How I turned a junker PC into a trap for scammers

As my regulars will be aware, for the past few weeks I’ve been getting lots of phone calls from “Peggy” from “Computer Maintenance Department.” What I’ve found during these phone calls is that debating with them does no good, and saying that your computer is crazy fast gets them to hang up on you, but they’ll call back again in a few days anyway.

Last week, I had lunch with a group of future coworkers–I’ll be joining them once my background check results come in–and I mentioned these phone calls. The guy sitting across the table from me said he wants their malware, so he can reverse-engineer it. So I said I would cooperate the next time I got a phone call. Read more

How to downgrade a Log Logic universal collector

If you’ve ever upgraded a LogLogic universal collector and had it fail to work, it’s very disconcerting to see the error message when you try to reinstall the previous version: Downgrades aren’t supported. But there is a solution if you need to downgrade a Log Logic universal collector. Read more

The Phoenix Project: A must-read book for anyone who aspires to IT leadership

After a bad day at work last week, I went home and ordered The Phoenix Project (or here it is on Amazon), started reading it, and felt better. Like Office Space, but there’s more to learn from it.

Phoenix is more realistic. Every problem every shop I’ve ever worked in is in that shop, plus some I’ve (luckily) only heard about. But unlike Office Space, it has solutions beyond burning the building down. Read more