Anybody here ever run into the issue of having people that you've known for a remarkably long time expect you to do/not do things that are completely out of line for things you would actually do/not do, based on an assessment not of your character or personality, but on social norms and expected behavior of someone your age/in your position/in your circumstances? If so, how did you deal with it? (If this fits better in Asked and Answered, feel free to move it, but I'd like general discussion on the topic as well as individual answers, if possible) Thanks for any input, I'm kinda upset about this at the moment.
I've run into this. Usually I just try and explain that though my age/position/hobbies/whatever may lead them to expect X for me they can expect Y. If I say it in a friendly tone and am truly open to discussing the issue with the person I've found it goes okay. Sometimes people pout or make comments about how I'm so weird to not do X but I just smile and shake my head and keep on doing Y.
It's easier for me to follow through with the above suggestion once I've calmed down and thought about what made me frustrated to begin with. If I speak when my mind is full of thoughts on how they shouldn't stereotype and/or that they are annoying I don't usually communicate effectively and risk losing that person as a friend. I hope that helps.
It does provide some comfort. :)
The statement I made on previous idkfa still stands: I'd rather see you come to me first than a place like the Best Buy Geek Squad, or their equivalent. I can usually diagnose stuff quickly and accurately, and give an exact idea on the damage and necessary repairs, and I'm not legally bound to sift through your data looking for... well, whatever they're looking to find.
Ha, no, this was not anything I had recorded, just a type of conversation I've had a lot of in the past (though, I don't think so with you).
I like the idea that all this time I've been trying to collect enough evidence to prove that we shouldn't under any circumstance be friends, meticulously recorded and categorized and labeled, and that it's only been my insistence that I prove it without a shadow of a doubt that has kept our tenuous friendship together.
Well, I guess I'll start from the beginning.
Following my update in August of last year, I ended up succeeding at buying a house (picasaweb.google.com). I now live by myself, midtown Anchorage, near a mega-church, two top-soil plants, and Sara's Sandwich Shop. Living here now nearly a year, I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. With a lot of help from friends and family, I'm slowly making the place into a normal home, and not just walls and surfaces with peeling paint and silly electronics.
As mentioned previously, my sister had a son in November: Khalil Makai (picasaweb.google.com), and married (picasaweb.google.com) his father, Dante, in December. Khalil's a happy baby despite having more allergies than I can count, and looked a little bit like one of the alien characters in Star Wars when he was first born. My sister didn't appreciate me informing her of the latter fact.
I tried this last winter to get outside as much as I could. In addition to family snowmachine trips, I played a weekly outdoor pickup hockey game, and further bullied others (picasaweb.google.com) to try it as well. I kept busy otherwise with weekly movie nights and book clubs and a short-lived indoor soccer season. I think at some point I even went to a dinner theater in Eagle River. Sometimes you just have to get out.
In May, I went down to North Carolina to see my friend Paul Kukes get married (picasaweb.google.com). He married his now-wife Abby on May 1st on the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, NC. It was my first time being to any Carolina, and I would definitely recommend visiting the North one if you have the opportunity. It was also my first time being in a wedding. Being a groomsman isn't so bad. Just be nice to the bride's dog, and move anything they ask you to. It's cake besides that.
This summer has been pretty standard. Ultimate frisbee a few evenings a week and biking around town (466 miles so far this summer). Just returned from a trip to my family's cabin, taking friends along with the grim purpose of fixing the cabin's failing foundation. We managed to fix it (picasaweb.google.com).
The common denominator of all these events has, of course, been work. I'm still employed, and employed at AT&T. Working for a big corporation is pretty consistently strange, and I'll leave it at that. In my dwindling free time (after I started rewriting idkfa), I also started a personal business (intersectionthereof.com) doing computer / programming for folks around town. So far, I've had one customer. I'll have to get back to you on that.
I can say, however, that rebuilding idkfa has at least reminded me that I do still have a passion for new and interesting projects, even if they're old ideas. It is good to know that I can still program recreationally and not be burnt out by having to work at the same time.
I'm not sure how I feel about this last year. I feel like I've done and accomplished a lot, but that I haven't really solved very much. I'm not sure what problem I should be solving, but it weighs on me just the same. I try to place importance on the normal things in life, things that seem to bring others happiness, and while I can appreciate them, I can't suspend my own disbelief. There's just too much about life I don't understand. And probably too much I've forgotten about while I was putting my life into systems.
I don't know what I'll be up to this next year. I'll venture a guess that home improvement will probably be part of it.
So now you've both a niece and nephew? That's fun. I'm sorry to hear that Khalil is allergic to everything. My sister and cousin were/are that way. They've decided to ignore all the stuff that won't kill them as adults figuring the headaches/tummy aches are worth it more often than not. I hope he grows out of it.
That would depend on your preference, though there is a link to increasing rates of autoimmune disorders and various allergies and a lower parasite burden in industrialized nations.
Allergies and various other autoimmune disorders are almost unheard of in underdeveloped nations not because there is less diagnosis and reporting but more because it doesn't really happen.
Thats it, good health care, clean food and clean water. Oh yeah and a rediculosely overzealos market for home cleaning products that have gone above and beyond the actual need for home sanitation.
One of the most interesting cases of this is Poliomyelitis (polio) which used to never be a crippling disease. Infants would usually contract it during the first few years and the disease was limited to a dirrheal disorder. It wasn't untill the turn of the century when stuff like chlorox became available in middle and upper middle class homes as a sanitizer that babies no longer contracted the disease as was normal. The older a peson gets the more likely polio is to cause paralysis. It's pretty devestating between the early teens and late 20's, look at FDR and any stock Iron lung photo's.
I read a book that relates to this idea, and it was quite interesting. It was called "Survival of the Sickest" and basically talks about exactly what it sounds like. Not only are we living in a world today where the basic "survival of the fittest" premis of Darwin's evolution theories is being thrown to the curb, but we are also helping this process along by making ourselves weaker with all the disinfectants that you mentioned. I know it's definitely true with me... My mom is a complete germaphobe, so I grew up in what Dan equates to a "bubble." Not surprisingly, I developed all sorts of allergies. I spent my first two years of college basically sick from something ALL the time. Then somehow I just started getting sick less and less as I lived in dirty and cramped college house after dirty and cramped college house.
Something I also found interesting was in regards to what impact all these sanitizers are having on the ecosystem. As you all know, my stepdad is a marine biologist. He sent me a publication a while back about how many bacteria, fungi, and algae that thrive in sea waters are undergoing chemical and biological changes caused by their exposure to intense loads of sanitizer by-products being leaches into the water systems when people are washing their hands, clothes, everything else, etc.
If you think about how your immune system should work, being an active and healthy person actually should boost response, if anything making you more likely to develope innappropriate responses to allergens. A sedentary life should be worse for your bodies ability to have a strong immune response.
If there is any culprit from industrialization its all the random crap in the air and living in cramped closed spaces most of our lives. Living and working indoors with poor air circulation. Food allergies are wierd though, your body normally sees things that it eats as kind of immune privileged, meaning it should rarely even be processed in a way that your body could ever become alergic to it, there are some notable exceptions though like the small and highly diffusable proteins from shellfish.
Allergies in babies is even wierder, babies have very weak immune systems, in fact its quite hard to make vaccines for them because their ability to develope immune memory is difficult and therefor require multiple boosts to get immunity. Babies and even toddlers should not be having any allergies, the most likely cause of which is because anymore baby food is so sterile and the environments that babies grow up in are so sterile that they are developing inappropriate immune responses to benign things because its not being challenged enough with legitimate pathogens.
If this is at all interesting you should take a look at this book I read a while ago, Parasite Rex. I goes over the evolutionary role parasites have played in the developlement of pretty much everything alive. Good read.
I'll buy that. Ever since I was a kid I've been eating whatever weird food I could fine including live earthworms on more than one occasion. I have a pretty good immune system in that I rarely get sick and if I do it never seems to last all that long. Plus I only have two allergies that I know of and both are to antibiotics.
In some small way I thank my eating habits for providing this measure of immune protection and lack of bs allergies.
I think it depends on genetic heritage as well. I have no allergies that I know of (other than to an antibiotic as an infant, which I overcame and can no use said antibiotic). I am usually cleanly, sort of a germiphobe... although I typically get sick about once a year, its almost always a sore throat.
It's definitely a complex issue.
That must be so exciting for your family to have two little ones running (or soon to be running) around! Aubry looked beautiful in the pictures on your Picasa account. I wish your nephew all the best in hopefully overcoming at least some of his allergies. I have worked with children who are allergic to everything on the face of the planet, and it always makes childhood so terribly difficult...
How are your parents doing? They are still in Anchorage too, right?
You know... if you ever find yourself sitting around Anchorage with too much time to think and worry about not solving a problem in life, maybe you should just put a stop to that by doing some traveling! (I know if I ever have too much time to just think, I drive myself insane...) If you ever find yourself in the DC area, you always have an open invitation to Dan/my place. :)
Parents are doing great, and yes, still living in Anchorage. Both are a few years away from retirement, and having as much fun as possible doing home improvement projects and watching mischievous grandchildren.
And I am planning on travel here in October, as I guess we're having a family reunion in Hawaii. I'm looking forward to it. Though, I still do need to think on where my next "disappear for a week, alone, into a strange land" trip will occur.
If I'm in the DC area again, I promise to bother you guys.
Refurbishing? As in, taking information off of it? Or just blowing it all away and starting anew?
And if it's a Windows 98 hard drive, there may be... slight complications in introducing it to newer hardware in a newer computer (for instance, an older IDE hard drive generally isn't compatible with motherboards that only support newer SATA hard drives).
And what kind of software were you thinking of putting on there? Before I work myself to a froth trying to put Linux on it, I'll warn that I no longer have any copies of Windows I can part with. Finding necessary software will be a big question.
As for price, you're grandfathered under previous business policy.
Because it generally falls to me to make the esoteric observations that aren't worth actually discussing, may I raise issue with the penultimate paragraph here? Can we discuss the existentialist undercurrent here, or at least the lack of recognition thereof?
Specifically, a series of questions for you:
Do the "normal things in life which bring others happiness" seem like they are potentially happy-making for you?
Is understanding life a prerequisite for enjoying it?
Are the systems you reference ones of your own making, or pre-fabricated? What I mean is, can you expound upon the idea of "life system?"
I'm pretty sure that the problems you mention solving are the problems of young adulthood, about which (in an effort to make this post even more pretentious) I might suggest a recent NYT article which outlines some of them.
Also, I'm a little ashamed that this quasi-combative, probing, pretentious post is my first on v3. I guess that's what they call "setting the tone."
Nice user image. And we can talk about my paragraphs if you really want.
I probably don't understand the definition of existentialism, but if Wikiepedia tells me anything, I would probably agree that a person is responsible for their own meaning, and in the context of this post, their own happiness as well.
From an email, sent July 13th, 2010:
Hello,
Josh Rhoades here again, on official idkfa business.
We're coming up again on "idkfa week," similar to what we've put
together the past two years in early August, commemorating idkfa's
"death day." I probably won't be in town for August 8th (the usual day
we schedule around), so I'm having it the week of August 16th, or
thereabouts.
This year I'm asking the same thing: reflect, and let us know what
you've been up to in the last year, or since you last posted on idkfa.
If you won't be around during this time, feel free to contact me if
you'd like to have something posted. And, even if you'd rather not
participate, I'm curious myself on the happenings in people's lives,
so please reply via email at the very least.
I should tell you that this will be the last idkfa week, or at least,
the last idkfa week in this context. This is because things are
changing around idkfa. Things you might be interested in.
First, rather than just leaving idkfa in read-only mode, I will be
disabling idkfa completely. While I have received no requests for
auditing personally identifiable information on idkfa since last
year's offer, it's been indicated to me that idkfa's content is
embarrassing, or at least no longer accurate of peoples' current
views, even when stripped of authorship. A lot changes in eight years,
I suppose. Even for myself, I cringe when I come across my baseless
fanboyism for since failed technological exploits, or anything I had
to say about what music I liked at the time. My hoarding instincts
forbid me to delete content, of course, so the information will be
archived for the rainiest of days, nestled snugly within my dedicated
storage, and available upon request.
Second, and probably the more exciting part of this announcement, is
that I have rewritten idkfa. As mentioned last year, idkfa's codebase
was showing extreme age, almost to the point where I could no longer
adequately maintain it, or bear to look upon its face. In early June,
I made the mistake of fixing a bug in idkfa that had been bothering me
since I had finished v2. That fix more or less snowballed and
scope-creeped into what I'm now calling v3, being the third massive
rewrite idkfa has undergone since inception. It runs about 25 times
faster, is written in half the number of lines of code previously
used, and isn't gray on gray on gray.
Though this latest incarnation of idkfa was born mostly out of boredom
and neck-bearded code monkey indignation, it was also inspired by
recent justification of my very fashionable tin foil hat. Very
recently, and on a number of occasions, people have been outraged at
various social networks' treatment of personal data. Though privacy
statements and policy documents agreed to by users plainly stated the
potential uses of a user's information, they started to notice when
companies like Facebook began exposing a person's information
publicly, and by default (i.e., user photos, profile "links", search
visibility). Facebook, fearing a mass exodus, rewrote their privacy
interface, twice, just to allow users the chance at their checkbox
labyrinth to hopefully protect one's online "identity."
I've been against Facebook from the beginning, likening it to what
reality TV did for television, that is, a sinister way to sell our
stupidity back to us. And yet I find myself (begrudgingly) checking
status updates, correcting people's grammar and spelling so I can
sleep better at night. Admittedly, it has its uses as an online
personal directory, but it has effectively become an advertising
platform, which I feel is not a constructive use for the Internet.
Additionally, for being a social network, and despite Facebook's
networks and groups and events and applications, Facebook fails on a
pretty massive level to engender any sort of community. I feel that
Facebook's encroachments upon our online identities and inability to
make us feel like we're participating in something important reflects
a failing on our part to understand what the Internet was originally
intended for, and that unless we are careful, companies like Facebook
will soon own anything we contribute to on the Internet.
Which is what I have kept in mind for the new version of idkfa. I have
stripped personal information down to username and real name. I have
removed polling, awards, and other superfluous function. I have given
users the ability to preview their posts, and to include images, and
tables, and not have to memorize silly notation. I will be finding a
way to allow users to delete their account. Comments flow sanely, and
rearrange themselves appropriately depending on page size and
boundaries. There's a search box that doubles as a command line. And
the login button is on the top right. It is pretty great.
I have taken what I felt worked best on idkfa (compared to Facebook,
other forum software), and tried to improve upon it. Work remains to
be done, which is why I am not sending a URL, but I feel things are
shaping up. And when it is done, I will send word, and I will expunge
the database. Everyone will create new user accounts, and start with a
clean slate.
The last part of the announcement is that with the disabling of idkfa
v2 and the beginning of v3 will also be my departure from Facebook and
social media. Some might say, "Wait, Josh, they're fixing the
problems!" or "Wait, they're coming out with a new Facebook killer
that we'll all jump onto in the near future!" or "Wait, but how will
we ever hear from you again if you aren't on my FEED?"
Facebook isn't going to fix something I've felt was broken since it
began. Its replacement will try to replicate its function, potentially
do it poorly, and further do it wrong. And all I post are acerbic,
cynical, and vague quips to my status anyhow, you aren't going to miss
that. In addition, you'll be able to consume, to feed voraciously upon
content on new idkfa by external means (RSS readers, to start), so you
won't have to open another precious browser tab if you don't want to.
Notice that I say "departure," and again, not "deletion." This is
because Facebook does not allow you to fully delete your accounts, nor
much of the information you contribute (photos, etc.). So, rather than
deluding myself that my data is safely locked away in Facebook's
vault, I'll lock down my account further, disable all requests and
invites, give myself a ridiculous password, and set notifications only
for direct message. That way, if you want to get a hold of me you can,
but otherwise, I'll be on idkfa. Look me up whenever you're tired of
hiding Farmville notifications and wondering if your employer can see
those photos.
I would hope for you to join me in creating a better online community.
idkfa in all likelihood won't see its glory days again as people have
jobs and families that have a necessarily higher priority, however, it
really doesn't need a high daily post count or a dramatic struggle for
awards and points. It just needs to suck slightly less than the
alternative.
Stay tuned for updates. idkfa is dead. Long live idkfa.
Regards,
Josh Rhoades
A couple of photos...
Rockband Party John and Mallory threw a week or so ago. Unfortunately, my camera died pretty early in the evening, so I only caught these photos. I'm sure more will surface.
 (picasaweb.google.com) |
| 2010 Rockband Party (picasaweb.google.com) |
The foundation on my family's cabin was failing pretty miserably. Here's photos of the project to replace the foundation and re-level the cabin.
 (picasaweb.google.com) |
| 2010 Fixing the cabin foundation (picasaweb.google.com) |
I'll take the honor of leading off - somewhat ironic in that not only has little changed in the past year, I could generally describe life in much the same way I did decades ago when IDKFA was in its heyday.
I still go to Goldenview every workday (and a few others). For the past 4 years I've been "out of the classroom" and focused on making the technology work. This fall I ease back in with a single computer class - the direct descendant of the class a few of you might have taken back in before the day.
I would be curious if an GV alumni return, as, once you've gone to high school, most people forget their middle school. But a few do not.....
Well, in some ways, it really hasn't changed. The packaging is a little different. Yeah, kids still need to learn how to type. I think I might have suggested that keyboards would be disappearing by the time you guys got out of high school. Missed the timeline on that one.
We have a large plasma screen in the commons area, the school website, and we'll be trying to start a student website with those insightful sort of items a student newspaper once had. The emphasis will be on creating content to fill the outlets.
There's a lot more work with video than when you went through.
Along the way, Word, Excel, PowerPoint....except we're using a service called Gaggle.net to issue email with a lot of oversight that incorporates Zoho apps. I'll probably focus on Zoho more than Office, per se.
Guest lecturer from someone in the profession?? The honorariums aren't high, but you get to pick out which kid looks most like you did back then......
Science fiction tells us not that we will do away with keyboards, but instead, will start mounting them on walls and other surfaces that make it difficult or painful to type.
Glad to hear you're starting a student website. Is it going to be a custom job, or are you going to put up an instance of something like Drupal/Wordpress? It'd also be pretty sweet to have your video hosted through your student site as well.
Oh, Gaggle. We deal some with it here at AT&T, mostly with school districts switching over to it after they get tired of us serving their fourth grader's student inboxes with spam. Hope it works out for you guys.
Guest lecturing? Man... a thousand worst-case scenarios just flashed through my head.
---
Student: "Mr. Holleman, why was that man such a horrible public speaker?"
Mr. Holleman: "We tried, Darlene..." (rubs pain out of eyes) "We tried."
--
Josh: "So, kids. Let's start simple. How do you think a computer works?"
Student: "Well, there's electricity, and a processor, that does work on the programs..."
Josh: "WRONG!"
---
Josh: "Well, you see kids, if you traverse your B-tree with a tail-recursive algorithm, that means your interpreter won't have to store the extra code on the stack after every call. This makes your recursive calls more like loop iterations, but with the ability to solve problems more elegantly and efficiently, and potentially over a more complicated data structure. This also has nice properties when it comes to parallelism..."
(time passes)
Josh: "Well, you see kids, the trick to iptables firewalls is to recognize the order in which the built-in chains are executed upon, and after that, which custom chains you've defined are being called. You also have to keep in mind the processing load incurred with every packet, such that if you have a single chain handling all of your processing, every rule you define will potentially be checked against every packet, even if they related to entirely different services. The trick is to divide your chains, such that a minimal number of rules is executed on each packet, but at the same time maintaining a level of security and distrust of incoming packets, while at the same time accurately doing SNAT and DNAT on internal and DMZ hosts..."
(time passes)
Josh: "Well, you see kids, Perl is a strangely designed language. Larry Wall designed the language from a linguistic point of view, making efforts to provide frequently used but distinct visual sigils to indicate data type context. While some of it may seem like line noise, I assure you, it's all relevant here..."
(times passes)
Mr. Holleman: "Go home, Josh. All they wanted to know about was how you typed so fast."
---
Anyhow. I'd be happy to talk if kids were interested in programming, web development, or such. It might be fun to walk kids through making a program in Scratch.
Today I ran my first ever 10k race - well my version of running is more like a slow jog for most people. I'd only ever run 6 consecutive miles two other times in my life, and today I was able to finish 6.2 miles in just under 1 hour at a 9:38 pace! I'm SO excited and impressed with the slow but steady progress I've been making at running. My goal was to do a half marathon this year, which most probably won't be happening, but I'm well on my way to doing a half marathon next year...
This new preview and then post thing is definitely going to be something I have to get used to. Apparently I'm really brain dead right now because a couple hours ago I definitely wrote three different posts and then thought I was posting them, but failed to go past the preview page. Apparently I need to stay away from idkfa when I'm sick/tired. haha.
The preview screen is intended to show you what your post will look like (after it gets ran through the gauntlet of idkfa's filtering and formatting), as well as where it'll appear in the thread. You can also keep previewing your post to see if anybody's updated the thread before you were able to finish your own post.
But yes, it's new.
Oh I know. I don't think it's a bad addition. But since there is only one button option available, I typically don't read the words on the button, but just automatically assume it is the "submit" button and think I've submitted the post. So I just forget that it requires a second step. I'll get used to it, I just need to pay more attention to what I'm doing.
Lately my dreams have been insanely vivid and lucid, more than likely due to my recreation of choice this summer.
Two nights ago, I was rally racing my bed against highschool friends and rivals in an unknown terrain. Upon crashing I had a long and interesting conversation with Aaron about him calling me a Homo (sic?) because of my facebook profile picture. I do not recall how the dream ended only that it was awesome.
The entirety of the dream was very action packed, I'm very suprised that I didn't have pillows and sheets everywhere when I woke up; and if you need a point of reference of what a rally bed/car is think of that old cartoon movie Nemo ( or whatever) how he rode around in his dreams on his bed. Except make your bed look like a suped up rally car still in a normal bed frame... yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah!!(/sunglasseson)
By all accounts cake seems to love alaska, seems everywhere else the concerts are more like Megan described. The Anchorage one, several years ago at least, was quite awesome by comparison. I really just don't think it'll be the same even if they are in our area soon.
Maybe it was the good beer but seriously, the last time they were in AK has to be one of the best concerts I've yet seen.
I kind of agree with you. I saw them when they came to Notre Dame a few years ago and they were good, but I feel like they didn't do a very good job of keeping the crowd involved/excited. Maybe their music was just a little to chill for a big concert setting and would have been better for a smaller venue with chairs/tables/drinks.
If mountaineering is a sport then I have something. Next weekend my dad, myself, and probably Aaron are going to tackly Mt. Rainier. Origically this was going to be Erik and I's big adventure but he left this state for the better life up in the AK. Doesn't matter... broken hearts and dreams do eventually heal...
The plan, pick up my dad from the airport at 2pm on friday. Drive to the mtn ~ 2.5hrs, get permits and climb 5k' to camp Muir at 10k' which should take about 4.5 hours. Get what sleep we can and eat what we can. Get up around 2am for the summit attempt. Rope up and climb 5-6 hours to summit. Rest/take pictures, drink 1 can of Rainier beer. Return takes about 3.5 hours back to camp and 2 hours back to the parking lot. Drive home, about 2 more hours not including victory meal.
I did it, though plans changed and all that I still made it.
Aaron unfortunately could not make it, but Dad and I did a pretty rockin job. We started hiking about 6:30pm Friday and made it up to camp Muir, 10k feet, at 12:30am. The climbers were just starting to wake up and leave as we were setting up our tent to go to bed. The next day we hiked up to just above 11k feet and spent the rest of the day napping and eating
Got up at midnight, made breakfast, roped up and headed out by 1am sunday morning. Made the crater rim at 7, took a shit in the crater 7:15, made the true summit 7:30. Drank half a Rainier tallboy 8:15 and started the long trek back down to camp. We made it all the way back to the car by about 5, though we took quite a few breaks on the way, I even dozed off for a bit in the tent while melting snow to refill our water bottles.
The weather was awesome and hot. At night the stars were phenomenal and we actally saw plety of shooting stars from the meteore shower. All in all a phenomenal trip. I'm proud as hell of my dad for making it to the top with me.
 (picasaweb.google.com) |
| From Mt. Rainier (picasaweb.google.com) |
I should add the link to the rest of the photo I guess
http://picasaweb.google.com/johnlaurance/MtRainier?feat=directlink (picasaweb.google.com)
This is basically my first year doing any real climbing, and the route I took on Rainier is hardly technical. The trail was pretty well packed in and little to no crevasse navigation was needed, coupled with awesome weather the climb was as easy as putting one foot in front of other with the exception of one ladder bridge and three areas of rock/ice fall hazards. No matter my dad and I were fully ready for anything and were roped up and had all our protection easily grabable.
To train for this trip we took a week long mountaineering course through Alpine Ascents International. We spent 6 days on a glacier practicing proper snow/ice travel techniques and spent a long time on rope skills and crevasse rescue. The cascades are a hard place to teach avalanche hazards and snow science... or maybe its a really easy place. The major avalanche hazards are cornices and moderate slopes, chutes and whatnot, so the obvious places really to anyone who actually goes on snow at all. Most of the snow here is heavy and consolidates very very quickly, or if gives way pretty fast.
Anyway, have plans to do a lot more technical routes this winter where I'll be facing some actual weather. Need an avalanche transceiver and probe first though.
From a week or two ago on Slashdot: "100 Million Facebook Pages Leaked on Torrent Site" (it.slashdot.org)
"A directory containing personal details about more than 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on an Internet file-sharing site. The 2.8GB torrent was compiled by hacker Ron Bowes of Skull Security, who created a web crawler program that harvested data on users contained in Facebook's open access directory, which lists all users who haven't bothered to change their privacy settings to make their pages unavailable to search engines."
Only really affects people who aren't paying attention to how their profile is being displayed to public search engines, but still scary given that the guy's immediate action afterwards was to throw up a torrent.
Today on Slashdot: "Facebook Bug Could Give Spammers Names, Photos (it.slashdot.org)"
"Facebook is scrambling to fix a bug in its website (www.pcworld.idg.com.au) that could be misused by spammers to harvest user names and photographs. It turns out that if someone enters the e-mail address of a Facebook user along with the wrong password, Facebook returns a special 'Please re-enter your password' page, which includes the Facebook photo and full name of the person associated with the address. A spammer with an e-mail list could write a script that enters the e-mail addresses into Facebook and then logs the real names. This could help make a phishing attack more realistic."
The continuing adventures...
From Slashdot, Dislike Button Scam Hits Facebook Users (it.slashdot.org)
"A message saying 'I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!' is spreading rapidly on Facebook, tempting unsuspecting users into believing that they will be able to "dislike" posts as well as "like" them. However, security researchers say (www.sophos.com) that it is just the latest 'survey scam', tricking Facebook users into into giving a rogue Facebook application permission to access their profile, and posting spam messages from their account. The rogue application requires victims to complete an online survey (which makes money for the scammers) before ultimately redirecting to a Firefox browser add-on for a Facebook dislike button developed by FaceMod. "As far as we can tell, FaceMod aren't connected with the scam — their browser add-on is simply being used as bait," says Sophos security blogger Graham Cluley."
You're right, no reason to get incensed about people being ignorant, at least, no more reason than normal.
However, the case here is my best argument for people who, when they ask, or I'm telling them about Internet security, respond, "Who would want my data? There's nothing interesting on there."
It's never that you're particularly interesting or important to other malicious users, it's that with disregard for the most minimal security precautions, you become a data point in their system. After that, it's a numbers game: among 100 million users, how many have made further bad decisions with their data (predictable usernames / email addresses, simple passwords, etc.).
Stuff like this exposes the fundamental flaw in Facebook's security model: you are only as secure as your friends are.
I guess my best response to facebook having security flaws would be this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6nBhhnnuOM&NR=1 (www.youtube.com)
I'm not usually one for either sandbox or casual gaming, but I've been enjoying Minecraft (minecraft.net) quite a bit lately. Anybody else played with this?
It's less about attachment, more about linking to an external image somewhere. In the comment box, there's an icon of an "image", that you can click on, and input a URL.
As for how to host pictures to be relatively permanent (and not disappear after a few months), I recommend services like Google's Picasa Web Albums, or Flickr.
That will probably work too, but for them to be visible to folks, they have to have a publicly accessible URL. For example, if you drag a photo from your computer to here (if it lets you in the first place), it will use something like "file:///home/username/mypicture.jpg" which will fail to be sourced correctly for pretty much anybody except for your computer.
So: you can drag stuff from other web pages, and verify they have a URL associated with them by right clicking on the image within the comment box and clicking "Image Properties." There is no handling, however, for uploading an image to the idkfa server, aside from user avatars.
Another reason I recommend Google or Flicker is because they tend to not care about people "hot linking" images from their sites, whereas others (including idkfa itself) return an error message when it detects that an image on their server is being used from somewhere outside of their site.
Er, let me maybe verify some of this...
 (picasaweb.google.com) |
| From 2010 Sparse Photographic Winter (picasaweb.google.com) |
Well I think that posting it here is better than anyplace.
So here's the deal idkfa'ers in September I'll be taking part in Washington States Multiple sclerosis bike ride. My friend and somewhat boss at work actually suffers from MS and convinced me to do the ride with her this year. Usually I'm just a supporter for others who ride but this year I decided to actually participate.
If anyone can donate heres the link to my page.
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=5382026&pg=personal&fr_id=13100 (main.nationalmssociety.org)
Thanks for any well wishes or support of any kind.
I saw, and thank you again if you didn't already get the regular thank you I sent. I did it over september 11 and 12. Rode 90 miles day 1 and 70 day 2. All in all it was pretty awesome. Except for all the shit that happened afterwards with my car. But the ride was awesome.
The second day it rained like hell for about the first 50 miles so that was pretty lousy. Its also tough trying to keep up with those road bike assholes, mechanical efficiency be damned I say.
I miss it too.
I wanted to get at least the default skin "right," and then work on others later. I hadn't realized until much later with v2 that most of the skins were pretty broken in places. I'm hoping to avoid that this go-around. With this one, at least, I stared at it and used it for a good two weeks, so I'm pretty sure it's in good shape.
STEAMCON 2010, POST 1: So I am attending SteamCon this November (think Steampunk ComicCon), requiring some epic costume making and prop construction, including a full ball gown and train, a wooden camera case to disguise my digital one, and a jumble of soldered metal which will pose as a necklace. First up, I'm making an armored corset: 1. Found a truly hideous bag at goodwill with what looks like chainmail on the sides. 2. Totally stripped the thing, turned the metal panels inside out, and am now sewing these metal sheets to a flexible stay corset.
I'm afraid I have no record for yours, as it was set to the default idkfa user image.
Here's where the old ones were: http://idkfa.com/forum/ui/
Though, you could, you know, just choose a new one.
