March 1 - Spring is Coming

Life is renewing in a few short weeks with the onset of Spring. Saying good-bye to this long snowy winter is something I am looking forward to. The only thing about Spring I would like to skip is all the Rain that tends to come with it here in the Midwest. Dogie door + two dogs (one little and one huge) + wet dirt = Muddy floors. OH MY! My puppy just turned one year old February 20, and she has there huge feet and hates my mop with a passion. Then again, she hates the broom, mop, vacuum, lawn mower, and garbage cans. I am sure she is looking forward to the swimming pool. Crazy dog loves water. Grand kids can go out in the back yard and play with the outside toys and sleep good at night for their parents. So looking forward to Spring.

The closer Spring gets, the closer we come to the end of another semester of school. That means, research projects come due, research papers are due, posters and presentations must happen and final testing of the disaster database must be successfully achieved. Pressure from many areas and the human instincts to put off tomorrow just to enjoy the sunshine that I have been deprived of all winter long.

I so need some warm weather and bright sunshine in my days to help me sleep at night and to feel renewed. Come on warm weather. Spring break is a mere 10 days away but there will be no Florida trip for me. Looks as if Wisconsin Dells wins this time. I hope they have sun up there in Wisconsin in March. I would so hate going up there and find cloudy over casted days and cold night. I can deal with the lower temps if the sun is shinning and I can get out in it for a few hours a day.

Oh well, soon we will be complaining of the extreme heat and needing to find some place that is air conditioned. Bring it on!!!!

Remember Alex Brown - Extream Makeover Jan 30, 2011

I watched Extreme Makeover Home Edition tonight and the team built a "green" home for a family that lost their daughter Alex to a fatal vehicle crash because she was texting and driving. I have to admit that I have attempted this myself but after seeing this episode, I have signed the pledge to not text and drive. I love their motto of live now text later. During the episode, the crowd was shown several times displaying a thumbs up with orange thumb rings made of rubber proudly displayed. I have google searched the Internet looking for any links that would point me to where I could purchase several of these bands. You would think that America would rally around this cause and that CBS would be prepared for the question, "Where can I get one of those thumb rings?".
Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Remembering-Alex-Brown-Stop-Textn-While-Driving/196020627075519?ref=ts&v=wall#!/pages/Remembering-Alex-Brown-Stop-Textn-While-Driving/196020627075519
I have "liked" the page within facebook and there too many people are asking the same question regarding the orange thumb bands. Why didn't someone anticipate these requests and have a link to donate to the cause and get a thumb band. Getting teens to sign this pledge is a great idea but it cannot stop there. I know people of all ages text now and just like anything else that takes our attention away from driving is a cause that should be highlighted and getting the public behind the cause is a great way to get legislation passed to support important causes.

Drinking a driving kills and obviously texting and driving kills as well. As a society, we need to be aware of how technology is negatively affecting our lives. Having laws that state you cannot drive and text will not solve this dilemma as we have seen that drinking and driving laws have done nothing - people still do it and still kill innocent people. Driving in the city of Chicago, they have a law that prohibits talking on a cell phone while driving, yet almost everyone still does it. What is it going to take to get people to use common sense and drive safely. Leave all the distractions behind until you can safely pull over and perform those necessary tasks.

New Semester, New Challenges

Well, the Spring semester is fully underway. It officially started last week with Professor Liles and the Independent Study. As usual, I am confused and wondering why did I sign up for this class. Well, I love the challenges that Liles throws at his students and I love the satisfaction of conquering the challenges. This semester even though I signed up for only two classes will challenge me on different levels. Liles class will make me doubt everything I know, everything I think I know and even the things I have no idea about. Professor Nicoai will be trying to challenge me in the programming arena. I have not wrote code in over fifteen years and now I have to tell her what my expertise is and the level of which I think I am at to her so she can assign me to a team. I really don't know how I will answer this question for her but I will.

Dropbox is a new concept for me as well. I finally got into the darn thing but still having to figure out where everything is stored and reviewing existing code to understand the project is my main focus this week. I am sure I will have plenty of questions and I really would love to learn SQL better and scripting. I think in the long run, this will be the most benefical to me.

I am going to try to keep from stressing out for the first month of classes, but I bet I do not make it that long. I may need therapy after I complete my masters degree. My daughter better hurry up and graduate so she can be in charge of that said therapy.

TaTa for now.

Enron - The Fall of the 7th Largest Corporation in America

December 2, 2001 Enron filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Nothing new here correct, until it became the largest bankruptcy of its kind and known as the largest computer forensic case to date. Watching the video "The Smartest Guys in the Room" was a real eye opener. It is available via Netflix and youtube.com. I watched it via youtube. Only bad part was that there are 10 segments all lasting between 10 to 12 minutes in length. Amazing how some people can think so deviously while others cannot even begin to think at that level.

So, what actually happened? In my opinion, a group of money hungry individuals working together to find more professionals who have little to no ethics to join the corporation to scam billions of dollars from unknowing investors, and the state of California got away with one of the biggest injustices I have seen in my lifetime. It was amazing to watch the whole story unfold and yet to hear about the millions of dollars these men were paid (salary, bonuses and stock options) to defraud so many people.  Arthur Andersen being involved was another shocker. Mark to Market accounting has been around since the early 1990s and Skilling took it to a new level at Enron. No one was allowed to look at their books and discover the huge discrepancies could have stopped the downward spiral of Enron before more than 4000 people lost their jobs and everyone lost their 401K investments and retirement funds. It is difficult to imagine how someone can perform the immoral acts that Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Fastow, Causey and others could and sleep at night. Let alone, sell off their stocks and get millions of dollars and never once think about how they were ruining other people’s lives. I really never gave Enron much thought until it became the Midterm Question for my Computer Forensics class.

I never really put two and two together when California was having those rolling blackouts. Enron was manipulating the markets and the power grid by shutting down electrical power plants to drive up the cost of electricity for the state of California. I never really realized how involved Arthur Andersen was involved until I watched the movie “Smartest Guys in the Room”. Traders involving themselves in insider trading and yet Lay and Skilling stated many times, they knew nothing of what was going on in their corporation. Impossible, it is just a shame; the courts could not recoup more money and assets from the quality and give back to innocent investors. How much influence did Enron have in the fallout of the .com situations way back when?

Forensics - not just dead bodies

Well, we are half way through the semester and the classes are interesting and gearing up to be more intense during the last half. In the Database Modeling class, I have been told that I am getting the materials and my data flow diagrams are shaping up. Next came the Enterprise Data Model followed by the Entity Relationship Diagram. Man this stuff is confusing when you are not a database person. The funny thing about it, is I can program, I can understand relationships between data, I just can't draw the pictures to match "the story". Professor Nocolai always says "Tell me the Story". My favorite part is "The End".

As for Managing for Quality in Production, this Thursday, the class has to present materials on Strategic Planning. We have been separated into five groups of five with I think one exception - one group of six. We have to present on Who is involved with a Strategic Plan. I am going to talk about St. Jude's Children's Hospital since they are a not for profit hospital. This out to be good.

Finally, what we all have been waiting for, the title of my blog today - forensics. I have played around with Encase for the last seven weeks, trying to understand how the software works but with a limited version of the software. I have no idea half the time if what I am doing with open source or free software is netting me the same results as the Encase does since we have to use their sample files. So this week we had due a lab where we had to clone a disk drive and get a hash value. I tried to use WinHex, but that seemed to net me two different hash values, not sure if what I did was correct or not, so I switched to ProDiscover. Only to find out that I had filled my disk drive with images from all the other software that did not work correctly. Spent a lot of time cleaning up and now my system mechanic software is Bitching about all the fragmented files and disk cleanup it needs to do. So, forensics is not only about dead people, I am learning a lot about dead and live imaging and enjoying the hell out of it. I hope there is a part two to this class. I want to learn more.

time sure flies these days

It seems like just yesterday, I was starting a new semester without an advisor but it has been five weeks already. Classes are in full swing and I am already starting to feel the crunch as midterms (if there are going to be some) are only a short three weeks away. I wanted to stay ahead of the reading this semester, but that has not worked out so far. I can easily get swept away if I am not careful. Life as a grad student is not easy - not that I expected it to be but man, it is hard work keeping up with every professors requirements. I don't think I will be taking three classes next semester. This is just too much work and not enough time to devote to each class. I feel like I am cheating myself out of valuable knowledge by not having adequate time to study and absorb the materials. I am not sorry I took three classes this semester; I just now know that I am not going to do it again next semester. I am challenging myself in many areas this semester and that is good, but taxing on the nerves and confidence. I will survive - as I am not a quitter. I just need to regroup and go at it from another direction.

OMG - Computer Forensics

This class is going to be great. Professor Liles drove home many of the requirements that appeared in the text chapters but somehow lost because they were just words on the page. Hearing him repeat the requirements and then back them up with real life experiences and examples made them sink into this thick skull of mine. Some days I wonder if I will truly get this information. I sit in class and my mind wanders to "how much more effective would this class be if I was like most of the other students in the class" They are underclassmen who are in their senior year of school - about to get their Bachelors degree.

These students have the luxury of just having some classes that I have not had ever but have learned most on my own through the life of a working LAN Administrator yet, I question my abilities. I know that I know this stuff, I just feel like I might have known more if I was in there shoes. Having being in their shoes over 15 years ago - I could not wait to get out of the classroom and into the work force. I was not thinking about a Masters degree. Then again, had I wanted a Master's degree immediately after my Bachelors - I would have had to obtain it from Purdue Lafayette and it still would not have included the classes I am currently taking.

Technology has changed so much and continues to change. I now have to figure out three topics in which I have to produce a research paper on by the end of the semester. One topic has to be in the Command Central arena for my Database Modeling class, One on Computer Forensic topic, and I believe the other has to be something to do with Quality Control and Productivity in Industry. I am not sure on the last one. Guess it is a good time to re-read my syllabus - Yes?