"Who needs porn when you have MTV." - Ryan's thought of the day.
"The interesting people at parties only talk to you when you have a mouth full of food." - Ryan's thought of the day.
Well it is Christmas morning and I've done the whole presents-tree-family-breakfast thing. I'd say I did quite well this year as I got the things I needed (money, books, chocolate, beef) and I am pleased with the things that I got other people. So happy holidaze and the like to you and those you don't hate.
Now that I've been jolly I'll get down to complaining and ranting. One thing really bothers me about this time of year. It isn't shopping, as I do almost all of mine online and it saves me much frustration. It isn't the annoying relatives, since the ones in my family that I consider annoying are far away. And it isn't the blatant consumerism, since I like to consume muchly. It is the damn cheesy christmas movies with terrible acting and plots. I don't know how anyone can stay in a good mood this time of year with 200 Olsen-twins Christmas movies on 24/7. Damn I hate those little blonde things!
Mwa ha ha ha ha! She's asleep! I'm free!!!!!!!!!! Cassie is asleep and I am awake working frantically on grandiose Ryan-things that will change the world! Actually I'm finally getting time to do some routine papers/homework for school... but they are still grandiose! Cassie and I have been in a comfortable state of delerium for a couple of days now, and it is wonderful - if somewhat damageing to my productivity.
In other news: The new Crypto-Gram is out, so go read it and be merry. And it seems that 61cm resolution satellite images will soon be availble to the general public - I approve.
Here is a link to some news about the seizures of computers here at RIT. Frink.
Aaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you tell I'm a little stressed out? Christmas shopping is taking its toll, as are bills, and that annoying need to eat. So, I feel it is your duty to give me money. Just because I am wonderful and you want to help me. I'm glad you agree.
From the news recently is looks as if I'll have to start getting even tighter on security. On a frighteningly related note, 6 students here at RIT were hauled (literally) off by the FBI a couple of days ago. They were in the RIT dorms and had been sharing movies, MP3s, pirated software, etc. I'm surprised that it was only 6 students, as opposed to 600. Frink. More details as I learn them. I really expected the FBI to have more important/useful things to do with their time. Actually, no I didn't, but I wish they did.
Anyway, in other news, Cassie's plane will be arriving Saturday night - and that will make me very happy. So expect me to be ... busy for the next week and not be in contact much :)
Monopolies are bad, especially in tech areas when the average consumer may never notice that something is broken. This post on Slashdot.org gives a good example. IE has a very serious problem, that was intentional, and the average consumeer would never notice - even though it could be affecting them in a serious way.
Cars today are built with plastic bumpers, crumple zones, and cheap materials everywhere possible. The result is that any accident a car is in - no matter how minor - results in hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damage. This is intentional, and it is done to make more money for the car manufacturers and dealers. The flaws (although intentional ones) in the cars do not cause accidents or usually seriously injure people. They just cost money. The major exception to this is the use of extremely flammable materials (especially plastics) in the cars. The government requires safety tests on all vehicles and has certain standards - these are good, as they are keeping people safe. There is a thing called the 5 MPH Bumper Test, it is simply a vehicle running directly into a pole a 5 MPH, this is done on the front bumper and on the back bumper. There used to be requirements that stated that a car must sustain NO damage in this test. Which meant that when someone backed into a pole, mailbox, etc. at less than 5 MPH they would not need any repairs on the car - this was a good thing. Cars made during the times this requirement was in place had mostly steel bumbers that were not built into the shell of the car - they attached via shock absorbers to the frame. This meant the bumbers were actually useful. Back in the early 90s this requirement was lifted. Shortly thereafter we started to see cars with plastic bumpers glued to the outer shell of the car. And 9/10 times now a 5 MPH accident results in quite a lot of damage. Some cars are even manufactured now so that the back windshield (there are a lot more safety requirements for the front one) shatters when the back bumper is hit. Just to make a little more on the sale of parts.
The average consumer will notice when a car is not operating properly. They will notice if a part falls off. They will notice if if uses a special gasoline that costs 10 times as much, or special tires that are only available from a special place for 10 times as much. And so cars rarely have these problems. But they probably won't take much notice if an accident costs 10 times as much to repair as it could otherwise. And so cars are made to insure that it DOES cost a lot to repair them.
Software is somewhat different. If it has a ton of gaping security problems a normal user will never notice. If they get a virus, hacked, etc. they think it to be inevitable. If the machine or operating system crashes they often think it is thier own fault or something they did. If something is too hard to use they blame thier own ignorance or stupidity.
This is a growing problem, especially with Microsoft's products. And I am not sure how to fix it.
Food is also good! As a poor starving college student I am always looking for good deals on food. As such I take a lot of my shopping trips to SAM's Club. They have a good selection of bulk foods and they are nicely priced, even here in upstate NY. Recommened items: 3 LB bags of M&Ms, 1 Kilo cylinders of Brie, 1 LB bags of pre-cooked bacon, and 4 LB bags of Tyson Chicken Breast Tenders. The chicken tender are an especially good buy as they are cheap, large, filling, easy to cook, and quite tasty. Protein is our friend, and I get a great deal of mine from them.
Sleep is good! I slept for almost 19 hours and I feel much better. Now it is off to work on cryptography.disseminate.info some more.
Also, at the suggestion of Sir Gram I have put up a Ryan-Speak section explaining some of my odd verbal habits. As of yet, Frink, Maharg, Ni, and Formis are covered. This will be expanded in the future.
Hmm, today is going to be really interesting. In my efforts to sleep (since I only got 2.5 hours yesterday morning) I went to bed about 3am. At 5:47am I was still awake and staring at the clock, so I decided to just get up. Apparently I fell asleep about then and woke up 43 minutes later to my alarm clock. So here I am, with 43 minutes of sleep, ready to go to 11 hours of classes. Yay!
Well I've finally completed my code audit of PGP 6.5.8 and (as expected) I cannot find any security issues whatsoever. At least nothing that puts the code at fault. So here it is, for the first time in 5 years, my updated PGP Public Key, applause please. It works out so nice that this came to be on the same day as attending a cryptography presentation (actually it reminded me to finish and get this up ASAP since crypto.disseminate.info will be up and running soon). (Update: I've switched over to GPG and the newest key can be found here)
I must be ill. Or perhaps some odd creatures modified me while I slept. Today I was outspoken, jovial, and chatty. These are not proper Ryan-qualities. I attended a presentation today, given by Bill Stackpole (my OS Scripting professor), on public key cryptography. It was quite a good overview and everyone seemed to like it. Following the presentation I talked to Mr. Stackpole for a few minutes and then headed to Wegman's in search of an evil thing. This evil thing is know as "White Fude Oreos". These (in case you are unfamiliar dear reader) are oreos covered in white chocolate fudge. You can only get them around christmas time and they are wonderful! I'm so glad I thought of them! (More on that below.) I become addicted again each year - and my withdrawl from them in January is not a pretty sight. They are chocolatey, creamy, and rich - all Ryan-approved things. I grabbed 2 boxes of then and a 3rd box of the Regular (non-white) Chocolate Fudge. This is the first time I've seen the regular Chocolate ones so I shall give them a try and report back on thier quality. As I was checking out the check out lady said something to the effect of "I see you're stocking up while they're still here. Taking care of your addiction." She was so right. I couldn't resist chatting with her about them (that is the scary part) and as it turns out she and her husband are also addicts. Not a single box has survived in their house for more than 24 hours. What a wonderful item - so rich and devilish! As I walked back to the car I realised that I had been jovial and talkative with the checkout woman. It was a wierd feeling, a little bit of my father showing through I suppose. I am usually very quite and avoid human interaction whenever possible, but I can always fake being jovial and outspoken when necessary. But this was just the natural reaction this time. Very weird... I think it was proably from being excited by the cryptography presentation. Good, passionate, nerdy things like that get me very giddy. I shall say I approve of Sir Stackpole thus far.
Now, about my comment on having thought of fudge covered oreos. Some years ago, 1995 I believe, my mother and I were talking about our love of oreos. My ISP at the time was IBM.Net (which was a very good ISP by the way) and I spent much time researching things through it. My mother and I decided to see if there was a website for Nabisco (the makers of oreos) and if they had any interesting information on thier products. Sure enough there was a site, and it was pleasantly informative. <rant> You must remember that this was back in the days when the internet had not caught on, corporate sites were actually useful, and people knew that HTML was supposed to be browser and display independant! Sorry - I really get ticked off when a site is designed to be pretty and magazine-like in such a way that renders it useless on anything other then IE at 1024x768 or impossible to display on a printed page - grrrr....</rant> Anyway, there was an e-mail address to which you could send comments and suggestions. So I decided to send them some ideas on what types of oreos I think would be good. I suggested oreos with peanut butter filling, oreos covered in chocolate, and a combination of the two. These were really logical steps from what oreos already had, but in some 50 years they had not taken them. So I made the suggestion. And low and behold - less than 2 years later there were chocolate fudge covered oreos. I later discovered that peanut butter oreos already existed - you just rarely see them. So - I thought of them, and suggested it to Nabisco, and they produced them. So think of me when you enjoy your fudge covered oreos.
Well one nice thing about having 3/4 of your classes as IT classes is that you can usually do the work ahead of time. I was able to get 4 weeks of Human Factors reading and study guides done last night, along with 2 OS Scripting LABs, 3 OS Scripting Homeworks, and 2 pre-LABs. Productive Ryan. This evening I will attempt to do the same for Internetworking - so as to have little or no work while Cassie is here next week.
Today it snowed in Rochester, and it seems to be sticking for the first time. This annoying procedure of having to move my car to the other side of the street every day is getting downright evil with this snow. Now I have to scrap off my car for 20 minutes in order to see out of it to move it to the other side of the street. I do not approve.
I know a lot of people for who soft drinks are their only beverages. I find this weird. Growing up I drank water when I was thirsty, it satiisfided my thirst and it went with everything. I like water still and I drink a good deal of it as compared to the people around me. My mother was very fond of Diet Coke while I was growing up, and as such it was the soft drink I usually had if I had one. And now I drink it fairly often.
I also developed a taste for gingerale, os which I maintain that Seagram's is the best and Canda Dry (which is far more popular and easily found) is the worst. I think Canada Dry tastes like Club Soda and sugar whereas Seagram's has a very gingery taste and the right sweetness and carbonation. I much prefer real ginger ales, like you might find in a good coffee shop, but those are very difficult to find in most stores.
Of those people who drink mostly soft drinks, Coca Cola is the most popular. I like Coca Cola quite a bit, but not nearly as much as some. Two of my friends, Matt Reece and Steve Pomeroy, drink Coke almost exclusively. Matt drank Coke as often as possible and championed it to the rest of us often. Steve (who I now live with whose door is across from mine) is almost never seen without a Coke in his hand. He goes through at least 5 a day and we make towers from his cans and my Diet Coke cans.
Let's see, what are the chances that the date above will be correct for the first time this week? Probably pretty slim - I'll end up coming back to correct it later I'm sure.
Ok, 13 hours at RIT is rather tiring, 9 hours of class, one of which is a LAB. OS Scripting is going to be fun, playing with Linux and vi. Ryan scrambles to get sed & awk covered as quickly as possible - as they are use extensively.
The website was modified a bit today, the frames are gone (yay!) and replaced with includes. Clean, easy, and it makes lynx happy. I've also rearranged some dirs and the location of some html files, but it is very similar to before.
This was shamefully stolen from a link off memepool but I thought it was quite good. Especially being as I adore sin and identify with the example for this definition.
sinesthesia - Committing all seven deadly sins at once.
example: "I think I have sinesthesia--where all seven deadly sins are combined. I covet anger, envy sloth, and take pride in my greed and lust."
Things are good today, except I got very little sleep, and I spent over $300 yesterday on food and books. Now that I think of it, I spend all of my money on food and books. Evil things. I shall have to outlaw them when I am dictator.
I miss Cassie. She's wonderful and sweet, and I need to be close to her. Weird - Ryan needing an animate object.
A few days ago I saw this post on Slashdot about why geeks and nerds do not hang out with normal people. I thought it was quite insightful and accurate.
"... why would i want to hang out with people that aren't as smart as me?"
This is a bad translation of what actually goes on in a geek's head. Geeks like intellectual stimuli as they easily get bored. Intellectual stimuli comes often from another smart person, but can also be obtained from somebody who is funny, witty, well travelled, or artistically inclined. Most people do not interact this way, which means that most geeks find the average joe dull. "Why would I want to hang out with a dull person?"
Today I was a prodcutive Ryan. I got up. Showered. Went to SAM's Club and purchased food, detergent, listerine, shampoo, paper towels, and a few other items I was in need of. Then I went to Wegman's for the items SAM's did not have. Next I headed over to RIT and purchased $155 of books for this quarter, fortuneately they look like they might have been worth the money for once. Then I came back home, put everything away, repacked my closet, made dinner, went back to RIT to pick up Steve because his ride had deserted him, and read several chapters in my OS Scripting books. Frink. vi is a good thing, I'm glad it is the editor we're to use for out scripting - although I do think a choice would be nice.
Last Tuesday I had four impacted wisdom teeth out. It was the first time I have been under anesthesia - and my stomach did not approve. I've healed up fairly well but I still bleed a bit and all I can taste now is blood. I just sit there with a strong taste of it in my mouth all the time, even when I'm not bleeding. And my tongue seems to be stained reddish brown from the bool as well - it will not wash/brush off. Weird.
They gave me Oxycodone/APAP 7.5 for the pain. It is essentially morphine that can be taken orally instead of being injected. It also makes you vomit. Which is really what you want when you have 4 large bleeding holes in your mouth. But it is really strong stuff, so strong I had trouble walking when I was on it. I am as far, not pleased with the experience of having my teeth out.
Also, I cannot open my mouth wider than my thumb, which is about 1 inch. So I cannot easily say some things or yell at people. And I must eat flat foods. My father tried to feed me a hamburger on Sunday but I couldn't eat it. I had to break it into little pieces I could fit between my teeth. So flat foods are my friend now - eggs, toast, bacon, pancakes, crackers, cheese, etc.
Why does Debian's NFS server have to be such a pain in the ass? It is exptremely picky about /etc/exports, gives errors when nothing is wrong with the file, gives warnings that are indestinguishable from errors, and does not like SIGHUP. RedHat's and Slackware's work much better. I shall have to modify the Debian install soon I think...
Well I had my last 2 classes this evening. Human Factors and OS Scripting. Human Factors is taught by the same idiot I had for Digital Media (he was completely incompetent), but this time he seems to at least know the material. That class is definately going to be a source of pain and suffereing for me this quarter. We have handout with fill-in-the-blanks and short answer questions to make sure we've done the reading. And they are fairly long. What is that sort of thing doing in a university! The last time I think I had busy work like this was 6th grade. Frink. OS Scripting, however, should be pretty decent. The Professor is a Cryptography Nerd like myself - he's giving a presentation to the IT and Mathematics faculty on cryptography next Monday that I am invited to - I approve. The class covers shell scriping on UNIX in BASH2, SED, AWK, and an intro to PERL. So it should be much fun - it is my first IT concentration course though (read: it'll be a damn lot of work) and the first in the System Administration Concentration.
"Thought is a luxury, the wealthy can afford it much more often than the poor." - Ryan's thought of the day.
Well it is a new quarter here at RIT and I have 4 new classes. I only have class on Tuesday and Thursday, which affords me ample travel time this quarter. Hopefully I'll have the funds to do so. Anyway, I have had my Internetworking LAB and Social Psychology of Religion (SPR) classes already today. Both instuctors seem to really know the material (which is a nice change) and both seem like people of which I approve. I really think that SPR will be an interesting course. We've a paper to write in it about out own religious history and why we have/haven't decided about religions for ourselves - should be fun to write.
I think the purpose of religion is so that people know they are not the only ones that lay in bed at night and scream at the sky for thier problems and the world's brutality.
Most of the people I don't hate have weblogs, and I often enjoy reading them. So I've decided to put up my own. Here it is. Impressive isn't it.
I found myself today, in front of my computer, studying Maxwell's equations. I sat eating Ranch Dressing and Bread (Ryan crack) and mutering to myself regarding how exciting was the fourth equation. I did this is a manner similar to how normal people watch a great movie and eat popcorn. And it is the most fun I've had in weeks. - I am truly a nerd.