Hacker's ramblings

I previously wrote about upgrading OS X El Capitan. After doing couple of boxes I ran into a SNAFU.

If you don't see anything in that page, that's correct! There is nothing there. It would be a safe assumption, that something had gone wrong.

Here is what web browser console says:

Error was: "Failed to load resource: The certificate for this server is invalid." As the errors were emitting from Amazon CloudFront, it didn't make any sense at all. Either Amazon had some sort of security fault happening, or I did. Unfortunately in such situations, the odds are always against me. I had upgraded couple of Macs already and had no problems with them, this box must have had something wrong with it.

My next move was to get a list of trusted root certificates shipping with an OS X. The list is available in Apple knowledgebase article HT205204. Here is what I got:

Another error: 'Safari can't verify the identity of the website "support.apple.com"'. Right. First Amazon was failing on me, then Apple. At this point I whipped up an already upgraded Mac and went for the page, this time it looked ok:

That was the proof, that something was badly off on that Mac.

For fact gathering I went trough the certificate chain of support.apple.com:

As the certificate wasn't trusted, the page looked horrible and there was no lock-icon on the address bar. The important fact here was, that the root certificate of VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5 had version number 3 and serial number of 25 0C E8 E0 30 61 2E 9F 2B 89 F7 05 4D 7C F8 FD. On the working Mac same certificate:

A completely different serial number of 18 DA D1 98 26 7D E8 BB 4A 21 58 CD CC 6B 2B 4A.

Then the relevant question was: Why do they differ? The facts are at OS X certificate store. It so happens, that all certificates can be viewed and altered via Keychain Access -tool. I went to see the System Roots -keychain:

But that didn't solve my problem! VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5 was there and had the proven correct serial number of 18 DA D1 98 26 7D E8 BB 4A 21 58 CD CC 6B 2B 4A. More poking around, and this is what I found:

A set of Verisign certificates on login-keychain. Weird. One of them was:

There was the 25 0C E8 E0 30 61 2E 9F 2B 89 F7 05 4D 7C F8 FD! The only appropriate action was:
And that solved it! Simply letting the weird ones go made all my websites work again.

But where did those certs come from? By googling I found Why is Symantec/Verisign CA appearing as an invalid authority? [closed] and Invalid certificate after Security Update 2015-004 in Mavericks. They both were pointing a finger to April 2015 security update. The release notes About the security content of OS X Yosemite v10.10.3 and Security Update 2015-004 say:

Certificate Trust Policy
Impact: Update to the certificate trust policy
Description: The certificate trust policy was updated. View the complete list of certificates.

I just happened to update the Mac too early and got a flawed upgrade. It is also possible, that on April, when I got bad certs, I may have gone to Verisign and manually loaded the proper root certificates in to fix my problem at the time. However, it just blew up on my face on OS X 11 upg.

If you never encountered any of this: good. I honestly don't think this issue is touching a wide audience. However, I disclosed this information for archive purposes. If something like this happens in the future, you have a clue what to look for.

One of my honey traps got one interesting one. Typiacally the junk is 419 scams, and with all the variations, twists and quirks, they offer very little worth reporting. I have written posts about Apple ID scams earlier, part 1 and part 2.

This is how the "roper" is trying to lure me in. He chose to impersonate the CEO of Apple Inc, Mr. Cook. Really believable, IMHO.

Here goes:

Dear Customer,

We have detected an unauthorized sign in on your Apple ID (me@my.mail)

We have temporarily locked your Apple ID for your safety.
While your Apple ID is locked access to Apple software and your iCloud is limited.

In order to unlock your Apple ID Account please click here.

Privacy

Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services, including iCloud and new services like Apple Pay. And we continue to make improvements. Two-step verification, which we encourage all our customers to use, in addition to protecting your Apple ID account information, now also protects all of the data you store and keep up to date with iCloud.

We believe in telling you up front exactly what's going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it's to provide you with a better user experience.

Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn't come easy. That's why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.

Tim Cook
CEO, Apple Inc.

Sure, it could have been true. It could be possible, that my Apple ID was put into hold because somebody attempted to hack it, but it wasn't.

Findings:

• The Apple logo in the HTML-version of the e-mail was loading from http://i.imgur.com/zGVkgD1.png. I don't think Apple corporation would do that.
• The link to unlock pointed into http://support.apple.com.en-gb.confirm.id.auth.cgi-key.myapple-unlock.web.user.<THIS-PART-REMOVED>.com, which really doesn't sound something that Apple would use.
  • Actually, at the time of writing, entire domain was removed. It's not available, no DNS, no nothing.
• The domain was registered via Todaynic.com, Inc. That is a Chinese domain-company. Really! I'm sure Apple wouldn't use them.
• Registrant for the domain was a private person, allegedly living in Beijing, China.
• The e-mail has following route:
  1. Original client at Suddenlink Communications DHCP-pool. IP has location of Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
  2. Mail relay via Power DNN of Omaha, Nebraska, USA
  3. Google Mail
  4. Me
• Mail route doesn't make any sense. All my real Apple e-mail originates from Apple directly, not via obscure teleoperators.

I think that's plenty of proof to call that one a fake!

The mailman brought me a nice and official looking letter. I didn't recognize the sender from the envelope, so I just opened it as anybody would do. It was in invoice from a Finnish company I've never heard:

On a cursory glance it says I have to pay 249,- € for this company for something they really don't specify.

By Googling, I found a (Finnish) thread about that at http://murobbs.muropaketti.com/threads/suomen-yritystietopankki-sytp-huijauskirje-nigerialaiseen-tapaan.1254838/.

Timing

Why do I receive this today, on this Tuesday? "By chance, they just happened to act now", pretty much everybody says.

I don't. Its a school holiday week in Southern Finland this week. A lot of companies are using less experienced personnel in their daily operations this week. A social hack will work much better to untrained people.

Invoice, front

On the invoice they have all my details. However, as many countries, also Finland has a public registry of all the companies and corporations at YTJ. The information is actually on sale as bulk in many formats and you can even subscribe to a update-stream to always have the most recent information at your own use in a server processable format. So, they got all that right to drop all doubt that I might have.

Corporate Info

This is the upper right corner of the invoice:

It doesn't have the business ID. All legit companies have it there clearly visible. That's because the VAT legislation forces you to have your BIS available easily. The information can be read in a very fine print next to their payment information.

Their business registration information is as follows:

It says, that the company was founded in November 2014. However, they activated this company into VAT-registrer September this year. I read that as somebody just popping a shelf-company out of desktop drawer into action.

The really funny thing is, that they don't have a phone number in their info. That's more than weird for any legit business. Typically you want to be contacted when needed.

Corporate Address

The address in Finland as stated by the "invoice"  (Google Maps):

Lautatarhankatu 6
00580 HELSINKI

It happens to be 1Office's Helsinki location. These scamsters will have a seemingly legit office location. In a place where a virtual address will cost them no more than 65,- € per month.

The bold part

This is what they want you to look at:

That information would be typical for an invoice. Invoice date, due date, reference and amount. If you don't look closely enough, you would process this one and have it paid at due date.

The real deal

For legal reasons, they don't say Invoice anywhere in the "Invoice". They say, it's an offer to publish your company information upon payment:

If that monster of a term sounds confusing to you, good, that's their intention. In a court of law, they'd just say that they sent offers to companies. However, their "offers" look very much like invoices.

The text in the middle is saying in a threatening manner: "we will remove your business information from our records, unless you pay this amount" is really funny. What I'd love to have is my information removed!

To make all that more threatening, they're saying that "if you want to re-enable your record, the cost will be 540,- €". That's ballsy!

Bank information

It would be a safe assumption that the bank account FI39 570 4320 0254 68 is a valid one. They'll most likely accept any money you'll send to them. In case of trouble, don't worry, you won't get it back.

Corporate Website

Domain

The domain of suomenyritystietopankki.fi is registered to Suomen Yritystietopankki SYTP Oy, 2654517-2.

That is not surprising, but the fact that there is a responsible person for domain is a surprise. The name they gave is: Gyula Katona. I would find it hard to believe, that the Hungarian mathemacian has anything to do with that domain. Most likely fake information.

The technical contact is Domain Directors (Finland) Oy. Yet another valid company, but it is not in tax prepayment or VAT-registers. That is a definite sign of non-active company frozen and shelfed. I tried calling Mr. Tony Lentino at +358 942597854, but I got call forwarded to somewhere in Europe over the crappiest VoIP-line there is. I really couldn't understand anything.

DNS is run by Amazon Route 53 at multiple geographical locations. MX-records in e-mail indicate, that their e-mail is handled by Google Mail.

Implementation

This is what their website looked like when I visited it:

It contains couple of pages and some seemingly working actions. I omitted the valid companies from the picture, but the obvious English review of Fortune Motors Oy kind of sticks out. The business is real as all the businesses they're displaying on their front page. This is the business record for that particular company:

Looks like that Finnish company is already out-of-business. And that's what they're using for an endorsement!

Based on the information they're giving out on a HTTP-request:

The cookie they're setting says Laravel framework. Server is running Apache 2.4.7 and PHP 5.5.9 on Ubuntu Trusty (14.04).

Hosting

The IP-address of 52.5.91.166 is registered to Amazon, Inc. Actually the entire CIDR 52.0.0.0/11 is Amazon Web Services' property. There is an Amazon US East data center at Virginia, USA, where the geo IP location of that address points to. So it would be safe to guess, that the web server runs on AWS US East.

Invoice, back

This are their terms and conditions:

That's mostly legal mumbo-jumbo. The text is valid and appears to be legit. The terms are really bad for you, though.

Conclusions

All this says, this is an international operation. All the data is spread over foreign locations to make any investigation really hard without US Department of Justice involved.

What they're doing is not directly illegal or banned, but the way they're doing their "marketing" is dubious at best. They even are running a website, it has business information and "reviews" of those businesses in it. However, some of the businesses are already shut down, and the reviews are very fake. But again, in a court of law, they'll claim, that they're running a marketing business.

In the terms and conditions part, they make it clear, that their "contract" is valid for companies only, that way consumer protection laws don't apply to them. What's between two businesses has very little protection in the legislation. A company can agree to a contract if they wish to do so.

I don't think this will be the last of them.
Beware!

Now that OS X El Capitan or version 11 is out, I'll do a refresh for the USB installation instructions.

The thing is ... the upgrade free, but it's big. The amount of downloading needed is easily 6+ GiB. I have 3 Macs to update and I don't want to download the huge package on all of them. So, let's figure out something smarter.

Step 0: Prerequisites

You'll need a bootable USB-stick with capacity of 8 GiB or more. All sticks should boot, but I have encountered some that didn't manage that.

USB-booting a Mac is trickier than a PC. The knowledge base article HT1948 states:
Intel-based Macs support starting from an external USB storage device's volume that:

• Has been formatted with a GUID partition type
• Contains an installation of Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later, or Mac OS X 10.5 or later, which is compatible with (or shipped with) the Mac that the USB device is connected to. Note: You should not use a version of Mac OS X that is earlier ("older") than the version your Mac shipped with.

So, if you just bought an USB-stick, the chances are, that it is MBR-partitioned FAT32. That's my experience of getting new ones. They are incompatible at their current state for USB-booting a Mac. Not to worry, that can be fixed!

If you happen to have a ready-made stick for any previous OS X version, that obviously can be loaded with new installer. You can even skip couple of things during the process as you don't have to reformat the stick.

Step 1: Go download

In your Apple menu (the top left apple-shaped thing at every program's menu), go for Software Update. An alternate is to click the App Store link:

Both options land you on the App Store main screen showing you something like this:

Click the image saying Free Upgrade (free as in beer):

Your Apple ID credentials are required for this free package. They'll keep track of who downloaded and what.

This is the part you'll wait for the download to complete:

When it's all on your machine, the installer will automatically kick in.

Step 2: Go USB

Now that you have the thing in your drive, don't proceed with the upgrade.

When you reach this screen:

do not proceed! You can quit the installer, if you want:

It won't delete the files from your drive. It is also possible to continue installing on that Mac, but don't do it yet. Take a copy of the files first.

Take at least a 8 GiB USB-storage. 4 won't do it, but any larger will. In my case, the USB-stick appeared as /dev/disk3. That may vary on your system. Also it is possible to use some GUI-tools on OS X to format your drives, but as a Linux-nerd I don't know about them.

It is very likely, that the disk is mounted and will display an icon on your desktop, and will appear on your Finder. The diskutil will unmount it automatically on partition, but I wanted to make sure and did:

# sudo diskutil umount /Volumes/MyUSBdrive

Next step is to make sure, the stick is in a Mac-format (this needs to be run as root, that's what the sudo is for). This will partition and format the entire stick into Mac-use:

# sudo /bin/bash
root# diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 1 GPT jhfs+ "OS X El Capitan" 0b

It will say something like this as a result:

Started partitioning on disk3
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for the disks to reappear
Formatting disk3s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name OS X El Capitan
Initialized /dev/rdisk3s2 as a 7 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk3
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *8.0 GB disk3
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1
2: Apple_HFS OS X El Capitan 7.7 GB disk3s2

Next thing is to confirm, that the volume with given name will be mounted:

root# ls -l /Volumes/
total 40
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Aug 29 12:24 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxrwxr-x 7 root wheel 306 Oct 10 12:41 OS X El Capitan

If it does, you're ready to go. Copy the thing into it:

root# cd /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/
root# ./createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/OS\ X\ El\ Capitan/ \
--applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/ \
--nointeraction

It will result in a lengthy process saying:

Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.

Step 3: Go update

Your stick is ready. This is the part you will be replicating to any of your Macs you want to upgrade.

Reboot the Mac and make sure to boot from the USB. This can be achieved by pressing down option-key during boot:

The official Apple instruction at knowlegebase article HT1948 states:
To start from a USB storage device that meets the above requirements:

1. connect the device
2. restart
3. immediately press and hold the Option key to access Startup Manager

If you successfully followed the steps, you will end up in Mac boot manager:

In that, you pretty much select the drive you want to boot from. In this particular case, making a choice for the recently prepared USB-stick will be a good one. Click the orange "Install OS X El Capitan". Both the gray HD and the network selection are there to confuse you. Ignore them and double click the USB-drive.

Most steps in this upgrade will include lot of waiting. Make sure that you have reserved couple of hours for the upgrade. Screens like this will become familiar to you:

Most time estimates are wild guesses. A 9 minute wait in reality is something like 45 minutes. Eventually the USB-stick finishes booting, and you will end up in a screen saying "To set up the installation of OS X, click Continue". Most screens will refer your upgrade as an install. It is nerve-wrecking thing, because you don't know if it is going to wipe your settings and data, or do a nice upgrade what you'd be expecting. My experience is, that it will upgrade nicely, but it won't say it properly.

Then there is a license screen which you must agree to continue. Then land on OS X Utilities. One thing you can do with a bootable stick is to upgrade or install an OS X:

When you select to go for upgrade or install, there is a welcome to OS X El Capitan screen. Click Continue. Yet another license screen appears. Click Agree and for the confirmation dialog: I have read and agree to the terms of the software license agreement, Agree. Select the install/upgrade destination as the one having a hard drive icon Macintosh HD (typical installations have that), then click Install. As the first thing, the installer/upgrader will prepare for the operation and then go for the real thing:

This is the most time-consuming part. After a minute or so, there will be an not-so-accurate estimate of time remaining for the preparation. When it has run its course, the actual installer will start. So if the screen says 1 minute left, do not believe it for a second. In my iMac, one cup of coffee doesn't do it. You can easily cook and eat a meal and then have the coffee while the installer/upgrader runs. Especially the final phase saying "About a second remaining" will take ages. My hardware isn't especially old or slow, but ... the process is.

Step 4: Finishing touches

After you've done your waiting. A reboot will result. At this point you'll need to login into your precious upgraded Mac with your local user account.

On successful login, you will end up in the OOBE (or out-of-box experience). Apple makes an effort to not allow stolen hardware to be used and they pretty much require you to login to Apple ID during install:

Since I have a 2-factor authentication enabled for my Apple ID, a 2FA-screen will appear during the process:

There are steps about sending your usage data to Apple. Then yet another license screen which you have to agree twice. First on the bottom screen and then on the pop-up that will appear. So if you want to complain later, they'll just say "but you did agree to our terms and conditions". It will look like this:

The last question you'll need to answer is about setting up iCloud Keychain. I choose not to share my passwords into any cloud services, but at this point you'll have the option to enable Keychain:

Little bit of setting up ... this one won't take long. And then you're pretty much done. Finally your upgrade is ready!

Step 5: Done!

Login for the first time:

One of the first things I did, was eject my USB-stick (there were couple other Macs to be updated, too):

At this point, you can continue using your precious Mac.

Aftermath

I updated anyway, as a nerd I like the latest stuff running on my computers. I should yield less problems and there needs to be some progress. I find myself stating the same thing in couple of my blog posts, "it wasn't worth it, but I did it anyway". With computers, it never will result any good to stand still and ignore future.

Epilogue

This story is so unbelievable, I have to share it with all of you. It has Hollywood material in it: it's a story about a hard working man who succeeds and then gets dealt bad cards. As the final good thing he does share his fortune with people he trusts. Then there is the surprising twist in the plot and he bounces back. The real surprise is when the ungrateful people don't want him back. That results in a bitter fight in the court. But as in all Hollywood flicks, there is a happy end.

All this started years ago, but my version starts two days ago when I received an e-mail. I found it from my spam-box and my initial glace was, that it was some kind of 419-scam. Something in the style of the text struck me as a scam, so I was just about to file a report of it into SpamCop, and then I saw the subject of the mail. It had word Storix in it. The mail was sent to one of my ancient addresses, which I had used with Storix. A random bulk spam wouldn't be about Storix, backups aren't that lucrative when compared to regular spam-topics, women, money or medicine.

The e-mail

This is the entire e-mail as I received it:

Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement by Storix, Inc.
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2015 16:15:31 -0700

 

Dear Sir or Madam,
This letter is to inform you that you may be in possession of unauthorized and infringing copies of Storix System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin). I am the author of the software, which is protected by US Copyright Registration No. TXu000988741, and expert testimony in the US Southern California District Court case No. 14-cv-1873 H (BLM) has
indisputably determined that I am the owner, have never transferred, nor received any consideration for its license by Storix.

 

I hold none of Storix' customers or business partners accountable, and you may continue using the current software, even if you received an infringing license after it was revoked. However, I must demand that you cease any further payment to Storix in relation to this software and refrain from downloading any further copies.

 

I founded Storix in, Inc in 2003 to sell and support the software I had already been marketing since 1999. In 2011 I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and gifted 60% of the company shares to long term employees before taking my medical leave. Those shareholders then elected themselves as directors and officers of the corporation:

 

David Huffman, President and CEO
Richard Turner, Director of Software Development
Manuel Altamirano, Director of Sales and Marketing
David Kinney, Director of Software Support

 

No new programmers were hired, and the software has now seen little change in over 4 years. After an unlikely recovery, I returned to the company full time in 2013 to continue development of the software, working alone for 9 months on major enhancements to address known security vulnerabilities and increase the network security. After requesting that others assist in the final development and testing, I was harassed by my former employees until I left in May, 2014.

 

After exhausting every effort to negotiate, the board was notified that I would assert my rights to the software if not given a position of control over its development. Instead, they chose to challenge my copyright. Using my remaining 40% stock, I took control of 2 board seats, but not before a 5th seat was added and occupied by David Smilkjovich, the new CEO and personal friend of Mr. Huffman. Every effort since to save the company, its employees and customers from the damages of this litigation has failed in a 3/2 vote.

 

As Storix has been well aware since my departure, I continued development of the software, believing we would eventually work out our differences. I made no effort to disparage or compete with Storix in any way. Yet, as a decision in the copyright case grew near, they filed new action against me for unfair competition and breach of duty as a company director (San Diego County Superior Court No. 37-2017-00028262-CU-BT-CTL). After I warned them in advance of this very notice, they requested, and were denied, a motion for temporary restraining order (San Diego US District Court Court No. 14-cv-1873 H
(BLM)).

 

Although a plaintiff in the copyright case, I'm also a 40% shareholder and a director of the company, and am obligated to do everything possible to put an end to this nonsense before the company is lost. Iwould have preferred the customers and employees remain unaware of this needless battle, but the actions taken by these individuals to protect their majority positions have resulted in the company becoming unprofitable for the first time in its history. They will accept no personal responsibility or compromise, and are now turning to a new employee stock incentive program to cover their losses. This nonsense
cannot continue.

 

The security enhancements to the software have been completed, along with much more. Unfortunately, far too much damage has been done to me personally and financially to allow these greedy individuals to profit from my work any longer. Many of you I had worked with personally for many years, so it pains me to inform you that support for Storix SBAdmin
will very likely end when a ruling is made on the copyright case at the end of the month.

 

Whatever the eventual outcome, I sincerely hope to rebuild your trust as well as the thriving company and innovative product I once had.

 

Best Regards,
Anthony Johnson
Author and Owner of Storix Backup Administrator
Former President/CEO, Storix Inc.

Show me the proof!

Ok, this is all sad and cool at the same time, but how do we know that all this is legit? I don't have any solid proof, but here is what I have:

• My own records indicate, I've been using Storix back in 2004 to 2009 when I did DLT backups. Then the company got greedy and the price of licence went out of my reach. At that point, I stopped doing tape-backups and went for Bacula and USB-drives. Software free and USB-drives are very inexpensive to store backups.
• The e-mail in question may very well be sent to me, because I have a customer account at Storix, Inc.
• In the e-mail Mr. Johnson wants you to: pretty much do nothing, he doesn't want your money, he just says not to pay any more to the software company not owning copyright of his work, but he does not want you to pay him for it. Asking for nothing is not a typical request in spam.
• Motive: What would be the alternate motivation or hidden agenda for doing this? Throwing mud at his own company? Slinging mud at some people he doesn't like (anymore)? I guess, the classic ones: money and power have something to do with this. Depleting Storix, Inc. main source of turnover is the primary motive.
• The origin of the mail is from Google. Yes, there is some Google spam, but no way it can be considered as a major source of crap.
• Google got the mail from a Comcast user located in Miami, Florida. Again, there is no typical source of hijacked computer, it can be any, even from Florida. However, it would be very unlikely scenario for a malware to hijack Google credentials for sending misinformation from a random Comcast user.
• There is a man in Linkedin with name Anthony Johnson claiming to be author of Storix
• There is a man in Linkedin with name David Huffman claiming to be the CEO of Storix, inc. He is registered as the president of the business entity C2494479 in California.
• There is a legal case 3:14-cv-01873-H-BLM in California Southern District Court, it is Johnson v. Storix, Inc.:
  • Lawsuitdata.com
  • RFCExpress.com
  • I don't know which, if any, of the documents contain the judge's ruling.
• If assumed, that the judge ruled as the e-mail explains, it would be obvious for not to pay for a product to somebody who doesn't own it. That would be fraud if anybody else than a legal owner would ask for you money.

When all of this is combined, there are two possible scenarios left: either this is the weirdest scam I've seen, or it is all true. My take here is: after looking, searching and using my own judgement, I believe the above story of a complete stranger. I sympathize all that happened to him. I also believe, that people shouldn't be thrown out of their own companies, that's just wrong.

Pitch in with a comment, if you have some knowledge of this. I'll be waiting for the movie.

Update 9th Oct 2015:

It's given, that I replied to the mail. I sent the link to this article and told that he has my support.
This is what he wrote back: "Wow, quite an endorsement, and no, it's definitely not a scam. Thanks!"

Some of my avid readers have been dropping me comments on some of my posts asking what's going on. Actually couple of persons contacted me outside this blog and asked the same.

On August I wrote:

It's just that new house with lawn, fence, and all other sorts of construction kept me really busy during summer. Not to mention that my motorcycle had problem with carburetor and when I got that fixed, the alternator broke. Darn!

Wait for the bad weather to kick in, I'll be back with computing-projects after that.

To put it briefly, I just had too much to do and as writing here is something I love to do, but only if it doesn't prevent me doing something more important.

Lately I've had more time to concentrate on the computing for more than my work requires. There are some comments, that require my attention to write new code and to fix my old things. So, I'll get back to them.

Thanks for reading!