So last week we took a “vacation” to see my family. I’ll post more about that (along with videos) later. Right now, there is treachery afoot!
We were about 72 miles into Ohio, almost to Columbus. Mel said she was going to try to take a nap, I thought “Great, I’ll listen to some music on my Cellphone / MP3 player”. I groped around my pocket where I normally keep it; surprisingly there was nothing there.
Check the other side; Still nothing.
This morning, I woke up at about 7:30am, a little later than usual. Did the usual morning routine. As I walked into the kitchen, though, I noticed that the sound of construction work seemed a little bit louder than it should be. Glancing over at the backdoor, I found that it was half-way open!
At first, I thought that it may have been Frank-the-ass-cat. Sometimes, if the door isn’t completely shut tight, and he wants out, he’ll paw at the underside of the door until he pulls it open. He’s quite innovative. But as I went to shut the door, I noticed the dead-bolt was extended. Jutting-out. As-in: “with the dead-bolt in the position it was in, the door cannot be opened or closed.”
This got my brain crunching a bit: “If the deadbolt was extended, the simplest explanation is that someone opened the door and then extended the deadbolt.” but I knew it wasn’t Melissa or myself. There were a number of other possibilities, all equally unlikely, including sleepwalking, gnomes, and our pets having telekinesis. What I settled on was “The door wasn’t completely closed and the deadbolt wasn’t completely extended, and Frank-the-ass-cat pulled the door open. When he did, the deadbolt slipped the rest of the way out.” I’m still not totally settled on that though. Before I left for work this morning, I went down into the basement and looked all around to check for signs of intruders (or intruders themselves)
Tonight, while laying in bed with my wife and infant son, I saw the back-porch light click on. This wasn’t TOTALLY unheard of — it’s motion activated, and a bit sensitive. But what would trigger it? The back door was closed and locked, and the back screen-door is spring-loaded to close by itself. The simple explanation is that something/someone was on the back porch (it’s completely barren except for some garden tools). What else could there be though? Did the wind blow through the screen-door and cause one of the curtains to move? Were there very large moths? I didn’t open the door and look, but I did listen. No reason to let whatever is out there into our house.
I suppose the paranoia is mostly rooted in the wave of recent crimes we’ve had that are uncharacteristic to this community. Within the past month we’ve had two bank robberies (a couple guys from Dayton robbed two local banks in the same week), our very close friend Joe Augustin was assaulted, robbed, and left nearly dead in plain sight downtown (the assailants are currently released on bond, trial in October), there’s someone being charged with attempted murder for shooting at a car that was passing by (he’s released on bond), a Kentucky man was found trying to lure an 8-year old boy into his van, and the police found human remains down in southwest Wayne county (middle-aged male, tattoo on one arm, unidentified otherwise).
What is going on around here? Is there some cosmological event that is make people more aggressive/desperate than usual? All of these things happening makes me a bit uncomfortable to be living in this town! It also makes me want to invest in ADT home security or something. It’s really unsettling to realize how vulnerable you are. We shouldn’t have to fear walking the streets at night, and we shouldn’t have to think about people toting guns around.
I’m open to suggestions about this — What can we do as a community?
Two things. One with me, one not with me.
I just found out today from a local insurance company that my Indiana driving-license was suspended back in April. I have apparently been driving on a suspended license for about 4 months now! The reason why? The minor scrape of an accident I was in back in February (the other driver thought it would be a good idea to paint a racing stripe on the passenger side of my car using his front fender), for which I PROVIDED my insurance number, apparently needed a “certificate of compliance” form filled out. They allegedly sent it to me, but I just realized today that the address on my license is old — it’s an old PO Box that I no longer use. So that’s partly my fault, I suppose. Regardless, I think it’s silly that I need to send them this information — I have the card saying I was covered then. I’ve been covered since 2001! If I have to pay a substantial fee (anything over $50) I’m going to be FUMING about this.
Second. A few weeks ago, Rich Jackson (a friend of Melissa and I) was fired from his position as managing editor of the Palladium-Item. There is a great interview about it in “Editor and Publisher” magazine. His termination wasn’t quite “atrocity”-level of an injustice (yet…Rambo still hasn’t gotten back to me. He must be too busy filming his next movie), but it’s definitely well above “unfair / unjust.” The conditions of his termination (for which he received no severance pay) were cited on the count of the “poor quality of the paper,” as well as the existence of a personal MySpace account which contained some allegedly “sexual” content. Personally, I think they probably felt threatened by his headline: “I’m something of a hepcat.”
Citing “poor quality of the paper” is a pretty subjective claim. I could attest that I think the Publisher is a man of poor moral fiber, or I could say that Dr. Phil has a poorly covered head. They obviously didn’t quantify or corroborate their claims with the fact that the paper has won numerous awards for quality (over 25) during Rich’s tenure. I think what they really mean is: “The paper did a poor job of spin-doctoring local influential individuals in a way that was desirable to them.” And I’m not just talking about his coverage of the EDC either. He’s a really smart guy, and he was very open-minded to new ways for keeping existing readers and acquiring new readers.
This just in!
Yet another thing to make my hair fall out (and then *my* head will be poorly covered). We just got a report from one of the main internet trunks (a “fat pipe”) in the area that apparently one of the city’s servers were being used to attempt to compromise access on some server down in Brazil. I started scouring the logs and found that this whole week a number of our servers have been getting HAMMERED from a series of different addresses. One user had actually succeeded in hacking user-level access (the lowest level of access) on one of our servers; That IP address was immediately blacklisted by County after I made a phone call, the password changed, and the user booted. I have a feeling that was what was causing the Brazillian traffic.
I ran some lookups on DNSStuff and found the origin of most of the attempts to be Chinese addresses. Apparently Chinese kids have nothing better to do than try to compromise US servers and farm fake money in Multiplayer Online RPG’s like World of Warcraft. One of the addresses was in South Carolina — I contacted the abuse address and sent them log excerpts. This stuff pisses me off. I’ve started a crusade to have more secure passwords for *all* users, no matter what their position. This incident has given us solid proof that our system is only as strong as its weakest password.
What a day! I hope this is the extent of the excitement.
I’m still fuming-on-the-inside about this.
About two weeks ago, Melissa, Satya and myself all went out to dinner — we were SUPPOSED to go to Amar India down in South Dayton, but due to a freak power outage, we ended up eating in North Dayton, at Don Pablo’s. The food was ok, it was about what I had expected. The service was so-so. She forgot a lot of refills, didn’t expo our check correctly (Melissa’s was missing beans, and mine was missing them as well), and blamed it on the kitchen. Anyways — it wasn’t a remarkably out of the ordinary dining experience. When I got the check, I left her about 12 or 13%, which totaled it at 32 bucks; Honestly, that’s the level of service she gave us. I served tables for 5 years — I’m very well aware of how that side of tracks works — but I’m not going to tip someone the full 20% I usually do unless they earn it. I expect myself and the people at the table to be taken care of. I won’t tip someone less than 10% unless they go out of their way to offend me, though.
Anyways… So I check my bank statement two days later when I’m doing my bank reconciliation, and I notice that it cleared for $37! I immediately consulted with the receipt, which I saved, and found out that this little bitch was trying to bilk me out of $5! Read the rest of this entry »
May 21
Wow. When I used to joke about the president being a playground bully, I had no idea how dead-on I was. Check this out. What can we do about this?
WASHINGTON — President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ”whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Read the rest of this entry »
Cracking the GRE, 2010 Edition (Graduate School Test Preparation) by Princeton Review
The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey Into The Land Of The Chemical Elements (Science Masters Series) by P. W. Atkins