You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

The recent twitter phishing scam had non twitter users scratching their heads on why this service would be targeted for a phishing scam at all.. Most people view little or no monetary value to twitter accounts. For most people this may actually be true. For people like Scoble or companies that promote themselves over twitter, well the brand name damage caused by a hijacked twitter account could be quite costly.

One of my friends on twitter had a reply about this issue (I’m assuming the other person didn’t realize the long tail potential impact (yes I used the term long tail – get over it)). What I saw was this:

@jeremyasmus could be any number of reasons, spread malware, spam, get passwords, us humans tend to use the same password over and over.

This is the crux of the issue isn’t it? The problem isn’t average user with nine friends directly, it’s the large power users and the passwords for other services. Let’s look at each of these.

Let’s say you are Scoble and your account get’s hijacked. Scoble has a level of trust built from himself, he is known to get the inside scoop on information, people click his links. Scoble has over 47,000 followers. If his account was hijacked and ten percent clicked a link that was really a malware installer – that would be 4,700 people infected within a matter of minutes. I think however the number of Scoble followers would be much larger probable in the 50-60% range. For a malware distribution this is a great return for the time frame, with the added benefit that you may get some other high profile names in the attack.

The cost to deploy such an attack is extremely low – under ten dollars, while the net return would be a few thousand, potentially more. Since there is little risk to getting caught if you know what you are doing, you could make some decent money by exploiting this chain of trust that exists and is protected by a mere password.

Let’s look at the side of this coin, the normal user.  Adam Baldwin nailed it right on the head when he stated “us humans tend to use the same password over and over”. I know I do, though different level of things have different passwords – my banking account does not use the same username/password combination as my twitter account – neener/neener. It is however shared with some other web 2.0 services. Some other people may not be so diligent. This once again is a chain of trust issue. You are trusting the companies that you give your passwords to are truly them, so once your password is in the wild it’s exposed and all of your accounts are open to attack.

Let’s look at the information an attacker can get from you if they have your twitter password:

User Name – while by itself it’s exposing a little bit about your account and your password – the problem lies in having both bits of this information. That part should be blatantly obvious. The issue lies in the fact that most of us use the same username or “handle” across many sites on the web. Doing a Google search for “Creeva” yields over 46,000 hits. A lot of these hits are different services that I play with and over 90% of the hits link back directly to me in some fashion. Since most sites use you username as your login name, if I used the same password every single one of these services would be exposed if I fell for the twitter phising scam.

E-Mail Address – Yes though it maybe only a small amount these days, your e-mail address is still worth a few percentages of a penny to the spammer. This would get you on more mailing lists, and ones that would be quite hard to get off of. It is also normally used as a login name for service that do not use your handle. More accounts have now been exposed because of this. If your e-mail account passwords is the same as your twitter account (dumb mistake) everything about your online life, accounts, and transactions can now be exposed and utilized against you. Would you notice a gmail filter that someone setup to clone every incoming e-mail?

The other issue is even you do not have accounts that show up in a Google search they could use a service search engine such as Spokeo to find accounts even you may have forgotten about.

Mobile Phone Number – This probably would be one of the most annoying things, that your phone number has been exposed to the internet underground. Phone spam, call back charges; there are a few things they can do with this number. I do think this is small annoyance compared to loosing your email account.

Being a good security professional my recommendation is to use strong passwords that are unique to each service and are rotated regularly. I am also a realist and know that you won’t. This may be the time to start doing segmentation where different accounts do get different levels of passwords. This is what I do so if my twitter account was compromised only the services that I consider on par with Twitter security-wise was at risk. Lower level accounts would be safe and higher level accounts would be safe. I also think with the range of accounts, I could move faster then the phishers going through and knowing what to change faster then they could try all 46,000 sites. It’s a thought – now what are yours?

You ever notice that when you are on social networks that you seem to seek people out that you only have the most tentative of connections with.   I’m as bad as anyone.   I’m speaking of this after a true friend added me yesterday on Facebook.  It’s someone I messaged back and forth a few times with, and may mildly keep in touch with.   After that I went through my graduating class and added more people.  Some people I’m interested in from afar, some I’m interested in communicating with, some I have a passing interest in.   I also didn’t add a few that I wouldn’t be interested in, but I would friend them back if they connected to me.

I was thinking afterward though that just like high school, some of these bonds and connections are true and some of them just a passing fancy where no communication will ever really flow from one end to the other.   I see people that I know vaguely, I’m at least proper enough to stick with people I actually had classes or conversations with.   Some of these people only have friends that they went to high school with.  Some I may be the only one.

Looking at the sociological dynamics is very interesting.   Some people are extremely close with those they went to high school with.   I’m not, mostly since I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of people.   Moving to Oregon also put a bit more space between me and the rest of the class, and even now I live about sixty miles away – though I play in the community band in that town.

Even the bullies, the preps, or the prima donnas from school, I wish them no ill will.  There was a moment in time I was worried about my standing in the social pecking order, but I think I left that behind when I was an underclassmen in high school.   I’m someone that cares about my immediate social circles and not those of memories of people over a decade old.   If they however wish to know me more in depth then my blog posts allow I’m happy to converse with them, maybe even have a coffee – but things won’t be like they were.  Because of that I don’t judge them by the way they are.

Time has changed most if not all of us.  I’m sure some of them all hang out with the same people from high school, get drunk every night with the same people they drank with when they were underage- but I hope the majority of them have moved from that.   That their dreams have been realized.   We have this spark of moment in time where we had a shared experience and it bounds us.   Not everyone is brave enough to face that moment in their lives, some people want to leave it behind them never to return back.   I’m sure those people I’ll never be able to reconnect with, the saddest part a couple of those were some of my best friends.

To the future and the past, we move forward solid in our own steps.   The echoes of the past follow behind us as we make our way into the unknown.

I think I knew from our first date that my wife was going to be the one I was going to marry.   Granted I literally broke up with my ex the day before I asked her out, but it all worked out.   Though I was twenty -one and she was eighteen it was the first real date either of us had been on.   We had started “going out” with people before, but it was always meeting and doing things in social situations then you labeled as a couple and doing things was just being together and not really a date.  I did ask one girl out on a date previously, but it turned into a double date, so this was my first real date.

It was in September of 1997 and I managed to get off work early and get a hair cut, then I went out to one of our customers and bought her a bouquet of roses.   We went to Chi-Chi’s in Lorain, Ohio driving there in my 1986 Ford Escort.  I ordered a mexican pizza which they burned and she had me send back, and I believe she ordered the chimichanga’s .   We talked about going to the movies afterward and decided on Conspiracy Theory.   Walking to the car I asked her if I was the type of guy she could fall in love with (me=geek, not the best social skills).  She said maybe.   I asked her if I was the type of guy she could see herself marrying, she said she didn’t know.   We then drove over to the movie and had a wonderful time.

A few days later she was having problems with her parents, she was at a cross roads and all upset.  She was sitting on the front stoop of her friends house and that was the first time I ever told her I loved her.  She cried in my arms (not from me saying that, but because of the other stress) and said it back to me.   Three months later we were engaged. Thirteen months later on Jan 2, 1999 we got married.  From that first date until about 2004 when she went back to Ohio to visit family while I was stuck working in Oregon, we never spent more then 24 hours away from one another, over 2600 days of seeing each other at least once every day.

I’m not going to saying everything has always been fantastic, we’ve had our ups and downs.  We have managed to stay together and stay in love.   I love her more each day, and now she is going to be the mother of my child (last year we did say we would do something special for our 10th).  We are opposites, but we are also twins, we are stronger together then we are apart.  We are both critical thinkers, yet I’m the only one that thinks she is the better of the two of us – so sometimes she is wrong.

She is the core of my being and the center of my universe, even though I don’t always show it.   Her thoughts and dreams revolve around mine, like mine do around her.   She is my wife, and I love her.

Maximum PC recently ran an article titled 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have, I wanted to go through and see how I ranked in their skill list.   Let’s find out.

1. Name the Connectors – yes I was able to :)

2. Run your essential apps on a USB stick – no I don’t do this, I could – I just prefer to run everything in the cloud or on my N810 – which is with me most of the time.

3. Straighten Pins on a CPU – I have done this too many times

4. Know the 13 basic HTML Tags – well I kinda know most of them – I use freaking wordpress I hardly need to use HTML and when I do I look it up and hav ethe answer in seconds.   Though I do know quite a few by heart that aren’t listed in the basic 13.

5.  Get through to executive customer service – hey I read the consumerist.

6.  Beat quake in 60 minutes – maybe at one point in time, but I’m not big on FPS games.

7.  Build a Hackintosh – I know how, I just don’t the components that seem to work, and I’m a cheap bastard that won’t buy parts just to run OSX - I’ll stick with ubuntu as my alternative OS.

8.  Watch TV Online legally – um that’s how I watch 100% of my TV these days.

9.  Get around a content filter from a public computer – yes I know how, I’ve helped friends at other companies, it’s not worth it to do it at my own job though.

10. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places – nope – I have no inclination to ever learn either.

11. Replace the controller board on a hard drive – hey I did that once, it’s not a skill that comes up at parties though.

12.  Benchmark your computer – really?  Is this even on this list? Yes, I was doing this before I fully understood what the benchmarks meant on my 386 DX40.

13. Decorate your room with only printer paper – am I physically in the skill set to be able to do this?  Yes I am – would I?  No.  I’m more likely to decorate with NES cartridges.

14. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered – yes I am capable – it would be easier if you encrypted it first though.

15.  Get into a windows computer if you don’t have a password – yes I’ve done this quite a few times.

16.  Hide data from anyone – yes encryption, hidden volumes, stegnography (which I got bored with in 2001) – I am capable of doing all that – I’m more likely ot share my data then hide it though.

17. Explain what e=mc2 means – yes I would like the e=MC2 with a side of fries please – yes I am capable, but refuse to put in the details here since I want to make it through this list.

18.  Abstain from buying extended warranties – I may have bought one, once – it was on something i thoguht it fall apart though – so it’s all good.

19.  Use photoshop or gimp – yes I am capable.

20. Use a DSLR in full manual mode – I can – I’m just lazy and prefer it to do the work.

21. Mooch your neighbors wi-fi – my neighbor doesn’t have wi-fi but I’m ready to mooch when they do.

22. Protext your wi-fi – Wep2 currently – For a while I had mac filtering, I hated to keep getting mac addresses from visitors though.

23. Create an animated spray in Valve games – um – I don’t think I’ve played a single one for more then 5 minutes….so this one is a no.

24.  Setup RAID – yes I’ve done this a few times over the years for my home network.  Now implement Iscsi raid across multiple computers – that’s a challenge.

25. Calculate a Pitchers ERA – no I don’t know how – but I know google will give me the answer quicker then I can calculate it.

26. Run two Operating Systems – um I dual boot currently……

27. Install a hard drive in laptop – done before and some day I’ll do it again.

28. Pull off an elaborate prank – I think have the skill set and knowledge – I just never have – unless stealing street signs as a teenager counts.

29.  Rocket jump with a macro – um – I said I don’t really do FPS games – so no I can’t do this.

30.  Wire your home with ethernet – um every place I’ve lived with my wife we have had wired ethernet – we even used RG58 at one point.

31.  Know the 6 most important linux commands – yes I get command not found when I’m not thinking and run them in windows.

31. Rip your CDs to Flac – we did this for awhile then went back to MP3

32.  Stream Music, Movies, Pictures to any TV in the house – I’ve done this before – now we just carry our laptops around – shrug.

33.  Install and configure a VM – yes I’ve done this for literally years (maybe even a decade by now)

34.  Run multiple monitors – yes I use to dual monitor and run SWG on two different ones at the same time – I’m sad I know.

35. Run hacked firmware on a router – yes liek the rest of hte world I have a hacked linksys router /yawn.

36.  Pick a lock – I’m not good at it, but I’ve done it a couple times.

37.  Tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – it’s been awhile but I think I could.

38.  Avoid DRM on everything – well streaming video legally that they talked about above seems to contradict this one doesn’t it.   However all my local video, music, picutres, and ebooks are DRM free.

39. Download a flash video and reformat it – yes I’ve done this – youtube videos locally stored on the N810 ftw.

40.  Get around in DOS – I grew up and DOS and resisted windows for a long time – so let’s just say yes.

41. Rip a DVD to h.264 – yes been there done that.

42.  Overclock your PC – yes I’ve done this my pride and joy was overclocking my AMD 133 mhz 486 to 160 MHZ – and it benchmarked and ran like a pentium 133 for half the cost.

43.  Use remote desktop – it’s part of my job – so yes.

44. Debate the merits of a star destroyer vs. the enterprise – yes, and the star destroyer would win.

45. Buld your own computer – built too many to actually count – I’m serious to – I worked at a small PC store and we sold hundreds – thousands of machines – so I cna build my own.

In irony they don’t seem to actually have 50 things on their list – so I think most geeks should know how to count also.

Sorry – this one is a couple of days late.

My parents don’t get along. I mean really don’t get along at all. I’m not sure I can stress this enough. My father always seemed to be doing what he did in the best interest of the children. My mother on the other hand was in a money grab and used leverage. This was nothing out of the norm from before the divorce however.

From about age seven until age fifteen, I was keenly aware that my parents did not have a good marriage.  I remember telling my friends that my parents were going through a divorce.   Ironically, they managed to keep going and going (along the way they also had two more kids).  My parents were a mismatch from the beginning, and if I had not entered the picture they might not have gotten together.  They did and now for some historical information.

My father attempted to be the disciplinary or the family, my mother was the enabler.   She was very much the enabler.   If  my father tried to set something down (this is looking back mind you), my mother would take a position just to be the opposite of him.   Of course if my mother wanted to agree with him, I could just bring out that everyone was doing something, this would normally allow me to gain her consent.

Now some of this I remember and some of this is stories passed down, I’m going to try to remove the bias and just give you some examples:

When we were living in Elyria, we didn’t make a ton of money.  Sometimes we were scraping by month to month.  It something that happens to a lot of families, and even as an adult I still find myself doing that most the time.  One month we had twenty dollars left in the bank account.   My father was counting on this money to provide lunch meat for himself for work.   My mother on the other side had other plans.  Knowing full well how much money was in the bank she went out and bought wash clothes, effectively draining the bank account.

My mother was never happy with what she had.   My father was constantly remodeling to her tastes.   He learned a lot of things about working on a house, so I guess you could say that’s a good thing.   I however remember the house always being in the state of flux as some project or another was constantly being performed.  Of course now as an adult I leverage my father for knowledge he gained from that experience, but my wife can’t live in that sort of atmosphere.  So that tidbit is something to take for taste.

During the early nineties my mother decided she wanted her own money.   That’s a good thing.  She decided she was going to make dolls and enlisted my father and my grandmother on her venture.  She made enough to buy a living room set after hours and hours of labor and sewing on all three of them.  I remember I did a bit of stuffing myself, but I don’t believe I did much else.   Now you would think that this is a good example of the family working together.  However, my mother didn’t seem to understand the concept of “cost of manufacturing”.  She believed that it was pure profit and just poo poo’ed all the money that it cost to create the dolls before sales.   Thinking back I hope my father set the profit margin, since my mom would have probably sold them for a loss and then went “Golly, look at all the money I have from sales”.

Before moving on to the post divorce era I’m going to relate one last story.  There was a movie I wanted to see (I was 15) – it was “People Under the Stairs” and I wanted to go with a friend.   My father said no, it was an R rated movie and he didn’t want me to go.   My mother snuck money to me and dropped me off to see the movie.   She was in full enabler mode.   Later when my father found out the fight between them was explosive, don’t mix two volatile chemicals together.   I have my father issues I may write about another time, but this month is about mom.

After the divorce my father and I didn’t talk for a few years.   We talked lightly after awhile, but it didn’t start getting regular until I was traveling for consulting.   This led to a whole new ball game in dealing with them.  I didn’t want to accidently pass information from one side to another, but at the same time I had to make my feelings known.   I would get my fahter to talk about things my mother had told me – indirectly inquiring.   I also did the same thing on the reverse.

The problem is I normally sided with my father’s point of view.   I was this go between, trying to maintain peace on each side of the family.   When I first moved into my house i was in the middle of everyone, so my house was going to be the holiday get together place.  A Switzerland where neither side could fight.   Well that didn’t last long before i stopped talking ot my mother.

The most interesting thing was the Thanksgiving when we first moved back to Ohio.   On my father’s side all of his siblings still get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to have a family meal.  My brother lives next door to my father.  My mother was staying at my Brother’s house that day……

Somehow, in some wierd mix up of the galaxy, my mother invited herself over to my father’s house.  (I’ve mentioned that they do not get along at all).   Her excuse was to see all of my aunt’s and uncles who could care less about her.   The rest of the family completely agrees that she was there only to see the house and see how my father was doing.   I don’t know how she managed ot get the nerve, but I wouldn’t enter the den of a place where I know I’m not wanted.

But maybe she just wanted to see if my father’s curtains made her look fat……..

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At one point in this whole debacle where I stopped talking to my mom, Xie thought she would try to mend things. She dropped me off at burger king to eat and went over to my mothers to talk (this is all second hand mind compared to most things I’ve written). Xie sat her down and told her she was going to push her children away one by one if she continued down the path she was going. That my mother had to pick herself up, get a job and move forward being an example (I’m sure Xie will comment on this story to fill in more details).

The selfish thing my mom said to my wife? “You don’t have to have a job why should I?”

Now because this is second hand I normally wouldn’t have included this, but I wanted to point out Xie’s effort. This wasn’t the first time my mother had said this. There are a lot of answers to this.

1. Xie has a supportive husband that hadn’t left her once and possibly will again
2. Xie spends her free time learning and expanding herself – my mothers expansion comes from Oprah and Dr. Phil
3. Xie doesn’t have two children at home not even teenagers yet that need to eat and hopes daddy will give mommy child support money
4. Xie isn’t a leech that feels entitled to it, she has offered to work many times, I don’t understand why both of us need to be miserable for a few extra bucks

While my mother is grazing the home shopping network for things to buy, Xie is doing Algebra out of text books for fun. There is a world of difference. Most notably my mother needed an income she could trust to take care of her kids and not ask friends and family for money to get by.

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousins family, well my grandmother has been saying that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.

A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

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My mother loves to gossip.  She loves to spread gossip.  She loves to receive gossip.  If you are familar with the musical “The Music Man” at all she is one of the “Pick A little, Talk A Little Women”

She would go to the community pool under the pretext of watching my sisters swim. If however there was no one to gossip with she would pack up and either take my sisters home, or get someone else to watch them. I’m sure my mother misses the hey day of the beauty parlor where all the women sat around and gossiped. I’m sure in some areas these still exist, but not really in her neck of the woods. Besides she felt superior becuase she had “her” beautician that she went to.

Her beautician always made sure that her hair came out with that blond color that she was born with. All those pictures I’ve posted of her as a toddler on up that have dark hair? Well I guess my mother believes that those are all bad exposures since she swears the blond she has now is her natural color. Ironically it’s because of her and the lies about her hair color that I refuse to ever dye my hair to hide my gray. I’m not going to tell people my hair is a certain way. Granted I’ve dyed my hair black for a costume, I’ve also done purple and blue – heaven help those that thought those colors were natural. I actually have my mother’s native hair color, I’m just not in denial.

My mother would love to gossip. She would spend hours on the phone talking to friends about who was having marriage issues, who was having works issue, who bought something new, and who was stuck with something old. If she didn’t have any friends at a given time she would either try to get me involved (I never had an interest so I’m sure she bored of me) or she would enlist my grandmother (who had the same enthusiasm as I did).

You would think she would like to discuss something of interest, but the most poignant she ever got to real life events was what new Longaberger baskets were coming out or discussions about Dr. Phil and Oprah – it seems to her these are the messiahs of the new world order. Who knew?

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As far back as I remember when I went to someone’s house the first question my mother asked me when I got home was never “Did you have fun?” Maybe that was too plebeian for her and her non-bourgeois ways. She didn’t want to be like every other mother on the planet and ask the obvious question. The question she did ask? Well that was “What did their house look like?” My mother was obsessed with other people’s housing decorations and using her eight year old son to do her scouting for her. I was a bad a scout thought, my answer until I was eighteen and moved out was almost always “It’s a house, with stuff in it”. She tried to grill me further and if she was lucky she sometimes got to pluck out some of the details she wanted.

Whenever my mother went to a house she seemed to case the joint like a burglar. What she wanted to steal though was not anything tangible they owned. What she wanted to do was find something that either she could use in her own decor, or talk about with her friends about how much she disliked it. If you didn’t fit in one side of the spectrum you immediately fit into the other side.

If something was featured on Oprah as must have, my mom would scheme to buy it. I can only assume she owns both a Wii and Kindle. I don’t know why she would buy a kindle though, she doesn’t read. I’m not saying she is incapable of reading, only that she prefers every bit of information spoon fed to her through network television compared to any other avenue. I swear my mother thinks the purpose of the newspaper is to hold her shopping advertisements.

She attempted to justify her moronic decision to make the first room you enter in the house being the dining room because one of her friends did it. This was one of those moments where you say, if all your friends are jumping off a bridge would you do it? (My answer to that question has always been “How high is the bridge? Is there water underneath it?” How many friends are we talking about and have they all survived?”) Either way a stupid design choice is a stupid design choice, copying it just makes you dumber.

The correct answer to why you do such a thing? Well I could say it fits until our routine better, it makes the house more functional, who cares about the norm or aesthetics, or it’s my house and I like it. However hiding behind that your friend does it so you decided to do it? That shows you have no thought in the problem other then some selfish little need of instant gratification that you are trying to get fulfilled.

I understand why my mom wants to decorate or own things that other people do. It’s called a psychological term called mirroring. If someone mimics your body movements your mirroring them. It allows for a repertoire to form, a link if you will. People like people that are like them. In some mis-guided learning my mother thinks she needs to dress, talk, and live like everyone else – otherwise she is non-existent. If she isn’t acknowledged because she isn’t like everyone else she get depressed. The whole problem is when you live your life by mirroring all those around you all the time, you are no longer an individual. You are a member of society, but your not going to help further it or challenge new and original thought.

Every single idea my mother has had for house design or money making has been because someone else has done it first and she thinks she can do it also. Mind you she doesn’t think she can do it better, she thinks she can do it just as well and get the same compliments for it. Because of this my mother doesn’t do anything well beyond “keeping up with the Jones’”.

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Stargate SG-1 Season 5, SG-1 greatness continues – nuff said.

Amazon’s synopsis:

It now seems clear that season 5 of Stargate SG-1 will be remembered as the one in which something went awry with Daniel Jackson. Lots of behind-the-scenes rumors fueled the idea of cast tension, but whatever the problem, his sudden departure from the show was obviously through a quickly contrived scenario. In retrospect, there must have been a problem for some while before the weird penultimate episode (“Meridian”). Michael Shanks looks frequently bored in his rare moments of individual screen time as he infiltrates a Goa’uld meeting and even when making friends with a creature everyone else wants dead. In fact, there’s only one point when everyone really seems to be having fun, and that’s in the spoof 100th episode “Wormhole X-treme!”

Stargate is one of those movies I almost missed, I’m glad I didn’t.  I originally saw it at the Lorain Palace Theater my senior year of high school with one of my close friends.  We were both Star Wars buffs and had been told this movie was Star Wars-like.  I’ll add to the fact that it is nothing like Star Wars other then if you mean it is science fiction.

That being said it was a great movie that I’ve purchased on both DVD (twice) and VHS.

Picture from here

Well in preperation for my NANOWRIMO challenge of writing, I’ve mentioned that I didn’t want the blog to be neglected with no new posts showing up.   I still have some more writing ot get done before Nov. 1, but I managed to clean out most of my drafts now.   Granted a lot of these were quickie movie’s I own posts, but hey they are cleaned out and done.

FYI – the movies I own posts are two fold, the first being it helps me keep track of stuff I own so I can lend it to friends.  The second since I use Amazon.com links in it, it gives me the psuedo chance ot actually make money on this blog.  Not that I think you will, but if you are interested in buying any of the movies I post about click the Amazon links from teh referrals on my site.

Having gotten rid of 30 drafts today does make me a happy panda.

My family has always talked about each other behind their backs.  Back and forth, just some things don’t get said.  I’m more of a lay it on the line and let it hang out.   My brother and I don’t see eye to eye on most thing.   I’ve already started in on my mother online.   Is this however still talking behind their backs?   They all have the url to my homepage.   Most of my family at least check my site out in passing.   I don’t see how I could be more public about it.  I’m not secretive, but I also don’t send out a blaring e-mail saying “I JUST WROTE ABOUT YOU ONLINE – YOU BETTER READ IT NOW”.

The reason this comes up goes to a yahoo group I used to manage of just close friends a few years ago.   I was egged into talking about another friends marital problems on the message board.   These issues were not a secret.   My post only stated that we should give them support in their time of need.   Ironically the people that blasted me the most in regards to “talking about this other couple behind their backs” were the ones that were spreading this the most through IM and phone calls.   Everyone on the list new, but it was secret since it wasn’t in the open.

This type on mentality is what pisses me off the most when it comes to the “behind the backs” argument.   If everyone already knows and you speak about it publicly to get the whole thing out in the open, how is it behind their backs?  Since I’ll be writing a bit about my mother, and I won’t keep any e-mail comments she sends me to myself – I’ll lay it out in the open.   It won’t be behind a closed door – it will be transparent like glass.   If she wishes to have a discussion in the comments where everyone can read what she has to say, the more the better.   I’ll be happy to have it out in public.

This is having things out, secrets just destroy people.   I share my life online because it’s cathartic.   I do abide by certain rules.   If you send me an email it’s more then likely not going show up on my blog.  I respect and adore privacy, even when I will share so much of myself online.   I love having discussions in public, if I’m wrong – show me I’m an ass.  I don’t mind.   I’m well aware there are consequences to all of my actions.  I’ll own up to those and suffer accordingly.  Let’s have it out and start a discussion.  If your part of it, I definitely can not be accused of talking behind your back.

I read the SWG forums still via RSS feed, and one of my friends posted a link to find out your game DNA.  I thought I would take the quiz and htis is the result.

Saturday was the VHS Alumni Bands 22nd performance at the Vermilion High School Band Festival.   I originally marched for the Vermilion High School Sailor Marching Band from my Sophomore to Senior years (Senior Year Video) which encompass the fall of 1991 through the summer of 1994.   I had the option to put on the band uniform one last time for the Vermilion Fish Festival in 1994, but I declined that was the first time I performed with the VHS Alumni Band.

My first band festival (Fall 1994) outside of high school I didn’t get a chance to perform, I was marching with earlier that day for a home game with the Ashland University Marching Band.   I did show up that evening to watch the performance and hang out with friends.  I heard a lot of people say that this was their best year in Alumni Band, no disrespect to Joe, but I have to disagree, at least for myself.   The best year for me was my first festival back with the group at the Band Festival of 1995(?) which was Willy B’s (William Burt’s) last year as the Band Director for Alumni.   If it hadn’t been for Mr. Burt and his loyal students there wouldn’t have been an Alumni band today, so all of us can look back and thank them for making this possible.

I’ve marched many years with Alumni at the festival (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007, and 2008) and I only missed it five times because I was living in Oregon.  I can say I was extremely tempted to spend the money for a plane ticket and fly back for it during those missing years.  I’m extremely happy that I was there for Mr. Henry’s final year as both a high school director (my senior year) and his last year as an Alumni Band director.  Last year when he announced he was retiring as the Alumni director I had tears in my eyes (HEY I’M A SENSITIVE GUY!!).   David Henry is probably one of the greatest influences on my life, and I don’t know where I would be today if Jeff Luther hadn’t tried to convince someone who didn’t know how to play a note to join the marching band.    Someday I’ll write a whole article on Mr. Henry, today isn’t that day though.

My own personal tradition is to show up early for Alumni practice, I was always the first to arrive and just enjoyed being there sitting in the back of the band room anticipating the day.   This year I was dropped off and there already was another car there, three majorettes beat me.  For the first time I wasn’t the first one there.   Next year I guess I have to arrive at 6 AM.   My wife dropped me off, then she went a visited the grave of a friend to tell him about the new pregnancy.   Later in the day I told that friend’s sister, who is now in Alumni,  that we are planning on giving our child his name if it is a boy.

Mr. Price ran us ragged through out the day for the performance.   I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, I’m just saying….   After lunch was practiced our closing routine for the first time and at the end we practiced the high step.   My ankles felt like they were going to break at any second.  It may have been the shoes, but I think it was age catching up with me.    I went out and bought a pair of ankle supports at dinner time.   I wore these for the rest of the night.   I managed to high step and I didn’t break an ankle.   On Sunday however I could hardly walk on my ankles at all.  By Sunday night it had migrated to just my left ankle.  It is still sore and tender four days later.

Pain and sickness isn’t new to me at Alumni Band though.   Two years ago I blew out and gave myself a sore throat in the morning practice.   Compound that by the fact that it was raining that night and eventually it got bad enough they moved the festival inot the high school gym – I was laid up sick in bed for four days afterward.  Last year I got the sore throat again, but it didn’t develop into anything more.  After last year I decided I wanted to be in playing shape – no sore throat and no dead lips.   I joined two community bands and that corrected the issue from that side.  I do think I’m going to have to start running again just to get my ankles in shape for next year.   These are the the things I do for Alumni Band.

Some things are funny, like the people being amazed that the current seniors were freshmen when they were seniors.   I pointed out that the current seniors weren’t even in preschool when I was a senior.   You have the differences in band style from the Burt to Henry to Price eras, and of course all of us think that our own era was the best.  There are things I missed from the past in Alumni.  Large groups of us used to sneak in Alcohol in water bottles and get lit before marching.   Before he did Dennis Pintur used to be notorious for that.   He was also notorious for blowing out his lip playing tuba and showing everyone his bloody white beard also.   The tuba’s back then actually did tuba chases, which I haven’t seen in the last few years.  During the drum breaks our tubas also used to twirl their instruments.   My first year in the band festival Mike Lewandowski put me on his shoulders during the drum break and we did a dance in our section of the field.

The band has changed and grown up.  This isn’t really a bad thing.   It may be why some of hte older members don’t show up still, but that happens.   The experience isn’t the same, people move away, people are busy – there are alot of reasons people don’t show up.   The rest of us… Well the the rest of us want to relive our glory days like Al Bundy.   In a way we are sad like some people think.   It is also glory.   The excitement of going onto that field, feeling the rush, and doing it one more time.   I’ll be there as long as I am physically able.  I’ll be there in a wheel chair and play for the middle songs only.   In the end I’ll be there.   I’ve lasted longer playing with the band then the band has played in the Vermilion Fish Festival (which BTW I think they need to start doing again).   I’ll survive and do it until there isn’t a band festival to march at anymore.   If it ever comes to that point I’ll just invite all the band members that want to show up on a fall Saturday, pull out some music, and play on the football field even if it’s just for ourselves.   Those that understand that, they are the ones that really want to “Do it One More Time”.

Videos:

Star Spangled Banner – Google Video Link

Festival Show – Google Video Link

Sideline Footage – Google Video Link

If you somehow missed it you can also always watch last years video here.

If you want to see the pictures I took – scoot on over to my Flickr set.

Picture from here

A couple weeks ago I was talking with a friend about an idea for a new web service.   The web service would have you enter in all the services and sites you use and have an account with online, and then send you a twitter alert when the policy changed and it would show you which text changed.  My problem is while I could come up with the design, function, and architecture I couldn’t figure out any way to monetize such a service.  I let it languish and said I would eventually write a blog article on how to roll you own.   This is that article.

The key feature to making this work (obviously) is a service that can monitor website for changes and give you some sort of data trigger outbound that is usable for repurposing.  I know I could use services that would do an RSS feed, but I wanted something more immediate and trustworthy then RSS for this scenario.  I hunted around and I found the service Change Detection that will send send you an email when a web page has changed.

E-Mail Alerts

With e-mail you have a bit more control.   It’s all easy.  If all you want is an e-mail alert put in the policy page into the page address field.   Then place your e-mail address in the “send alert to:” field.   Easy as cake and your done.

Twitter Alerts

What about getting twitter alerts?  The first thing I’ll point out, I’m not a programmer.  I’m sure there are much better ways to do this in much simpler methods.  I have two requirements for myself.   Keep it free, and it keep it in the cloud.   Make the internet do the work for you, it’s always on and online – your computer doesn’t have to be.  So instead of using an Uber-Twitterbot I’m going to utilize a few free service:

1. Change Detection -Configure the privacy page you want to monitor the same way in section for getting email alerts.  Instead of relying on the emails for notification, change detection allows you to create an RSS feed for each page you are monitoring.

3. Twitter – Setup a new twitter account that you can friend.  If you worried about privacy (people knowing which sites you are watching), set the updates to be protected so only “friends” can see them.   Have the alert twitter account friend you, log out and friend the account back with your main twitter account.

4. Twitterfeed -Take the feed from change detection, pipe it through twitterfeed so it will put update notifications to your “alert account”.   Now whenever anything has changed you can watch updates from that account and you’ll have almost real time monitoring of any web page.