Merry Christmas to my friends and family from coast to coast! May your Christmas day be filled with Family, fun, and food - I know mine will be!
PowerShell Saves the Day
I ran into a situation today where I only had remote desktop access to a Windows machine and that machine did not have any outbound network access, but I needed to somehow get a dll onto the system. As remote desktop drive access was disabled, but I could copy and paste data via the clipboard, it only took a few moments before I realized base64 was going to be the route to take. But how could I decode it on the other end? Fortunately, the remote system had PowerShell pre-installed (rare, but very fortunate)!
Thanks to a few useful references, I was able to whip up this one-liner to get my dll over to the remote box:
1$fileName = "CustomLibrary.dll"; [System.Convert]::ToBase64String((Get-Content -Encoding Byte $fileName)) | Set-Content ($fileName + ".b64")
Open the .b64 file in notepad, copy the contents, then paste into a new file on the remote side and then use the following:
1$fileName = "CustomLibrary.dll"; [System.Convert]::FromBase64String((Get-Content ($fileName + ".b64"))) | Set-Content -Encoding Byte $fileName
And there you have your new dll copied over to the remote system using nothing but PowerShell. And if Out-Clipboard was still built in, I wouldn’t have even had to deal with the intermediary file!
Google Browser Sync
So Google’s recent Browser Sync tool is pretty neat. It allows you to sync your Firefox sessions between computers, which is pretty nice for a guy that frequently moves between 3-4 computers. The only curious thing I noticed when I installed it, was that it installed from dl.google.com even though I hadn’t added that to my list of exceptions - photographic evidence here:
My current list of exceptions:
The browser sync install dialog:
So how did Google achieve this? I was quite suspicious at first, but it turns out it’s simply a little collaboration with Mozilla. There is a browser sync page on the Mozilla addons site, but all it does is redirect the user to Google’s xpi for installation, which allows Google to still host the browser sync install file, but not require the user to add their servers to the exceptions. Here’s the content of the Google Browser Sync addon page:
<html> <body onload="window.location.href='http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/toolbar/google-browsersync.xpi'"> </body> </html>
Cute, huh? I haven’t decided yet whether I’m upset by this or not. They haven’t bypassed the Firefox security restrictions, but they have definitely misled me…
Update: Yea, RSnake is right (see 2nd comment). Combined with an XSS on a site that’s in your trusted exception list, this could probably allow an attacker to install XPI’s from arbitrary sites if they so desired. Roxor. I’m curious if the Mozilla addon page allows JavaScript for developers - I’m assuming not, but you what assuming does…
Boarding in Baker
Baker was wicked! It’s so awesome to be back in a place where snow sports are so readily accessible. I tried out boarding and it was pretty cool - I was linking turns and whatnot by the end of the day and making it down one of the runs without falling too much. I gotta run to L.A., but here’s a pic of me at the top of the last run of the day. I can’t wait to hit the trails again!
Back to the Snow
Sorry for the lack of posts - I’ve been busy planning world domination. In other news, I’m heading up to Mt. Baker to do some skiing and snowboarding this weekend. The last time I went skiing, it was 1993 and entirely different technology was in use. This should be pretty interesting, but I can’t wait!
And in what is an interesting case of irony, there is now Argentine Tango Dating across the street from where I used to live in Chicago…now cool would that have been!
Snowing in Seattle
It’s snowing in Seattle tonight. It doesn’t do this very often, so it’s nice to get a real taste of winter. Comcast has yet to successfully get my cable installed (third visit is tomorrow…) so here I sit once again in a cozy coffee shop listening to Christmas carols and watching the snow float gently to the ground. It’s a beautiful sight.
Turkey day was great - I got to see a lot of family members and play with my wonderful little niece and nephew who I miss so much. The only down side was the 12 hours of travel from door-to-door that it took to get out there and another 12 on the way back. It was definitely worth it, though, and I slept through most of it. Time to go do some donuts in the parking lot!
Happy Turkey Day
Happy Thanksgiving, all. I’ll be spending the day with a whole bunch of family back on the east coast. Enjoy the turkey! gobble, gobble
Technology and Socializing
Question of the night - Does certain technology (specifically text messaging) make people more social? The theory I’ve always assumed is that the insertion of text messaging systems into society tends to separate people and make them more distant by removing a sense of interaction and personality and instead allow people to interact without repercussions of the standard conversational experience. But can this in turn make people more willing to interact? For an example using text messaging - I can send out a message to numerous people inviting them to some event. I can send this in mass and without concern of getting blatantly turned down. If somebody doesn’t want to go, they just don’t reply. Furthermore, I don’t have to go to the trouble of initiating a conversation with several people and face being rejected in person. What’s easier? Taking the effort to call somebody and form a coherent conversation on the spur of the moment or send them a text message that’s been carefully thought out and initiate a non-real-time conversation that allows you to contemplate your replies.
A lot of what got me started thinking about this is services like Dodgeball. Dodgeball is a service that sends a text message to your “friends” when you send a text message to the service indicating an establishment that you’re currently at. Although huge in Seattle, it is not nearly as popular in Chicago. But it is a great service that allows you to catch up with your “friends” with minimal effort. Pretty cool, if you ask me.
That’s all the speculation for this evening. I’m still stealing Internet from Tully’s. Comcast comes to my house for the third time tomorrow - hopefully the third time is the charm. Installing cable in a house is a slightly more complex process than in an apartment building. ;o)
XMas
So…does anybody want a Damon for Christmas this year? Home is kind of far away and I’m entertaining the idea of spending Christmas in a foreign land this year…so if anybody has the need for a Damon in their Christmas plans, just let me know. :o) All I need is a place to sleep - I am otherwise self-sufficient!
Pics From the Road Trip
On my way out from Chicago to Seattle, I took about 150 photos. The scenery was just gorgeous, especially in Montana. I just put a bunch of them up on flickr so take a look at my pics tagged with road trip.
Busy with work, which is good. On an awesome client this past week and next and doing some really interesting things. Tully’s is kicking me out now so I’ll have to post some more later - still no Internet at home.