23 Feb 2003 mjcox   » (Master)

Had an interesting week wading through vulnerability details and the various advisories which never really seem to match the facts. Take one Linux vendor for example who got confused about the Oracle mod_dav vulnerability and, even though they were not affected by the vulnerability, released new Apache mod_dav packages. To add to the confusion their newly released errata packages had actually added a patch which added in the vulnerability. So they started out not vulnerable, but then released a patch which was meant to remove the vulnerability but actually really made them vulnerable. No wonder folks are confused. Wrote a bit of a rant about it in Apache Week this week.

A large number of people came to a party at the house last night and I woke up sweating and wondering how they broke the automated heating system - it should default to 'off' if it breaks. According to the logs some wag decided to set the temperature to 27.5C (although the heating system tried all night it never made it above 25). Need to have some sort of 'party mode' that locks certain operations and perhaps a more sensible maximum than 29C.

It's strangely hard to get the builders that visit the house to give quotes. I'm not sure how I scare them off. After another Saniflow event (some plastic got stuck but Tracy fixed the unit) we decided to get some quotes for fixing up the bathroom, running a proper waste drain, and throwing away those horrible little pumps, or at least making them only deal with one of the toilets so we don't end up unable to do washing each time they break. Unfortunately that involves running a pipe along about 20ft through three rooms and four breezeblock walls. The first quote came in at about double what I expected, so thats put the plans for buying a new espresso machine on hold (a Rancilio Silvia, lovely looking machine). Working toilet and bath or nice coffee? In the meantime it's finally time to get around to taking out a small claim against the sanipump repair folks who, after 12 months, still have yet to return a fixed unit.

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