John Hesch

GasBuddy.com helps you find the lowest gas prices in your city. They cover the US and Canada. Surprisingly they even had data for St. George which was updated as of yesterday. There was a .20 difference between the cheapest and most expensive gas stations in St. George, which could amount to over a $4 savings for a fill-up.

All times are MDT.

To air September 4, 2005

• 12:00 AM 12:00 PM – Jesus Wept with music by Rachael Phelps – Oh My Soul Hungered
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM – Daddy with music by Bob Carlisle – Butterfly Kisses
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM – Trust The Pilot with music by Brett Raymond – Hold On, The Light Will Come
• Whitewashed will air during the Sounds of Sunday with music by Michael W. Smith – Friends

To air September 11, 2005

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM – Patrick Henry with music by Damian Hall – God Bless America, Again
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM – Power with music by Showtime Company – The Touch/Master’s Hand
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM – To The Teachers with music by Brad Bowen – The Vision Of My Calling
• The Marathon will air during the Sounds of Sunday with music by Saturday’s Warrior cast – Pulling Together

To air September 18, 2005

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM – Katie’s Prayer with music by Hannah Rawson and Jeff Rammel – Child’s Prayer
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM – Elijah with music by Angie Powers – I Can’t Do Everything
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM – The Constitution with music by Paul Engemann – Freedom’s Light
• The Battle Has Begun will air during the Sounds of Sunday with music by Mormon Tabernacle Choir – Battle Hymn of the The Republic

To air September 25, 2005

• 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM – Mitchie with music by Michael McLean – You’re Not Alone
• 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM – Maryanne’s Race with music by Becca Rammel – Hero
• 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM – Orange Juice with music by Becca, Angie, Rachel – Promises I Keep
• Courage To Do Right will air during the Sounds of Sunday with music by Katherine Nelson – Fearless Heart

For one day only, you can get an ad-free version of Opera. Simply click here to get a free registration code. This offer is valid from 12 a.m. Tuesday, August 30 to 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT).

In the near future…

You’ll be asleep in your house, and your wireless entertainment device will wake you up. It’ll be voice-activated, so if you want some music -­- Nelly or Eminem ­– you just say so. You’ll use the device to turn on your TV and change channels or to surf the Internet on your computer. Just tell it what you want to do and it’ll take you there.

When you go outside, you’ll plug it into your car and it will serve as a global positioning system and give you detailed directions to where you’re going. The device will tell the car stereo what tunes you have on your iPod and play them over the speakers. If someone else is driving, you can watch TV news or surf the Internet, answer e-mail, download music or read an electronic book. At work you can put the phone up to a special reader and pay for lunch or coffee. Perhaps you’ll hold a video conference. Or pay bills.

If you are in e-commerce mode, you can purchase music or movies, which will automatically be stored in your home entertainment system as well as in your wireless device.

The future of technology is absolutely awesome!

Google recently released a new instant messenger service called Google Talk. I’m surprised to see Google, or anyone for that matter, attempt to break into the already established and mature IM services. With AIM, MSN, Yahoo and ICQ, I don’t see a lot of people giving up their favorite IM’s for a new one. It does look like Google Talk supports standards-based communication clients so Trillian, Gaim, and others will be able to add Google Talk to their service.

I have heard that Google wants to get into the VOIP market and Google Talk does offer voice chat, so maybe this is Google’s introduction to chat leading up to offering a SKYPE alternative.

Requirements for Google Talk:

1. Win2K or XP
2. Gmail account
3. English

If you use the Adsense Notifier extension to watch your Adsense stats in Firefox you probably noticed it’s broken. Google has updated their pages which breaks the extension. Mincus has an update which fixes the extension.

Two weeks ago my server was used to attempt break-ins of at least three other servers. Before this happened I was totally unaware of what was needed to secure a web server. I'm still not close to being a security expert but I have learned quite a bit in the past few days. In this post I hope to provide the uninformed or newby server administrator with information and tools to secure¹ their server against hackers.

My experience began on a Friday evening when I checked my inbox and found several emails from other server administrators, suggesting that my server had been compromised and was being used to attempt break-ins of their systems.

The first thing I did was log into WHM² and checked the Show Current CPU Usage link. I noticed that the CPU was pegged at 100% by several Nobody³ users. I should of taken the time to record exactly what processes were being used but I immediately killed all Nobody processes. This action brought the server back to normal operation.

I honestly did not know how to proceed. I was under the assumption that since I had been operating this server for several years without incident, that I had a fairly secure server. I started with Googling Apache security topics and visited the discussion forums hosted by the company where I lease my dedicated server.

The two applications that I consistently read about were APF (Advanced Policy Firewall) and BFD (Brute Force Detection). I've always used a firewall on my personal PC but it never occurred to me that I would need a firewall for my server.

I've never installed programs on the server before so this was a new learning process. Luckily I found a great website that took me step by step through the process.

Once I got AFP and BFD installed I began searching for the culprit. I learned that most rootkits are stored and run from /tmp folders, so I ran the following commands from SSH as a root user.

When I got to the /var/tmp/ directory I found what I was looking for, a suspicious directory called /bebe/⁴. In this directory were several files beginning with an IP subset.pscan.22. I'm assuming the IP subsets were the IP addresses my system was scanning and the port was 22.

I zipped up the files, downloaded a copy and then deleted the directory.

From what I have read, once a rootkit is uploaded to your system the hard drive should be formatted followed by a fresh install of the OS. I took several additional steps and I feel fairly confident that I'm now running a clean system. I'll follow up with another post on what additional steps I've taken, and tell you what my daily security routine involves.

1. From what I have read there is no foolproof way to keep all hackers out of my server. There are ways to prevent the average to above average hacker from breaking in. [back]
2. WebHost Manager is the control center of the cPanel / WebHost Manager package. It is used to set up and manage accounts, monitor bandwidth and services, and much more - all aspects of web hosting are covered through WebHost Manager. [back]
3. I'm not really sure what the Nobody user is but some processes need to be run by Apache without passwords. Nobody is a username that doesn't require a password. [back]
4. It took me awhile to figure out how to get into the directory as /bebe/ was preceded with several spaces. [back]

Max is leaving the Bloggernacle for many of the very reasons I have ceased with my LDS related posts. I began blogging in June of 2003 and often spoke about LDS issues but eventually became uncomfortable doing so. I won't even comment on other LDS blogs in reference to LDS related issues. I've never written about or discussed this decision and this is about as far as I'll take it.

I saw this Adsense ad on one of my websites the other day

Is it possible that there are over 99 billion songs on the planet? And what mega hard drive is storing these 99 billion songs?

Whatever.

UK police are looking for a man wearing just a diaper, who approaches women late at night and asks: "Are there any baby changing facilities around here?"

I'm sorry but I had a good laugh when I saw this. I know it shouldn't be funny as this guy could be a danger to these women but it reminded me of that stupid movie commercial for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo where Rob Schneider is walking around in a diaper.

I actually have some fairly useful posts in draft status so don't give up on me just yet.

Update: WordPress has released version 1.5.2 which fixes the below problem and addresses some other issues. Upgrade as soon as you can.

WordPress has issued a security alert instructing all WordPress 1.5.1.3 users to upgrade their wp-settings.php file if their server has register globals = ON. The alert instructs you on how to test if your server has register globals = on and then provides the updated wp-settings.php file.

All WordPress users are encouraged to first make sure they are using version 1.5.1.3 and then to follow the instructions in the security alert.

A guy in Simi Valley, California was sick and tired of hearing his neighbors car alarm sounding so he did what any caring neighbor would do. He pulled out a handgun and put three rounds into the Camry, silencing the alarm and earning himself a free trip to jail.

If you're an LDS Google Adsense publisher you've probably seen ads on your site that are not ideal for you as a publisher. I have developed quite a list of websites that I don't want advertising on my sites. I probably wouldn't care that much about anti-mormon ads but I get some strongly worded emails from my KZION listeners about these ads, so I try to keep the anti stuff from appearing.

If you log into your Adsense account and select AdSense for Content and then Competitive Ad Filter, you can add the URL's of websites you want banned from appearing on your sites. Here is a text file with the list of sites I have collected over the past several years. You're welcome to use it if you wish.

Shelly, two of my sons and I went to see Dan Truman and Jason Deere perform Joseph: A Tribute to the Prophet. Jason is an amazing talent and has written and produced one of the best CD's that has come out of the LDS market in years. The CD features such amazing talent as Jason Deere, Diamond Rio keyboard player, Dan Truman, David Osmond, country stars Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband, Dan Cahoon, Mindy Gledhill, Jimi Westbrook, and Dale Murphy.

Tonight's performance included just Jason, Dan and a couple other guys from Nashville. I'm pretty familiar with the CD since I've had it playing on KZION for almost a month now. When the program began the chills started and didn't end until I was almost home. I have such a newfound respect and admiration for Joseph, Emma, Hyrum, Porter Rockwell (Joseph’s bodyguard) and the others portrayed on the CD.

I missed the CD release concert a few weeks ago so I feel pretty lucky to of been able to see the performance tonight. As you might expect, there is a country feel to the music but country and non-country music lovers alike, will enjoy this music.

I didn't get a chance to visit with Jason or Dan after the show¹ but you guys were awesome. Thank you so much for the spiritual lifting this evening and for taking time from your busy schedules to come to St. George.

If you want to purchase a copy of the CD go to any Deseret Book store or online here.

1. The performing arts center was packed for this performance. It would of taken forever to get through all the people lining up to meet the performers. [back]

It looks like Blogging Pro hasn't had much activity lately and there have been a bunch of really cool plugins for WordPress released. Here are some of my favorites.

Auto Links Plugin for WordPress: Automatically turns keywords into links. If you write Google the plugin will linkify it for you. The cool thing is if I write Google again, it will not linkify it. Only the first time the keyword is mentioned.

The only complaint I have with this plugin is the list of keywords is listed in the plugin itself, making adding and deleting words a pain in the butt. What would be nice is having an options page in the admin section of WordPress where I can edit the words.

Oh, I almost forgot. Did you notice the image next to the first mention of WordPress and Google? This plugin will automatically add an icon next to all external links. This can be turned on or off, your choice.

iTunesSpy: is another cool plugin which inserts and displays the recently played tracks in iTunes on your blog. You first have to install the ituneswatcher 2 application (version 2.0.0.2 or higher). iTunesSpy took me a little while to figure out but once I got it setup it was simple to use. You can see it in action to the right of this page.

One of the problems I'm having is the link to Amazon does not include my Amazon Associate ID which I entered into the options page. I wrote the author to inquire about this but have not heard back. The other problem I am having is when trying to display the time the song played, I'm not getting the correct gmt_offset. The best I can tell is the plugin should pull my WordPress settings for time offset but it's not doing that.

If you want to display your iTunes music, this is still the way to go.

Transpose Email Plugin: This WordPress plugin encrypts your email address if you decide to add it to your blog. I prefer to use a contact form but it's easier for the user to just click a mailto: link and communicate through their email program.