Tomorrow I leave for vegas!
Yay!

Wow,

So far this has proven to be a good read. I won't go in to any detail, but I would like to add a word of caution. This is not the children's book that came out 6 years ago. Rather this book is intended for those readers that started 6 years ago.

What I mean is that this book is really not intended for 11 year olds. Of course I'm reminded that 11 year olds play Grand Theft Auto these days. Regardless, I plan to let my child get through each book when he is of age.

Of course there's nothing truly horrible in the book, rather it could be best enjoyed by a 16 year old as that is the age of the main characters. I'm sure this is what J.K. Rowling intended, that the books grow with the children. However I wonder how many parents of young kiddos purchased the book for their kids. *sigh*

Anywho I still give the book two thumbs up, though I haven't finished. I have about 100 pages left and my wife and I plan to finish those tonight.

G' morning!

I don't know about you. But I'm pretty excited.

Apparently others are as well.

My weekend will be consumed.

The more I deal with this concept, the more it puzzles me.

What is trust? According to Dictionary.com :
Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

So how do we establish trust? Typically it is granted, and then maintained until something violates that trust. At which point it may never be fully restored. Once the integrity is violated, can it ever be totally restored? Ideally, yes one's integrity could be restored*. At least this is how it seems to be in human interactions. The quote:"Trust takes a second to lose but a lifetime to regain" embodies that idea.

Trust is founded upon the initial presence of another person. The ever important first impression becomes the framework for that persons perceived integrity. Therefore after the first impression, the initial steps toward trusting that person are involuntarily taken. It is only after further confirmation of that person's integrity/character that trust can be fully established. That works well enough for humans but what about communication where only one human is present?

Now we get into some sticky problems in computer science. What happens when that human interaction is relayed through computer programming? For instance, a web server implicitly trusts all connections to be valid connections. Of course in the event of a malformed request** the web server code should catch those errors and respond as necessary. But since the web server allows for unauthenticated access, we run into alot of potential problems. For example the buffer overflow is a classic example. Sending a specially formed request to the web server that is a bit longer than it can handle (with some special bits appended to the end) can cause the server to become under control of the requestor.

This is also where email becomes broken, not only from buffer overflows. It is susceptible to phishing. Email is great, you don't have to know the person, just their email address and for pennies*** you can contact virtually anyone in the world. This great convenience comes at a cost. The email protocol is wide open. With relative ease, I can construct an email that appears to be from Mickey Mouse or <choose your favorite>. And this is what is causing folks across the world problems. Oh this email must be from paypal.. sure I'll update my account.. oh you need my username, pass, ssn, DOB, etc... here you go!

Of course there are safeguards for these threats.. but perhaps a new trusted email protocol or needs to be written. Let's say that does happen, just to entertain the idea, how long before it gets implemented. Bah... Course even if you do create this Titanic**** protocol, what happens when you leave your desk and your email client open and Joe Hacker types an email to the president. The protocol is trusted so it must have come from you... And back to the problem.

How can one trust? How can one be trusted?

It seems that trust and perception begin to walk hand in hand. Trust is a reliance on integrity. Integrity is:
Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code

The reliance of trust is base on a perceived adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.

Perception and reality, perhaps that is my next rambling.

*(but not quickly!)
**(something could have legitimately gone wrong..)
***(the price for the bytes [probably fractions of a penny])
****(meaning on its maiden voyage it'd probably sink)

Wednesday night our family and all of Arxan Labs went over to my boss' house for a pool-side catered dinner. Sebastian was the only baby there. Arxan is very much a family oriented company and all the executive staff members that were also attending the dinner were very interested in the little guy. The CEO even commented on Thursday that he was a cute kid. Ah Sebastian, only 11 months old, and already networking.

Phase II of the Nemesis Project was reviewed on Friday! We had a blast (pun intended) by launching model rockets. The model rocket was the kind with the camera in the nose cone so whenever it reaches apogee it takes a shot. Can't wait to get those developed.

Today was really good. Started off the morning with a couple Caramel Macchiatos and finished with pasta and homemade spaghetti sauce. Took Sebastian for a bike ride this morning to pick up some milk and doughnuts. He was a pretty happy camper. Cleaned house a little bit. Helped Mehlberg with his landscaping. Took another bike ride around the neighborhood with Kristen and Sebastian. Not sure what else is planned but its been a pretty good day.

I was able to flex my AV skills again by creating a movie of Sebastian, about his quest to learn how walk. You can find it here.

Wow, I've meant to comment on this but haven't had the time. But now I do so I am..

Last weekend was amazing.

Taste of Chicago was Saturday.

Sunday after church Kristen and I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a bike trailer for Sebastian and a bike for Kristen. That day we took a nice ride around town and visited a co-worker of mine. Then we had Terry over for mongolian beef which was tasty.

Monday (the Fourth of July) was equally enjoyable. In the morning, we rode our bikes to the grocery store (avoided cars, saved gas!). Charcoal grilled for lunch and dinner. Collectively spent $120 on fireworks, and just had a great day.

So for not having planned the weekend it sure turned out nice.

Yesterday was an unbelievably fantastic day.

Yeah! Went to the Taste of Chicago, didn't plan the trip just kinda went. It all worked out perfectly. We left at 9:30a so Sebastian was able to nap in the car. We got to the windy city around noon. Although the parking was expensive ($17), the festival had free admission! We enjoyed a selection of foods from local eateries. We had Dolmeh (stuffed grape leaves), a chicken taco, two bratwursts with the works, fried dough (elephant ears), chocolate covered frozen bananas, seasoned fries, and a Cheesecake Smoosh ( chocolate chip cheesecake with oreo topping a scoop, of vanilla ice cream AND chocolate syrup to boot!) Food coma was imminent.

Along with the smorgasboard of food stuffs, there was live entertainment everywhere. There were amazing Caribbean acrobats. The would stack themselves in different configurations and jump over one another. They also had an interesting sense of humor. Jokes were made about Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, and San Francisco. Here's one joke I can reproduce told by a guy who calls him self "Sugar Daddy":

Sugar Daddy: Little girl how old are you?

Little girl: six

Sugar Daddy: When I was your age, I was six.

Heh. You probably had to be there, but regardless thats pretty funny. There was a Fisher Price playpen, which Sebastian (and I) duly enjoyed. After playing with an assortment of child safe toys, we mosied to the Power Wheels section. There we found a "Grave Digger" monster truck Power Wheels. I let Sebastian sit in it until some staff told us that it was dangerous to have him in there seeing as how it wasn't completely assembled. After we left the Power Wheels section we found some fully assembled toys. There were mini power wheels with a handle that a parent can hold. The parent can steer with the handle and activate the motor with the push of a button. Pretty neat concept but doesn't seem terribly practical. The highlight of course was the free concert by Los Lonely Boys, Santana, and El Salvador Band. We could only stay thru Los Lonely Boys set, but as we were making our way back we heard Santane performing Maria.

It was truly a great fun-filled day. Can't wait for Sebastian to get older so that he can enjoy more of the fun that is in store!

Well this was supposed to be my weekend project. But I suppose it can still be.

I decided today to pick up a copy of FIPS 180-2, or Secure Hash Standard. I figured it would be an interesting exercise to implement a crypto algorithm from a standard. It turns out this document is REALLY well written. The author(s) go into great detail of implementation. Fortunately (?) they stayed away from talking about the theory of why SHA is a good choice.

I haven't implemented all the breeds of SHA-2, or really cleaned up the code. I chose SHA256 because I'll be able to get the most benefit from it. Using AES in Cire, I was left with choosing MD5 for the key generation. Worse still this left me with having to use AES 128 bit. Of course the diaries are ridiculously protected with this. Ever "vigilant" I wanted stronger keys. I thought maybe transform the users password and MD5 again, but this could be more trouble than its worth. So I figured SHA256 would be best. Perhaps OpenSSL includes an implementati... NOPE. (unless its undocumented). Regardless I picked up FIPS 180-2 and began pounding out the code at around 8:30p. So now here I am at 11ish and for the string:

abc

I generate:

00: BA 78 16 BF 8F 01 CF EA 41 41 40 DE 5D AE 22 23
10: B0 03 61 A3 96 17 7A 9C B4 10 FF 61 F2 00 15 AD

and for the string:

abcdbcdecdefdefgefghfghighijhijkijkljklmklmnlmnomnopnopq

I generate:

00: 24 8D 6A 61 D2 06 38 B8 E5 C0 26 93 0C 3E 60 39
10: A3 3C E4 59 64 FF 21 67 F6 EC ED D4 19 DB 06 C1

So now I can use AES 256 yay!!! ridiculously strong diaries!

Next steps are code cleanup and modularizing the "api". Then I can integrate with Cire.

G' night!

It is finished.

Well sort of. All the "funcfionality" we desired to put in there made it, but I think there's still some fixups that could be done. Not that it really matters, we've reached the end of Phase II. I don't know if we've planned on a maintenance phase but if we have we probably have a lot of work to do. Hehehehh.. ugghh.

PHASE III (profit?)
Now we really get to fixup the whole architecture. I've learned quite a bit about system programming in the past year and now it's time for us to really get the project to shine. Exciting! Furthermore we'll start creating tools that actually do analysis.

Not a big fourth of July planned. Kind of sad. Not to worry the three day weekend will certainly be soaked up with around the house stuffs.

Sebastian is taking first steps. Not really big steps or continuous but he's close to walking.

So,

I caved. I went to Lowes with the parts in question, hoping to find a new compression nut of some sort. Alas it appears as though the connection is 5/16 " instead of the typical 1/4 " used in common plumbing. Therefore, until I can find someway of fixing the handy dandy espresso machine, we purchased a $30 replacement. It's not too shabby. OH, and we finally found a stainless steel milk frothing pitcher. Those little guys are really hard to find. We went to Wal-Mart, Coffee Shops, Target, and a couple other stores in hopes of finding the elusive pitcher. Bed Bath & Beyond has them if you need one. In the meantime, a Pyrex 2 cup measuring cup works nicely.

BUT!!! even though I've given up on it for now, I'll still look for some way of fixing it. Anyone know of espresso machine parts dealers?

Today is the first annual neighborhood pot luck. We've lived here for 3+ months and still don't know anyone, other than the Kovacs and Mehlbergs. So this neighborhood pot luck is designed to fix this. Unfortunately its 94 degrees (F)...

I've got to get back to developing Cire, I helped design the ncurses interface for it. It's about time I put some of my new security knowledge into practice and add in support for encrypted diary entries.

"Nemesis is like a dog that's not housebroken" -- jabbey
"It leaks all over the place?" -- jvaught
"Oh yeah" -- jabbey

So as the development project has been coming to a close, I've been interested in the amount of memory that is leaked. I've written quite a few programs but never one where I actually cared about this. In all my other programs, the process would start, do its analysis, and then sign off leaving the OS with this task.

So a quick glance at the memory usage told me that tools on average were leaking about 20MB of memory.. Yeah.. and since this program runs as a server, it's expected to be running a long time. If it were 4k leaked per tool run I might not care but 20MB is a bit too much. So I've been spending my time looking for the mallocs, news, and such, and matching them up with a respective free, delete, or what have you.

Got to demo the project yesterday. That was fun. Since I've become this seemingly autonoumous conduit of development, right I've been working hard, I had a great deal of confidence in the little package. I was not disappointed, and furthermore, I believe others were impressed.

After much debate with Jim Vaught and Mike Mehlberg, I've determined that the problem is what we've suspected.

As you can see, the tubing is crimped into place. The fitting set in the upper half of the picture is the fitting that was attached to the pressure chamber. If you click the image you can see how the crimp should appear. Now I'm at an impasse:

I know what's wrong, I know what needs to be done to fix it, but I'm not sure how to fix it...

I want to get the tube back in its fitting, but I can't force it in the fitting, I can expand the fitting but I'm afraid that I'll damage it further. Alas, I'm considering finding an alternative solution. Basically I'll need to find a pressurized fitting that can attach to both sides, and still be able to cope with intense heat and pressure. Tomorrow I'll have more answers.

Work today was as productive as I expected. Looks like our alpha release might actually meet expectations. Shhhh don't tell anyone. However as the project winds down, I feel that I've learned a great deal and am eager to apply this knowledge to the next phase of development.

Sebastian was particularly fussy today. Once you'd play with him he would calm down, but if he had to sit still he'd be rather unpleasant. This does not bode well. It seems the little man has already begun his trek to independence. Though, of course, he is entirely dependent on us, his defiance to authority is steadily increasing. It's really interesting though, watching his reactions to "NO" develop. At first he'd quickly pout, but already he's started looking back at us like, "Do something". Alas we'll have start discipline soon. He exhibits the ability to understand basic communication, and as such he'll understand basic discipline.

What a lovely weekend.

Saturday was a wonderful day of Cinnamon Struesel Muffins, Moe's Burritos, and last but not least Taste of Tippecanoe!. Yes Saturday was indeed a day of gluttony.

Sunday, Father's Day, was kicked off with some tasty waffles (do I have an eating problem?), followed by church, errands, and such. Got a couple cute daddy son books, and ironically a book on gourmet coffees. The cards were all very nice filled with loving messages. That afternoon, however, my wife unleashed a ruthless thrashing of top notch UNO playing upon my mom and I. Kristen won 6 rounds in row. Then came Phase 10, where I thought she had my mom and I again, but in the last hand I managed to meld phase 10 along with Kristen and we pretty much tied.

:: She claims I won ::

Monday has been pretty low key. Got on another hyper productive kick. I was streaming code out of my hands. It was great! Got loads developed today. Hope this streak continues deep into tomorrow. Also the last hour of the day was spent solving a crypto problem. Well more like a problem on establishing trust with simplicity but robustness. Sebastian was a cute monkey this afternoon. Got to chase him about the house.

And so it begins...

I thought that repairing the Espresso Machine would be a simple task .

Thus far it has proven to be less than that.













Last night was good though. Watched Harry Potter 3 , well parts of it. Had the Mehlbergs and Cochrans over. We all got tired around 9:30p. So we made it halfway through the movie..

Getting back to work on the development project here at work. Supposed to code freeze tomorrow.. I hope so, but I'm not quite sure if its possible? We'll see.

Back to work...

Our development project at work is coming along nicely. Finally got the data back that I needed. Still waiting on supplies from our customer for our other project.

Been bit torrenting the goo out of Fedora Core 4. I'll probably get around to installing it soon.

Everything's fine at home, except I need to mow, and the espresso machine is on the fritz.

Turns out frogs will try to escape even if water is slowly heated, and the only difference between a bean and a pea is the shape. (peas are spheroid)

Work finished faster than I thought.

Tonight we finished with BLTs for dinner, a watered lawn and 100 minutes of Mostly Classical.

Sebastian has become quite the little mimick. There's three cues that I can give him and he'll mimick them right back, pretty impressive for a 10 month old.

Looks like everyone has turned in. About that time. G'night!

BLAST!

Still working...

Church was good today, the sermon was all about compassion. It's tricky keeping Sebastian occupied and listening to the service. He was a good boy otherwise, very cheerful and overall happy.

Hmmm

Apparently as soon as Kristen leaves anywhere, Sebastian and I kick it into bachelor mode. Today is mad cleanup of the house. whooops. After that Terry (and crew?) are coming over to break bread. Also we'll get to clean his cool air intake.

Then after all that madness, my mom and Kristen will be back in the good old state of Indiana. Well, back to folding clothes.

So, ever since my ISP started being mean about enforcing their Acceptable Use Policy (rightly so [sort of]) I've been looking for alternative solutions to hosting my website(s).

It all started when I got an email from my ISP saying we've detected you have servers open. They went so far as to tell me what ports and when they scanned them. So I captured their IP in my logs. Then it was a minute with firewall configuration and suddenly, they would never see me again. I logged any attempts from them to see if they would "check up" on me. Alas this never happened.

Then I get a mailing. The ISP is going under "major infrastructure" work. This meant that they are no longer separating their networks into subnets. So I could wait for them to scan me again, block them; block all network traffic on those ports from their network; or find an alternative. Ultimately the alternative was found.

My good friend Terry has graciously given me a place to host the site on his box in Chicago. This is great. When I was hosting the site I couldn't really upload fast enough. I mean it was enough for my family, but I still thought it was too slow. Now that's all taken care of. Thank you Chicago Community Colocation Project.

Oh and I'm no longer breaking my AUP. Hurray.

(sort of)

Migration from old to new:

Jun 11 2005
Ah Saturday. Sebastian is taking another nap. He's been a pretty good boy today. He's really active making a mess for me to clean. Heh. The house is pretty much a wreck. I should really clean it up before Kristen gets home tomorrow... and do laundry.. and dishes... and mow? Bah. Watching Family guy right now. Funny show. Went on a walk with Sebastian a couple hours ago. He is really close to walking. He doesn't like being on his own tho. Obviously. But he sure likes to pull things off of shelves, out of cabinets, and such. Sounds like Kristen has been having a nice time in Charlotte.
Jun 10 2005
Wow. Work has exponentially increased. Everyone is going 4+ different directions. This is interesting. But we still seem to be maintaining. Currently waiting for a long job to complete. Wife headed down for NC today. She'll return on Sunday with my mom. It'll interesting having mom live with us for a couple weeks. Having a live-in babysitter will be great! I may update more today...
Jun 9 2005
Hello, this is the hidden page. I decided to start yet another blog/webdiary etc.
So just got back from San Francisco. Wow. What a trip! On Monday boss says hey you're going to SF, I'm like ok. We get on a 7a flight Tuesday which means we woke up a 2a. Then on Wednesday we hit a 11p flight. Yeah, anyway suffice to say I'm tired. We did learn alot of great things though and thats always a good thing. I met some pretty cool people. The food was fantastic. Its so much better when you aren't paying.
Thats about all for now.