Facebook Refugee

FaceBook is super down right now, so I thought I'd check in here... and dust off some of the settings.  Apparently there might be two of my friends left here! (also on FB).

It's been 10 years since Halicallahanicon, I believe.  The world has changed quite a bit.

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Mystery Post
32 weeks since I last posted here...

I'm over on Facebook now, so if anyone wants to see some cool pictures, go there..

Or, you could plow through my Picasa albums

http://picasaweb.google.com/john.trindle/

In December 2006 I made a mystery post called "100 days" to remind myself I had spent 100 days without alcohol. It's now been 3 years and some weeks and I have no regrets about giving it up. Sometimes there are nightmares, but more on the lines of "oh, I forgot and started drinking" or "somebody slipped me something..." Giving up drinking didn't make my life perfect, but it made it a little easier.

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Google's broken!
And my life teeters on the edge of madness....

I thought I had a virus infection, but it's on multiple computers in multiple browsers at multiple locations.

(I rilly depend on Google for teh IntarWeb)

[Edit: Slashdot's take http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/31/1457221 ]

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For the crypto-weenies
This RSA conference keynote panel was the highlight of my day:

http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9914553-57.html

Except that article leaves out the funniest part. Here's a blogger with more detailed notes:

http://blogs.verisign.com/websecurity/2008/04/rsa_cryptographers_panel.php

(Oh, he left out Whitt Diffie's line 'women will realize men are an expensive and inefficient way to distribute DNA...'.)

I had to leave before Michael Chertoff was done or I'd never had lunch. This place is a ZOO.

Oh, and after lunch I won a Jeopardy-style trivia match at the F5 Networks booth. 3 contestants on stage behind podiums with buzzers! I got razzed for answering in the form of a question at least once, and almost lost to the gentleman on my right. He knew a *lot* more about security than I did, but I beat him on port numbers and fun facts, 1700 to 1600 points.

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On the Road again...
In sunny San Francisco for the RSA Conference. So far things have been going well... uneventful trip, got to my "cheap" hotel room "near" the airport, and registered for the conference. I accidentally attended a motivational speaker teaching networking (it was the social kind, not the computer kind...)

The real trick is transportation. I have a commute that consists of

1) shuttle to the airport
2) BART to town
3) Walk to Moscone Center

which involves a lot of waiting for things. Best get going (though I think I may try to walk to the Millbrae BART this morning since I may be too early for the shuttle).

Many speeches to hear, many classes to take, and much vendor tech and many booth babes to ogle. No caffeine in the room this morning, though (aii!)

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Geek Toy
http://www.oreillymaker.com/

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Locks on Screen Doors?
I was impressed a year or two ago to see fingerprint-locked USB keys for sale at WalMart. No surprise, the implementation of cheap biometric-secured data protection leaves a bit to be desired:

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Secure-USB-sticks-cracked--/features/110280

Slashdot has a discussion thread:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/03/14/1455255.shtml

It wouldn't have taken much more effort to have the biometric match release a crypto key, which be used to decode the data. Not very secure either, but better.

For the more technical, here's interesting coverage of pseudo-encryption of a hard drive:
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Enclosed-but-not-encrypted--/features/110136

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Vehicle Hunting
I'm nominally looking for "cheap pickups" on eBay (no, that's not the search term). These tickled me.

"Stands out in a crowd." (I especially like the 2 cylinder automatic)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Mercedes-Benz-190-E_W0QQitemZ110227909142QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item110227909142

"Jeep Cherokee with *what*??"
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Tricked-out-Jeep-w-Chrome-Wheels-Lamborghini-Doors_W0QQitemZ140210749851QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item140210749851

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Art Life imitates life
My employer's email system is currently under assault from a mail cascade virus.

A few years ago we experienced an accidental posting to a hidden company-wide distribution list. When 100,000 people start hitting reply-to-all and asking "take me off this list!" it can bring already perilous productivity to a screeching halt. It was somewhat amusing at the time. "Ha ha! We're a genius IT company and we don't understand computers!"

Now there's a bot programrogue meme loose in the system which does the same thing, forging causing people to write reply-to-all messages from infectedtheir machines. It's not nearly as creative or interesting, since it has only a handful of message bodies.

I signed up for a Blackberry a few months ago, tied into the e-mail system. Starting at 3 a.m. local time it's been going off every few minutes with new "mail". Poor thing has about vibrated itself to death.

Between this and my cold and my normal traveling insomnia, I haven't had much sleep. Yay for flying home today. I'm about to pack, hit the Kangaroo up for gasoline and decongestant, and head for the airport.

Edit: The problem was due to a distribution list, a clueless upper manager, and the natural inclination of our folks to hit "send" without reviewing the message. How soon we forget.

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For those of you into geometric puzzles and Flash games, I recommend:

http://www.addictinggames.com/untangle.html

I had a tough time with the second-to-last level but finally got through it all.

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You Saucy Auntie
The bank, for no visible reason, likes to truncate the descriptions of merchants charging to the bank card. Evidently I had more fun than I remembered last Saturday on the way to the FrostFest (hamfest, an amateur radio flea market):


02/04/2008 5812 AUNT SARAHS PANCAKE HO

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Passed BFR, first low-wing time
Every two years, even private pilots have to pass a review. It takes an hour of ground instruction and an hour or more of flight instruction.
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Paging Pixel...
Photos from the west coast version (Altamont Raceway) of 24 Hours of LeMons:

http://www.g20.net/forum/showthread.php?t=66122

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Dude!
They're auctioning off props from the Transformers movie on eBay:

Allspark Cube
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200126643272

77 Camaro (Bumblebee)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200126643267

(it's a real, running car...)

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A couple sunsets
Ft. Pocahontas, north shore James River, Virginia, June 23,2007

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Sad day at KJGG
Last night we had a rather vigorous storm blow through... evidently some winds were higher than others.

Several planes were ripped from their tiedowns and some turned turtle. I know or know of most of the people who own them.

http://pilot-in-training.blogspot.com/2007/06/theres-got-to-be-morning-after.html

(Mine is OK. No living creatures were harmed.)

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o/~ On The Cover of The Piker Press....
Check out the latest issue...

http://www.pikerpress.com/

Current Mood: accomplished

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Back Home: Quick Summary
22.9 hours of flight in a Cessna 150 over 9 days.
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CNN Headline, my response
"Airline passengers subsidizing private aviation"

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On Vacation
Just a quick update, we are in Sarasota, FL and enjoying family... details when we return next week.

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