Found this link on Doc’s website. Bruce Schneier thinks the Blaster virus caused the Great Blackout of 2003. He makes a convincing case, too, reading between the lines of the offical report. Something caused all of First Energy Ohio’s monitoring computers to simultaneously freeze. Sound like a virus to you?

This could also be the fuel for the recent road show that Tom “Mr. Homeland Security” Ridge and his trusty sidekick..er, deputy, Robert Liscouski, have been taking to techies. Their blunt message to tech companies is the proverbial offer-you-can’t-refuse: clean up your code or face potential regulation.

“There should be no mistake about where we stand,” Liscouski said during a press conference at the summit. “We are not going to let anybody who operates in this space dodge their responsibility, and I will be sticking my finger into people’s chests to make sure they live up to their responsibilities.”

I was a bit mystified by this statement when the story broke last week. Why the hell does Homeland Security care about viruses? Surely no fool would run mission-critical systems on flawed operating systems? Yet, if that is in fact what happened, you could expect this exact reaction. That is: don’t dare let on that a stupid computer virus took out a huge chunk of the North American power grid, but discreetly go after the perpetrators once the lights are back on. If YOUR computer caught a virus that crashed an entire power grid, would YOU ‘fess up? I thought so!

This is not without precedent, of course. The same power company had its network completely o\/\/n3d earlier this summer by the Slammer worm. And here I was, thinking guys like Homer Simpson only worked at nuke plants in the CARTOONS! Morons.

(I’ll refrain from pointing out that there are other choices for clean, stable operating systems because that should obvious.)

There’s been a revival of Bubb Rubb in the office lately. I got tired of Bubb months ago, but some folks in the office are just catching on. It’s still amusing to hear the occasional “wooo whoooo!” around the office. I know I’ll soon be praying he will soon disappear again. 🙂

Even stranger than that is the fact that I still get a significant number of search engine referrals with “Bubb Rubb” in the search term.

December thunder…sounds like a name for a military operation, huh? I heard thunder about 20 minutes ago. It was quite out of place, seeing how its mid-December. It’s rained buckets today, too. And it still continues.

There was some talk in the office yesterday about how strange it is to have two named storms cruising the Atlantic, long after hurricane season has offically ended.

And what is this talk about an earthquake west of Richmond? When I first heard that, I thought “yeah, west… as in California.” But the epicenter of this 4.5 quake was 30 miles west of Richmond. When it struck at 4 PM yesterday, I never noticed a thing. Dang.

Ol’ Mother Earth loves keeping us on our toes.

Legendary N.C. State basketball coach Norm Sloan passed away yesterday. Lots of comments today about his life.

He coached an N.C. State with David Thompson and Tommy Burleson to a national title in 1974 and provided a spark to the N.C. State-Carolina rivalry.

Even Dean Smith’s comments on Sloan still hint of the sting. No mention of “he was a good friend,” or “what a great guy,” Dean only mentions Norm’s coaching ability:

“What a great coach Norm Sloan was,” Smith said Tuesday. “Believe me, they were our main rivals when he was at N.C. State. His teams played extremely hard.

“He was such a competitor. He passed that on to his players. They played hard, but they played smart, too.”

Sloan obviously did a lot for N.C. State, but he also did a great deal for ACC basketball, too. The Wolfpack faithful owe a lot to him.