Flack

Back in first, second, and maybe third grade, I played soccer on a local soccer team. While out team consisted of a vagabond group of kids (I imagine us as soccer's version of the Bad News Bears), we had one outstanding player: Brian Olea. Brian Olea hit puberty sometime around the age of seven. In our team soccer photo, he could easily be mistaken for a coaching assistant. Brian was the only kid in sixth grade with a moustache. During soccer practice, I can remember Brian hanging from the top of the soccer goal, doing pull-ups for fun. He was a giant of a kid. He was also our goalie. Brian was pretty much the equivalent of a 20-year-old athelete -- totally unfair to everyone else, but we loved it. I can't remember anyone ever scoring a goal against Brian. Maybe they were afraid of being eaten by our giant, who knows. And so, guess what? At home, out in my garage in a worn cardboard box full of old memories sits a first place soccer trophy. It's small; just a tiny faux-marble slab with a faux-golden soccer ball attached to the top of it. On the front is a generic plaque that reads something like, "Yukon Soccer, First Place, Pee-Wee Division." And Susan thinks it's hers. Susan is the same age as me, grew up in the same town as me, and played soccer in the same league. And, she swears up and down that the trophy is hers -- which is ridiculous. How could she forget our ten-foot-tall goalie? Brian was so huge, when he got bored at practice he would make the coaches run laps! One time during recess, Brian kicked a soccer ball that hit me so hard that it knocked the wind out of me and I thought I was going to die. As I was laying flat on my back and trying to gather enough air to cry, Brian grabbed my belt with one hand, lifted me up and said, "you're going to be okay." I can still remember the image of Brian standing above me, blocking the sun, looking like a Greek hero standing before me on the playground. If Susan says that trophy is hers one more time I'm going to have Brian Olea kick her ass.

The Cult of the Dead Cow has officially released GoolagScan -- but what exactly does it do? Google is a very powerful search engine. Google indexes billions of websites, and lots and lots of little bits of information about each of those websites -- lots of information, in fact, that website owners may not even realize is being archived. Through crafty and sometimes complex Google searches, that information can be retrieved. Everybody who's used Google for any length of time has learned its nuances and advanced search options. For example, by using quotation marks you can group words together (+"Michael Jackson") and by using plus and minus symbols, you can include or exclude words in your results (+mp3 -avi). The real power comes in linking these things together: (+"Michael Jackson" +thriller +mp3 -avi). Unfortunately due to the thousands of sites that sell mp3s, this isn't a very effective search. You're pretty unlikely to find Michael Jackson's Thriller this way without a lot of manual searching. That's where advanced searches come in to play. Google for <b>“parent directory” +mp3 +thriller -html -htm -download -links</b> and all of a sudden you'll find indexes of open shares that contain both the words "mp3" and "thriller". This method's not foolproof either. If you run that query on Google you'll notice that the first two hits are fake webpages set up to look like indexes of files. Boo, hiss. The third hit, however, is a real index of an mp3 share hosted on a webserver. And, if you're needing your daily zombie/Vincent Price/Michael Jackson fix, here's Thriller. Obviously, sitting around and Googling for mp3s is kind of silly in today's world of P2P, FTP and Usenet. But what else could we use Google for? I'm glad you asked! What if we want to search for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that contain the word "salary" or Word documents that contain the words "dmz" and "password"? Woo hoo, now we're having fun, right? Johnny, of johnny.ihackstuff.com took Google Hacking to new heights by compiling an online database of Google Hacks. Want to know how to search for files, or passwords, or login portals, or vulnerabilites? Johnny has a collection of these search tidbits, called "dorks", that can be viewed. Once the idea of storing/shaing dorks grabbed a foothold, the Google Hacking scene took off. Everybody was doing it; even I wrote my own app, Scroogle, which was a small GUI that allowed users to use built-in dorks or add their own (stored in text files). The software is actually quite functional, although it was never officially released. So anyway, full circle -- what is Goolag? Goolag is a web auditing tool that takes Johnny iHackStuff's Google Hacking to new heights by automating Google searches and providing a collection of security-related "dorks". Want to scan your domain for vulnerabilities, files containing usernames and/or sensitive directories? Now you can! Want to scan someone else's domain for those same things? That's naughty and you shouldn't think of things like that.

If I take the back way home from work, there's one intersection that scares me to death. It's a two way stop where the crossroad is a four-lane highway. Cars speed by at 60mph as people behind you honk impatiently for you to zip across. It's a wonder no one's been killed at that intersection yet. Yesterday, I almost was. To make a long story short, a small, gray Honda was hidden behind a large red truck. I saw the truck coming and gunned it, only to notice the gray car hidden behind it seconds later. I hit my brakes and swerved to the left to avoid hitting him; the drive of the other car locked his brakes up, sliding sideways and hitting the curb. I'm not sure how close we came to colliding, but it was pretty dang close. I stopped to see if the driver was okay, but he motioned for me to drive on so I did. Then I noticed he was following me. In retrospect, I think he was just motioning for me to get off the busy road before we stopped. The guy wanted to exchange information and, still in a daze, I gave him my name, home phone number and address instead of my insurance information. I hope he calls; I'd gladly give him my insurance info, I just wasn't thinking straight at the time. His car seemed to be okay, sans a few scratches on his wheel. Does anyone know if insurance pays for an accident where the cars don't even touch?

One feature of my new LCD television I hadn't given much thought to was the VGA input. Downstairs I already run a PVR system, so when I saw the VGA port on my new television I decided I would build another computer and hook it up upstairs, so I could watch divx and other downloaded video files easily. But then it hit me -- can't new consoles such as the PS3 and Xbox 360 stream media? I've heard about people using the original Xbox for multimedia streaming, but had never personally tried it. This weekend I decided to give it a go. Streaming media to the PS3 involves the installation of UPnP (Universal Plug-n-Play) software on your PC. This software acts as a server, to which your PS3 will connect. Your media (music, pictures and video) remain on your PC and are streamed over a network connection (wired or wireless) to your PS3, where they are displayed on your television. There are many uPNP programs to choose from, but the first four I found were Nero's MediaHome, TwonkyVision's TwonkyMedia, TVersity, and Free UPnP Entertainment Service. TVersity and Free UPnP Entertainment Service are free; Nero's MediaHome is not, but I already own it (comes with Nero Ultra 7 and . TwonkyMedia is also not free, but a free trial is available. First up -- Nero's MediaHome, a really slick product. Nero's MediaHome was the easiest uPnP server I attemped to set up. The computer did everything. Unfortunately, it didn't do anything quickly; Nero Ultra 8 took over 30 minutes to install on my 2ghz/1gig of RAM Windows 2003 Server. While I realize this machine is not the powerhouse it once was, the only installation I can remember taking longer than this one was Windows itself. Behind the scenes is Nero Scout, a program that scans your hard drive for media files to include in its database. Actually, "scan" is probably an understatement; "seriously thrashes" is much more accurate. From the moment Nero Scout launched, my CPU maxed at 99% and stayed there until I stopped the service. A Google search of "Nero Scout" turned up complaints from multiple users. Unfortunately, MediaHome won't run without Scout, and when Scout's running, my computer is so maxed out that it can't stream video. That makes it unusable to me. Nero certainly got the installation and configuration down smooth, but it must require a beefier box than I own. Next up -- TVersity. TVersity was almost as simple to set up as Nero's MediaHome, which makes sense as its performance was almost the same as well. The PS3 found the TVersity service running on my server almost immediately, and while viewing photos and listening to MP3s worked well, videos were completely unwatchable. Even low quality videos would only play for a few seconds before they began to spit and sputter. Concerned that my wireless network was not fast enough, I directly connected my PS3 to my 100 megabit switch with no improvement in performance. I skimmed the TVersity forums for help, but instead found other PS3 users with similar complaints. Strike two. The third uPnP server I tried was Free UPnP Entertainment Service, or FUPPES for short. FUPPES appears to have been written for Unix/Linux and ported to Windows, and it shows. Documentation was sparse and disjointed; I spent a lot of time on Google just to get the program up and running; more modifications were needed to make the streaming PS3-friendly. FUPPES' configuration program allows you to change about four settings in the program's cfg file -- everything else must be done by hand. The PC interface is decidedly unpolished and requires technical knowledge (or patience and Google) to configure. And you know what? FUPPES worked FLAWLESSLY. Videos began streaming perfectly from my PC through my PS3 to my HDTV. And not only did those videos stream flawlessly -- I was able to stream videos from a machine connected via wireless to my server; I was streaming videos from PC (wireless) to my server, to my PS3 (wireless) to my TV with no stutter. A winner is you, FUPPES. The program was a bear to configure, but was definitely worth the effort in the end. My CPU hovers at around 15% while streaming DIVX movies, a completely acceptable overhead.

With the swipe of a credit card, I have officially joined the high definition era. Wednesday, UPS delivered my mail-order 46" 1080p LCD flat screen television. And by "delivered," I mean "left me a note for me on my front door telling me to come pick it up." Oh sure, they'll attempt to deliver it two more times -- during the middle of the day, when obviously I'm at work. Someone should invent a shipping company that delivers packages between 6pm and 10pm. I'll probably detail my experience with UPS in another post but for now, the focus is my new television. Woo hoo! At UPS, Susan and I managed to load the bulky (but not particularly heavy, considering its size) box into the back of the truck by ourselves. A couple of tie-down straps later we were barreling down the interstate, racing to get home. While driving, I imagined what might happen if I were pulled over for speeding. "Mr. O'Hara, why were you driving so fast?" "Dude, did you see the television in the back of this truck? I'm trying to get home so I can hook it up and see how it looks!" "Oh wow, would you like an escort? Let me call the guys so they can meet us there!" I have a great imagination. On the way home, the four of us (me, Susan and the kids) stopped at Taco Bueno for some dinner. And yes, I backed my truck up to the sidewalk and positioned myself inside the restaurant so I could look out the window and keep an eye on everything. After we got home and got the childrens settled, Susan helped me carry the television into the house. She was nervous about dropping it and so was I (nervous about her dropping it). Fortunately, the short migration was uneventful. I decided to unbox the television in the kitchen -- I figured if the screen was scratched or broken, I might as well find out downstairs instead of lugging it upstars, discovering it, and carrying it back down again. After unboxing the television on the kitchen counter, I hooked up a spare DVD player to it to test everything out. It looks great! By now the kids were getting pretty curious, and as I worked they drug dining room chairs into the kitchen to watch what I was doing, forming possibly the world's first kitchen home theater. At least we weren't too far from the popcorn.

Shampoo! At least, when you're trying to get gum out of a kid's hair. Mason fell asleep with gum in his mouth and woke up with it in his hair. He's lucky; when I was around the same age as Mason it happened to me, only the gum ended up sticking my head to a pillow. Susan and I don't know everything, but we do have Google. A few minutes later I was rubbing peanut butter through the boy's head, breaking up the gum. It worked, but would have worked better if I'd had a comb to brush everything out. After rubbing the spot for about five minutes, the gum began dissolving. Shampoo, repeat with the peanut butter, and shampoo again.

No matter how much space you have, you'll always be out of space. I have a 14x40 building for my arcade games, and guess what? It's so packed right now that you can barely walk through the place.

Most days when I show up at Mason's school to pick him up, I see the school's custodian standing out in the middle of the road, directing traffic. His job, as far as I can tell, is to tell people not to turn into the school's driveway when it's full. Of course, when the driveway is full, there's no where to turn anyway. In fast food terms, it would be the same as standing by the drink fountain and warning people to stop filling their cup when it's full. The funniest part of the whole situation is, the guy is only out there approximately every other day. On the days he's not there, everything goes just fine. Drivers, showing a fundamental comprehension of physics, understand that they cannot move forward until the car in front of them has moved forward. Somehow we manage the no-so-complicated "single file line" system without his direction or intervention. How depressing it must be to be able to be replaced by "nobody" on a regular basis and have things still run just fine. (Susan's comment: "I think the worst job is standing on the corner, holding a pizza sign. Those people can be replaced by a pole.")

Just when I got the family weaned off of videotapes, "Pivo", our living room-based media center PC, up and died on us. I can't say that I didn't get my money's worth out of the box I was using -- I bought it over a year ago off Craigslist for $100 -- but during a recent winter storm our lights flickered, the machine went off, and that was the end of that. The power supply fan spun, but that was the only sign of life. I pulled every card and swapped out all the RAM, to no avail. This happened a little over two weeks ago. You don't realize how much you've grown to rely on something until it abruptly disappears. Pivo's a great babysitter -- I have instant access to any number of videos -- and I've personally come to depend on it for catching my regular television programs. It's tough to get through American Idol when the kids are awake; after they go to bed however, we can watch an episode twice as fast by skipping commercials (and the dead time between performances). Suddenly, all of that was gone. The kids cried, "we want Barney! We want Teletubbies! We want Curious George!" Instead, they've been scraping by, suffering with old videotapes of Scooby Doo and other cartoon characters well past their prime. Even worse -- Susan and I have been forced to watch television in real time -- with COMMERCIALS! Pivo #2 -- a Dell Inspiron 3000 -- was purchased over the weekend. Surprisingly, very little work needed to be done to get it up and going. I swapped the old RAM and the old hard drives into the machine, rebooted a couple of times, and things were back up and running. Now I'll have to wean everybody back off videotapes again (and throw them away this time). So, RIP Pivo. Hello, Pivo #2.

This week at work I've been meeting with the external user provisioning team here in Oklahoma City. Emily, Johnny and I (all locals) make up 3/8 of the group; the other five members hail from Washington DC, Seattle, Austin, and Atlanta (the location of our last meeting). During the week I found out that both of the guys from Atlanta (Earl and Curlen) are in to videogames, so I decided that Thursday night after dinner I'd invite the team over for some videogames and beer (two things that always go well together). I'm not exactly sure how Susan got the house cleaned while we were all out to dinner, but she did. All the piles of junk and clutter normally scattered around our home magically disappeared while I was gone. Someday, I hope to locate all those things again. After dinner, when my co-workers and I finally made it back to my house, I was as surprised as they were at how clean the house was. Someone commented on what a nice touch it was to have a candle on the table that sits on our front porch. The funny thing is, I've never seen that candle before and I'm pretty sure it just appeared that day. Some of the people showed up to play games, some showed up because it sounded like fun, and some showed up because they didn't have anything else to do while out of town on a Thursday night, but everyone who came had a decent time. Wednesday night I moved all three of my newer gaming consoles (Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360) upstairs, where they were connected to the projector. Emily and several others enjoyed rocking out on Guitar Hero III on the Wii. Curlen, the master of all driving games, ended up unlocking several cars on the Gran Turismo HS demo (PS3). Curlen also took on Mason at a couple of Wii Sports games, including bowling (winner: Curlen) and Tennis (winner: Mason). After showing off a few other games, Earl and I ended up playing a full game of Madden 2008 on the Wii. Neither of us had played this particular version before and Earl had never even played a Wii before, so to his credit he was definitely at a disadvantage. Despite Earl returning two separate punts for touchdowns, I was able to squeak out a 3-point victory. In honor of my victory, I wore a football jersey to work on Friday just to rub it in. My home is personal to me. I don't open it up anymore to people like I used to do. It really meant a lot to me that these people would come over to my house and hang out for the evening. I have a bad habit in my blog of simply referring to these people as "co-workers," when what I really mean is "friends I happen to work with."

Funspot (at least the one I went to) was in New Hampshire, not California. It might be closer than you think!

You know that's funny, I swore I had a pic of the DK machine but I guess not. Something was wrong with it and half the sprites (including Mario, the barrels, and Donkey Kong himself) were not displaying. Jason Scott actually managed to score 100 on the machine by jumping a barrel -- pretty impressive considering everything that moved wasn't visible. I think that Cloak and Dagger machine was the first one I've ever seen in person which was kind of a special moment (as that's where my alias came from -- Jack Flack).

Saturday I finished off my Boston trip by joining Jason Scott on a trip to Funspot in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. Weirs Beach is a cute little lakeside community with lots of cottages, restaurants, and attractions to see ... during the summer. In the winter, most of those things are boarded up or chained closed. Fortunately for Jason and I Funspot is open year-round, which made for a much more interesting visit. Funspot claims to be "The Largest Arcade in the World." I don't know what specific metric they're using -- square footage or number of machines -- but both were pretty impressive. Funspot actually consists of three levels, although the stuff I went for (the Classic Games) were all located on level three. Level one contained dozens of redemption (ticket) games, air hockey tables, racing games and a snack bar. Level two contained a full-size bowling alley, lots of kiddie rides, a tavern, and some pinball games. One end of level three contained a golf center complete with a driving range and a mini-golf course, but it was the other half of that level that we were most interested in. I was told that the cutoff date for the classic room was 1988, and that seemed about right. (Games that I'd consider to be "newer" classics such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989), The Simpsons (1990) and Mortal Kombat (1992) were located on the second floor.) Using some rough calculations I estimated Funspot has over 200 classic machines, the vast majority of which were restored to look and play like new. It's hard to think many genuine classics that they didn't have. They had everything from the well-known classics (Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Space Invaders and so on) to lots of more obscure gems (Lode Runner, Crazy Climber, Venture). Many of the games were grouped by manufacturer; there was an Atari section, a Sega section, a Taito section, and so on. Dragon's Lair sat next to Space Ace, Cheyenne stood next to Crossbow, Zaxxon sat next to Super Zaxxon, and so on. I had an awesome time playing (or in some cases, just seeing) some of the games I grew up playing. The only disappointment of the day was the fact that Donkey Kong was broken. For those who don't know, the classic Donkey Kong showdown from The King of Kong took place at this very arcade. The fact that Donkey Kong was broken was ironic, but not particularly upsetting as there were so many games there that I enjoyed playing and seeing again. More photos from my visit are located HERE.

Saturday I finished off my Boston trip by joining Jason Scott on a trip to Funspot in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. Weirs Beach is a cute little lakeside community with lots of cottages, restaurants, and attractions to see ... during the summer. In the winter, most of those things are boarded up or chained closed. Fortunately for Jason and I Funspot is open year-round, which made for a much more interesting visit. Funspot claims to be "The Largest Arcade in the World." I don't know what specific metric they're using -- square footage or number of machines -- but both were pretty impressive. Funspot actually consists of three levels, although the stuff I went for (the Classic Games) were all located on level three. Level one contained dozens of redemption (ticket) games, air hockey tables, racing games and a snack bar. Level two contained a full-size bowling alley, lots of kiddie rides, a tavern, and some pinball games. One end of level three contained a golf center complete with a driving range and a mini-golf course, but it was the other half of that level that we were most interested in. I was told that the cutoff date for the classic room was 1988, and that seemed about right. (Games that I'd consider to be "newer" classics such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989), The Simpsons (1990) and Mortal Kombat (1992) were located on the second floor.) Using some rough calculations I estimated Funspot has over 200 classic machines, the vast majority of which were restored to look and play like new. It's hard to think many genuine classics that they didn't have. They had everything from the well-known classics (Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Space Invaders and so on) to lots of more obscure gems (Lode Runner, Crazy Climber, Venture). Many of the games were grouped by manufacturer; there was an Atari section, a Sega section, a Taito section, and so on. Dragon's Lair sat next to Space Ace, Cheyenne stood next to Crossbow, Zaxxon sat next to Super Zaxxon, and so on. I had an awesome time playing (or in some cases, just seeing) some of the games I grew up playing. The only disappointment of the day was the fact that Donkey Kong was broken. For those who don't know, the classic Donkey Kong showdown from The King of Kong took place at this very arcade. The fact that Donkey Kong was broken was ironic, but not particularly upsetting as there were so many games there that I enjoyed playing and seeing again. More photos from my visit are located HERE.

In July of 2007 I released eCoderRing, a Visual Basic program that encrypts and decrypts messages using a somewhat convoluted implementation of "book cypher" encryption. According to my own local IIS logs, eCoderRing has been download several thousand times. Included in the eCoderRing documentation was a code challenge. I promised a free copy of my book to anyone who could break the code. I am now adding $100 to that prize. The first person who successfully decrypts the code from this message will receive a copy of my book Commodork, a copy of my yet-to-be-released book Invading Spaces, and $100. To win the prize, you must e-mail me the decrypted text along with the method in which you decoded the message. To those who plan on using eCoderRing to decrypt the text, I will tell you that the key is publicly available on the Internet. Neither the key nor the decrypted text appear anywhere on my website or personal computer, so hacking those things won't help you. All, some, or none of the program's options including start, shift, skip, and xor may or may not have been used in the encoding of the message. Using eCoderRing to decrypt the code is not a requirement; brute force or any other method of decryption is acceptable, as long as the method is documented and repeatable. The $100 comes directly from my own pocket and can be paid with PayPal, money order, or cash. Please spread the word. I would really like to see a lot of people give this a shot. Here again is the encrypted message. [begin Code] 1011 162 1817 2046 1829 1234 1495 2273 2517 3823 3383 4763 5063 4160 4375 5772 5849 5200 5454 6791 6847 6181 6250 7775 7962 7250 8067 7168 8789 8738 8955 10135 10233 9498 9665 10266 10461 11960 11350 11402 11417 11574 11635 11755 12859 12652 12762 12729 12714 13959 14022 14236 14210 15318 15261 14448 15284 14549 14526 14798 14805 15991 [End Code]

It's Friday night and I'm back at the hotel, having just finished a week's worth of Courion training. Courion is a suite of programs that perform "user provisioning" -- specifically, it allows user accounts to be created, granted rights, be unlocked, and so on. From co-workers who had previously attended the class we had heard both the product and the class were both pretty complex, and they were, but I think Johnny and I (who both have programming experience) had a slightly easier time as the Courion suite is, in reality, a combination of macros and scripting. I'm oversimplifying for the sake of conversation, but generally speaking the program thinks and flows like a series of programming scripts. If you've ever tried passing variables between ASP/PHP pages, built basic SQL queries, and tried keeping track of several dozen variables and workflows at the same time, you have an idea of the program's basic structure. And if you've never had the pleasure, just be glad there are geeks out there doing this sort of thing for you. The class ended with an actual exam that I was really fearing. Again, from co-workers, I had heard that the quiz was a combination of multiple choice, essay questions, and hands-on lab work. What those same co-workers neglected to mention was that the test was open book. Emily, who took the class a month or two ago, scored a 99% on the final exam and challenged us to beat her score. I wasn't too sure about a couple of my test answers but the lab work went well. When I got my final grade, I couldn't help but smile. 100%. I win.

Last night for dinner, Dave, Johnny and I went to Acapulco's, a local Mexican restaurant here in Framingham. As one would expect we entered the restaurant and were promptly seated. Moments later we noticed a mariachi band in the corner of the dining room. AND THEY BEGAN PLAYING LOUDLY. THEY PLAYED VERY LOUDLY. AND THEY MOVED FROM TABLE TO TABLE, PLAYING ONE ENTIRE SONG FOR EACH TABLE. AND IT KEPT GOING AND GOING AND WE COULD NOT HEAR OURSELVES THINK. While we were waiting for our food it looked like the band might go the other way and entertain other patrons, but no. They turned the corner, surrounded our table, AND THEN THEY BEGAN PLAYING AGAIN. RIGHT IN MY EAR. MY LEFT EAR HAD AN ACCORDIAN IN IT AND THE RIGHT HAD A TRUMPET. THEY WERE PLAYING SO LOUDLY THAT I FELT LIKE MEXICO WAS INSIDE MY HEAD. IT WAS LIKE HAVING A CHEAP MEXICAN IPOD TURNED UP TO 11 THAT YOU COULD NOT GET OFF YOUR HEAD. It was literally impossible for me to have been any closer to the band; in fact, had I BEEN a member of the band, I would have had to move slightly further away. When the band asked us what we wanted to hear, Johnny said, "something fast." Unfortunately the band leader mistook that as a request regarding tempo, and the four or five musicians played an up-beat song in my ear for what seemed like an eternity. The margaritas were good, the food was great, and eventually the ringing in my ears waned. About an hour into the meal we hear the band starting up from across the restaurant. We quickly paid our bill and made our way to the exit before being attacked again by blaring mariachi classics.

I've only flown once since 9/11/01, and boy have things changed since then. I arrived in Dallas curbside with three bags -- one to check (clothes) and two to carry on (laptop and CPAP machine). After paying $2 plus $1 tip to check my bag at the curb, I was informed it was over weight. Aren't we all? I was informed I could either pay a penalty ($50, I believe) or remove something from the suitcase to lighten it. I removed my heavy coat, which I had packed, and put it over the jacket I was already wearing.. Apparently, that little weight it was enough. I had just taken two Sudafed and one mg of Xanax, so instead of asking any questions or being sarcastic I gathered my senses, nodded, smiled, and moved on. The line for TSA's security searches begins inside the airport's front door. As I approached the X-ray machines I could feel the effects of the drugs taking fact. I tried to look as inconspicuous as a person can look while carrying two bags, wearing two coats, and sweating profusely. After showing my ID and boarding pass I began reading the instructions and following them to the best of my ability. Place your coat(s) in a tub. Check. Place your shoes in a tub. Check. Place your bags in a tub. Check. Remove your laptop and your CPAP from their bags which are in tubs and place them in other tubs. Check. The line of rollers only held six or seven tubs, and I was occupying them all. Now, walk through the metal detector. DING DING DING. Whoops, forgot to take off my belt and my wallet and put those in a tub. I pass the metal detector, but as I reach for my stuff I hear the following: "Sir, you've been randomly selected for additional screening. Please step this way." So then he tells me to hold my arms out to my side. "I'll make you a deal," I said. "I'll do that, and you hold my pants up." He said that was not an option, and so as I held my arms out my pants slid down to somewhere between my waist and my knees. Good thing I was wearing clean boxers! After the frisking was over, I didn't even bother pulling my pants up. I just waddled back to the rollers and began collecting my tubs. I put my CPAP in its bag and freed up one tub. I put my laptop back in its bag, and freed up another. Eventually I got my shoes, coats, and my belt back on. What a wonderful reintroduction to flying. A few minutes later, I found my gate -- A19. I found a chair, set down my bags, and took my second Xanax pill. Moments later, I began falling asleep. I tried playing Gameboy a bit but I found my hand/eye coordination was greatly diminished, and more importantly, I found I didn't really care about winning or losing. Sounds like the stuff was working. I didn't even get upset when they announced my flight had been delayed an hour due to a snow storm in Boston. Normally I would have been freaked out; instead, I just sat there, grinning. An hour later we boarded the plane, and things went just like they should have. We took off, I turned on my MP3 player, and I went to sleep. I was awaken twice by flight attendants asking me if I wanted water. No -- I wanted to sleep. I woke up, covered in drool, as we made our final descent. A few people mentioned that the landing was a little bumpy. I either didn't notice, or didn't care. I can't remember. Boston had a nice dusting of snow on everything this morning. Class has been good so far, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week.

Today, work is having a get together at Incredible Pizza. Even though Susan, myself, and the kids are all in varying stages of sickness, we're still planning to go. Expect pictures later. Tomorrow I drive to Dallas, then hop on a plane and fly to Boston. I'm driving to Dallas to avoid flying on a puddle jumper. The last time I flew was August, 2004. The last time I flew before that was 1997. I'm not looking forward to the flight, but I am looking forward to the Xanax. I'm also looking forward to the trip. I'll be in a training class all week, and visiting my friend Jason Scott during the evenings. Next Saturday, Jason and I are driving to Funspot, the "largest arcade in the country" according to their website. Then it's back to the airport for more fun and more Xanax, arriving in Dallas late Saturday night and crashing with Justin before heading back home Sunday morning. According to my server's logs, eCoder Ring has now been downloaded over 2,000 times. That's a lot of people out there playing with my silly little electronic toy. And, to the person who sent me an encoded message without a key ... the program does not have a back door or a universal unlock code. Not even I cannot decode your message. In fact, to date no one has cracked my test message that I included in the program's read me. Maybe next week I will repost the code along with a financial bounty. I am considering starting a podcast. The podcast will probably be similar to my tech blog in subject -- I suspect I'll be talking about retro computers, videogames, and other technological topics. I haven't decided on a release schedule yet -- weekly makes sense, but sounds like a lot of work. Bi-weekly sounds better, but I wonder if people would remain interested? I'm still working out the logistics, but I think it's going to happen. I am taking a mic with me to Boston, in case I become inspired.

In the movies, crafty computer wizards always have a self-destruct button somewhere on their computer's desktop. Just click a button and POW, all their private data is erased, permanently and instantly removed from existance. Back in the day, I had one too -- a secret batch file named KILLME.BAT that, if ran, would have performed a quick format of all my computer's hard drives. I had a copy of this batch file on my old BBS computer, ready to run at a moment's notice. Should "the man" have shown up knocking on (or kicking in) my front door, the plan was to kick off the batch file, erasing both files off my hard drive and years off my sentence. In retrospect, my attempts at deleting electronic evidence would have been pretty pointless; even the most amateur forensic data tech can recover files from a quick format. The only way to really hide information through formatting is by writing over the drive multiple times with 1s and 0s, a process that takes hours to complete. Somehow, I doubt anyone willing to kick in my front door would have waited for such a task to complete. Before the days of hard drives, data was stored on floppy disks. Obviously with data strewn across hundreds of floppies, mass deletion of data was more difficult. Enter the degausser. A degausser is an electromagnet -- a device that's magnetic only when powered by electricity. Electromagnets can be safely stored nearby electronic media, as long as they're not turned on. Magnetic media includes cassette tapes, video tapes, floppy disks and computer hard drives. Each of these devices stores its information using magnetised media; put any of them near a big enough magnet, and the data is erased. Throughout the 80s and 90s I met more than one paranoid soul with a degausser sitting dangerously close to their collection of floppy disks. I don't think any of these people were in any real danger of being raided, but had it happened, they would have been prepared -- a flick of a switch, and bye bye data. And unlike that old batch file that I had, a degausser would have certainly erased evidence in a hurry. Wiping a big magnet across a floppy disk doesn't just erase the data -- it scrambles its little mind. Think of it as a floppy disk lobotomy. In fact, I recently degaussed some old floppy disks here at work. As a test, I put one of those disks back into the computer to try and see if I could get any information off of it. Windows first said, "this disk is not formatted. Would you like me to format it?" When I said yes, Windows came back and said, "this floppy disk is unusable. Please insert another floppy disk." Of course with a degausser there are no second chances, so you had better be sure it's the real deal before powering it on. I can only imagine the look on some poor soul's face after hearing his front door being kicked in and wiping his entire disk collection, only to hear his wife yell moments later, "Sorry, hon! I forgot my keys!" For most people, encryption has replaced those panic buttons. There are lots and lots of drive encryption programs out there today for under $100 that offer unbreakable drive encryption. Jetico's BestCrypt (a program I played around with for quite a while) offers AES, Blowfish, CAST, GOST, RC-6, Serpent, and Twofish encryption algorithms. AES (256 bit) is what the NSA uses for anything ranked "TOP SECRET". Of course the biggest problem with encryption is that to access the data you need a password. Whoever is kicking in your front door knows that you know the password, and there are lots of not very nice things they are likely to do to extract that password from you. I doubt many hackers would hold up long against a taser, rubber hose or waterboarding, but I doubt things would come to that. After they throw your wife in jail as being an accessory to a crime and toss your kids in a foster home for a couple of days, I suspect most of us would give that password up freely. And then you have to think, why are people kicking your door in in the first place? If they already had enough evidence for a warrant, chances are they don't need what's lying around on your floppy disks to make or break their case -- if anything, it was probably icing. Destroying evidence at that point probably won't help your case. For the degausser, there is no bargaining and no undoing. We have a giant desktop one here at work that I'm sure would scramble a PC in seconds flat. In fact, I may try that at some point, just to see how well it works. This blog entry didn't end up where I thought it would end when I started it.

So let's rewind for a second; I'm sick. Yesterday the doctor diagnosed me with bronchitis and pharyngitis (which I think is doctor-speak for "sore throat"). Four prescriptions and one shot and I'm just now starting to feel better. Mason, on the other hand, is just starting to come down with it all. When I picked him up from school yesterday he said he felt icky, and all he wanted to do yesterday afternoon was lie on the couch and watch television. Jump forward a couple of hours -- it's Skate Night! Once a month, the local elementary schools have a skate night at our local skating rink, Yukon on Wheels. Mason said he was feeling a little better when he remembered it was skate night, and so we decided the whole family would go. Long time readers may remember our last visit to Yukon on Wheels. If not, here's a quick summary -- Mason and I went, I didn't skate, Mason did, fifteen minutes into the evening Mason fell so hard that I thought he might have broken his arm, and we left with him screaming. I thought no matter how last night went, it couldn't be and worse than our previous visit. It was probably a tie. Our first mistake of the night was putting roller skates on everybody, including Morgan. It seemed like a cute idea at the time but first of all it cost $4.50 per person (which seems kind of high for a two-year-old to roller skate), and second of all at no time was Morgan able to stand under her own power, which meant someone had to hold her up at all times. So now all of a sudden instead of the family going to the skating rink, jobs become apparent -- do you want to be the parent out skating with Mason, or the parent standing around holding Morgan up? The second mistake was putting roller skates on ME. You know, as a kid I had pretty good balance. I was good at things like skateboarding and katate and roller skating. I don't know what happened, but roller skating is not like riding a bike -- you can and do forget how to roller skate over time. Even though I remembered the motions, the coordination factor was just not there. My first goal was to not look like a fool but I quickly gave that up and switched to operation "Just Don't Fall" -- and if that meant grabbing on to the side rail (or a kid) for balance, so be it. I'd say I probably did five laps throughout the night, each one looking like a person with some sort of neurological disorder. It was not pretty. Morgan lost interest in skating early on (thank God). Mommy had the foresight to bring some paper and markers and that kept Morgan occupied. I quickly saw watching her was a way to get off of wheels myself, and so the two of us awkwardly walked and rolled our way to the snack bar. Mason hung in there all night, even though his body gave out. It was obvious he was feeling bad, and pretty soon he started crying about everything. He cried when I skated too close to him. He cried when I got too far away from him. He cried because he couldn't get his skates off. Or back on. I tried to talk the clan into leaving early, but no -- apparently at the end of the night, the DJ plays some song and all the kids get to dance out on the rink, skates or no skates. Of course last night they didn't play the song or do the dance, which made Mason cry even more. By the time we got in the car, it was apparent what the problem was. Mason started freaking out that his throat hurt, and started freaking out worse when he realized he was losing his voice. When he declined an order of ice cream to make his throat feel better, we knew things were bad. After dropping Morgan and I off to the house, Mason and Mommy continued on to the after hours clinic, where Mason was diagnosed with the same junk I have. Susan said her throat is starting to hurt, too. Man what a shame that I am going out of town next week, leaving behind a bunch of sickos ...

At the time of its release, Venus Corporation's Multi Game Hunter (MGH) was a unique console copier that could connect to both Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis game consoles. The Multi Game Hunter included two interchangable adapters allowing it to plug into either machine; a third adapter, which allowed the MGH to play and dump Sega Master System ROMs while connected to the Genesis, was also available. These luxuries, however, were not cheap; MGH units (without the optional SMS adapter) originally sold for around $400. The MGH is a large unit that overhangs the power and reset buttons of the Sega Genesis and hangs off the back of the machine as well. As a result, the MGH gets rocked and tilted quite a bit through normal usage. Unlike some of the later copiers, the MGH requires power from an external power source (I picked up a power adapter from Radio Shack that did the trick). The MGH can use 720k, 1.4, or 1.6 meg floppies. The menu system is not as polished as many later units. The icons are oversized and undercolored, with the entire menu presented in four colors (not including the blue background). The menu presents the icons horizontally, but since they're so large you must scroll back and forth to see all the options. The SRAM, SNES, Genesis icons all contain the same choices, which makes one wonder why they didn't put them all under the same icon. Two other icons, labelled "options" and "MGH", don't do anything at all ("option not available"). With just a little thought, the menu system could have been greatly improved. The MGH came with two memory configurations -- 16 megabit (2 meg) and 24 megabit (3 meg) -- which worked for a while, but could not dump the later 4 meg cartridges for either system. Despite its memory limitations, the unit works quite well. The MGH is one of the more reliable Genesis backup units, and the fact that it does SNES ROMs as well is icing on the cake.

And no, I don't mean in some poetic, muse sense; I mean I literally lost my voice earlier this week. I started feeling bad on Sunday, felt like crap on Monday, felt like worse crap on Tuesday, and back to "just crap" today. Over the weekend my throat started burning and I thought drinking a lot of water would fix it, but it didn't. I slept a ton yesterday, and am feeling a little better today. Truth be known if it were just an average week I would definitely have stayed home yesterday and probably today as well, but the fact of the matter is we simply have too much stuff to do at work and not enough time to do it. No rest for the wicked ...

Saturday morning sucked. I worked approximately 12 hours patching servers all day at work. Saturday evening was much better. Jeff, Andy, Scott and I (all childhood friends) got together for an evening of fun, food and poker. The idea came while the four of us talked at Andy's birthday party last month. Last night's poker night was similar to our gatherings of old, except instead of booze and pizza we had diet soda and a huge selection of health-conscious snacks (graciously provided by Jeff). Although the group met under the guise of playing poker, really the four of us just wanted to get together, chat about old times and catch up with one another. We had such a good time that we decided to rotate houses and do it on a monthly basis. I'm looking forward to it. Blog updates have been slow due to (a) a massive headcold and (b) the Xbox 360. Things should pick up after the three-day weekend. If things work out, Susan and I are planning on sneaking away for a couple of hours later tonight to see Cloverfield. I've seen reviews ranging from 0/4 stars to 4/4 stars. I have no idea what to expect.

Monday night, Mason and I finally picked up an Xbox 360 . The fact that I bought an Xbox 360 isn't as interesting as who I bought it from: the infamous Doctor Phrackenstein. Doctor Phrackenstein (aka Shawn) is a friend of mine that I've known for, geez, over 20 years now. Ol' Phrack and I met back in 1985, when I first started calling Commodore 64 bulletin boards. In fact, those of you who have read Commodork may recognize his name. Shawn was a good five years older than me; back when I was a twelve-year-old kid mid-high student first calling bulletin boards, he and his friends were about to graduate high school. I was definitely the runt of the circle, but that didn't stop me from hanging around the tech-savvy group, listening to and learning intimate details about computers and the phone system -- things that would be classified as "mischievous fun" back then, and "felonies" today. BBSes were very localized; of the hundreds of users that regularly called my bulletin board, maybe half a dozen or so were long distance users. Local phone calls were free, so unless there was a compelling reason to do so, most people tended to stick to BBSes in their own area code. As local BBS users began graduating to the Internet (and from high school), those local circles of friends dissipated. Sure, some of us e-mail or chat online from time to time, but the personal visits all but ended. Back in the heyday of BBSes I probably saw Phrack on a monthly basis. Since the rise of the Internet over the past ten or fiften years, I've seen him twice -- Monday night being the second time. We're both older now, of course. Phrack's got a beautiful house and a lovely wife. I brought Mason along with me to meet Shawn, and on the ride over it donned on me that Mason's only six years younger than I was when I first met Phrack. The first time I ever went to Phrack's house (his parents', actually) he had a Rocky Horror Picture Show poster hanging in his bedroom. At his new house, he's building an upstairs home theater room. I saw a framed Rocky Horror poster leaning against the wall waiting to be hung and wondered if it was the same one from all those years ago. Computer-based friendships are easy to pick back up. When your common interests are hard drives and videogames and gadgets there's always something to talk about, regardless whether the things you're talking about are from back then or now. Doesn't matter, really. We had a good time catching up with one another and I hope we continue to chat and hang out from time to time. I know "they" say it's not good to live in the past, but whoever "they" are didn't grow up with the friends I had.