idlethreat

I woke up this morning feeling pretty crappy, so I ended up playing hooky from work and spending the balance of the day playing [HL2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2) and enjoying the hell out of it.

I'm not a huge gamer, so it takes a while before I end up playing the more popular titles out there. I would have to say that HL2 really deserved the name 'best game ever'. So far, so good. really love it.

I think Highway 17 was my favorite level so far. Dark, misty, driving a dune buggy down a mostly deserted road and fighting off things that pop up here and there. The best 'post-apocalyptic' sort of feeling that I've ever gotten from a game, really.

I suppose this will be a small update this evening. Just wanted to yap about HL2 for a minute or two before getting some sleep.

The lovely wife was photoshopping the pubic hair of one of her friends that she photographed over the weekend. Long story there, kids.

Heard from Gizmo this evening. It's been a very, very long time. Really good to hear from her. More on that later as well.

Cheers,

tom

there was an interesting [article posted](http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/10/securitymatters_1004) by [Bruce Schneier](http://www.schneier.com/) the Storm worm seems to be gathering strength, attacking targets of apparent low interest to build a better bot net.

Where I work, we currently have a new client in the environment that I manage that is getting hit by systems apparently infected by the Storm worm. While the attacks currently happening are not causing any DOS (Denial of Service) and is more of a nuisance instead of a threat, it is *extremely* worrying that all someone has to do is flip a switch and cause all sorts of havoc to an environment.

> IronPort found that on Sept. 9, roughly 280,000 distinct Storm-infected systems sent about 2.7 billion e-mails advertising those addresses, making Storm responsible for about 4 percent of all spam sent that day. [[quote](http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/10/the_storm_worm_maelstrom_or_te.html)]

Perhaps the more frightening bit is that there's no head nor tail to this beast.

Well, it's my birthday today. 34 years ago today I was getting pulled out of my mother, shrieking at the top of my lungs. 34 years later, and I still shriek on occasion.

Speaking of shrieking… Been playing the hell out of The Thousand Year Door today and love it.

Took the day off from work, sat on my ass, played games and pretty much did nothing whatsoever. Here's hoping for more days like that in the future ;)

tom