Some script kiddie has spent the last hour and a half trying to "hack" SlideSix in what I can only assume was retaliation for my last post where I discussed differences between SlideShare and SlideSix.

Apparently this person took offense to something I said so they decided to inject some JavaScript alerts into my site by saving them in their profile bio. I overlooked the fact that JS can be fired from within an <a> tag and since I was stripping everything but that tag they found a vulnerability and had fun popping 'SlideSix Sucks' alerts for a few minutes until I locked everything down. The fix took a whole 5 minutes and the next hour and a half was wasted scouring every input to make sure nothing else was missed.

Here are a few screenshots. I'm sure the name they used is fake.

I'm not sure what it was I said that offended them, but whatever. Congratulations, you ruined my night. It's now 3:00am and I need to be up in about 4 hours. I hope you accomplished whatever it was that you set out to do.

I had been making some personal backups of my DVDs this evening when I decided to pop one in to make sure everything looked OK. In my office I have a little 26" LCD with an internal DVD player so I stuck one of the copies into the TV when a heard a very unfriendly grinding. It's widely documented that I'm not a hardware expert, but even my untrained ear told me that this was a bad noise to be coming from the player.

Sure enough, the player soon spit the disc right back out at me. I tried a few more times (yeah, like that was gonna work) to no avail when I decided I'd grab a screwdriver and take the thing apart to see if I could get lucky and fix the thing.

As I started to work on the 58 or so screws that held this amazing little player together I began to hear a familiar rattle. The kind of rattle that only the actions of a mischievous toddler can produce. Before I'd even removed the cover I already knew what to expect. Sure enough when I finally got the thing open my suspicions were confirmed:

Thankfully once the offending currency was removed and the device was reassembled it returned to it's previous working state.

So this morning my wife and I are getting ready for work, the usual routine of running around getting the kids ready, making coffee and whatnot and she casually states to me "I think I'm done with Internet Explorer. It's so slow and it crashes all the time." I had to simply stop what I was doing and embrace her in a loving hug. OK, so I didn't really do that, but I have to say I'm extremely proud of her for finally making the decision to use Firefox. She'd be the first to admit she is not terribly computer literate, but even she has finally realized that IE is the 'devil's browser' and is ready to make the switch.

I realize this is kinda pointless, but I logged into my GoDaddy account today for something and took a look at my domain names whilst I was in there. Of the 9 domains I own, I'm only actively using 4 of them. The others were either snagged up for a bright idea that I had at one point, dead sites or domains that I fully intend to use at some point.

How many do you own that you're doing nothing with, and why?

I downloaded Adobe Media Player yesterday and although I didn't get a chance to fully check it out I do have to say I'm pretty impressed. Overall the UI is pretty pleasing (though the fade effects are a bit choppy on my machine). There doesn't seem to be a ton of content just yet, but I'm sure that will come in time. I'm intrigued by the 'offline' viewing capabilities. That should definitely come in handy when travelling.

I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about these on demand internet movie/tv technologies that are coming out lately. hulu is another one that is pretty cool. I even went out and picked up an extra long HDMI cable which I hook up to my XPS laptop so I can watch on my HDTV. The quality is not quite 100%, but just the fact that I can watch programs and movies when I want to on my regular TV with very limited commercial interruption is very cool.

Just saw an interesting Vista tidbit in an article at infoworld, though I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, on one hand, increased performance is always a good thing. But on the other hand, one would think the 4GB of onboard RAM and a 7200RPM hard drive would be enough...

Get flashy: If you have an extra USB flash drive that you don't use for much else, Vista can cache disk reads on it, thereby boosting performance beyond what you'd get from your hard disk alone. Simply insert your flash drive into a USB 2.0 slot. If the drive is fast enough, a prompt will appear, asking whether you want to open the folder for the drive or use it to "Speed up my system using Windows ReadyBoost." Choose the latter option, and follow the remaining prompts. When you're calculating how much space to set aside for ReadyBoost to use, Microsoft recommends that you let ReadyBoost use one to three times the amount of RAM on your system.

Play your cards right: USB thumb drives aren't the only way to boost system performance -- fortunately, as USB memory sticks protruding from a computer (particularly a laptop) are easy to dislodge, and they can be a pain to remove and stow for traveling. If your PC has a reader for SD (Secure Digital) or CompactFlash cards, you can use those media in place of a USB stick to handle your ReadyBoost needs.

So I've just clicked 'Install' on Vista SP1 on my desktop. I've been told to step away from the machine for an hour while it 'does it's thing'. Good thing I've got my laptop here with me. Amazingly (or not so much) Microsoft has made it quite a quest to get the damn thing in the first place.

We shall see. Here's hoping for the magic bullet...

About 6 months ago a friend shared the trailer for Southland Tales with me. The trailer certainly presented a strange but intriguing looking film so I was anxious to see the movie. I kept my eyes open for the movie, but it apparently was only released in a limited capacity in theaters (usually a bad sign) so I had to wait until it came out on DVD which happened yesterday.

In June of this year I will have been working at the same company for 12 years. Working for the same company that long these days is almost unheard of but I consider myself fortunate to be 31 years old and almost half way to being pension eligible (yes those things do still exist). Barring any unforseen circumstances, I'll probably be at this company my entire career. But that's a discussion for another day.

I arrived at my local Toys-R-Us with 2 mugs of coffee and the Sunday paper at just after 5:00AM thinking I'd sip some coffee and read the paper for a few hours until they opened at 8:00AM. Little did I know there would be 19 other crazies already standing in line. Luckily after a near 3 hour wait in the freezing rain I got my Wii! I've just played a little bit but I am very impressed with it so far. The controls definitely take a little getting used to but they seem cool. I'll try to follow up with a post in a week or two after I've really had a chance to get used to them more.