Daily Archives: August 16, 2017

She’s real fine, my 4 0 9 . . .

Cue the Beach Boys.




Back at the client’s this morning, I concentrated on getting full access to the webserver. And to do that I had to figure out how the other IT guy was getting from his personal computer into the webserver, which is a Linux machine, not Windows.

Normally you use a program called PUTTY to telnet into the other computer, but it wasn’t installed on his machine, so I went looking for OpenSSH, another popular ssh program, but no luck there either. Of course I could have just installed PUTTY or OpenSSH and used them, but I figured that whatever program he was using would have the IP address and ports already entered.

And finally I found it – TightVNC. And there was the needed info – 192.168.1.200::5901. Now to figure out the password.

I had found various passwords scribbled on Post-It’s around his office, and started with some of those. But I quickly ran into a problem. He had the security protocols turned on, so after three wrong passwords the system would lock me out for a while.

So I had to get smarter. I had noticed that there was a lot of references to 409, the song by the Beach Boys, and I knew the password had seven characters (the system wasn’t masking the password length) so I started trying variations on  this theme – and the second try – ‘fine409’ hit paydirt.

Now although I was into the the webserver, I still didn’t have root access, so it back to my password list. And in this case the fifth try was the charm, and I was in with SuperUser access. And that wrapped it up for today.

Now I can work on it remotely from home.




Tomorrow morning we’ll head for Hammond LA about 350 miles away to pick up our RV from Big Wheel Towing and Diesel. The last time I saw ‘Beauty’ she was parked forlornly at the side of the big lot there a week and a half ago. So it will be good to get back to our ‘home’.

I know Karma will be glad to get back as well, since for the last almost two weeks, her entire world has been our bedroom here at Brandi’s

Karma Bored

With two big dogs, Kitty and Baxter, and two other cats in the house, we decided to keep her out of the fray. But I should have brought a couple of her toys with me when I brought her with me. She’s been really bored.

I would like to leave earlier than 9am, but that would put us in the middle of downtown Houston traffic during rush hour. So we should get to Hammond about 3pm, and  hopefully on the road back to Breaux Bridge, and Poche’s RV Park by 4pm.



Then on Friday we were scheduled to come on  back to Lake Conroe TT for two days before moving over to Colorado River for two weeks. But this evening I changed our schedule to where we stay nine days at Lake Conroe, a week at Colorado River, and then back on our two week schedule at Lake Conroe.



Thought for the Day:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” — George Orwell, ‘1984’  

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