I’ll Do it Later Attitude is Worst When Dealing in IT Department

For almost two decades I’ve seen lots of crap in IT departments, and one of the major problems is the attitude of dealing with things later. So lets say you installed Windows 2008 R2 yet you will deal with windows updates “later” … AFTER you finished configuring IIS or Apache or whatever AND then on top of that all you, did not complete change management or document what you did on that server at all.

Anyway, am not writing this to preach on how you should do your work, but because of the attitude above you might not have one in few months, because your company lost revenue due to hacked system.

Minimal/General things to consider before and after…

  • Scan your server for vulnerabilities before you do anything ( Use tools like Nessus, Openvas (open source), Rapid7 and others)
  • Install your software, make sure its up to date
  • Do windows or linux updates
  • Scan your server for vulnerabilities again ( if you find something fix it right away, don’t wait)
  • Note information you did on the server , that includes creating any type of usernames, updates, fixes, installs, etc.. basically everything you did on that server.
  • If you are installing some type of new software, take screenshots, be very specific as to what you did to install it correctly.

The steps above are really minimal but the impact on security is greater and can sometimes even save you from unwanted attacks.

One thing I always do is join newsletters, blog rss feeds and company events that their software runs on corporate network.. this way you are always up to date. Update notifications for software is fine too, but most likely too late if you get hacked.

The stuff above really applies to everything in life, if you have that little hint of “I’ll do it later” yet takes you 2 minutes to do it, do it right then and there!..

“I’ll clean my teeth tomorrow.. am too sleepy” – you will most likely say same sh** tomorrow!

 

Reseting Windows 8 Password – The Easy Way

While many corporations are still on Windows XP and Windows 2003 servers, many already moved on to going with Windows 2008 and now Windows 2012 servers. Main operations problem is if you change the whole IT department and previous IT people had all passwords in their head. Don’t you FK@!# hate that?

I DO!

Anyway, guys at 4SysOps wrote up really cool article about resetting Windows 2012 password the right way, as they said – there are third party tools that do all the work for you but if you are skeptical like I am. I rather do it the right way.
One nice password manager apps that many IT smaller shops use is KeePass , since I started using it for personal use , I got so addicted to it. So after you reset your Windows 2012 password , get some password manager, please?

Changing SSH Port on CentOS or any Linux Distro

When I fire up my Linux boxes for the first time , first thing I do is change the SSH port to something other than 22. I just hate the default port and there is just to much security going on with that. Anyway , like most Linux boxes changing the SSH port is easy but the problem is when you can’t  connect to the box after you changed the port I faced that issue with CentOS. And then you go around your normal troubleshooting:

  1. Did I do port 9992 or 9929? Maybe it was 5592?
  2. Does my PC or Mac allow those ports? Oh let’s check router settings etc.
  3. and more..

You could go on and on with troubleshooting but to be honest 90% of the time is on the Linux box you configured something either incorrectly or IPTables are messed up.

 

Anyway first to change the port on any standard Linux distribution such as CentOS, Ubuntu or even RH you start with

cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config

this will display all the stuff about your sshd…

To to change the port use an editor like nano or pico which are usually installed on your Box by default and then type

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find where it says PORT 22 if it’s commented like #PORT 22 remove the # and then change the number to some high number above let’s say 5K.

once you are done with that, save the file by clicking CTRL + O

The change above should not distroy your connection so let’s add the IPTable for that port.

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –dport  5000-j ACCEPT

(PLEASE Change the port 5000 number with your desired port you set above) 

Let’s save the IPTable by writing the command /etc/init.d/iptables save

So now you should be all set!

Restart sshd by typing:

sshd service sshd restart

Now try your remote ssh client such as putty or cygwin to connect to your box..

 

 

Don’t Be Stupid Ok? Mobilize Your Website Already!

You know what’s wrong? It’s wrong that millions of websites and blogs even the ones that are on top of the list still didn’t mobilize their websites.

Millions of people from work, home and anywhere in the world are browsing Internet via their mobile devices yet webmasters still don’t see the benefit of mobilizing the website.

I really hate the fact that when I go to some “popular” tech blog and I have to wait till site loads, then I have to pinch-zoom-in to read the content. For wordpress bloggers it takes literally 20 seconds to mobilize their blogs: I use wp-touch..its an awesome wordpress plugin that can difirentiate the visitors, whether they are browsing from Some Tablet, Smartphone or Desktop PC.

When I look at some of my sites that received millions of pageviews, 15-25% of traffic came from mobile devices!

Don’t be stupid and wait 5 years till you realize that you can help your mobile visitors read your content faster and easier.

Get wp-touch if you are on wordpress, if you have some other CMS platform, lookup how to mobilize your website. Or pay $200 some offshore developer to mobilize your website. Trust me it’s worth it, and people like me will love to come back and read your content.

iOS 5 Predictions

For past few years my predictions in technology were 90% accurate and spot on the release dates for gadgets.  Just recently my iOS 5 predictions were 100% accurate and lets hope that iOS 5 release date prediction is also going to be spot on.

iOS 5 Release Date Predictions

iOS 5 Beta 4 – July 25th

iOS 5 Final Release – Late August

According to what I see in tech industry and how things are moving around, iOS 5 should be released to public in late August. To be more specific I am thinking August 22nd.  It does not really take any special sense to predict those dates, basically I compared how apple worked out previous iOS 3-4 releases and apply that same knowledge to iOS 5.

IBM researches predicted that in next 5 years there are going to be devices which will be able to display holographic images. I totally support that prediction because I predicted that about 4 months before they even release that news to the world.  Bad thing about such predictions is that there is two things that can happen to me : If predictions of mine are correct I get to be called , genius.. but if they are incorrect, I get to be called an Idiot…Oh well! Ill take my chances whether I was right or wrong.

So far all my predictions are 90% accurate in IT world.

D5000 Fireworks Settings

This July 4th I took some awesome pictures of fireworks with my D5000 camera with my 18-55MM lens. After reading few of articles on how to setup Nikon D5000 to photograph fireworks, I learned a lot about the colors, aperture and shutter.

My Nikon D5000 Settings

  • Manual Mode also known as (M)
  • F13-F22 – Aperture was set between F13-F22 depends on how near I shot the fireworks
  • Shutter Speed was set to between 2-4
  • Focus on the lens I set up manual

Speaking of Focus, I would strongly advice to put it in manual mode vs automatic, because when you put it on automatic, you will lose a lot of time and fireworks between the shots.

Here are some of my pictures that I took this July 4th in Urbandale, Iowa

As you can see above some shots are good some bit bad, that’s why changing the aperture between F13 and F22 helped a lot, I left the shutter speed between 2-4 as I mentioned above. I took 233 pictures which you can see the rest of them on my flickr account. Am not profesional photographer but if you leave comments below I will respond to whatever questions you have in mind.

Taking Pictures for 4th of July of Fireworks with DSLR – Tips Resources

DSC_0744

We are few hours away from experiencing the 4th of July fireworks, while looking up online for some DSLR Tips I stumbled upon on few sites that give great tips on how to take pictures of fireworks.

My favorite post about taking pictures of fireworks  is from friend of mine Darren Rowse, who is also very known among professional bloggers like my self. In the link below you will find almost everyhing you need to know about taking picture of Fireworks.

How to Photograph Fireworks Displays

My second favorite is from Photo Kaboom, has lots of tips and tricks on photography – but bit too confusing to read…

Fireworks > DSLR Cameras

And my top resource which comes from Ken Rockwell who is one of the well known and experienced photographers. In his post below he describes a lot of useful information just like Darren Rowse does.

Photographing Fireworks

Hope you like my limited resources on how to photograph fireworks. I tested Darren’s tips last year and worked perfectly!

 

#8035 by Joe Hobot

Here are some of my @8035 Instagram pictures I took with iPhone, must say that Instagram still works with iOS 5 Beta 2. #8035 is yearly music festival in Des Moines, Iowa where you can see some new and popular bands playing for 2 days.

Anyway,

Just wanted to share some of my latest pictures I took.

 

Who Did We Become?

Where is this world going?

What are we favoring?

Who are we honoring?

Those are some of the questions I ask my self from time to time (every day). Where is this greed for MORE and MORE money going?

Where is media shifting us?

Why is Charlie Sheen 24/7 on TV  for past few weeks, yet soldier that died today who fought for his country was not even seen by local news.  Who are we favoring, Who is our hero? Who is our idol?

We all know that it’s wrong, we all have that feeling that its wrong, but we still at the end of the day do exactly what others tells us to do. By the time you go to bed, sometimes people don’t realize that a peace of their heart and soul just died, and it’s dying every single day, because we resist that feeling, we don’t want to feel guilty, we want to be happy for that moment.

But then again, who am I to say those things, right? ……..

YOU: That’s right Joe! …..who the f** are you?

Sincerely,

Your Guilt.

 

 

 

 

Blogging from iPhone

Ok so this will be my first post that I’ll attempt to write on this blog via iPhone app called WordPress. So far iPhone app for WordPress seems to be easy to use, very straight forward but that also means it’s very limited to what you can do. For an example if I would like to view post in HTML I can’t. Nor I am not able to use bullet points. So basically I am stuck with text writing only. I think that is the reason why this app is low rated on apple store. But for quick posts I think the app does well job.

Another way I usually post stuff is by installing mobile admin plugin on WordPress, that way when I login with android or any other mobile device it’s easier for me to write quick posts.