It’s time…

It began when I started driving to work; I lost 20-40 minutes per day of walking (not to mention an hour per day of reading!

It accelerated when my mother died; for a while there, I just didn’t care.

The result: I’ve mangaged to regain 35 of the 50 pounds I lost in 2002/2003. It’s time to get rid of them. I think I’ll get through the holidays first (although I’m going to try for some restraint), and then get serious come January.

First Blizzard

We had the first blizzard of the season today. When I left the house the roads were clear. About 5 minutes later, it started snowing, but the snow was just blowing around making the road surface look pretty. 15 minutes after that, the snow was sticking and turning to ice, and everyone was sliding around trying not to hit things with their expensive SUVs.

At that point, I turned around, thinking that the drive home would be even worse. It took me more than twice as long to get back home. Then I drove the kids to school, and the wife to the subway, before making it back home again.

Nigerian Fraud Countries

Amateur radio operators keep track of all of the countries they’ve had contact with.

I’m going to start keeping a list of all the countries I’ve received Nigerian fraud (aka 419 spam) messages from.

• Nigeria
• Liberia
• Senegal
• Mauritius
• UK (London)
• Hong Kong (China) (20041110)
• Sierra Leone (20041110)
• Cote d’Ivoire (20041119)
• South Africa (20041120)
• Burkina Faso (20041124)
• Togo (20041124)
• Benin Republic (20041124)
• Korea (20041125)
• Brazil (20041231) (wow, that was a long gap!)
• South Africa (20050113)
• Russia (!!!) (20050114)
• Dubai (20050117)
• Senegal (20070717) (after another long gap…)
• Iran (!!!) (20080212)

I’m slowly collecting most of that part of Africa…

interrupts

I’ve been trying to merge a series of changes from the mainline to the bugs branch all week. But every time I get into the flow, some critical interrupts would arrive. Even working from home didn’t help; the phone rang off the hook all day. (I’ve got two children in school nearby, so I can’t just turn off the ringers, alas). I’ve had to drop and restart the task so many times that it got completely befuddled, to the point where I realized this afternoon that I had to start over. On the plus side, I know what I need to do now, so it won’t take me another entire week… unless more interrupts show up!

dungeons and dragons is 30!

It’s the 30th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons today. In honour of the date, we’re having a session over at Gerry’s house. The other hard core gamers were strongly typecast during their days at watsfic, and so the party ended up needing a mage (and a cleric) to complete the set. So I volunteered to be the mage. Oops…

It occured to me after we’d created a character that I’ve never actually played a D&D magic user before. We’ve always replaced the D&D magic system with Spell Law. It never made sense to me that you had to “memorize” spells to cast them (and if you wanted to cast them more than once, you had to “memorize” them more than once!. The most recent D20 explanation at least makes some logical sense, although it still doesn’t mesh with my personal opinions on magic.

_now_ they tell me…

Scientists find coffee really is addictive

Don’t be surprised if missing that cup of morning coffee gives you a headache or makes it difficult to concentrate at work. It’s all part of caffeine withdrawal, say Johns Hopkins University researchers who released a study that could result in the official classification of the condition as a mental disorder.

This isn’t news; everyone I know already knows about caffeine withdrawl headaches, and I know of several hospitals that now give patients caffeine either right before or right after surgery, to prevent withdrawl symptoms from interfering with their post-op recovery.

outsourcing quote

The commentary is the usual, but I loved Mr. Greenspun’s way of phrasing it:

American labor is wonderful but it is a luxury that most American families can’t afford

(from Philip Greenspun’s Weblog:)

it’s the most wonderful time of the year

Back to school, although today was just a two hour “meet the teachers” session. Both kids and adults had lots of fun reacquainting after the summer break.

Lots of people we talked to had hurricane experiences, either Frances or Charlie. We got off easy compared to some!

a comparison

Mission Space was a much better ride than Frances …

false security?

That’s the first time ever I’ve had to remove my belt to get through the airport security checkpoint. My wife had to take her shoes off!

Keep in mind, when reading this, that I have travelled in Europe during their anti-terrorism crackdowns; there’s no comparison. The United States is more interested in the appearance of security. For example, I watched two separate TSA agents walk into the bathroom, look at an “abandoned” suitcase sitting there, and walk out again…

wind, and wind, and wind…

The north eyewall (what’s left of it) is less than 40 miles south of us, according to Channel 13’s spiffy doppler radar. The storm has lost quite a bit of strength; it’s impressive out there, but no flying alligators yet!

The big hassle with this storm is its size; we’ve been under it for over 18 hours now, and it’ll be at least another 18 before it calms down enough for emergency crews to start opening everything up again. Fortunately we have power, and Footloose is on VH1 right now!

everyone knows it’s windy

So I’m staring out the window at rain falling at 45° and the trees starting to lean over… Part of me wishes Frances would just get here already; the suspense is wearing. It was supposed to arrive Friday, then Saturday, now Sunday early morning.

Our hotel is open, and packed with people who have fled their homes, both from Orlando and farther east. We still have power; we’ll see how long it lasts, as they’re predicting that most of Florida will be darkened by this storm. The hotel is currently planning a curfew at 10PM tonight, until at least 10AM tomorrow. But the storm has stalled, so I’m not sure if they’ll change those times.

Defense in Depth

I’ve visited lots of old fortresses in Canada, and a few in Europe, and I remember learning about defense in depth. This is the idea that your assets should be surrounded by multiple separate layers of defenses to make it harder for the barbarian hordes (or Americans :-) to break in. Ideally the defenses should be different, so that if a simple technique of defeating one is discovered, it doesn’t help against the others.

looming energy crisis?

These days it is stories like these that keep me awake at night.

• China - An Energy Timebomb?
• Basic Choices and Constraints on Long-Term Energy Supplies

Basically: We’ll run out of oil in my lifetime; long before that, it will be expensive, and then rationed. Alternative sources simply can’t fill the gap; we do not have the capability to replace just our electricity needs with renewable energy, never mind our other energy needs. Even if North America switched to nuclear power, we’d run out of fuel in 35-58 years, a mere band-aid for the problem.

passwords in the news

I can’t find it now, but I remember reading recently about another “cross-discipline” team that discovered all sorts of interesting things, because each member of the team had a different way of looking at the data. Now a PKI research group has attached a sociologist to the team, and that is starting to produce insight:

A recent survey found that 75 percent of Dartmouth students have shared their network passwords. “They like having people who know their password,” explained Denise Anthony, a sociologist who spoke at the PKI summit conference I attended earlier this month. “They like having someone who can check their e-mail for them or log them in to places where they’re supposed to be.”

The fridge arrived!

My [New Refrigerator]({{ <relref “old-blog-posts/2004/refrigerators.md”>}}) arrived at about 8:30 on Saturday morning. We took out all of the packing materials, hooked up the water and electricity supplies, and plugged it in. It is a thing of beauty!

It took about 3 hours for the freezer temperature to drop to -15%deg;C and a few hours longer for the fridge compartment to cool to about 2.5°C. I went out last night and loaded up on fresh food again; now we have a fridge that looks just like the pictures you see in the advertisments…