From the Seattle Times: Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes. The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB “thumb drive” that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad… read entire post

I fly down the stairs, feet moving so quickly I almost trip over them. Rounding the corner I dodge Morgan, pop into my office, and remove my workstation from the domain. As that machine begins to reboot I jog back to the living room and begin moving downloaded utilities from my laptop to a memory stick. Once the copy begins… read entire post

Came home the other day, found a note on the front door. “Your gas has been turned off due to a suspected leak. Call us to arrange an inspection. Love, Oklahoma Natural Gas.” Turns out, ONG has a courtesy service where they automatically shut your gas off when your bill hits a certain number. Apparently that number is around $500.… read entire post

I’m a regular member of several online forums, one of which is the Oklahoma Coin-Op Collectors Forum. The demographics are fairly obvious; most of the users are people who live in Oklahoma, and who collect coin-operated games. The main focus of the forum is arcade games and pinball machines, although conversation about coin changers, vending machines, slot machines and other… read entire post

A couple of weeks ago, we (the external user provisioning team) needed a projector for our meeting, which we borrowed from PC Service here at work. Along with the projector came three or four different video cables — VGA to VGA, s-video to VGA, and so on. Later in the day, one of our friends (Paula) came over and said,… read entire post

One (of many) skill(s) I am apparently lacking is the ability to correctly judge how much food others can or will eat. Every time I buy or prepare food for others, things go horribly wrong. And, due to my own issues with food, I consistantly buy too much food instead of too little. Scenario #1: This year was our year… read entire post

Another year, another Sun Valley Garage Sale Day gone by. As a youngster, my mom and grandma hauled my sister and I to our fair share of garage sales, but Sun Valley’s Garage Sale Day was the first “neighborhood” garage sale I can personally remember attending. On every Garage Sale Day, dozens of our neighbors would open their garage doors,… read entire post

I spent most (all) of my evening working on my PC software archiving project. As I mentioned yesterday, this project began after noticing that many of my older CDs have started to disintegrate. If I’m reburning everything, I might as well organize it all while I’m at it. To kick off the project I copied every CD-R I’ve ever burned… read entire post

Bitrot, according to Wikipedia, refers to “the decay of physical storage media.” Back in the early days of computing, losing data was a way of life. I’ve seen people in tears more than once after discovering the floppy disk that once held their homework was no longer readable. Floppy disks are magnetic storage media; as such, directly applying a magnet… read entire post