chris-crockett.com

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:

So, I’ve recently worked out a serious level of integration between all of the various “social network” sites I’m affiliated with, as well as my website… and phone… and productivity tools. The glue, it seems, is Twitter. Since everybody seems to have an API that updates from or to Twitter, it can serve as the central communication hub among the plethora of sites out there… including this one.

Long story short, since I can now update basically everything at once, and do it from the web, an IM client or even directly from my cellphone, updates should come somewhat more frequently now.

For anyone interested, it’s a combination of the Twitter Tools and Wordbook Wordpress plugins, TwitterSync app on Facebook, IMIfied for instant message integration and Jott for updates while on the move.

So many of the jokes that I truly enjoy these days are based on a certain level of… education.  Self taught or otherwise.  For instance, one of my t-shirts is hilariously funny if you are familiar with quantum physics.  Otherwise it just looks like a stupid shirt about some weirdo’s cat.

Similarly, this comic only makes sense if you’ve taken 100 level Physics in college:

Yesterday, I’m late in posting this but so be it, I was required to complete a Physical Abilities Test in order to maintain my employment with the Federal Government. This test was the biggest stress factor in my life, since I was not entirely confident that I would do well on all five of the portions of the test. Let’s face it, I’m not really a physical type of guy. I don’t much like sports, even golf does not get me out very often and it’s my favorite sport to play. Well, the short story is that not only did I pass the Physical Abilities Test, I passed every portion of it, under the benchmark time. I didn’t know that I had it in me to do as well as I did but the simple fact is that training alone for a test like this really isn’t the same as actually doing it, particularly when one factors in the encouragement of one’s classmates. There are no more significant obstacles to my continued employment, and eventual retirement. The remaining tests are ones that I know I am easily capable of passing…. but there’s always graduation with honors to shoot for. I’m definitely shooting.

I am failing, flailing, floundering, foundering…. I have a deeply rooted desire to write, create imagine, build and make commentary on the world, or perhaps to comment on a new world, of my own devising.  As anyone can see from this newly incarnated blog, I’m not doing very well at it.  I keep promising myself to spend at least an hour a day writing.  Writing something, anything, even gibberish.  Yet I fail to do so, every day.  I don’t know what it is.  Or I do, but I’ve become too lazy to do anything about it.  TV, the boob-tube, the idiot box absorbs so much of my idle attention.  It’s just too easy to sit back and let someone else do the storytelling for an hour… then another hour… then another hour until finally it’s time to go to sleep, or go to work.  Feh.  The problem exists not within the box, not within the pixellated world of fictional characters, it lies within myself.  I feel the urges flowing but I allow them to ebb… to be soothed by the scintillating radiation of the cathode rays instead of blasting them out onto the page, or into my keyboard and from there on to whatever destiny awaits.  I don’t presume to think I am writing the Great American Novel (TM) but there are many other good reasons to write.

64 machines, updated manually, the only thing going for me was remote admin capability.

I am now officially a resident of the state of Florida. I’ve been employed here for a while now but today I surrendered my Georgia driver’s license in exchange for a Florida document of the same nature. I suppose it’s too late to deny now, I’m a Floridian.

Having an "interesting" start to my shift… in the Chinese proverb sense.