Building my new PC

I've been putting this off for years but now I'm forced to build another system when my old faithful CPU bit the dust this morning . I've been using the same desktop since Moses came back in 2000, which is kind of embarrassing as a IT guy. I was just to lazy to build another one and move all the apps and cash is tight - most of my data is on the file server or drives I'll just move over . So I've decided on what I want, ordered it and it came to a whopping $650 for motherboard, decent case, CPU, video card, a little extra memory and a high quality 600w power supply.

- Core 2 Quad Core Q6700 - http://news.tigerdirect.com/2008/04/15/intel-core-2-quad-q6700-processor/ like a year and a half old but a third of it's original price and still a monster.
- Intel DG35EC Motherboard - actual Intel brand which for $85 bucks is a workhouse - planning to add Windows XP64 with 4-5GB of XM2 DDR2 RAM depending what I find lying around in the office http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=I69-2168
PC Power & Cooling 600W power supply to run the video card nicely - not cheap at $90 but a must have these days.. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=P227-1000
- GE 9500T 1GB DDR2 which is a steal for $70 - not the gaming superstar for a $M but seriously good deal mated with the Intel Quad core it should be smoking fast! http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=E145-9504
- For drives I'm still chewing on spending the money on a solid state drive (you can get a 32GB for $100) but I don't want to deal with the shorter life but booting in 7 seconds is quite the incentive - However, I actually already have a WD Raptor - 74GB 10,000RPM drive - so I'm using that as my boot drive and that will stem the bleeding - I'll RAID two 500gb 7200rpm data drives that are lying around the office to store crap on...

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How to point your Google Site to an existing Domain Name

For all you guys moving your clients over to Google apps hear ye, hear ye!

I recently created a Google site for my fiance's interior design business under my personal Google account, without realizing that there would be no way of moving it to a Google apps account once I was finished. No migrate tool, no export function..no nada! I had spent a fair amount of time figuring out the Google Site GUI, and the last thing I wanted to do was to recreate the entire site again in the Google Apps account which I had created for her domain. I was under the impression that I could create a business class Google apps account with my existing logon - but I was wrong. Google apps requires an Administrator for a domain and so needs to separate the accounts by design.

Although I understood why, the most annoying thing with Google Apps is that you cannot associate your Administrator account with your personal Google account; and flipping between the two causes annoying cookie retention problems. Google has done a good job at recognizing this issue and has some automated tools that recognize the two accounts and tries to help navigate you to the correct account. But still there was no function or tool which I could find that would allow me to tie the personal Google site with an existing domain nor migrate a Google site from my personal account to my domain Google apps account .

The way I managed to point my Google Site to an existing domain was to first go to my host's Cpanel for designwise-sd.com and create a CNAME for a new sub-domain, in this case wub.designwise-sd.com pointing to ghs.google.com







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The next step is to login to your Google site settings and add the sub-domain you just created to the Web Address section.








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I then created an .htaccess file with (good tutorial is located here) and entered in the following code without quotes:

"redirect 301 /index.html http://wub.designwise-sd.com"

or for all files on your domain use

"redirectMatch permanent ^(.*)$ http://wub.designwise-sd.com"

Obviously, you want to replace /index.html with your default page (could be index.htm; or index.php etc.) and http://wub.designwise-sd.com with your sub-domain name you created in the previous section. This is a more SEO friendly way to redirect a site versus using Meta tags to do it, which I wouldn't recommend.

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I logged onto the FTP for designwise-sd.com and uploaded the .htaccess folder to the root of the site. This is the same location as your index.html (or your equivelant) file and CHMOD the file 644. The .htaccess file will now redirect all traffic showing up at www.your-domain.com to your-new-subdoman.com in real time. As an FYI, the .htaccess is a hidden file and usually waon't be displayed in your FTP client once uploaded so Enable View Hidden Files is a good tutorial.

If anyone knows a better way to do this or there is a problem with this technique, please comment!

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CNN Alert Spam - Avoid Vundo infection

KitRx at EveryMethod is cleaning at least two or three infections of a new strain of the Vundo virus each week. Our managed systems are all protected with Anti-Malware/Virus software but they seem to make no difference and even cause further complications. I've finally come to the conclusion that Anti-virus software is practically useless against any elective installed Malware like these variants of Vundo. I cannot remember the last time any of these overhyped, under performing software packages actually found anything worthwhile. There are a number of variations to the Vundo hijack theme and almost all are deployed by forcing or requesting an install of a bogus video CODEC or flash plugin.

Vundo infects victims' computers by exploiting a vulnerability in Java and Windows systems and is deployed as a rootkit which makes it very difficult to remove = expensive. Many of the popups advertise programs including WinFixer, WinAntiVirus, WinAntiVirusPro, ErrorSafe, SystemDoctor, WinAntiSpyware, AVSystemCare, WinAntiSpy, XPAntivirus2008, Performance Optimizer, StorageProtector, PrivacyProtector, WinReanimator and others which are very similar programs available only for Windows that claim to repair computer system problems but do not actually do so - so DON'T INSTALL THESE WHEN TOLD TO DO SO - YOU'RE NOT A ROBOT - THINK FIRST THEN CLICK. There are no FREE TRIALS, just infected systems and expensive cleanups. This variant shown in the pics was sent using a CNN Alert SPAM email originating out of the Czech Republic.

The image shows an attempt to install a hijacked version of a flash plugin by the deploying site, masquerading as a CNN Video site. IF YOU CLICK OK YOU WILL BE INFECTED - PERIOD - SO DON"T. Unfortunately hitting CANCEL puts you in a loop which means you have the kill the browser process in Windows Task Manager. The pic shows the Firefox process but look for your browser in the list - then hit END Process. Delete the email, empty your trash and forward the link below to all your friends.

http://blog.kitrx.com/2008/08/cnn-alert-spam-vundo-infection.html

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