That was my first instinct, followed closely by Spybot when Adaware didn’t seem to work. Most things seemed cleared out pretty well after a couple scans by each program, but a few random-looking processes hung around and pop-ups persisted whenever I browsed the web. The culprits seemed to be a process named NAIL.EXE and the Orwellian-sounding ABetterInternet. A little googling led me to discover The Best Offers Network. The name (unofficial or official, I don’t know) of their spyware/adware/malware is Aurora.

Simply put, Aurora does things so malicious, so difficult to track, so unfathomably evil that I am inclined to wonder whether it was programmed by human beings or shat forth, wholly formed, from the gaping anus of satan himself. If you’re reading this in hopes of learning how to remove it, I would strongly recommend you run screaming in the opposite direction, search out your WinXP installation disc, back up everything you can’t stand to live without, and reformat your hard drive, because Aurora will almost certainly defeat you. There are so many versions out there that nobody can help you, and you will wind up spending so many hours following wrong paths, red herrings, and underpants gnomes that a 2-hour reformat/reinstall will seem like lunch at Alto by comparison.

But I did learn some things while securing my own victory over the festering ball of fecal matter that is Aurora, and you’re welcome to read on if you’re curious.

As expected, I’ve been working for almost two full weeks now. Adjusting to the routine of coming into the office every day has been surprisingly easy, probably because this is how I’ve spent each of the past three summers. We’ll see how I hold up once August rolls around and I’m not on my way back to Harrisonburg.

My first few projects haven’t been anything terribly exciting; in fact, most of my energies right now are focused on forcing Excel do things for which it was not designed (i.e. behave like a database). The nice thing about being here full time from now on is that I’ll eventually be able to throw out the bad kludges that don’t work quite right and redesign from the ground up without having to worry about the hard deadline of going back to school.

Another nice thing about being here full time is the paycheck: I got my first yesterday.

Happily, I was told that, when I graduate, I'm welcome to come back and work here as an Actual Person (my words, not theirs). With this in mind, I hereby dedicate at least the next ten months of my life to worrying about my last year of college, and not what comes after it.

13:09:21.89 1 ACCOUNT(ajs) [32954] failed to deliver. Error Code=end of file error
13:09:21.89 1 DEQUEUER [32954] LOCAL(ajs) failed
13:09:21.89 0 TEMPFILE(32955) writing failed. Error Code=disk is full

Impossible. The server has a huge hard drive! So I df...

/dev/sda5              1027768    927448     48112  96% /var
/dev/sda3             14358012     32828  13595836   1% /home

Could I be a bigger idiot for not having checked this? I mean, I didn't install the OS, and whoever installed the OS must not have known that /var is where all the data goes, so I should have checked. God, I suck.

It's going to be a long weekend.

Wait. I should tell some of the backstory.

I asked a not-hypothetical question last week (what, you didn't realize that I am Guy?) and actually wound up answering it myself. I'm installing and configuring a copy of CommuniGate Pro as my company's new mail server. Then I'm going to manage it. It's gonna be great.

Yesterday, I changed some of our DNS records using Bizland's (poorly documented) "Custom DNS" tool (for which we are now paying US$3.95/month) so that I'd have a subdomain to work with. This, in retrospect, was a Big Mistake, as the MX records got messed up. The upshot? No one in the office has received any email since yesterday evening.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining: several people have told me that it's nice not having as much work to do. Meanwhile, I scrape through the sparse documentation at Bizland's website, trying to learn the seemingly secret locations of their SMTP servers so that I might fix the MX records.

Six hours after I began my quest, someone (who doesn't even work for Bizland, as far as I can tell) helped me. So now, my task accomplished, I sit back and wait for the DNS records to propagate.

The really ironic angle to the story is that, within another day, I'll probably be switching the MX records again, to point to the new mail server, but we need our old setup working now.

• Researched and ordered a laptop to use this summer. It's a Dell (unfortunately not a Powerbook) Inspiron 8500 with all the goodies. I'll be installing Linux on it and playing with remote VoIP applications.
• Ordered wireless networking cards to set up Wi-Fi in the office. It's gonna rock.
• Prepared for, then completely botched, the installation of a new device (the ZyWALL 10W) in my company's network. That, incidentally, is the reason I was here on Saturday and Sunday (broke everything trying to install it on Saturday, fixed almost everything on Sunday).
• Completely ruined, then resurrected, the VoIP applications we have in the office already.
• Prepared for, then executed flawlessly, the installation of a new device (the ZyWALL 10W) in my company's network.

Now I'm looking into setting up a VPN between this office and the Miami office. I think I need a nap.

Example: After December 14, there will be nobody in our apartment until January 11. I can configure Asterisk to answer the phone whenever it rings, play a message to that effect, and ask the caller if he would like to be forwarded to either my or Dan's phone (mobile, home, or both). Sure, I could have just recorded a message before I left listing our phone numbers on our existing answering machine, but where's the geek cool factor in that?

In my apartment at school, we have a single incoming phone line and high-speed Internet connections. To set up a PBX would entail setting up Rohan as a gateway, as it was last year. This time, with a more server-oriented distro (probably Debian). Install in Rohan one X100P and one S100U. X100P gets connected to wall outlet via standard phone cable, S100U gets connected to standard analog phone. Naturally, Rohan also has connections via Ethernet to Internet and Gondor.

Asterisk is installed on Rohan. Incoming calls (either IP or over PSTN) may be routed to analog phone or client on Gondor (IP calls using IAX are not routable to Gondor, as Windows port of Gnophone does not yet exist). Asterisk also functions as voicemail system, making answering machine in apartment unnecessary, although system may only be accessible via analog phone connected to S100U(?).

Outgoing calls via phone connected to S100U may be routed according to destination and current status of phone line:

• If phone line is open and call is local (local prefixes as defined by Verizon), use PSTN.
• If phone line is open and call is long-distance (no long-distance service on phone), use Internet to place call. This will wreak havoc with caller ID (as will any use of VoIP).
• If phone line is in use, use Internet regardless of call destination.

Back to the research...