Smitty's Thoughts

How to determine the number of bits used when generating a CSR

Smitty — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:30:53 +0000

I was looking for an answer to this question today and stumbled across a page on the MaximumASP site, which indicates that looking at the first few characters of the CSR will provide the answer.

I still want to do a bit of research to verify that what they have said is true, but it seems to be, based on my limited test. I generated CSRs for 512-, 1024-, 2048-, 4096-, 8192-, and 16384-bits* and examined the first few characters. My generated CSRs for 512- and 1024-bits matched the MaximumASP page. Here are my results.

512-bit CSR (for 40-Bit certificate)

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
MIIC…

1024-bit CSR (for 128-Bit certificate)

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
MIID…

2048-bit CSR

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
MIIE…

4096-bit CSR

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
MIIG…

8192-bit CSR

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
MIIK…

16384-bit CSR

—–BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
MIIS…

* I knew it was going to take a while generated the 16384-bit CSR, but I didn’t realize it was going to take 7.5 hours! The 8192-bit CSR, in comparison, only took about 20 minutes to generate.

How to determine if a mobile number is on the Verizon network

Smitty — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:40:23 +0000

Need to find out if a mobile number is considered in-network for Verizon? There’s a page on Verizon’s site that let’s you find out easily and quickly: Determine if a mobile number is in the Verizon Wireless Mobile to Mobile Calling Family.

My wife and I are starting to send more text messages as more and more friends and family prefer them to phone calls (why I don’t know–in most cases I’d gladly take a 3 minute phone call over 45 minutes of text messages back and forth). At any rate, my wife was starting to exceed her 250 message/month plan regularly, so I called to see what other options we could choose. Verizon has a new plan that’s only $10/month that includes unlimited in-network text messages and 500 out-of-network messages. That seems like a good option for us since most of the people we know are in-network (at least they are since Verizon bought Alltel).

Now the question is, how can we tell who is in-network and who is out-of-network if we don’t know? I posed that question to Jared, the Verizon customer service representative who helped me switch to the new text messaging plan. Jared led me on what seemed like a round-about way of finding the online tool for answering this question, but we got there. I hope this helps someone else save some time:

Start at the main Verizon Wireless homepage.
Scroll to the bottom of the page where there are BLUE text links.
Look for the one named “Best Network” and click on it. (it’s current on the top line of links, close to the center of the page)
Scroll to the bottom of the page where there are BLACK text links.
Look for the one named “Best Network” and click on it. (it’s current on the top line of links, on the right side of the page)
The page that loads features (currently) a picture of a young man holding a phone just to the left of a coverage map of the US. Just above his head is a “Mobile to Mobile Calling” link. Click on it.
This page features a picture of a family, all using their mobile phones (of course). In the left-hand column below the picture is the heading “Unlimited Mobile to Mobile Calling.” Click the “Find Out Now“ button at the bottom of that column.
A dialog box pops up and allows you to enter up to three mobile numbers. Clicking the Submit button at the bottom of the window will return a page indicating the in- or out-of-network status for each number you entered.

Here’s the direct link again, for convenience: Determine if a mobile number is in the Verizon Wireless Mobile to Mobile Calling Family.

Microsoft LifeCam software crashes

Smitty — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:01:49 +0000

Microsoft LifeCam software crashes upon startup. It seems to not be specific to my parent’s computer, but several potential solutions have been proposed. Here’s what I tried.

Moved 04Geometric*.dll files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft LifeCam\Effects directory into C:\Program Files\Microsoft LifeCam\Effects Backup per this post. — This one change has allowed the camera software to run normally.

At the same time, the Skype software crashes, also when the camera kicks in. I assumed that it’s the same problem in both cases, but that assumption seems to be invalid.

I started Skype after making the change mentioned above and Skype still crashed after selecting the web cam.

I created a Visual Backup 2 directory as a sibling to the other one and moved all the other DLL files from the Effects directory into it and started teh LifeCam software again. It ran and didn’t show any effects from which to choose, as expected. I disabled TrueColor and closed the software, hoping that would help Skype. A few seconds later the LifeCam software crashed.

Inspecting the error report technical details that were sent to Microsoft showed that the LifeCam software was still at least referencing the moved DLL files, so I moved them completely outside the LifeCam directory tree and tried again. Same results.

The next thought was make sure that we had the most recent version of the software installed. One of the forum posts gave a link to the Microsoft page with the software and I downloaded both the most recent LifeCam software and the firmware update for the camera. The firmware program indicated that the camera was already up-to-date (which doesn’t surprise me as I applied the firmware update the day I unboxed the camera), and an inspection of the Version tab of the properties of one of the LifeCam executable files indicated that it was already at version 3.21 (the same as the software I just downloaded). I decided to try reinstalling the software anyway and was told that I had to uninstall and reboot first. So I did.

After the reboot, I noticed that the camera was still listed in the My Computer window, so I right-clicked and chose Properties. A quick Test Camera yielded an all-is-well dialog box. Going back to My Computer and double-clicking on the camera brought up a window with the live camera feed. Closing the window worked fine–no crash. I looked for the C:\Program Files\Microsoft LifeCam directory and it’s nowhere to be found. Just to see what would happen, I started Skype and selected the camera for both the audio and video devices and clicked on Save. Normally Skype crashed at this point, but it didn’t this time. I grabbed my laptop and started a video call between it and my parent’s computer and everything worked just as it should. Even ending the call didn’t result in a Skype crash like it used to.

At this point, I’m considering the issue resolved. The only thing I wish we still had is the TrueColor correction, but I’m willing to live without it if it means that Skype isn’t crashing.

Seth’s Blog: Consumer debt is not your friend

Smitty — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:10:26 +0000

“Debt seems like fun for a long time, until it’s not. And everyone does it. We’ve been sold very hard on acquisition = happiness, and consumer debt is the engine that permits this. Until it doesn’t.”

“It’s simple: when the utility of what you want (however you measure it) is less than the cost of the debt, don’t buy it.”

Read Mr. Godin’s blog post–I can’t say it better than he can.

Seth’s Blog: Consumer debt is not your friend.

Pumpkin Cookie Cakes

Smitty — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:23:06 +0000

Ingredients

1 package (18.5 oz) butter cake mix
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
2 cups pumpkin pie filling
1 c. oats
1 c. flour
Optional: 6 oz white chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Combine cake mix, oil, eggs and mix.
Add pumpkin pie filling and mix.
Stir in the oats and flour in a bowl. Batter will be slightly lumpy.
Add the white chocolate chips and mix.
Bake for 12 minutes at 375 degrees F.
NOTE: These cookies don’t settle as they bake.

Adapted from Cake Mix Cookies on cooks.com.

Word Study: Poieo and Prasso

Smitty — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:46:08 +0000

Definitions

Poieo and prasso are both often translated “to do” in our English Bible, but they have very different flavors. Prasso has “to do” as a primary definition and “to practice” as a secondary definition. The feeling here is very physical and control-oriented–I take out the trash, paint the barn (Manley), make the bed, vacuum the floor. Those activities are prasso. I get tired as I do these things. Often times I have to make a conscious effort to make myself do those things. The common usage of prasso during Bible times was with regard to business. Prasso is always about results and ability (how something gets done).

Poieo‘s primary definition is “to create” with a secondary definition of “to do.” Do you see the difference? Poieo has the flavor of naturally occurring action–like it can’t be helped (or even guided to an extent). Think of an artist as she creates a painting (Manley). Yes, she’s holding the brush and she’s controlling where it goes as it dances across the canvas, but at the same time she’s not really controlling it. The art she’s creating is flowing out of her, that is, she’s pouring herself into the art. She doesn’t get tired as she works; the artwork is an expression of who she is. In the secular Greek, poieo is used to describe how trees produce fruit (Bolich). The common usage of poieo during Bible times was with regard to artists, philosophers, and poets. This is something that can’t be taught. Inasmuch as prasso is about how, poieo is about who (i.e. a painting reveals something about the artist).

Some Examples

Let’s take a look at some Scriptures to see this in action.

Romans 7:15 – I don’t really understand myself, for I want to poeio (do) what is right, but I don’t prasso (do) it. Instead, I poieo (do) what I hate.

Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God poieo (created) the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:21 – So God poieo (created) great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water…
Genesis 1:27 – So God poieo (created) human beings in his own image.

John 5:19-20 – So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can poieo (do) nothing by himself. He poieo (does) only what he sees the Father poieo (doing). Whatever the Father poieo (does), the Son also poieo (does). ²⁰For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he poieo (is doing). In fact, the Father will show him how to do even greater works than healing this man. Then you will truly be astonished.

John 5:28-29 - Don’t be so surprised! Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son, ²⁹and they will rise again. Those who have poieo (done) good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have prasso (continued) in evil will rise to experience judgment.

John 5:30 – I can poieo (do) nothing on my own…

John 14:12-14 – “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also poieo (do) the works that I poieo (do); and greater works than these will he poieo (do), because I am going to the Father. ¹³Whatever you ask in my name, this I will poieo (do), that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If you ask me anything in my name, I will poieo (do) it.

James 1:22-25 – ²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Poieo (Do) what it says. ²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not poieo (do) what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to poieo (do) this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it–he will be blessed in what he does.

Further Exploration

John 15:1-17

Sources

Stephen Manley
John Juneman
Jeremiah Bolich – Revelation 1:9 – “Kingdom Character”

Strongs Numbers: 4160 (poieo)

Strongs Numbers: 4238 (prasso)

Resources

E-Sword
Biblos.com
The Holy Bible: New Living Translation

Bible Study Tools
Unless otherwise mentioned, all scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.

Malware infection: Total XP Security

Smitty — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:47:05 +0000

My church’s secretary called me a few days ago and indicated that she saw a number of popups on her computer screen that seemed suspicious. She wasn’t able to catch anyone by phone at the time, so she did the next best thing she could think of–she shut down the computer without clicking on anything.

It was a day and a half before I was able to make it to the church to look at the PC and I discovered that the pastor had booted it during that day and allowed it to run normally (it serves as a file and print server in addition to being the secretary’s primary workstation). After a partial run of ClamWinAV (which I had downloaded, updated, configured to run in standalone mode, and burned to a CD so I wouldn’t risk infecting my USB drive, I decided to take the machine home and scan the drive on a computer with a known good Antivirus/antimalware program (Microsoft Security Essentials [MSE]).

MSE scanned the drive and found only one problem, which I had it remove. I loaded the drive back into the church’s computer and headed back to the church. Upon booting the computer, everything appeared to be normal. I quickly discovered, however, that all was not well. None of the shortcuts on the desktop worked. Neither did any other program I tried to run. I would always get an “Application not found” or the “Open with” dialog box. Right-clicking on a shortcut or executable file gave me the normal Open, Run as…, and Scan with AVG Free options, but I noticed a new “start” option.

Checking the registry for the .exe class (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe\shell\open\command) showed that the (Default) action was now ‘”C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\ave.exe” /start “%1″ %*.’ A quick Google search indicated that this was part of the Total XP Security fake antivirus program.

Some more quick searching via Google turned up some excellent instructions for removing Total XP Security at BleepingComputer.com.

I also discovered another useful tool during this process: Norton Safe Web. Norton Safe Web scans sites for security problems and gives a report on its findings. It also allows visitors to rate and comment about sites. While Googling for instructions to remove Total XP Security I found several sets of instructions on sites that were not rated well by Norton Safe Web. BleepingComputer.com, however, has an excellent rating.

Following the BleepingComputer.com removal instructions has gotten my church’s computer on the right track again. The Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program took about 20 minutes to run and found over 40 infected files/rogue registry keys! It was able to remove them (with a reboot).

I have since removed the AVG virus program and replaced it with MSE. Let’s hope that we don’t end up in this situation again!

This does lead to another question, though. Is MSE enough protection on a PC? Some people don’t think so.

Running MSE and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware side-by-side.

The easy way to make dig more useful: .digrc

Smitty — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:40:02 +0000

I’ve been a long-time “dig” user (on Mac and Linux) to retrieve DNS records before I start transferring a domain to a new registrar. Every time I issue the same dig commands to gather the data I need and put it in a text file for easy reference later. Dig always outputs way more information than I need and I end up fishing through most of it to find the one or two lines that interest me.

$ dig jssm.com any

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-APPLE-P2 <<>> jssm.com any
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 37409
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 7, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;jssm.com.                      IN      ANY

;; ANSWER SECTION:
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       216.98.141.250
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       69.72.142.98
jssm.com.               7200    IN      SOA     ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns17.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns8.zoneedit.com.

;; Query time: 62 msec
;; SERVER: 172.16.0.100#53(172.16.0.100)
;; WHEN: Tue Mar  9 10:10:20 2010
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 203

Dig Options

After perusing the man page for dig, I discovered the magical combination of options that hides all the stuff I don’t want to see while still returning all the data I do want to see: +nostats +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +recurse.

Now my command is messy, cumbersome, and difficult to remember, but I have what I want:

$ dig +nostats +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +recurse jssm.com any

jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       69.72.142.98
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       216.98.141.250
jssm.com.               7200    IN      SOA     ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns8.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns17.zoneedit.com.

.digrc

I was delighted to see that dig supports a .digrc file for setting default options. I simply plopped the options I like into my ~/.digrc file all on a single line, issued my simple query, and voila! just the data I need without the extra stuff I don’t.

$ dig jssm.com any
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       69.72.142.98
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       216.98.141.250
jssm.com.               7200    IN      SOA     ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns8.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns17.zoneedit.com.

Bonus Syntax

I also discovered that dig supports multiple queries on the command line. I can now issue a single command and get all the DNS information I need for a domain:

$ dig jssm.com any www.jssm.com any mail.jssm.com any
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      MX      0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       216.98.141.250
jssm.com.               7200    IN      A       69.72.142.98
jssm.com.               7200    IN      SOA     ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns17.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com.               7200    IN      NS      ns8.zoneedit.com.
www.jssm.com.           7200    IN      CNAME   wfb.zoneedit.com.
wfb.zoneedit.com.       951     IN      A       216.98.141.250
wfb.zoneedit.com.       951     IN      A       69.72.142.98
mail.jssm.com.          7200    IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.

Questions to ask when looking for an apartment

Smitty — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:47:32 +0000

Can we install child locks on the cabinets, etc.?

Pumpkin Pie Cookies

Smitty — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:56:19 +0000

(An adapted recipe)

1 c packed brown sugar
1 c granulated sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 large eggs
3 cups flour
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1.5 c pumpkin pie mix
1 cup oats

Mix all ingredients together. Drop 2″ balls 2″ apart on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.