Bought a "special" arduino from an Australian company that can use virtual keyboard & mouse libs. No more crazy long password entry at work. I really hated locking my computer every time you get up. Going to combine it with RFID to make it even cooler.

Will post pictures when it is picture ready : )

Turtle in the road! Run turtle, run! I usually stop to relocate lost turtles but it was just over a steep hill on joe prather (a country "highway") with no shoulder. Hope the little guy gets across safely.

Going to just crosspost stuff from G+ for a while. Hope nobody minds :)


The biscuits exploded this morning, lol. You know when you peel open a can and they sort of violently spiral open with a pop? This was extreme and ejected biscuit parts all over my shirt and the stove. The cats were in there bumming food and did the hilarious "the kitchen floor is now ice" scramble to escape.

First, Cats! Nym, our new kitty, was found sleeping in the same spot that Banjo (who recently died of FIP at age 1) liked to lay. I also found Banjo on the floor today, i guess she was playing with him.


Here she is just playing with a mouse. Yes, this was filmed with a potato.



Next, Hackers. It's pretty typical to get automated scans and hacking attempts on any public services. But it has really stepped up in the last few days. I've been seeing "live" attacks and not just automated ones. Spent much of the morning checking logs and closing the things s/he was poking at.

If i add the attacking ip to the firewall, a few minutes later s/he will be back with not just a new one but a new one located in a different country. So i've started work on a php script that watchdogs the logs and auto-deny any ip that does something abnormal. Abnormal is including 404s and long GETs, so it is pretty strict. It allows for some whitelisting though for legit 404s and so on.

The ips are pooled and i'm searching for things they have in common. Maybe they are all part of a company service or p2p network or something. Then i can outright deny any connecting machine that is part of that network/service.

Only once before has my machine been hacked (that i know of). There was a zero day ssh exploit that took me completely unprepared. Had to wipe the box :(

Here's the chart!

Click for full-size.

Looks like my internet is especially poop before lunch and around dinner. Going to expand the data collection to several different locations in the US and remake the chart (at a later date.. i don't feel like messing with it for a bit).

The chart was made from data collected every 5 minutes from 4am to 11pm today which comprise 199 logging events consisting of 5 pings to www.yahoo.com. The pings are summarized into minimum, maximum, and average times.

The internet here is great EXCEPT ping times go really high randomly. From 50-250.

In an attempt to figure it out (because the Insight guy ran a test and said everything looked good) i coded up a logger that is collecting info 24/7. Tomorrow i'll throw up a graph and we'll see if there's a pattern to this pain.

Reformat reinstall is almost done on the main computer. So snappy! It's like clean sheets on the bed, or warm pants from the dryer, or sitting in a new car (or freshly detailed), or sucking the warmth from your loved one with cold hands :)

Miss K convinced me to sell most of my books (they take up a lot of space). So we first tried selling them to a local book store, a bin (40ish books) for 20$ was the best rate we could get. Instead of selling locally we're trying half.com and so far it's working out pretty well. It averages two book sales a week.

I really didn't want to sell them because it's impossible to get your money back out of them. Each paperback is 8$ and hardback 15-30$ (at new prices). So ~300$ worth of books will resell for 20$ local or 50$ online... so sad! But honestly i don't reread them unless they are truly fantastic. Tunnel in the Sky, Pushing Ice, Seeker, Ringworld, stuff like that.

Miss K usually loses her keys somewhere in the house so i dug up an old key finder (unopened) from a surplus parts box she got me last christmas. Pulled the battery tabs and tried to program it but the beeper part that attaches to the keychain just beeped and beeped like crazy. I could reset it into learning mode but it would quickly jump into learned and beeping mode.

Quick Fix! Stuck it in the microwave and programmed it in there. The microwave is a small faraday cage and luckily filtered the same frequencies that were interfering with the keyfinder.

Ok, the dust has settled a bit and those with cameras have put their lovely pictures online. These are my vanity pics but please go look at my friend's photo streams here and here for a view of all the fantastic costumes at Otakon 2011.



Imperial Guard Catachan Devil with Inquisitor and a Sister of Battle.



Catachan Devil with the Inquisitor.



Mild tension between an Imperial Guard Inquisitor and a Catachan Devil.



FFXIII Lightning with DR. Venture and a Catachan Devil.

BTW, serious looks on our faces is GOOD.. hahah. The Warhammer 40k universe is dark and grim. Endless war in every direction and almost zero hope for an end. Zealotry has replaced hope. Blind faith has replaced reason. Anyways, it's a-ok for us to have grim looks :)