. The Practice, however, can get tiresome after the first couple episodes. On Wednesday we went to Disneyland. I'd been wanting to see the holiday mansion for a while, especially after rewatching The Nightmare Before Christmas a few weeks ago. I'd also been wanting to get a season pass (since I live about fifteen minutes away, now), which we did. The holiday mansion is very cool. The entire mansion is completely changed - nearly every effect and decoration has been modified, and the 'outdoor' graveyard scene almost looks like a completely different ride. It should also be added that the Christmas tree in the ghost's ballroom is just about the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Small World also changes for the holiday. The outside, when lit up with Christmas lights, is spectacular. Inside, they've scattered some big snowflakes and stuff around and put some cotton-snow on the ground. It all looks relatively nice. The dolls don't sing "It's a Small World" in the holiday version, either. Instead, they've also chosen the only known song that is equally as annoying, and guests are treated to incessant repetitions of "Jingle Bells" throughout the entire fifteen minute ride. We didn't get to see the holiday fireworks display. Actually, we weren't planning on seeing them in the first place. The idea was to head over to Small World and get in so as to have enough time to visit the mansion one last time. What we (and about 20,000 other people who apparently had a similar plan) didn't realize was that Small World closes during the fireworks. By the time we figured out that the road was roped off, we'd already managed to press ourselves deep into the unbelievable mass of people and were effectively stuck there for the duration of the fireworks - fireworks that never occurred, I remind you. At precisely 8:45pm, when the firework display was supposed to begin, the voice of a very happy man came over the intercom to tell us that the fireworks would unfortunately be delayed due to high winds. A while later the same recording, sounding way too happy after standing in a mob for the last fifteen minutes, was broadcast from the loudspeakers. By this time, a good-sized collection of Disneyland employees, many of whom had likely been working for only a couple months, had gathered to determine how to handle the situation when the ropes would innevitably be removed. Finally, after another fifteen minutes, the happy man once again came over the loudspeaker informing us of the very sad news that the fireworks were cancelled. Everyone cheered - except for the Small World employees; they needed to open the ropes. This was also my first chance to visit Disney's California Adventure, of which my first impressions were unexpectedly positive. The rollercoaster, while huge is actually a very easy ride. I found it somewhat relaxing. One cool thing about that is they've got speakers installed in the back of the seats, so they play music for you while you're riding. That's something I certainly haven't seen before. The Soaring Over California simulation ride is probably the most popular there, and I can see why. No description can convey the coolness of this thing. Actually, it's difficult enough just to describe what it is. Basically, you're sitting in a ski-lift-type seat with your feet dangling above the ground. You're then lifted up and brought about three feet from the biggest movie screen you've ever seen in your life. From there, it's pretty much a montage of scenes taken from a camera flying over different places in California with some motion and wind and even some smells. The illusion is incredible. I'm not lying, here. You feel like you're actually there. ...And gosh! What I wouldn't give to watch Lord of the Rings on that screen... Comments December 2, 2002 Stuff I'm busy this week. Speech on Thursday, math test on Friday, and history term paper due next Monday. The Two Towers soundtrack is already floating around the internet, fully ten days before its release. Makes you wonder how stuff like that happens. The new Madonna song - that one from James Bond - sucks. And it certainly doesn't get any better with time. I'm listening to it now for about the seventh time in a row. Just one of the many advantages to living in the dorms. The Warcraft 3 demo is supposed to be released today. You should play that. Looking for a holiday gift idea and have several thousand dollars to blow? Pre-order a segway now! A 60 acre spider web. Can you even think of anything cooler? December 2, 2002 Sounds cool... Sounds cool, I havent been to Disneyland in ages, and havent seen California either. We should all go together sometime during winter break when everyone is back home! I love Spider-Man, but spiders creep me out. -Mike December 3, 2002 Disneyland It'd be cool to go to Disneyland together sometime. Note, however, that the passes I have are of the cheaper variety and exclude those dates which promise to be most crowded - some such dates being two weeks out of winter break. See the calender for more details. Shaded dates are blocked out. December 2, 2002 Infected Any of you know anything about a virus called "W32.Nimda.enc"? Norton Antivirus just recently started popping up saying that my computer's got it. Rather odd since I've always been pretty careful about what I run, and I can't recall even executing anything recently. There doesn't seem to be a plethora of information about this virus on the internet, either. From what I've found, it could be one of a few things: 1) A false alarm caused by a bug in Outlook Express. That's great. I don't use Outlook Express. 2) A virus transmitted through an exploit of a bug in Outlook Express. Again, I don't use it. 3) A virus transmitted through an exploit of a bug in Internet Explorer v5.1 and v5.5. I've got IE v6.0. Unfortunately, short of telling me I've got an infected file, Norton Antivirus does nothing. I completely scanned my HD for viruses and came up clean. Yet, I still get this message popping up every once in a while (Twice so far - both today. I restarted after the first alert). The link leads here. The message does not always reference "desktop.eml" either. After pressing okay a bunch of times, it cycles through several other files with .eml extensions - none of which mean anything to me - before the message goes away. A Windows search comes up with no files on the HD containing ".eml". I've experienced no noticable problems other than the standard Windows XP crap. This is somewhat annoying. December 3, 2002 Announcement! There is a one hour special on the making of LOTR2: The Two Towers tomorrow on KSWB. That's tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec 4th) at 8:00pm-9:00pm on KSWB (Channel 69, cable 5). Tape that for me, please? I won't be watching it until after I see the movie, though, so put it somewhere where it won't get taped over too soon. December 4, 2002 "The Captain says it could be infected!" It's Wally! And I'll bet that that made no sense to any of you except maybe Raymond : ) Yeah, I've heard of W32.Nimda.enc before... in fact, I've probably gotten it at one point in time. When really weird definitions like that go off, it's often just mistaken for another virus posing as the W32. What sucks more is that some programs deep inside will act with W32-ish activity and just send your virus scanner screaming bloody hell. But really... desktop.eml looks like a really suspicious file to me... I hope you didn't download it : ) Oh, and Mike, you're assuming that you won't be in Las Vegas over the Winter Break ; ) December 4, 2002 Okay... I certainly didn't download any .eml file to my knowledge. And according to Windows' search, there aren't any on my computer, either. So... eh.. what does this W32 thing do assuming that Norton isn't mistaken in its diagnosis? December 4, 2002 Sneaky Sneaky Well, to summarize what I've found online: W32 is a mass-mailing worm that sends itself by email and web servers. It also infects both local files and files on remote network shares. What sucks is that it put itself up on a webpage that's being hosted and ask whomever happens to surf by to download it via the typical download dialog. What sucks even more is that us with DAP, Flashget, and Getright could possibly download it automatically without our knowledge if we configure the utility to automatically download files upon clicking on the link (which I do). However, I've also found that Norton likes to scream blood hell at InstallShield, or more namely, the Professional script engine 6.31, thinking the file ikernel.exe is the Nimda virus. InstallShield released a patch for this, and supposedly, Norton release new virus definitions that "somewhat alleviated" the problem. And as far as window searching for *.eml, I would guess if it was a nice sneaky virus, it would avoid the more common modes of detection. -Victor December 4, 2002 Right... I should probably have moved this discussion into private email (I hate to have such boring things littering my page), but perhaps somebody else would still like to offer some advice. Thus, it remains here for now. With that said, back to W32... That's pretty much what I'd come up with - except for the DAP thing, which I hadn't seen. But I don't have it set to auto DL on clicking. I really only use DAP when I want to leech a whole bunch of files or download something really big (ie: Warcraft 3 demo). I forgot about the install shield thing, but the websites I found said that was fixed quite a while ago, so I figured it couldn't be the problem... unless Norton screwed itself up with updated definitions. I had recently updated my virus definitions just before the problem started. But that's another thing... I still have no idea what the problem is. If all this virus is going to do is spawn inert undetectable files on my computer, I really couldn't care less. Infect away, I say. If, however, it's going to start screwing with stuff, or make my monitor explode, or open up some backdoor into my computer, I'd kind of like to know about it. As a small update, Norton AV popped it's message up again last night. That time, it didn't reference any file - just ".eml". (ie: "C:\blahblah...\.eml").		Quick Links - Fun 'n Folly - Juggling Club - RF Haunt - RF Gallery News/Updates HOME - Latest Post ARCHIVE - Full Archive <- PREV | NEXT -> 12/2 - Been One Week 11/22 - It Is Done 11/19 - You Going To Answer That? 11/17 - Cleaning Lessons 11/15 - Picture This 11/13 - Sound Check 11/10 - The Rain Did It 11/6 - What Were You Expecting? 11/4 - How to Fix a Printer 11/1 - Change of Plans Previous 10 shown Read More... 8/6/02 - First Post HOME - Latest Post ARCHIVE - Full Archive
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