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- June 10, 2017
- The Reality Plot Thickens
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I've pretty much been wanting to leave this alone as yet another misguided millenial gone astray due to the orientation imparted by an educational system populated largely with left wing twits influenced by the democrats tax and spend ideology in conjunction with the so-called "progressives" who simply want to take from the worker and give to the shirker ... or worse the ne'er-do-well Bernie Sanders 'socialist' utopians who simply don't have a foot in reality nor clue at all.
It seems this kid 'Reality Winner' is in far deeper than she originally appeared allegedly having downloaded sensitive NSA data to a USB drive and apparent written intimations that she wanted to burn down the White House and go to Afghanistan for the purpose of swearing alliegiance to the Taliban of all things.
If she had any inkling as to how the extremist adherents to the false implementation of Islam indigenous to the Taliban and ISIS treat their women ... if she understood the violent nature of their orientation to life; she would certainly not make such foolhardy assertions anywhere.
Much like her, at that age I was a similar fool. Luckily I had no designs on any of the mess she has pursued, much less the total lack of discretion she has utilized in her pursuit.
Rather than indulge some evaluation of comparative idiocy in American youth I prefer to stick to this particular matter because this is both a crime and a tragedy as well as a statement on the futility of wasted potential.
She told her sister that during her bond hearing she intended to play the "pretty, white and cute" card up front. First of all, given the fact that she was denied bond she may be white; but that seems to be about it in that department.
Secondly, one should consider the consequences PRIOR to the commission of a crime. Not how to get out of the mess after the fact.
Finally, with revelations of additional problematic events which are characterized as "more disturbing" in conjunction with a set of parents who appear every bit as naive as she does I don't feel this will end well for this little girl who tried to be slick but didn't even know how to play the game.
This is a sad tale indeed already — and it's not over. I hope that I don't cultivate the contempt for her that I have for Bradley Manning and his ridiculous pardoned criminal ass.
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- June 9, 2017
- Web Cam Password Flaw
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I remember years ago when I was initially contemplating my camera server and how I would provision it that various vendors came to mind. Indeed I did audition several software company offerings but kept to the research until I was comfortable with a specific camera line.
I'm happy to say that my research and my trials were a success story for I now have eight cameras online with a cam server which supports 64 and the cams may not be accessed by the outside because I only route them internally and present them on a web page referentially.
Today I read in Ars Technica about web cams having "hard coded" passwords which can never be changed to something only known to the owner. This issue is indigenous to the Chinese Foscam line and those subsidiary downstream brands which utilize Foscam devices.
Foscam was one of those brands which made it to the finals in my pursuit of suitable hardware.
My first set were Trendnet which I noticed were accessed frequently from Asian IP addresses back when my configuration included routing to individual cameras. Now that I route ONLY to my web server configured to limit anonymous access even those would not be a problem ... now.
Suffice it to say that I had the solution in place prior to the problem becoming publicly known and I'm an obsessive compulsive for firmware and security updates on everything so I don't forsee any problems here at the crib — though I wil remain vigilant nonetheless. It just seems that my lack of trust has not been misguided since the mid 90s when it all went to hades in a handbasket for I'm a stickler for locking everything down as well as I can.
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- June 8, 2017
- Peter Sallis (1921 - 2017)
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One of those television programs I used to watch as a younger adult was "Wallace and Gromit," an Oscar winning 'claymation' animation comedy featuring the adventures of Wallace and his dog Grommit.
Peter Sallis
(1921 - 2017)
I was always taken by the plot details as well as the humor of each of the pieces I viewed. It was a guaranteed laugh during a dark time when little was funny in my existence.
Mr. Peter Sallis, the actor who provided the voice of Wallace died last Friday, June 2, 2017 — after a period of declining health.
He also played other British sitcom characters and was a fixture on some of the most popular British television of the era.
I know little of those but the interludes of levity he provided to me were an essential part of keeping my sanity in a difficult workaday world I found myself in at that time.
He was born on February 1, 1921 in Middlesex England. After a stint as an amateur he trained formally at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and debuted as a professional in London in 1946. He retired in 2010.
Thanks for everything and rest in peace.
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- June 7, 2017
- Reality Winner's Alleged Reality
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It's difficult to release sensitive NSA documents when you are compelled to leave as many trails pointing back to yourself as possible. Case in point, one Reality Winner (really?) sharing online jokes with her sister regarding Moscow attempting to influence the US presidential election and weight lifting becoming a national sport in the US.
She knew she was in hot water when she contacted her folks in Texas some seven months later to report that she had been arrested by the FBI and couldn't really talk it up.
It is alleged that young Ms Winner, who was working for the defense contractor Pluribus International Corporation printed an NSA document which entailed the Russian hacking of a voting equipment vendor in Florida with subsequent attempts at breaching the local election systems til late in the actual voting there. This document is further alleged to have been provided to individuals outside of the agency.
The young lady was on social media expressing hate and discontent over recent political developments and these were likely contributory to the alleged compromise of the NSA documents.
Her family remains confused regarding the details and do not appear to understand the nature of technical breach of security and document compromise as alleged in the case before Ms Winner.
It seems that her downfall was found on those pages from the NSA's printers — which included invisible tracking dots known as a DocuColor pattern which simply is an encoded grid containing information regarding the printer and when it was used. The code on the leaked documents revealed the date and time of printing as well as the printer's serial number.
The authorities used this information to track her down then charge her with leaking a classified NSA report by following the hidden prints.
Gee, I believe that using company resources to divulge company resources is somewhat backward thinking. At the most it's pretty unsophisticated skullduggery. Given the other idiocy in social media allegedly attributed to this person such as tweeting to the Iranians how the people of the US are "with you" if you are attacked by the government ... it is surprising to me how she ever qualified for enough security clearance to gain access to sensitive documents anyway.
I attribute this entire debacle to the poor management we have come to know in the security agencies in general.
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- June 6, 2017
- Say what you need to say
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Over the years my life has been marked by episodes of silence which should have been filled with conversation. I can't count the times that I failed to say things to others only to have them pass away without making something significant known to them and allowing them to hear it from me personally.
During that ensuing time I also cultivated a "TMI" approach to others whereby I said too much or made things known that others didn't really care to hear. Far be it from me to overcompensate ... but I feel this is the result of those previous failures to communicate — and speak my heart when I really should have but for one reason or another didn't. Luckily some of that which was said was done so with actions which on occasion are known to speak louder. But still it would have been nice to say "I love you" to a few more people than have heard it from me.
That sadness for those failures which punctuate my soul are a constant reminder of that which should have been done never happening. All I can really do is remember those no longer around me and try to meld something more from that silence which was. To fill that silence with something which is meaningful ... and to mark those mistakes I made so many times.
Say
Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all of your so-called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations
Say what you need to say ...
Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you'd be better off instead,
If you could only ...
Say what you need to say ...
Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You'd better know that in the end
It's better to say too much
Than never to say what you need to say again
Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open (a wide heart)
Say what you need to say ...
John Mayer
The Bucket List soundtrack
Aware, Columbia
November 20, 2007
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- June 5, 2017
- Game of Thrones thy name is Fickle
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Winter is coming ... in due time.
As is the hurry up and wait nature of Game of Thrones, it appears that there is talk of the final installment arriving sometime in 2019.
Now then, being quite the fan initially; there has been a lot of water under the bridge on several fronts but the most limiting factor of it's remaining in my life has absolutely nothing to do with the drag ass pace of production.
Having withstood the various cliff hangers and cheered for Tyrion Lannister as he shot his father with a crossbow twice whilst his majesty was perched upon the can ... not to mention the ecstatic jubilation of seeing the cruel King Joffrey bite the dust in purple poisoned glory ... and the dragons, oh the dragons charcoal broiling various villans hither thither, and yon.
HOWEVER, with all of this came the revelation that HBO was acquired by AT&T and thus ended my pursuit of Game of Thrones and all else on HBO as just another scumbag sellout to some criminal empire on the internet. I simply no longer care about dragons, mothers of dragons, or any of it all anymore. Funny how something so important could become absolutely meaningless to me with a simple buy and sell transaction.
You are who owns you.
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- June 4, 2017
- Case Mods ... art is long life is short
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Oh yeah. I always wanted a computer in a case that looks like a cyborg torso or a sylized eagle.
Or better yet ... some morphed space scene melded into a transparent sided fanboy looking like a scifi movie backdrop.
Seems that Computex 2017 is accommodating all of the kiddies and art nouveau types with the modified case collection from hell. I took them all in from the plain aircraft carriers to the Shield Helicarrier (of all things) and I am left wondering just what all the big whup is all about.
Some of the fantastic liquid cooling features look like ground effects on some low rider barreling down the street or worse, some pinball machine in full motion during those uses the machines contained therein must not mind.
Me ... I'm more of a "case purist" as it were and I haven't so much been a fan of liquid cooled processors since that day the pharmacist squirted his all over my 32 processors in a custom Chenbro case and burned the whole thing up posthaste. I spent over 200 clock hours on that waste of time and money.
So, never let it be said that art and geeks cannot coexist for these things not only house some bad ass machines but they are works of art in and of themselves !
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- June 3, 2017
- Gambling is a Superstitious Thing
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Today I went to my local convenience store and plopped down a 20 dollar bill for 10 powerball plays. Most of them were quick picks ... but a few I have been playing (more or less) since 2002. I was struck with my degree of underlying ritualism associated with the act. For example, I "had" to have the 5 quick picks first so they wouldn't be "influenced" by my set of regularly played 3 numbers and 2 more quickpicks.
Having brought this irrational subconscious belief up with the owner we both had a brief banter about that superstitious nature of lottery picks and she related another customer's even worse predilection for such superstition
similar to that which I imparted to the transaction today. We both had a good laugh about it and I went on my way, ten numbers in hand ... three of which I've been playing a long time now (to no avail).
So it would seem that my behavior would indicate an ignorance of the laws of probability (though I'm quite well versed on the odds) and today's rite was a trivial pursuit of some faith in magic or chance — which though underlying is really not a contender in the reality of playing the game.
So much for my abject state of mind as it continues to immerse itself in my snowball's chance in hell of winning the powerball jackpot this evening !
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- June 2, 2017
- Fake News Persistent at Facebook
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I was reading an item on cnet.com regarding the continuing fake news found on Facebook.
Shareholders of Facebook are speaking out regarding this continuing problem with 'fake' news ... must have a lot of feed straight from CNN — or perhaps the LA or NY Times.
It would seem that informational quality is a priority with some in the organization ... but the purveyors still manage to get through.
Having viewed the environment over at Mom's ... yes I haven't been able to get her to boycott that drivel ... I was impressed with the "feeds" which consist primarily of various subtle to not so subtle nothings.
The most alarming aspect of the experience are the little "questionnaires" designed to advise you regarding things like your IQ and other unqualified tidbits that the users seem to suck up like a golfball through a garden hose in — well, just whose mouth isn't important anymore.
While not fake "news" per se, it remains fakery at a higher and more insidious level giving participants some false notion of their intellectual functioning ... or personality traits ... or any one of numerous other facets of their existence which are figments of the imaginations of the writer of the spam. In return they harvest personal account information and gain permission to install modules on the accessing machine.
The sophistication of the user is typically their in. This leaves many open to any manner of exploit; the least of which is gaining some false notion of themselves.
The crux of the issue are both reliability and integrity. Something CNN lost long ago as the main stream media follow merrily down the same path of yellow journalistic influence peddling devoid of objectivity ... which has become the primary thrust of entirely too many news outlets anymore.
Zuck says that it's primarily a function of money grubbing spammers and I certainly can accept that up to a point. Where we diverge is the organizations inability to control the spammers with extreme prejudice.
He says they're just making money. I say they're the scourge of the internet and should be taken to the beach and turned over to Isis or something equally horrid.
All in all I seem to have been left with the notion that this fake news problem will be persistent over time. I attribute this to a lack of effort on the part of the company.
Be all this as it may that fodder which it is should not be taken as seriously as some do. I for one am skeptical until I fact check it across multiple news venues then again on the conservative side and those outlets I trust.
Too much is taken for granted in an information age where too much of the information is contrived by some dirt bag out to make a buck.
Boo !
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- June 1, 2017
- Cybercrime Projections Staggering
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An item on wallst.com caught my attention with it's claim that cybercrime costs will jump to some 8 Trillion dollars US over the next five years.
This forecast is related to the IOT connection to global networks with records on the order of 2.8 billion to go to thiefs in cybercrime and moving on up to 5 billion by 2020 or so.
This gloomy data is courtesy of Juniper Research and bases those estimates on the ongoing integration of new devices and systems with legacy networks that don't take into account the overall security of those networks.
They said that the problem is particularly bad for small and medium sized networks where security spending is characterized as "marginal".
Ransomware seems to be a rapidly rising star in the toolkits of skullduggery with an increase of "ransomware as a service" as it were with individuals placing the malware and infrastructure at a crook's disposal for a fee — or a bloody cut.
The interoperability of security systems is said to be a major contributing factor because as we all know, such things tend to be reticent to "play together" in the cohabitive protection of assets prefering to be the "only show in town" much like many of the IT companies trying to finagle the business from others touting a bunch of capabilities which never seem to materialize.
So. It would seem that my overkill approach is par for the course in that realm which is keeping your stuff out of the hands of the bad guys.
And you thought I was kidding !
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- May 31, 2017
- World No Tobacco Day
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Each day when I park in the parking building and proceed across the street to the building where my tenth floor office is I must pass through the gauntlet of smokers on the sidewalk standing around puffing away. Typically I will hold my breath for a few moments until I am well into the street but I often times catch a big whiff of second hand smoke with which I start my workday.
Not really being too warm for the UN or any of it's offices I am hesitant to discuss anything important to the World Health Organization because I personally believe the UN and all of it's agencies should depart the country and stop trying to take us over.
Today is World No Tobacco Day a recurring May 31 event intended to support abstinence from all forms of tobacco as a health measure. Created in 1987 by the World Health Organization it is both a welcome and hated observance depending on the relationship an individual may have with tobacco ... smokers feel they have a "right" to smoke and nonsmokers feel they have a right not to breathe smoke.
It's a vicious cycle likely to continue into the years of "vaping" and "dipping" and all the varieties of partaking of the stimulus barrier tobacco has to offer us in these difficult times of making ends meet. Ash trays holding fresh flowers are a common symbol for the day. I must say that I rarely see this symbology in my travels. As a matter of fact I have NEVER seen it of which I am aware.
Regardless have a happy No Tobacco Day and do try to leave it alone if you can. The deleterious effects of tobacco on the health are evident in the hacking and gacking, wrinkles, and teeth encountered in and on smokers and dippers everywhere.
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- May 30, 2017
- Happy Birthday in Heaven
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My Stepfather passed January 27th of last year in a tragedy too profound for words. Our memories of him sustain us during this time which must pass before our joyeous reunion in the afterlife — but I miss him every day.
As are those who have cared about me in my lifetime I have cared back and over the years I have found that grief is simply an aspect of love and as such it's difficult to resolve and impossible to ignore.
Today would have been his 84th birthday and I just want to mark the occasion because he remains here with me abiding in my heart.
Happy Birthday Johnny !
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Psalms 34:18 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:8 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4 Holy Bible King James Version
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- May 30, 2017
- Amazing USPS Delivery
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On Sunday, 05/28/2017 I received my first USPS delivery on Sunday.
I had returned from visiting Mom to discover my robot battery had arrived ... on Sunday.
Sure, I had received notifications that the item would arrive on Sunday. I never expected to receive it then, however.
Be all of this as it may, I took the opportunity to tear down the robot and blow it out and clean it up good then replaced the old battery which was failing a slow death (down to about 10 minutes run time) then attached it to the charger.
The new battery runs right at 2 hours which is plenty of time to go over the whole house well.
This new battery is the "extended life" (XLife) model manufactured by iRobot.
I had purchased a lithium rechargable earlier but it was a bit rough on the older 500 series circuits, I think.
My robot, Fred (Free roaming electronic device) operates in a much more robust fashion now.
Whereas I was a smidge whiny about the pattern and coverage I see now it was compensating for what it perceived as a power limitation.
In that contradiction of terms which is "being a dude" and "trying to keep house" the robot has been a life saver.
The new battery has breathed new life and capability into Fred, and I couldn't be happier for him.
The very surprising Sunday delivery was simply fortuitous icing on the cake.
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- May 29, 2017
- Memorial Day 2017
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Memorial Day is particularly somber for me these days. This is primarily due to it's proximity to my late stepfather's birthday which follows the next day ...
As I mark the day I try to maintain the perspective of service and honor as it relates to the military.
Being both a 'Navy brat' as well as a veteran of the Navy, and the son of a highly skilled and decorated Navy veteran as well as the stepson of a decorated Air Force veteran I take pause to remember those who passed both as the consequence of their military duty — as well as those who served honorably through the ranks for long periods during their lifetimes.
These are the heroes who enabled me to grow up free.
Rest in peace.
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