Things so normal as to not fit neatly into any other area.
Another year, this time 2021, is nearly complete. It was an interesting one as the product I’ve been working on since 2016 finally arrived for some folks in limited quantities: the PlayStation 5.
It was also another year of covid lockdown. This curtailed many of the activities that I would have been doing, including flying. On the flip side, I’m much better at video conferences than I was a year ago, so that’s something?
After years of manual tweaking, maintenance, sub-par hosting, outages and hacks I decided to pull down my long running website (this one) and switched to a local install of WordPress. The goal: to eliminate a lot of pain doing software upkeep and to eliminate an attack vector for opportunistic internet individuals looking to make a quick buck.
Did it work? Well the site you are looking at now is all static pages, so there’s nothing more to attack. All scripts and executable code has been removed to my local install where it is relatively safe, then it is rendered out to plain HTML and uploaded here. From what I can see, the amount of attacks and issues that I previously experienced have already gone down.
However, there is this nice reminder of the old times, which arrived in my inbox just 24 hours after this site was updated:
I nearly fell out of my chair when this arrived. Not only did I just change up everything that could have been “hacked” into on the site, but this was a straight up extortion email asking for USD $2000 in order to “keep from destroying my reputation” based on information they somehow found in my “sites database”. Which wouldn’t normally be funny except for the fact that the site has neither a database nor any reputation damaging information on it.
It’s a nice reminder that the internet can be a pretty nasty and inhospitable place if you are running insecure or badly managed services on it. So be careful out there, kids.
… into the current “Sad Batman” meme craze that’s sweeping the internet. Â Enjoy?
It has been an interesting 24 hour period when it comes to vehicles.
Starting on 4/25, I sold the 2005 Infiniti FX45, my treasured commuting and skiing companion during the end of my California tenure.
Then on 4/26, I sold the 2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z51 coupe, my first true, new from the factory car and my weekend fun vehicle. It was my occasional valley carver and fun day toy.
Now I’m down to the current company vehicle, a 2014 Chevrolet Silverado LT truck. Â It possesses neither of the FX’s or C6’s charms, but is a useful hauler of people and stuff.
I enjoyed my time with both the FX45 and C6, but I hope that I have helped them find good, new homes. Both will be missed.
For some reason today, Labor Day, I decided that I had to have something from my childhood as a reward for the dusty work around the house that I performed. It seemed only fitting that this treat have some kind of Coca-Cola flavoring to it, since that is one of the most vivid and constant memories I had growing up. Problem is, I really dislike the way Coke tastes now in the USA, so hopping over to the local Safeway for a beverage certainly wouldn’t do.
First I thought it would be a good time to stock up on some Mexican Coke again. I live in California, I have a Costco membership, this should be no problem… except that it’s Labor Day, Costco is closed, and none of the Costco’s nearby carry the sugary drink any longer. Strike one.
Alright, how about that kiddie treat standby, the vulnerable Coke Slurpee? I asked Google Now where the nearest 7-11 store was and I headed out the door. Upon arriving, I searched around the store to find the magic machine of frozen drink deliciousness. Only once I got close to the machine did I discover the sad truth: the machine was broken, flashing, and leaking some kind of darkened ooze. The store clerk was of no use, simply repeating what the machine had already communicated and then returning to his headphones and music. Strike two.
I set off for yet another 7-11 location. I am now discovering in my search that it is far easier to find Starbucks locations than it is to find frozen wonder drinks. After driving around for another 8 or so minutes, I find the next frozen delivery den. Inside there is a working cola flavored Slurpee machine. I grab a cup, turn the switch and delight in the process of fulfilling my admittedly short term goal of Coke nirvana. After paying the clerk and walking out the door I take my first straw-full of Slurpee and…. I am disappointed.
All of this searching, driving and anticipating had raised my expectations to levels that were unsupportable. I was left with a mildly cola flavored, ice crystal drink and a series of questions about how I recall my childhood. Was the Slurpee always this tasteless and bland? Is my memory fading now such that I couldn’t recall the previous bouts of poor cola taste? Had the secret recipe changed somehow in the intervening years while I wasn’t watching?
I believe I’ve learned an important lesson here: lower expectations are better expectations. And that it’s probably better to buy Mexican Coke, some vanilla ice cream, and make my own concoctions at home. Figures.
It was bound to happen at some point, but today is the day the T-28 met its demise while flying in my hands. Fittingly, it was a mid-air collision with another T-28 (and another former Bayside member) that ended its flying days so abruptly. Seems there are some things that EPP foam just can’t recover from, and of course I found this out the hard way.
Goodbye ParkZone T-28, I’ll miss you.
Dear people of the internet, please help yourself out by verifying that the email address you sprinkle to every web site, sweepstakes form, shopping cart, government entity and social network is actually an address that belongs to you. I’ll even tell you how to do this, just follow these simple, basic steps:
This is the first post on the new web host. Hopefully all is well and this will post up just fine. Time will tell if this host is any better than the last one, as the last one was positively awful near the end…. but more on that issue later.
For now the key is to find out if any of this works out and so far it looks like it does, or mostly does.
Just by reading the headline you can see that I have no problems leaving 2009 in the dust. It was a crappy year in just about every sense. But rather than drone on and on about what really sucked about the ’09, because really, I could, I will instead pull the old “look back” list trick from my friends in commercial journalism. It works for them so it ought to for me.
I thought about going on and listing some hopeful predictions for 2010, but let’s just think about the track record for such things: they just don’t pan out. If you can’t predict the easy stuff, like tomorrows weather, then trying to guess how a whole year will turn out like is just nuts. I will stick with my current belief that next year will just be a bit like this year, only with a “ten” at the end of it. We’ll see.
Two different events conspired to make today suck: an email purporting to be from the FBI and US Mail from a former employer telling me that my identity may have been stolen.
The FBI mail is the typical Internet scam, but this time with more legit looking information and 50% less bad grammar. It tells me that:
your e-mail address was among the e-mails that won this year promo award of UK National Lottery, that is the fund that was transferred to Africa , and it has been recovered.
Of course, I completely forgot about that lotto ticket I picked up when I was in London five years ago. How silly of me, and how wonderful that the FBI took the time to track it down for me. I’m sure someone will fall for this but it’s just another hoax in my inbox.
This second one is more serious. It seems that a former employer who will remain nameless contracted with an accounting firm which had my personal identification (and that of others) on a laptop. That laptop was stolen and the firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, says it had all kinds of security to keep my information safe, and that I shouldn’t worry. Sounds fine until you read the next paragraph:
… as the laptop was in use at the time of the theft, we cannot be certain that these security measures were enabled.
So now I’m told that someone can go out and masquerade as me, creating new bank accounts, credit cards and personal loans and that all PWC can say is sorry, we’re not liable? I realize that the 21st century was going to be new and exciting but I didn’t realize that personal or corporate responsibility wasn’t one of the 20th century carry-overs. Shameful, I say.
