Hurray! Sebastian is all better. The rash is gone and he's back to his ol' self. It's nice to be in a room with him and he not scream and cry for hours on end! One more parental milestone. Now we're prepared for the terrible twos.. I think. Yikes.

Child development is pretty amazing. This little helpless ball of humanity rapidly develops to perform activities I've grown to take for granted. For example he's getting really good at finger feeding. Pears are no match for him, nor is macaroni, pineapple, peaches, green beans, carrots, crackers, etc. His ability to pick-up new sounds is also getting better, which means I need to be careful what I say. He's able to mooo and almost say fishy, He's started to "dance". Well when he hears a song he likes he'll walk around in circles and bob his head. He'll pick up a toy phone and say hi. He's a pretty quick study.

Furthermore parental development is also pretty amazing. I went from a bachelor who couldn't match belt and shoes, to a married parent in a little over two years. In that time I've learned quite a bit, and also become rather emotionally attached. At first, I'll admit, I wasn't that taken by the little guy. But over time, his smile, giggle, and spastic walking has really grown on me. Especiallly the da-da. I know he's just throwing it out right now, but when I'm holding a banana-nut muffin and he's smacking his lips and then looks in my eyes and says dada, I've got to give him a bit, even though he'd already had an entire muffin, and a yogurt cup.

Along with the bachelor who couldn't match belt and shoes, I have a lot of life-learning to owe to my wife. It didn't take her too long, but suddenly I could see the light, brown shoe, brown belt. It's a tricky rule, really. She's taught me alot about how dustpans shoudln't be put on food preparation surfaces. I've learned what love is. Now I know that sounds sappy, but it's true. I never knew love like I do now. I mean sure my parent's loved me, just like I do Sebastian, but this is that other love. The love that many seek and (hopefully) many find. I've gotten some criticism concerning being married so young, but I prefer the life I've chosen. I'm so glad that when I go home I have my wife to greet me. Some might say, but what about the thrill of a relationship or finding someone new. Finding Kristen was one of the most thrilling times of my life. The amazing amount of attraction, physically and emotionally I felt towards her I knew I would never feel again. I won't lie and say everyday is thrilling, I won't lie and say that we are perfect for each other. Of course not, that is a farce. Perfection is an unobtainable goal, that is its nature. But I will say that there are days of great thrill, days of great love and happiness, and much like a roller coaster there a times where I get frightened and have to deal with the lows. That's life. So what's my point. To have what I have is a privelege. I see my friends searching for their significant other. I feel for them. I got lucky. I knew I liked Kristen when I first met her, but amazingly we fell in love and now we have Sebastian a great outward symbol of our love. It's amazing what can happen in two years.

In other news...

Thursday September 15 I'll say farewell to 4 of my molars. Yup wisdom teeth are getting the old heave ho. *sigh* Clearly I'm excited about the operation. I'd rather have my wis..dom uh teeth .... pulled. Er.

Sebastian was recently immunized for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Poor little guy is the 1in 6 to get a fever. He's fine, but just a little bit off. The plus side is that since he's pretty tired he's really cuddly.

Last night though he woke up around midnight and was not a happy camper. I'm still getting used to the ear thermometer. The first reading was 106 F. The next were 103.4 F and 104 F. Needless to say we called the doctor. They said that every thing was fine and that acetimenophin would be sufficient, but to call back if his fever gets worse.

This morning he was 99-101 F, and very receptive to the banana nut muffin. Hopefully the little trooper has broken his fever.

In other news, Racquetball was very nice today. I won a game and lost the next.

Racquetball is probably the best game known to man.

Well, Sebastian turned one, Kristen graduated with her Master's Degree, and we're celebrating our second anniversary today.

Oh and there were about 11-30 people in the house.

If you ever need a piece of hardware, be sure to ask for the cables as well.

Today at work we got a box, and power supply but no connecting cables. I suppose its... wireless.

Okay bad joke, but sometimes what you want is not all that you need.

If you are ever summoned for jury duty and they give you a number to call to see if you are needed.

Call the number.

You might find out that you don't have to go.

I did, but I didn't call the number. I went to the courthouse, the nice ladies in there asked me if I'd called the number. I told them I hadn't.

Call the number.

TOMORROW??!?!

Sheeesh. I thought when I had re-registered to vote that that would notify the court of my new address. As it is it didn't. The post mark was July 28th for and August 4th summons. I suppose I won't be playing racquetball tomorrow.

Wow, time to be a citizen.

The house is a mess. It's not quite that bad, but the area I've habitated in has gotten piled up pretty fast.

Anyway, my immediate family, inlaws, and my family will be here tomorrow.

Hopefully I won't need any help.

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...