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January 26, 2005

Ouch

This video is bloody clever. The song is "Bushes" and the video is the reaction of those having them stripped off. Excellently funny.

Posted by Samer at 11:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spam from Moran

Congressman Moran has deemed it necessary to send me spam. I thought I'd send him a friendly note and find out why.

Unsolicited e-mail from your office

Dear Mr Moran,

Today I received two e-mail messages from you that were identical and sent to different addresses that I own. I've never signed up for your newsletters, and the addresses are such that they indicate they were purchased or harvested from the ACLU and Consumer's Union.

Having never given your office permission to contact me via e-mail except, possibly, in reply to actions by the above organizations, I'm very disappointed that you and your office have chosen to engage in what can only be called Spam.

I'd ask you or your staff to please let me know exactly how you got my e-mail addresses (listed below), and what steps you are taking to prevent this from happening again.

The addresses are:
numberportability_consumersunion.org [munged]
aclu-action [munged]

I sincerely hope that this address is not going to wind up on your spam list, as well. And while Listrak seems to have a good reputation, I hope my addresses do not wind up with other spammers. If you purchased the addresses from a third party, I would request their name and contact information so I might remove myself from their clutches. If not, you might want to consider that people who contact you do not want your spam unless they've agreed to it.

Thank you for addressing this issue.

Samer

Let's see if my congressman responds.

Posted by Samer at 08:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 23, 2005

Snow!

Snow Tire Well, we finally got some snow yesterday. Sadly it wasn't as bad as predicted, only about four inches or so. Still, it was fun while it lasted. Now the cars are turning it into slush.

Posted by Samer at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 19, 2005

This is your brain...

... This is your brain on Gmail.

A very interesting article from Digital Ocean about managing information in your life by creating a Gmail account strictly for the bits of info you need to do something with. Tag it with a reasonable tag and then have Gmail do the filtering. See something you want to read later, send an e-mail with "READ: something cool" and some information about what it is. Make a new contact, drop yourself a "CONTACT: " note.

A very interesting concept, and I think it might help me out a lot. Or it could give me a ton of snippets of stuff I will still have no time to look at.

Posted by Samer at 09:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Major Security or Major Headache?

Brian put together a nice summary of the insane levels of security being readied for the inauguration, but last night's massive interagency response took the cake. A man in a van threatened to blow himself up near the White House in what the FBI is calling a domestic disturbance. The entire assembled mights of the US Secret Service, the Park Police, the FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department descended on him and the area around 15th and Pennsylvania. For all I know, even the subway police were involved.

The response to this threat was what I would call "overwhelming", and that's a damn good thing. Tens if not hundreds of cops, three DC mobile command centers, robots, and tactical strike units. The closure of blocks of roads, obviously to protect people in case of an explosion, quickly turned Downtown into a gridlocked tangle of cars. I'd venture to say that within an hour, certainly by 5.00 PM or so, the threat was known to be limited, and MPD should have reopened roads. Maybe it was only known to a TV audience. I'm not going to second guess this, though, except to say that MPD should investigate if everything was done in as expedient a manner as it should have been.

The thing that does get my goat, though, are the lazy assholes that are the officers of the various departments. I'm pretty sure between SWAT, MPD's negotiators, the FBI and a few others, the need for every single cop to be in the area standing around doing nothing is just ridiculous. As I walked by the scene, I saw cop after cop sitting in their cars blocking roads as people gridlocked the streets. Why were these guys not out directing traffic? I, for one, don't buy the "We're Park Police, traffic is not what we do" argument. Traffic could have been kept flowing (albeit slowly) had these other cops, as well as MPD's traffic cops (who seemed to just vanish after a while), got off their lazy asses and got things moving.

Posted by Samer at 08:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2005

Panix is back (sorta)

Seems that the folks at Melbourne IT went and did the right thing. Sad it had to wait until 9a on a Monday morning for them to do it.

[Gulfoss:~] samer% jwhois panix.com
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.melbourneit.com]
[Querying whois.melbourneit.com]
[whois.melbourneit.com]

Domain Name.......... panix.com
Creation Date........ 1991-04-22
Registration Date.... 2005-01-15
Expiry Date.......... 2006-04-23
Organisation Name.... Public Access Networks Corp
Organisation Address. 15 West 18th Street
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. New York
Organisation Address. 10011
Organisation Address. NY
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Panix Hostmaster
Admin Address........ 15 West 18th Street
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ New York
Admin Address........ 10011
Admin Address........ NY
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... hostmaster@panix.com
Admin Phone.......... +1.2127414400
Admin Fax............ +1.2127415311

Tech Name............ Panix Hostmaster
Tech Address......... 15 West 18th Street
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... New York
Tech Address......... 10011
Tech Address......... NY
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... hostmaster@panix.com
Tech Phone........... +1.2127414400
Tech Fax............. +1.2127415311
Name Server.......... NS1.ACCESS.NET
Name Server.......... NS2.ACCESS.NET

Alexis sent this note to NANOG. It seems that things are finally getting back to normal.

Posted by Samer at 12:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 16, 2005

Panix.com Hijacked

It's been over a day now since one of the oldest ISPs in the nation has had its domain hijacked.

This thread on /. has the information, this particular comment from tjls is pretty damned eye-opening:

What seems to have happened is that somehow the Australian registrar "melbourneIT.com" yanked the fully paid-up registration away from Dotster (where Panix had it) without any notice whatsoever (this violates all the relevant RFCs for the Shared Registration System and the current ICANN policy *and* seems to indicate a severe bug or security problem somewhere in the registration system).

What's particularly scary is that melbourneIT.com isn't open on the weekends, period (though oddly enough they transferred the domain first thing on Saturday, hmmmm) and won't do anything to help. There are lots of ugly details in the NANOG mailing-list archive [merit.edu], particularly in this message from Perry Metzger [merit.edu], this message from Richard Cox [merit.edu], and this message from me, which includes a slimy note from some customer-service flack at Verisign [merit.edu].

This has clearly happened to others in the past, and highlights a serious flaw in the current registry-registrar system. We are not 100% sure how the domain was transferred between registrars with no notice to anyone (though I have some hunches I won't go into here right now) but consider this: a rogue or penetrated registrar can effectively put you out of business for the duration of the ICANN complaint and appeals process, with no notice, and there may be nothing you or anyone else can do about it short of extremely expensive legal action, even if you get law enforcement involved. Yuck.

If this sort of thing can happen to Panix, it can happen to anyone. Clearly, from reading the NANOG list, this seems to have been a serious and well thought out attack intended to cripple Panix for some reason. I'm boggled by Verisign's lack of response, and boggled more that this has happened more than once with MelbourneIT.

If you do need Panix, reach them on Panix.net, instead.

UPDATE: This is Alexis' note to NANOG.

Posted by Samer at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 12, 2005

Second Annual Lupulin Slam

I'm at RFD and getting ready to sample 15 great big hoppy beers. Yes, I do know how geeky it is to be blogging live from a beer tasting. Here's today's beers:

From the west coast:

From the east:

More if I feel like it and am sober enough to type.

Before we got started, Sam Caglione showed a video debunking some of MADD's idiotic attacks on beer (why do you hate America, Sam?). Hysterical and I hope to find a copy for online use.

So, the trash talking has begun...

"We sold the house out so they can drink our beer," from Vinnie Cilurzio of Russian River

The beers are great so far.

Oggi's Hop Juice is getting an 8/10 from me, for a big hoppy nose and taste. The Nodding Head BPA gets a 7, as it is not as hoppy. The Russian River Pliney the Elder, the first Double IPA ever brewed, only gets a 7 from me, cause it is so undrinkably hoppy.

Dogfish get an 8 for their wonderful 60 Minute IPA and Stoudt's gets an 8 for the amazingly tasty Fat Dog Stout. Pizza Port's very hoppy Lou P Lin gets a 7. Bill Madden's excellent Slobberknocker (9.2%) from 2002 has really mellowed out and is more malty than hoppy, though you can certainly feel the hops in there.

Okay, this tasting is kicking my ass. I don't know why, as I've been to bigger beer tastings before.

The west coast brewers got together and blended some of their brews for the Chateau. It is a blend of the Pliney the Younger, the Hop 15 and the Hop Juice. It's nice, but it just does not cut it at 7 out of 10.

Stoudt's comes in with the best beer so far: the Fat Dog Stout. I love this 9% beer and it gets an 8.5 on my scale. The Russian River Pliney the Younger clocks in at 8, and the Founder's Big Al Imperial IPA gets a 9. That's right, it beats the Stout.

Posted by Samer at 06:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

iStampede

I'm as faithful a Mac head as you will ever find, but this Wired story is out of control:

Meanwhile, inside the store, employee Michael Lyen was handing out iPod shuffles as fast as he could pull them out of boxes. Many people were taking two and three at a time. It had the feel of someone handing out freebies on the street. Such is the lure of being one of the first to shell out $100 for a music player that is shorter than a pen.

Stefano Scalia, who was standing in line to buy one, said the whole experience was an exercise in being a part of what he called "Steve Jobs' reality-distortion field."

"Anything he says, everybody buys it," Scalia said. "I just wanted to run out and get one even though I'm on a tight budget.... I'm a die-hard Mac user, and basically, everyone's going to have one. I need to have one."

$300 for Shuffles? Seems the reality distortion field is in full on mode.

Posted by Samer at 09:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Apple is the iPod

And the iPod is Apple.

The SteveNote at MacWorld San Francisco was pretty damn packed with stuff. Jobs, despite having a lot of his thunder stolen the last few days by rumor sites, still managed to wow the audience.

So, the announcements fall into a few categories...

The interesting bit for me in all of this is that the Shuffle, a measly $99 product, was the "headliner". It was the trademarked "one more thing...", not the $500 Mac mini. Why is that? The iPod is the now of Apple. The music sales ($1.25 million a day) and iMac sales are being driven by the iPod. iBook sales are probably getting a boost, too.

The Mac mini isn't being introduced to get current Mac owners to buy another Mac (though, we will). It is being introduced to help move those people who bought iPods to the Mac from the WinTel world. They already have a keyboard and a mouse. And a display, too. Not to mention scanners and printers and cameras and video. Those folks are the future of Apple, and the iPod is what's getting them to the company.

If this works, and I think it will, Jobs could be an even bigger genius that I thought. Or maybe it was Phil Schiller's idea?

Posted by Samer at 12:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 06, 2005

Metro Sucks (Five in an Ongoing Series)

I'm walking home and feeling tired. I decide to hop on the Metro at Rosslyn. I noticed the train had some difficulty pulling out of the station, but then we were on our merry way to Court House. Two minutes, that's all it will take. Right.

The train stops in the tunnel. Not unusual, happens when there's a backup. But this was at 19.25 or so. No real reason for a backup. The train does the normal "unlock the breaks, roll backwards a couple of feet, engage the motors, move forward". Well, except for the move forward part.

The train was making all the right noises, but just kept rolling backwards. "We're experiencing some technical problems. We'll be moving shortly," says the driver. For values of shortly that include 15 minutes and another train. A couple of minutes later, he comes back on to tell us that "we're going to need some help."

This is the "Metro Sucks" part of this: There's no explanation of what is going on. Nothing other than those two announcements. I knew it was bad that I'd turned my iPod off so I could hear the announcements. And all this time, with every few feet we would slip backwards, the thought of what happened a couple of months ago, with one train slamming into another, kept entering my mind.

Eventually, I notice a light from behind our train, but I'm far enough away, I don't really know what's going on. Until the loud and jarring collision. Another train or vehicle of some sort was now connected to the rear of our train and was going to give us a push. After one or two false starts, and still no information, we get moving. Slowly. Really, really slowly. Eventually, I can feel the motors in my car catch and we move a little faster.

We enter Court House, but then have to wait another several minutes before the doors are opened. We step out and I saw something I was not expecting. The vehicle that was pushing us was another Metro Rail train. With passengers. I think it is pretty cool, and the obviously have a procedure for this sort of thing. I just hope that train driver told his folks what was up before pushing our train.

Posted by Samer at 11:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 04, 2005

The Million Year Old Cat

MoeMeet Moe. He's a million years old.

Seventeen is a long time in cat years. It is also a long time in human years. A long time to get attached, a long time for the cute little kitten to become a best friend. Moe was LVH's friend.

I met Moe in 2003. It is safe to say I was not looking forward to it. I didn't like cats, and I was going to be staying with LVH for a few days. She had three cats and they would be checking me out.

Moe made me comfortable. He wasn't afraid of me, seemed to like me and want to be around me. I was smitten with the kitten.

He's had his rough spots over the time I've known him. Diabetic, he's needed shots every day, twice a day. He has to deal with two other cats that won't let him rest. He's been through a lot.

I saw him again on my trip out west. LVH was off teaching and I had an hour or so to kill. Surfing the web, Moe jumped up and sat next to me on the comfy chair. He laid there, comfortable with me, and me with him. Like two old souls, we sat in silence, enjoying the moments.

LVH called me yesterday to tell me she was going to have to put Moe down. He'd been unwell, and she took him with her to Ohio on her trip. His health had been deteriorating since Christmas, and there was nothing to be done. He was in pain, not eating and looking worse.

She had told me that Moe would let her know when he was ready to go. She'd be able to see it in his eyes. I asked her what she saw in his eyes. "I don't think I want to see what he's telling me."

She cried, of course. How could she not? He's been her cat for far too many years. He's been her buddy, always there for her, and she for him.

I'm going to miss that cat. In a way, he was my friend, too.

Posted by Samer at 09:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The New Year

So far, 2005 has been odder, if not better, than 2004.

I'm not sure what to make of it, really.

Posted by Samer at 09:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack