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We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for several weeks, and today it finally did… with a bang! W32.Novarg.A@mm made its debut this afternoon/ See Symantec’s report for more info. Today we received almost 10,000 messages that were infected with Novarg. We block all executable attachments, but this one also sends itself as a Zip file, waiting for people to open the Zip and then open the attachment. It takes advantage of the fact that most systems let Zip files in so that people can transfer legitimate files that would otherwise be blocked by filters.

No, I’m not talking about a special Friday broadcast of ER on NBC. I actually took a trip to the ER Friday night and Noah Wyle was nowhere in site. I had been feeling pretty fatigued the previous few days. Partway through the day on Friday I started to have a pain in the right side of my chest. It didn’t go away and felt worse through the afternoon. By the time I got home, I wasn’t feeling any better, and I hadn’t had a physical in a few years (I had just scheduled one a couple days earlier so no lectures!), so I figured I’d better be safe than sorry and have someone take a look. Kristin was on her way home, so we headed over to Barnes-Jewish West County ER.

Well, when you say the magic words “chest pain” they do all sorts of fun things, even if it is probably nothing. They drew blood, hooked me up to a heart monitor, did an EKG, gave me some oxygen, and took chest x-rays. Over the years my insurance companies haven’t paid out much at all. Well, tonight I got my money’s worth for a change. Everything came back normal, so the pain is probably muscle pain. They want my doctor to setup a stress test just to be certain, but otherwise I’m OK.

NewsGator 2.0 is out and after upgrading, I thought I’d test out their plugin for posting to Movable Type. Seems to work pretty well. Maybe I’ll post more often now that I can do it from Outlook.

XM Radio has announced a number of changes to their service at CES 2004 yesterday. The biggest news was the move to commercial-free music, which is the equivalent of a kick in the stomach to their smaller rival Sirius. They also announced some lineup changes which included… Gasp!!! The elimination of Special X from the service!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Special X, this is a channel where you can go to always hear something different. And by different I mean really different. My favorite shows included The Best of Dr. Demento, Wax My Woody (surf music), and the Planet Pluto Polka Party. Where else can you go to hear hours of polka music? Don’t laugh… I like polka music.

XM says that some of the programming will move to other channels, but even if that is the case, much of their programming just didn’t fit into a single category and probably won’t ever get played anywhere else. So if you want to save Special X, send an e-mail to Lee Abrams, their Chief Programming Officer, and let him know you want to save Special X!