grey

Nostalgia

2009-04-22T08:25:48Z

I am really missing the old local Citadels right now. WWWA, Cathode Cathedral, Satellite of Love. Names few will remember, but I know at least slowbob will probably be getting a warm tingly feeling if he's glancing this over.

Cit-68k, Cit-86, GremCit's, Cit/UX's, MacCit's and Macadel's. Whatever. Sure, there were your major BBS's and C-net's and WWIV's and boards with focuses on files, games, maybe even multi-line chat - but the breed of Citadels excelled at communication in a way no other BBS's could touch. In a way, it's unsurprising - Citadels evolved organically, they were not written with a purpose to fulfill, the first Citadel started as a text adventure game; one feature enabled users to leave a message for other players. That little excursion from the core of intention soon proved to be more popular than playing the game itself, and in turn the software evolved to facilitate what the community cared about; the community was not built around molding their ways to the software as so many are now.

I miss *knowing* everyone with whom I would chat, and for whom I would write. No random crawler archiving our messages for posterity. Strangers were interrogated until vetted; and it was generally easy to do since few called who weren't local. And if they were calling LD and they knew how to phreak, they were probably worthwhile enough anyway. Regardless, anyone was welcome to tool around in the public rooms but only those trusted friends (and I really mean -friends- not some meaningless term for a digital association) made it into the sanctuaries where the real conversations happened.

If they turned out to be a troll, an asshole, bad blood boiled, or simply an untrustworthy idiot. Sysops would twit them. A twitted user could log in, enter messages the system would make it look like everything was fine. But behind the scenes, the message would be discarded and no one would have any idea the twit had even existed. Far better than actively blocking someone to their knowledge thus raising their ire; and with the power of giving everyone the same ignore list - good users were never troubled by the twits; and twits never knew they were getting the short end of the stick. Ignoring the trolls as it were wasn't a form of advice, it was a double ended technological implementation, without social fallout.

I miss the -thread- of conversations. Even the layout of information is so much simpler and smarter than most systems today. Start at the oldest unread message and work your way down to the most recent, just like we read things in English: top to bottom. None of this backwards show me newest messages first and let me try to ascertain when I've finally started rereading things I read last time. When someone chose to contribute - append that message to the tail within the flow chronologically. No needless crap of people answering the same question someone else has already answered because you were made to read other people's responses before you were provided with an opportunity to respond yourself.

And Citadels had one feature that people probably can't even comprehend today if they never experienced it. .Terminate Abort Sure sure, Cit/UX doesn't have it. Well not public releases of Cit/UX anyway. Young Republican (RIP) hacked in support for the revival of SoL along with me figuring out how to jump to it via ssh via crude efforts. TA'ing as we called it essentially would clear all the message pointers; making it like you'd never connected that session. Useful for occasions where you had enough time to connect and skim, but not enough time to formulate a proper replies; which turns out is often enough. But don't sacrifice the conversation - come back to it later when you've got a chance to really contribute; like putting a bookmark a page or two from where you've read so that you can be sure to reread that part later when you're not distracted.

We may have had simple line editors, but god - so much better than dealing with stupid escape codes or reserved characters.

Our networking was crude, but we managed, across continents and even oceans sometimes; and of course oceans of a different sort - variant software implementations (Deadman wrote the Cit-86 to Gremcit networking code that linked us to his board after he switched coasts; but we kept in touch with nightly syncs over illicit pc-pursuit accounts). And the anti-vortexing helped alleviate a problem that most people deal with today - repeated messages rebroadcast on endless nodes. Networked rooms could be tagged such that their networked nature was clear, and you knew if you'd checked one on one board you didn't need to check the same room on another board. None of this failed syndication and intractably implemented aggregation without even comprehending the problem an aggregator should be trying to solve.

Digital communications today are archived duplicated EULA'd appropriated analyzed aggregated datamined and more, even as the messages themselves are of an increasingly banal nature. Astute researchers spend more time analyzing the relationships of the parties interacting and how they can model or map those than they spend actually -looking- at the communication. And the same is true for many people who choose to use these new mediums. The citadels, ephemeral as the storage upon which they were written (sometimes even on dying floppy disks) contained a culture and a conversation that was, to me at least, so much more intimate than anything I could even imagine existing today.

And yes, things change and evolve - but is it the community that is driving it anymore? Big business here, startup over there all looking for consumers. So rare is it when the community is the driving force now; actively implementing a better world not passively digesting or -demanding- what they wish to see from those "on high" whom are given undue credit.

Years before the FSF the GPL, rms and all kinds of political evangelism; Cynbe ru Taren whom I knew only by the citation of Jeff Prothero released the source as public domain.

The legacy goes on. Cit/UX has continued to evolve (far from even when I last used it when YR was running SoL on it) into a robust groupware platform; apparently still at the behest of its community. I am tempted to fire it up; I can only assume that all the functionality is still available from the fundamental text interface, even if it now offers caldav, groupdav, imap, all manner of web front ends and client support.

But this isn't so much about the present as it is about the nostalgia; and really of truly vetted and trusted communities and means to communicate digitally in a time where prying eyes hadn't been conceived or at best were embryonic. A time of small fiefs of communication among friends with walls to protect them. Vibrant and full of potential and optimism.

CItadel is a real hacker's code. Which is unsurprising seeing as it got its start from someone who wrote one of the first hacker's codes:

http://muq.org/~cynbe/hackers-code.html

artkiver @ 2009-03-16T16:07:00

2009-03-16T23:12:07Z

I rarely use the mood tag thinger; the one I wrote doesn't accurately represent how pissed I am.

So I'm checking the (incredibly shitty) Santa Cruz court website to double check the date for the next status conference hearing for my divorce which I was informed back in November was going to be the 18th or 19th this week when I went to the last status conference hearing.

Not only can I not find anything scheduled; when I dig up the case # from queried the last date I was in family court about this; I find that they never noted the schedule for the next date. Moreover, there's been no status update at all (i.e. my paralegal never filed the paperwork I'd filled out and given to my exwife to sign and return; or perhaps my exwife never signed and returned it to her for her to file, even though she claims she did).

ARGH!!!

So either the exwife, or more likely paralegal completely fucking dropped the ball AGAIN. But moreover, the court didn't even schedule anything when they said they did.

How the fuck am I ever going to get divorced at this rate when other people keep fucking up their shit? I don't want to be a babysitter; I just want it behind me; it's been almost four years to the date since my marriage imploded. ;-/

nothing to see here move along.

2009-03-10T07:37:32Z

. . . I feel like I should be writing something as a means of catharsis. But I don't know if I want anyone reading it... what do people use for real private journals in the 21st century? Because it sure as hell isn't on the internet. ;)

Life has been full of tribulations but I'm working on resolving the ones pertinent to me. I don't seem to have the kinds of drama other people do; not that I want any more drama of any sort. But at least those kinds of drama are often the result of intimate relationships which I'm still avoiding.

I'm sure intimate relationships can exist without drama. I look forward to those.

on cut throat razors...

2009-01-13T08:14:02Z

If you don't care about straight razors, move along.

So earlier this year [remember it's still the year of the rat for a bit longer] I decided to finally really give a good show at attempting to use a straight edge razor; and after some practice got in the swing of it much to my own pleasure. Now, after having given away my Dovos and kit (due to iffy origins relating to exwife and not remembering which was from a friend) and some of my goals being closer to being done, including hopefully the divorce (still holding my breath for a bit) and it being near years end and trying to get some dots lined up and all, I'm kinda in the market for new razors.

Well, got one today. Kinda by happenstance, I was doing a bit of research online earlier while sick and figured I needed to get out of the house and get some food; and oh hey there was some Japanese tool shop I'd driven by on San Pablo in Berkeley I'd been wanting to check out but never had, but since I wasn't at work and things were actually open when I was out - well lemme go find that. Now I wasn't quite expecting to find the crazy handmade Japanese straight razors I'd seen some stuff online about, but no worries I wasn't really prepared to spend $300-$2000 on a razor either. So after some foggy brained driving (post food, but still kinda sick delirious) and a few too many u-turns I finally came across the Japanese tool shop I swear I'd seen before, it's called hida tools (and turns out they have a website: http://www.hidatool.com/ ) neat little shop with friendly (and actually Japanese [or at least Japanese speaking American]) employees. Content to let me browse and just as helpful to ask me if I was looking for anything in particular when I said straight razor, I got a quizzical look and some hand motioning to the face in a shaving fashion to which I nodded, one of them lead me to a section amidst all kinds of other blades [really they have more tools than I can imagine uses for] and showed me the two straight razors they stock. Both are Japanese, from a manufacturer Suzumasa; interestingly they're both western style straight razors, with plastic handles, basically exactly like the Dovos I'd had before. One was $120, and the other AA grade was $161; being a palindrome, and being that $161 still isn't too steep for a new straight razor, and that in general you want better quality steel anyway, I opted for the more expensive one. I also picked up a really nice pair of kitchen scissors [which is perfect since I just went on a knife & scissor cleanup/throwout last night].

Anyway, getting home and doing some research, it looks like Hida Tools has been around for 27 years (25 at their current location) and I definitely recommend checking them out. I didn't find much about Suzumasa though; there's no Japanese on the box or blade that I can find, and there's scant mention of them in teh googlez. I did find one reference to someone using one in Hong Kong, and two old used blades on a Taiwanese ebay facsimile, one going for about $25 (which is about what you'd expect for an average used blade) and another going for $180 (which seems kinda spendy for a blade that looked to be in similar condition, especially if new ones presumably can be found for less). At any rate, no info about the manufacturer themselves could be found, nor any new retailers. I wonder if they're still in business, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if these were made primarily for export long ago (but then the old Dovo's I had still had "made in West Germany" stickers on their boxes, straight razors aren't fast sellers in most parts).

That said, I spent quite a bit more time researching errr 'traditional' Japanese styled straight razors or kamisori (perhaps specifically wakamisori, but my online dictionaries are failing me at the moment), look a bit different, e.g. :

http://oldschoolshaving.net/Tosuke_3.html
http://shouhonyama.topcities.com/Tosuke_5.html
http://www2.odn.ne.jp/mandaraya/iwassekishigeyoshi-wakamisori.html
http://www.japanesetools.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=213&products_id=2330&zenid=6d6b65087d438b23b0855780a49dc4df
http://www.munemasa.co.jp/english/1707/1707-301.htm
http://www.japanwoodworker.com/product.asp?s=JapanWoodworker&pf_id=05%2E001&dept_id=22924
http://www.geocities.com/soatoz/hamono/Iwasaki/Kamisori.html

I realize, I just posted different links to some of the same blades; but of note is only three craftsmen worked on any of those. Tosuke, Iwasaki Shigeyoshi, and Muh-Tsyr.

Now, Tosuke, passed away not too long ago, so there will be no more blades from him. That said, they don't look to be of the greatest quality; or maybe it's just the more recent designs using a plastic/rubber handle grip that is throwing me. Iwasaki Shigeyoshi is at least a second generation blade maker [son of Iwasaki Kosuke] and is getting quite on in years and it looks like he may be passing his craft off to Mizuochi Ryouichi soon and likely many of the blades sold now are actually made by his successor. As for that other guy... Muh-Tsyr.... well not much info on him other than what's on the page, not Japanese, practicing in America, studying under an american who studying under a Japanese craftsmen; but unlike Say Iwasaki it was not a lifelong discipleship (obviously no father-son lifelong stuff, or hey I'm old and dying take over my business now type lifelong) and well, I can't say the look of his work really looks all that noteworthy just yet, not to disparage him, some of this stuff can just take a really really long time to master!

This is interesting though:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&indexURL=1=&item=290284011144=&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting=

Sold not too long ago, for merely $300. This was made by Iwasaki Shigeyoshi's father, and according to some, was actually made of tamahagane, which is very rare/expensive sword-grade steel. Iwasaki Shigeyoshi has supposedly been known to make a razor from tamahagane every now and then, but more for collectors and they tend to cost at least $2000 or so, so whoever got that ebay buy really really got a steal and probably didn't even realize it (or at least the seller didn't).

At any rate, it's an interesting thing to read up on. It appears that Iwasaki and his disciples are probably the last currently active (or at least exported) makers of traditional Japanese straight razors still alive and working in Japan. Of course, that's not all they make, Iwasaki is a licensed sword maker; but apparently there's some post-WWII regulation which states that only two swords may be produced a month by such craftsmen and so much spare time is spent making other things; just seems that Iwasaki is the only one who cares to still make a traditional shaving tool in addition to knives and whatnot.

So doing more digging on this sort of thing reveals a number of vendors with various prices, and people pointing to The Japan Woodworker as kind of -the- reference place (and interestingly enough, the cheapest in the US too, not a significant markup over one Japanese retailer, and actually -cheaper- than another Japanese retailer). And I seem to recall a coworker giving me a catalogue of theirs some years ago and being enthralled by it, even though I don't work with wood at all, so it was kinda like "oooh pretty. ooooh, pretty useless for me." I can't really say I'm much of a cook either, so all the knives are mostly lost on me still too. However, shaving? Well, shaving is something I do do everyday (ok well I haven't done it at all in months due to this other crap, but soon I will be shaving again daily) and I can certainly see sinking some money into a handcrafted tool of quality for that. Anyway, let's be realistic - $275 for 50mm blade or $475 for a 60mm blade? Egads, kind of steep in cost, but supposedly the longer blade also uses more higher grade steel, so that accounts for the cost difference, still, barely more than the 50mm blade from that one Japanese importer, and hundreds less than other places sell it for.

So I'm staring at it:
http://www.japanwoodworker.com/product.asp?s=JapanWoodworker&pf_id=05%2E002&dept_id=22924

And researching...

And thinking about how, y'know a longer blade actually does make the shaving go a little bit more smoothly because you need to wipe/wash the blade clean less frequently between strokes. But man, $200 more? $275 I could easily drop (hell there are crufty machine made western straight razors for that, or even $500) but ... I dunno, it just feels kinda expensive. But hmm, yeah y'know it would be kinda nice to have something nice/special for especially that first shaving off the beard. It's symbolic, and well something special for the symbolism and just the general ceremony and ritual of straight razor shaving...

(oh and for those wondering/worried about -shaving- off a beard, while I grant you most razors will get clogged to the point of worthlessness with stubble that's a few days old, a single blade has no such issues - behold a neat demonstration of someone straight razoring off a beard in a mere five minute shave with no issues [albeit shorter than mine is, and certainly shorter than it will be by the time it comes off]: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3738198030255805151&ei=OVJsSeHxBYL8rgL3mdSVDA&q=beard+straight+razor [fyi on a totally tangential note there are some interesting videos of straight razor shaving Japanese women, like around the eyebrows and stuff, no waxing - straight razoring! Wow, that's kinda neat.] ).

And I'm thinking about this, and poking around. And for whatever reason I decide to go back on yelp to look up the hida tools place I went to earlier. And I'm like, huh these reviews don't look the same as the ones I read before I went out today; they kept saying how alameda was a drive, which didn't make sense to me at the time because the tool shop is in berkeley. But sick delirium, nothing makes much sense.
(review for reference, no mention of Alameda: http://www.yelp.com/biz/hida-tool-and-hardware-berkeley#hrid:KYt9wglO_MaV2iJNJ5HabA/query:japanese%20tools )

But I figure, what the hell lemme just go back and yelp for japanese tools. And well sure there's hida tool. But so is The Japan Woodworker.
(review for reference, with mentions of Alameda being far [now makes sense] and mail order [now also makes sense]: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-japan-woodworker-alameda#hrid:uqGUoJrccxrxT42FhMQBhg/query:japanese%20tools )

Wait, The Japan Woodworker? Like, the one everyone was going on about as being the best importer in the country/world? The Japan Woodworker that had the best price on that razor that is really spendy but ohman LUST DOWANT MUSTHAVE?

Yeah... it's the same place, it's been around for 35 years... I drove by it on my way home from dinner just to convince myself I wasn't going crazy, and nope, it's there in a big huge warehouse along the harbor. And to make matters worse, just now using google maps to get driving directions not as-the-crow-flies far, EVEN THEN it's still less than a mile from where I live.

Clearly I'm doomed to buy that blade. May be time to earn some more money...

[update - female facial shaving in Japan - the eyelid stuff even wigs ME out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCZLjRs0068 ]

artkiver @ 2009-01-03T16:56:00

2009-01-04T00:57:26Z

I'm not doing a year end write up, it's not year of the ox until January 26th, I'm still living in the year of the rat! So nyah!

Preaching to the choir

2008-12-14T22:11:59Z

Donate money to NIMBY NAO! They need $6500 MOAR by tomorrow to make this happen!

http://www.nimbyspace.org/

Use your credit card w/o even using a paypal account! Or, if you have one, you can use that too.

$krillaz

(and yes they have already raised over 9000 dollars, but that isn't enough).

sunday Sunday sunDay!

2008-12-13T03:02:00Z

Half the tme crew is lending a hand for megabyte mike's special bday static. Come out!

before i forget due to the amazing show intoer put on distracting me

2008-12-08T08:29:01Z

http://tinyurl.com/63jw9z
http://tinyurl.com/6ph34x

For Raven, or others who haven't jumped on the android ship yet.

artkiver @ 2008-12-05T16:00:00

2008-12-06T00:00:17Z

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/21775/?a=f

livejournal sux, here's a shitty workaround

2008-12-05T00:27:04Z

I can't post a reply over 4300 characters in someone else's journal, so here's a reply here without dumbass arbitrary limits. Not of interest to others, but since I've got some other security/hacker practitioners as friends who read this, you're welcome to offer your comments too. This is just my perspective having been in a role of errr support of some sort for . . . too fucking long. Albeit, my views outline an ideal, and I've certainly dealt with things that put a lot more burden on me than I like handling and I deal with that; it's also a goal to not put too much burden on users [that doesn't tend to work or scale], but where do developers fit in? If you are interested in my biased thoughts, read on:

I don't think it necessarily fits into your two choices of voting; but even though I tend to do more network/sysadmin/security stuff I guess that's me. Albeit, I do and have done lots of network/system security work in the past. My philosophy is something along the lines of:

do you have root/admin on the machine?

If yes: Then you better be responsible and keep things patched, you want the 'power' then you don't get to get away scott free. Albeit, you are probably not the only one with this responsibility, if there's an admin team at your job that has root, you all get to share in it. When giving friend's a shell on a machine I own, I tend to automatically give them root [because most of my friends could get it easily if I didn't provide it anyway] and tell them they get to pitch in with sysadmin duties. This tends to work well as long as everyone in wheel is communicating with each other. Some of this is reflected by a friend of mine (Bob Beck of UoA) who has often turned young snotty hacker students who own one of the machines on campus into his unofficial minions. How did he put it? Something along the lines of, "I feign being impressed by their skills long enough to please their sense of ego, then I ask them if they can help me out and teach me some of their amazing skills by showing me how they keep a system secure. And eventually, I have them wrapped around my pinky finger doing whatever I ask them to do." Beck is an evil evil evil man, but also a great hacker and realist; but most kids don't understand the idea of being manipulated on that level, at all. ;) His page is here: http://www.ualberta.ca/~beck/ and the character from Brazil is really pretty much the personification of bob and other top notch ops guys I've been lucky enough to run into or work with in my career. Anyway enough on that...

If you don't have root: not your job, if sysadmin slacks, that's their fuckup. Believe me, as a security guy sometimes I don't -want- access to your system, I don't want the finger pointed at me for your fuckups. I mean sure, I can -get- access to your system, but if it's not provided for me (or if I don't tell people I'm on it) they can't blame me when it's broken. Same goes for you to systems you don't have control over!

But as far as the role of the developer. There are often hard battle lines between ops and development; where ops people don't -want- developers to have any kind of root/admin privileges. Or if they give it, they do so very sparingly or with a watchful eye. There's generally some history behind this [from both sides, but let me talk about an ops perspective]:

The worst security compromise I've dealt with were on machines that developers ran in a sandbox network I setup for them to do whatever they wanted with admin rights (windows shop mostly there). They didn't patch their shit, and they also bridged into the production network because they were tired of sneakernetting or vpning things to the sandbox development network and ended up letting loose a worm on the internal production LAN. To make matters more worse, there were other machines on the network that got infected which were machines that -they- had taken it upon themselves to put in place so users could use beta versions of their software, and again they didn't follow standard build+patching procedures and were outside the scope of what our very limited IT staff had to deal with (we were about 10X the size of kink, and had about half the amount of ops staff). They said they *needed* admin access and we gave it to them with the knowledge that they were responsible for keeping their machines patched as our bargain. That was a fair deal, they got their autonomy and were happy they could do whatever they wanted, and we were happy because we had less to deal with and didn't need to bugfix crazy alpha builds of whatever crappy stuff they wanted to run. The reality was we gave them those rights, and they didn't keep up their end of the bargain. Cleaning up other people's shit is a reality in any sort of ops job, but when you're cleaning up other people's shit who said they could wipe their own ass and you put your trust in them and the shit all over your world, it's infuriating. It's much worse than the clueless user who doesn't know better; I wanted to see people fired for negligence. (This did happen eventually not as a result of that, but I'm sure it didn't help their case much that they were clearly jerkoffs who liked a lot of toys but didn't like to pick up after them, I'm obviously still bitter).

That said, I've worked in worse scenarios too - when I worked at the county office of education in SLO, it was me, another guy and our boss as IT for 45+ sites throughout the county. Any problem that came up was ours to deal with from helping people check their email to becoming the first county to join up to the Digital California Project [a subsidized high speed network for california school districts by county]; and that kind of 3:several thousands to support just doesn't scale. If you found a user who had a clue, you would do everything you could to educate them to take care of themselves and ideally even people they worked near (traveling between sites occupied much of many days). We certainly never faulted anyone for not taking care of things if they couldn't, but if they could - it was a huge help! Most educational environments are like this - there are too many things going on for the ops guys to fight every fire, and if you are a developer and writing software an overtaxed ops guy is going to assume/or at least HOPE you have a basic clue and can do fundamental routine maintenance on your system assuming you have the privileges. In that environment I often would freely give out admin/root privileges to people who had a clue so that they -could- install their own patches and updates, by simply asking me for that ability they'd demonstrated enough for me to give them the benefit of the doubt that even if they did shoot themselves in the foot later they were taking steps to make sure that wouldn't happen. There are plenty of people who know a lot less about technology than an average "developer" and naturally are going to necessitate more attention, but hey you write software, you should know a thing or two.

There used to be (or IMNSHO *should* be) a progression:

neophyte -> user -> power user -> admin -> developer (EDIT:) -> wizard/hacker.

The reality is on the higher end of things (be it admin work or development work) there's a lot of crossover. A real wizard handles everything themselves and generally only asks other wizards for pointers on how to do things better.

Sadly developers (and even many CS professors) these days never even get to the power user stage; computers are great symbolic abstraction tools, but if you have your head in the clouds of whatever newfangled fad language/api/library and don't understand the fundamentals of discrete systems and the layers you're working on top of (one of those previous horrid developers I mentioned above was writing webapps, and didn't even understand how to use ping to check for connectivity to a system he was trying to poll from) I'm of the mindset that you will pretty much never make things that are satisfying for people to work with. On a bad day, this is when I talk about building a robot army to kill all humans in reference to such people.

Anyway a lot of this is opinion, but the main thing in dealing with this situation that I would recommend comes from the message you quoted:

"If you need help, I can put you in touch with the campus sns team."

I would do that. They're probably more than happy to do hand holding, or the entire patching process for you. A good admin/security person will know how to back things up to rollback onto if needed, or realize when you need to push forward and fix some bugs/config issues to deal with the 'new world' despite the breakage. If you have a team there as a resource, it seems far more effective to use them as that's been provided an option than to worry about what is being asked of you, since you've got an option to foist things onto someone else.

That said too... most patches are designed to be minimally intrusive and compatible, things that will cause problems are generally explicitly stated in the patch release and you should review them before running with them and see if anything jumps out at you. If it's all nonsense to you, chances are it's not something you need to worry about anyway. And, if you're sufficiently behind in your patching, if you do patch and it gets hairy, you can generally rely on the internet to find someone who ran into the same issue as well as a fix or workaround.

Sadly the security of a system doesn't just rely on it being 'patched.' For example, the number of sql injection bugs introduced by developers who don't understand step 1 about security or sane ways to interact with a database from an untrusted input is very trying. I know some great brilliant people out there who stop developing software because they simply stopping wanting to be responsible for trying to figure out every edge case that could lead to catastrophe and found far more satisfying technical lives in hardware design [albeit errors in hardware design can be far far more costly, but a lot more time is spent in sanity checking things too].

Even a good hacker/security practitioner is constantly fighting a battle of proportions where any 13 year old with a copy of the 1337h4X0r tool du jour can do serious damage with minimal skills or understanding. The odds are already against the security people and they can't do it alone - in any place I've worked or college curriculum I've helped design, I've encouraged educating not just the security practitioners but the public at large. Patching should be like changing the oil or tires on your car, help keep it running optimally and reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic breakdown, it's just routine maintenance and shouldn't break things (or in cases where it does it's often because the software was written in a manner that was insecure to begin with and that practice should change). And most of all, don't be scared of it - know how to do these things yourself, even if you discover you don't like changing the tire on your car yourself, and get it serviced by people who do that for a job usually, having done it at least can help you in a bind and save you a lot of headaches. (to use an analogy)

Also for 'staging' that's what vm's are great for these days. IMNSHO all development should start in a vm environment before ever being pushed live (and in some cases vm's make sense for live deployments too). But you may not have those resources at your disposal. You mentioned apache and other very standard F/OSS tools - and there are other F/OSS tools to help you do just that, learning about them will only add useful things to your resume for the future and make you a more well rounded and capable.

That said, I understand this stuff can be a drag; turns out it is for everyone. But where the finger is pointed or responsibility foisted doesn't change that for whoever does the gruntwork no matter "who's job" it is. And again, like I said - if you've got a team at your disposal to lend a hand, use them. The drag at least can be distributed among more people, and you can probably learn some things or best practices from them in the long run. There can be tradeoffs with security practices (often in convenience) but at least being aware of the process can help you, and help you realize when maybe there's actually a more convenient way of doing something that is more secure too (e.g. using ssh public keys instead of telnet or something).

artkiver @ 2008-12-01T18:19:00

2008-12-02T02:19:55Z

The FDA, definitely protecting you!

http://www.naturalnews.com/024947.html

not.

Posted using TxtLJ

2008-11-17T06:20:47Z

the greatest birthday gift of all is the love & support from some amazing friends. Thank you!

Posted using TxtLJ

2008-11-16T02:12:48Z

After finally getting a working debit card again & being paid the money irs shorted me last year, credit card paid off!

artkiver @ 2008-11-14T19:38:00

2008-11-15T03:40:03Z

Goddamn I've had this g1 for like three hours and am already so in love with it I can't describe how awesome it is. But seriously, why didn't this phone exist four years ago when I was rockin qwerty, wifi, touchscreen, evdo back then?

Posted using TxtLJ

2008-11-14T00:30:57Z

No kids this weekend. Bday is sunday. Is anything doing tomorrow (friday)? Or should it be impromptu party time?

overdue update?

2008-11-10T03:32:47Z

I haven't written here in a while; but I am still reading regularly? Here's some catch up.

So my halloween costume threw a lot of people for a loop:

Megabyte Mike got the resemblance at least:

Ok, so it wasn't really a Halloween costume. I have to say it's been hugely entertaining to me to go unrecognized by so many friends at first glance though. And people who seem to doubletake/flipout at my appearance are also very entertaining. Going so errr 'normal'? Relative to my general appearance is apparently pretty drastic action for the social circles I'm in, which I find perhaps more entertaining than the looks and comments I get from 'normal' people regarding my hair colours and whatnot at other times.

What happened to the coloured hair on top, and what's with all the hair on my face? Just a temporary change, winter hibernation mode, chrysalis, I don't know wtf.

At any rate, I'm not really a fan of facial hair (especially now that I've gotten so good with a straight razor, making shaving a lot of fun), and I do like coloured hair. But there were a bunch of things in my life that weren't getting much momentum, so a change seemed like it might help me kick things into gear and be a nice incentive to get me getting shit done that has gone undone for too long.

So with that, what are some things that I want to see done before going back to an appearance I enjoy?

* divorce finalized
* debt paid off
* doing kungfu again/regular physical activities

Things that would be nice to get done before shaving/etc. but less mandatory because they're huge fucking projects and I'd be happy just getting into a routine of doing this kind of stuff regularly once a day/week/whatever:

* house organized:
which entails stuff like:
. shelves put up
. things taken out of boxes
. get things that I can donate to museums donated (the computer history museum actually is interested in some of my stuff, I've just been a lazy ball dropper and haven't filled out the paperwork and given it to them yet).
. get rid of stuff that I shouldn't have been lugging along all this time anyway.
. making sure I've got any of the last physic reminders of exwife gone
* digitize media (I'm done with being a packrat of physical things, but being a packrat of bits is easy and manageable, and more importantly - USEFUL, since I can share things with friends super easily). But my 1000+ CD's, all my LP's, tapes, vhs cassettes, minidisc, laserdiscs, books, etc. I just want in electronic form. Maybe I'll still keep the physical objects as backup, but at least I should have them frigging organized instead of scattered in a gazillion plastic bins.

Oh, one thing will be needed before shaving too:

getting new straight razor(s) [I couldn't remember which of my old ones my exwife had given to me vs a friend, so I just gave all that to another friend since I don't want a reminder every time I shave, even if it's just a question].

That said, how far along am I on these goals?

Well, as far as the divorce goes, there's been all kinds of headaches and hassles with paralegal, exwife's assumptions on childsupport (thankfully clarified now, though I guess she's still telling my daughter that none of the monthly amount I pay is for her, which is not the case at all *sigh*) and whatnot. That said, I just got what looks like the last of the paperwork I'll need to deal with filled out and passed off to my ex, so hopefully she'll fill in the last few details she can provide and initial things and submit it and then errr it gets submitted and we wait a bit? At any rate, I don't think there's anything more I can or need to do about getting divorced at this point *breaths sigh of hopeful relief*

As far as getting out of debt goes... if you recall some months back something about my mom lending a hand, well that didn't happen due to market changes cutting into what she has as disposable help-the-kids kind of stuff (that and I think with my sister moving and whatnot there's a greater need for day-to-day financial help she can provide). But that said, it seems that the tax screwups from last year which left me 4-6K in the hole from what the accountant estimated finally got cleared up after I submitted my 2007 taxes. So once I get these federal checks deposited I should be that much closer to paying off the last of my CC debt *fingers crossed*

The regular physical activity + kungfu stuff is probably the hardest thing for me actually; breaking bad habits of decades is a real challenge, and scheduling work in relation to kungfu is a constant battle. That said, this next week I think the last of our gargantuan pain-in-the-ass of a colo move (moving from 365 to space at 200paul) will be done which means hopefully no more regular late nights; and I hope to be able to get into work earlier so that I can commit to a class in the east bay which would necessitate me leaving work earlier in order to make it (as much as I would like to train with my Sifu's friend Joseph Crandall in Pinole, making it by 6pm in traffic would be a total pain, whereas there's a place near a bart station in oakland that teaches baguazhang and hsing-i and looks like they do some TCM stuff too).

Add in the fact that my at&t contract is just about up and I can finally get a cell phone that does just about everything I've wanted in a cell phone for 3+ years now with the android stuff in a couple weeks, and that my birthday is this coming Sunday (november the 16th). Things are looking up, and a time for new beginnings is drawing near, just as about the 4th year post-marriage fuckup draws close (which is a good year from my perspective to put things to rest given my skewed Asian perception of 4 being a homonym/phone with 'death'). New relationships aren't on the horizon still, but at least I feel like I'm getting closer to my life being in an order that I can live with and maintain more easily.

Inching closer on my journey of a thousand miles. . .

Tickle Me Electro tonight! Now Free!

2008-09-27T21:02:59Z

The sound guy isn't charging us, so we're not charging you! Maybe I'll find a coffee can for donations or something for people who feel like it, or just save your money for the bar. Anyway, hope to see people out (albeit on a very busy Saturday night).

artkiver @ 2008-09-25T17:53:00

2008-09-26T00:56:30Z

Don't forget about Tickle Me Electro on Saturday!

In return, I give you (worksafe) pr0n after the cut:

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2008/9/Diesel-SFW-XXX-577249.html
(full motion in the style of http://www.sfw-porn.com/ )

And, worksafe but of the incredibly hot pr0n star Stoya as a really nicely done music video (apparently she was errr being taken care of as far as what isn't framed in the shot):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKPd8o87E2o

artkiver @ 2008-09-20T11:01:00

2008-09-20T18:05:14Z

Blarghity itsmorelikeachainletterthanamemebutisagoodexcusetoshowoffnewcmykhair

blargh!

And in even more other news!

2008-09-09T03:48:40Z

Today is for flyers and stuff apparently.

artkiver @ 2008-09-08T19:13:00

2008-09-09T02:13:55Z

In other news...

artkiver @ 2008-09-02T15:49:00

2008-09-02T22:51:24Z

Who books shows with this much ignorance of what else is going on that night?

http://events.contracostatimes.com/san-francisco-ca/events/show/84061849-sebastian-freq-nasty-random-rab-ooah-ana-sia-vibesquad-david-starfire

vs

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/875206/

vs NIN (ok well I don't care about nin, but a lot of people I know who would go to either of those other shows do).

I have the kids, so none of these choices work for me ah well.

Plenty of other things going on, don't really care to update here or elsewhere. Errr maybe check twitter for more frequent and less verbose updates?

(No longer doing twitter crossposting to livejournal due to friends who have both and are justifiably annoyed at reading the same thing twice. I should work on fixing that problem, since I've had ideas about it for years and it'd be useful for many things in life and not just me).

artkiver @ 2008-08-11T19:24:00

2008-08-12T02:33:51Z

I've been remiss in posting in a while. There's kind of too much to catch people up on; but I'm still alive, if a bit sick the past few days. The next Tickle Me Electro! is currently set for Saturday, September 27th. I will be taking the kids to Boston on Saturday for a week and I might take my daughter up to NYC for a day or two, but unsure about that. If anyone has recommendations of what to do in Boston, I've already had some (and well my mom's got a good idea seeing how she grew up there and we're visiting because that's where her husband lives), but I haven't been since I was 5 and mom ideas might be kinda off...

Errr yeah. Moms are pretty swell though, I crashed out from an old friend's wedding on Saturday with chattering teeth and a cold sweat. Not only did she bring me soup and boxes upon boxes of tissues, but she's been helping relieve financial stress without me even saying I was under it (yeesh, even as a parent with some psychic abilities for my own kids, it still impresses me how that works even now). I feel pretty crummy about relying on her to pay for my mistakes but grateful she can. I'd be chumped about even paying for the few hundred bux the last mediation session cost. But at least on that note hopefully that was the last time we'll have to go into the mediator? The court date is set for mid september now. Inching closer to divorce at nearly the three year mark of being separated. Everyone and their mother (and my mother) is still bugging about asking if I'll ever start dating; really don't want to think about that still, ungh plz to be not asking for another few months at a minimum, kthx.

Ok, that's about as good as I get at conveying information without getting too wordy, so I'll stop now.

p.s. diatribes about technology are being spared for now. z0mg so much more shit in the world now.

Posted using TxtLJ

2008-07-26T21:52:14Z

Reminder: Tickle Me Electro! Tonight 9pm - 1:30am @ Li Po Lounge, 916 Grant Ave., SF (in chinatown) FREE!!
(see previous post for another flyer dose)

artkiver @ 2008-07-22T15:43:00

2008-07-22T22:44:50Z

(reposted from mattbot, who introduced me on Friday night at the Babyland show @ Gilman)

The Prids were involved in a bad wreck and need help.
From Marshall Serna (ephemeralone):

"Our dear friends The Prids - David, Mistina, Joey and Maile - and two of their significant others - Kristin and Chris - were in a serious accident early Sunday evening while en route to Los Angeles on tour. A tire blew, they lost control of the van and it rolled several times. David was airlifted from the scene of the crash, he suffered a broken collar bone, broken ribs and has 6 staples in his head. Chris broke his arm, and they are waiting for MRI results to determine if he's sustained a spinal injury. Maile has a broken vertebra and toe and a severe cut with stitches on her knee. Joey broke ribs, Mistina suffered a concussion, and as far as I know Kristin is in similar shape. As of late tonight, everyone but Chris has been released from the hospital, and they are staying at a hotel in Fresno.

A special paypal account has been set up to help out and donate directly to The Prids. And the recent update (9:30 this morning) is that Chris is out of the hospital but David went back in this morning vomiting blood. He's on a morphine drip and stable."

The e-mail address to donate to is: donate@theprids.com.

Update from Mistina via

hifihillary:

"A note from Mistina:
Jul 22, 2008 12:27 PM
Subject: We are alive, thanks for your kind wishes and help

Hi Buds. We're all in a hotel in Fresno, friends Marshall and Kiisu are here now and we're about to rent vehicles to transport what we have left in belongings and gear and health back to Portland. Not sure when we'll be back, Thursday or Friday.

I spoke with my friend Nona last night and she posted the following info up. Sitting is ouchie so I'd rather repost than give another account of things.

We've got hospital bills, a van that we still owe money on, a new van to buy and an unknown amount gear to replace... so all of your donations so far and to come, are appreciated more than you know. At the moment we've gotten enough money donated to help with hotel rooms and our gas home, not to mention our amazing friend Anna is renting us a van to transport our gear-scraps home.

Thank you all so much. If I weren't so loopy I would write a motherfuckin thank you that would bring tears to your eyes!! love you all.

ps do you like how I called you buds? Vicadin blows btw... barely works! blah!
xoMistina

from Nona's post:
6 people, EMERGENCY ROOM. One air flight to the hospital. Totaled van with 3 thousand dollars owed on it, towed to an impound. Medical care in a situation such as this is going to total for all 6 pushing over thousands of dollars.

THINK: x rays, cat scans, MRI, blood draws, fracture care, hospital stays, life flight, ambulance, etc. The only two with insurance is Maile and Kristen, and we already know insurance doesn't cover 100 percent of bills.

On top of all of this is their stay at the motel. It is unknown how much of their gear, if any, is salvageable.

Highway patrol kept calling hospital, because they had never seen an accident so bad with all people to survive!"