Malware: Even IT folks get it sometimes….

Yes, I can admit it, even IT folks can unknowingly get come across a malware attack on their machines. IT happened on my laptop today at work.  The difference is that most IT folks know what to do to limit the impact and get rid of the rouge infection.

While researching some excel formulas that I am never really good at, I all of a sudden I got this is fake antivirus “program” on my taskbar. I knew right away that this was cause by a compromised website. Defender.exe or known as a Trojan Mal/FakeAV-FB is just the beginning of an attach. Once installed the compromised computer can then become a gateway for other Malware/Spyware etc….

Immediately, I pulled my network LAN cable and disabled my wireless. I knew that this malware was only the gateway to try to install other malware/spyware. I then, restarted in safe mode. From there, I was able to run my malwarebytes (buy it and support a great product) and remove the threat. I also looked up on Sophos site to determine what other cleaning that I needed to do. After a little registry hacking and deleting Windows Restore points, I was good to go.

The quick action lead me to only have to remove the Trojan and not any other items that the Trojan would soon let in.

Not the best way to spend my lunch hour, but at least I am clean……

More EMR Parodies….

I must be on an EMR parody kick. This one I found on Meaningful HIT News with Neil Versel (http://www.meaningfulhitnews.com/).

Dilbert: EMR Fun

Saw this Dilbert comic the other day. Great EMR Fun. As an EMR practitioner and implementer, I found this to be very funny. For the non-geeky Star Trek fan, check out "PON FARR" reference.

Using SMS Technology In Healthcare

So, I came cross this link fon twitter(@vwadhwa). It talks about how through the use of SMS text in India Emergency Healthcare is brought to rural India.

I have been to India once and would go back in a heart beat. It is simple amazing the use of cell phone technology and SMS throughout India. Power maybe have the occasional brownouts, but the cell phone and texting will live on.

What I like about this use of technology is rather than bringing in technology, the group adapts technology that already exists.

An Great Day in San Francisco

While I am not here to gloat, well, okay just a little. The last couple days in San Francisco has been picture perfect. This was a shot from Greens in Fort Mason. If you never been, you have to go. Great food.

Batch Scripting Fun: Playing with Random Numbers

Proof of Concept:

Today, I needed to generate a random number between 1 and 5. Depending on what random number came up, would determine what IP address from a pool of IP address the user would be assigned.

Maybe I had Craps on the mind, but this problem reminded me of dice rolling. All-be-it a 5 sided die. So to test, I thought that I would write a simple Batch script that would generate a random number between 1 and 5.

I had a pretty good idea that I would use the %Random% operation to generate a random number between 0 – 32767. Then I would limit that to between 1 and 5.

My first attempt turned out like this:

:loop
set num=%random%
if /i %num% GTR 5 goto loop
if /i %num% LSS 1 goto loop
goto finish
:finish
echo %num%
pause >nul
exit

Now it worked but it was slow because if you think about it, I would have to recalculate %random% every time the number was greater than 5 or less then 1. I needed to speed this up.

I knew that math would be the answer. I came across this Simulate a Dice Roll through a Google search. It showed that I was on the right track. I just tweaked it a little to at some logic to be able to run a command after finding the random number between 1 and 5.

@echo off
cls

:RandomLoop
set /A num=%random% %% 5 + 1
goto NumberFound

:NumberFound
if %num%==1 goto one
if %num%==2 goto two
if %num%==3 goto three
if %num%==4 goto four
if %num%==5 goto five

:one
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:two
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:three
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:four
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:five
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:end
exit

As you see. The random number is generated and depending on the number 1 through 5, the next set in the Batch script can be executed. While this is a very simple programming 101 type of question, this shows how you can turn an classroom exercise into a practical application.

Using Windows Live Writer 2011 for Windows

I thought that I would try something new. Or, at least new to me. It is the Windows Live Writer 2011. Windows Live Writer is apart of the Windows Live Essentials. Windows Live Writer is an offline blog writer for many different blogging platforms.

I am hoping that this platform will allow me to more easily write blog post drafts. So far so good. As I play with it more I will see if I continue to like this software.