I’m a computer security buff

When it comes down to my personal computer [and other people's computers as well!], I crave a very secure and controllable environment. Everything needs to be at my fingertips, from what goes in and out through various ports — to changing my desktop background. Firewalls are the concern today!

I am thoroughly happy with Sunbelt’s Personal Firewall. It beats the Windows Firewall [hell, everything beats the windows firewall] in every aspect. I would even rank it higher than McAfee, BlackICE, and ZoneAlarm. I have control of so many aspects of the firewall such as web filtering, program activity, port monitoring, an extensive logging system, and even predefined behavior alerts. It is a bit complicated to fully use at first but well worth the time spent learning. And if you don’t feel like learning it is simple to set up and let it run in the background.

Sunbeltlogo

I do have one large problem. It is not caused by my firewall but does affect the firewall. My laptop, which I use majority of the time, came to me through a Laptop Program at my school. The school set everything up and then handed it to me, along with a belligerent contract stating that "I do not own this computer until graduation, at which time it will be ‘given’ to me. [Insert school name] has every right to take back said computer, make changes to said computer, and administrate said computer." Not in those exact words but close enough. Apparently there is a McAfee antivirus system running on this computer. I have no control over any parameters within the system, nor am I able to remove it because the school is administrator of it. My firewall constantly detects abnormal behavior from the antivirus program as well as intrusion attempts from it. It is very annoying having a malfunctioning antivirus program running on my computer while I try to do work with it. Thankfully I have had no major break-ins with this laptop. Albeit, could be because I’ve been running Sunbelt since I received this comp… makes ya wonder. I might as well just buy a new laptop! Should just stop messing around with this old <1.0 Ghz. IBM laptop probably made in 2003 with not even enough memory to run Adobe Photo and Firefox at the same time.

Anyways, enough ranting! Let’s get to it!

What security do you employ on something as valuable and essential as a personal computer?

I have:
Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall
McAfee Antivirus [malfunctioning and stagnant]
Mozilla Firefox [which carries plenty of web security]
Sysinternal’s ProcessXP [analyzes all background processes]
SpyBot SD [runs through temp files, cookies, etc to find ads and bots]

December 5, 2007 | No Comments »

Personal motivation

Some people out there are so gosh darn motivated! When I work with people I tend to observe a major part of their personality. How a person works is a great defining point. In my marketing class I spent time collaborating with two others on various projects throughout the semester. We worked well together as a group by aggregating certain work to each other and also taking into regard each others schedules and workload. It was nice for someone to say to me, "It seems like you’ve had a full week, why don’t I do this part of the assignment for you this time." There are also times when I would sit down and do a good majority of that weeks group assignment for my group and myself just to get it done my way. [Yes, sometimes I have control issues...] All in all, the group work is finished, the semester is winding down. I feel confident that we did a great job together.

Ahh, managing inter-work relationships. One of the most interesting topics I’ve pondered. At my job there are the "He is not doing as much work as I am, so why should I?", the "It doesn’t matter who is working where, let’s just get it done.", the "I’ve been here longer, you do my work for me.", the "I don’t get paid enough to do all this work." There are so many outlooks on work that it may often be difficult to put together an efficient team.

A team needs 3 elements [in any combination, with any amount of members- although generally not too many] : Tenacity, Creativity, and Modesty.

Tenacity enables a team to push forward and take control of the situation.

Creativity allows a team to be able to accommodate for setbacks and be efficient in innovation.

Modesty helps the members of the team step backward and forward so not one single person is being the tenacious or creative one.

[[A simplification of an enormously complicated topic which many managers face. Globalization also makes it difficult to construct a well-oiled team as people sometimes do not know how to interact with strangers. Makes me appreciate that most colleges are requiring courses on Diversity, Building Personal Relationships, and others of that sort.]]

December 1, 2007 | No Comments »