Chris Crockett - Gaming and Computer Geek

>коли под наемy, my world is now bereft of my little weasel buddies.  About two months ago Puck sufferred a brief insulinoma siezure, followed a month later by one much worse.  Bad enough to require the ultimate decision.  Sadly, his big brother Oberon has recently (yesterday) succumbed to the same issues.  It was a sad day but I can celebrate the fact that they had a long and happy life for ferrets, eight years or so, and that they brought a lot of fun into my life.

But now, my apartment is empty of the pitter-patter of ferret feet.

In the coming time of elections we may think that there is too little difference between the candidates.  Worse, our favorite candidate might not even be a viable choice.  I’m not writing this to express my feelings on which candidate is right, or which one I support.  I’ll say that I am a conservative but not a religious zealot conservative.  To say that my choices seem to be a rock and a hard place would not be far from correct.  Even worse, it seems like none of the available candidates supports anything like what I see as the best future course for this nation.  Nevertheless, I believe that all of this makes it ever more important to vote.  It’s not about who is right or wrong, it’s about demonstrating to our leaders that we will hold them responsible for those choices.  The thing is, it’s not even very hard to vote these days.  Sure, getting out to your polling place on election day can be rough, especially if you, like I, have to work on that day.  I for one am solving this problem by using an absentee ballot.  My state of residence allows every registered voter to do so without even bothering with any explanations.  It only took a few moments to fill out an online form requesting it.

The fact is that low voter turnout enables our leaders to do whatever they choose because they know that no one will be holding them responsible.  Low voter turnout demonstrates that no one really cares.  Even if your candidate loses, put the fear of responsiblity into the victor’s thoughts by giving them a slim margin on a 90% voter turnout.  Nothing will make politicans more responsive than knowing that we’re all watching them.

I am now officially dual-booting my EEE PC 900.  I’ve got Windows XP running on the internal SSD and Ubuntu rockin’ the SD slot.  Admittedly, most of this work was done by the fantastic folks at Ubuntu (which demonstrates that Linux is getting pretty close to general purpose usability) but there was a little bit of “off-the-map” configuration needed.  I started by following the instructions on the eeeUbuntu page to install Ubuntu to an SD card (a 4GB SDHC card for now but I’ll probably upgrade to a 32GB when the price drops a bit) but I did have one problem (okay, two, but one was a badly burned Ubuntu CD so that doesn’t count).  It seems that the “optional” step nine of upgrading the kernel is… less than entirely optional, at least on the model 900.  Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough for the generic kernel to scan the system but my first boot attempt on my EEE PC hung.
Fortunately, I was able to boot my desktop PC from the SD card and upgrade the kernel from there.  Now, I’ve got an entire second operating system for my EEE PC stored in the SD card slot.  Can I just say, that’s fantastic.

I’m not one for pomp and circumstance, drawing out simple statements into big productions so I’ll say this the only way I know how.  I’m getting married.  There are no details yet as we’ve not made any decisions but both of us have some life goals to get in order that basically puts the timeline at a year to a year and a half in the future.  I’m looking at a promotion with transfer to an as yet unspecified location and she’s got a Ph.D. to finish.  More information will be forthcoming as it develops.

A long time ago in a city somewhat far away I came into the possession of a document.  This document was recieved by a very good friend of mine at his place of business.  That business specialized in coordinating public speakers for venues, and or venues for public speakers… I can only imagine they went both ways on that actually.  This business did, by its nature, come into contact with a variety of celebrities, including current and former Congresscritters and so it was only of slight surprise that my friend found several copies of the linked letter on the company’s fax machine one day.  Slight surprise, that is, until he actually read the document.

For your education I present a digitally remastered, but entirely faithful, rendition of that document, which is titled: Mr. Congressman: PLEASE CHALLENGE ME TO CATCH A STEROIDS VAMPIRE.

Here is a screenshot of the message I get whenever I click on Inbox messages, to read them, even if those messages (appear to) come from Facebook.

“You are using this feature to spam other users” (emphasis added).

As a programmer I am 100% certain this is a bug but I honestly hope that I’m not the only person who reacted to this error with a “Fuck you Facebook”.

A friend sent me a link to a project related to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which seems to be intended to drum up some sort of “support” for the LRO project. How sending your name to the moon is supposed to support the LRO project I don’t know. I suppose it’s at least as effective as signing a petition. I assume that they are loading the names submitted into the NASA equivalent of a thumb-drive and strapping that puppy on the LRO somewhere… I imagine zip-tied to a landing strut or something.

Now, my first thought was: I wonder if one could enter a name that would cause a buffer overflow on the web-form and initiate some form of SQL injection attack, then leverage that to gain control of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter after launch. It’s worth noting at this point that I have neither the inclination, knowledge or ability to perform such a hack… I can’t really even confirm that a SQL injection attack on the server would work. My point is that I thought of it. Bruce Schneier wrote an article about the Security Mindset that made me realize that not everyone looks for the worst case scenario. I’m an engineer and engineers generally only care about making the process work, and truly that is very often more than enough for me, but I am also an employee in a very secure facility where security is paramount. I work in an environment where the users cannot be trusted, by policy. Sometimes it’s tough for me to convince others of the things I see as possible security holes because they truly do not see the possibility of users exploiting them.

I do not think that people are inherently un-trustworthy. I simply trust that there are some people bloody-minded enough in the world to seek out, stumble upon, be shown and then exploit any weakness in any system.

Puck, the smaller of my two ferrets, somehow managed to injure himself. I noticed this when he came galloping at me in the morning, as usual, with an unusual gait. Turns out that he’s managed to hurt his leg enough that he can barely move it. Being a ferret, he reacted to this by behaving entirely normally, begging for treats and following me around. So, he spent some time at the veterinarian today, getting an X-Ray to be sure that nothing serious was broken. The results, inconclusive. Nothing apparently broken but he still can’t move his leg. So, here he is, bandaged up:

Work shall be over soon. This is good because I need a nap.

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