2002-10-05 The trouble with starting a journal is beginning. Humans are such dynamic blends of the past, present, and future, to capture a moment, an expression, an emotion, a motive, is the most difficult task in life. Perhaps this is why art has been so cherished through out history. Blogs on the other hand are not typically cherished (as far as my understanding goes). At least not by the writer. You put something down on a completely temporary medium, hoping that someone will stroll by and appreciate it for a brief moment, never knowing whether or not they even like what they read; it is inconsequential, that is why I have chosen to start a blog rather than a traditional journal.

2002-10-09 As soon as all of my siblings had left home, my Mom and Dad regressed 20 years in terms of maturity. They are at the point now where it is often annoying to be around them. Thankfully they don't act this way all of the time. 2002-10-10 It seems that the only economic encouragement these days are the low interest rates that one can find. Yesterday, I received the only good news I've had all week: I got a new interest rate of 7.5% *big smile*

I typically not the kind of guy to complain a lot, but I have noticed lately that I have become a whiner. I'm not sure when that happened, but I intend to stamp this behavior out -- pronto.

Music for the day: Hard Candy Counting Crows

Plans for tonight: Cup of Joe, a caffeine crazed typing fit while trying to finish off my SANS paper. 2002-10-15 Last weekend was extremely good to me. I'm not sure that I want to comment about it here. I am quite a private person, generally speaking, I don't share my personal life with very many people. If you know me, and I share my personal life with you -- feel very fortunate.

Music for the day: Yoga Rhythms Soul Food

Plan for the night: Once more, I will be working on my SANS paper. 2002-10-19 My Sister got married tonight. It was a beautiful ceremony, and served as a fantastic reminder of how empty my life is. I have a girl friend (for the first time in over a year), but I don't feel like it is anything serious. Besides, she is Russian, and perpetually reminds me that she must drink profusely and smoke whenever her Russian friends are around, because this is what Russians do when they get together. Her friends are around much too frequently. I didn't want to go out with them tonight, so we said our good-byes and I came home to relax and reflect on the day. I hate this feeling I have right now. This lonely feeling. This feeling that no matter where I look in the world, that I cannot find someone who is right for me. Maryna is a good woman, overall. She is kind, elegant, and beautiful, but those good qualities are never enough to blind me to the drinking and the smoking. I think she doesn't want to change, and I think to myself: "who am I to ask her to change?" I knew she was like this when I started seeing her. Ultimately, I don't want the mother of my children to drink and smoke. I would like a woman who has taken care of her body, and will continue to do so -- even as I have taken care of my body. But still, it is painful to be alone. I have been alone too often in my 24 years of life, I find I can no longer bare the burden of this pain. So I sit here reflecting on life and relationships alone, while my girlfriend spends the night getting drunk with her friends.

Suddenly my bout of insomnia returns. 2002-10-20 I woke up at 11am this morning and laid in bed until 2:30pm. I was wishing that Maryna was here, and at the same time thinking about all of the disappointment she put me through last night. After my sister's wedding, she wanted to stop by a birthday party. I obliged, we didn't stay long -- then she tells me that she has to go back, because she had promised Anya that she would hang out. I felt like such an unwanted piece of trash. She called three times this morning, I answered on the fourth.

Okay, so she apologized and made up for ditching me last night. I am very moody and sensitive sometimes, I'm not sure how that happened. In the future I may try to explain this to her. For now, all is well. 2002-10-24 Nothing profound or thought provoking tonight -- like there ever is. My friend Anthony was telling me about how I should "open up" and share my feelings with Maryna, because if I don't she will drift away. So here is to you Maryna. I like you. I enjoy spending time with you. I am not looking to settle down right now, so if that is your plan, you should re-think it.

Music for the night: Inti Illimani Lejania 2002-10-25 I spent the entire night trouble shooting a problem that I created at work. I think I could get fired over this one. I'm just not a hardware guy, no matter how you dice it - I'm not cut out for industry. 2002-10-26 I spent a lot of time with Maryna yesterday. She is always an encouragement to me. I feel much better about my failures. She really is wonderful. 2002-10-28 Minor and I ran today. This is our routine thing to do on Mondays. Today it was raining, cold, and dark. Perfect. We took off at a must faster pace than normal. Being that I got a workout last night, Minor kicked my butt. He has really improved since we first started running at the beginning of the summer. The student has become the teacher. On hellish nights like tonight, the winner is the one with the most desire; Minor definitely had the desire tonight.

Plans for the night: Web page layout.

Music for the night: Musicforhackers internet radio. 2002-10-29 I have never been so scared in my entire life. I have become very accustomed to having spare change in my pocket, broad band internet access, cell phones, and new cars. I would say that I have done very well for a new college graduate. I made a fatal mistake, taking this job, and depending on my new income too much. It wasn't really by choice. My old beater, affectionately referred to as the beast, a '75 Pontiac LeManns died last fall while I was still an intern here. I only had a week to find something else reliable. I chose to go with a new car. I love it. I don't have to worry about it over-heating and spewing anti-freeze everywhere -- in the middle of the winter no less. I don't face the down-nosed-glances I got while driving my old car. My Camry gets respect, and I like that, almost more than anything. When my land lord told me that my building had been condemned, giving us 30 days to find a new place, I took it fairly well considering it was right in the middle of finals week of my last semester in college. However, it also doubled the amount I was paying for rent; I got a little more space, but still these things start to add up. When Southwestern Bell couldn't seem to transfer my telephone correctly, I went without. Until, a guy at work complained he couldn't reach me, despite carrying their fucking pager with me 24/7. So I got a cell phone. It is nice too, and I like being available to my friends and family anywhere any time. This, like everything in life, comes with a price tag. They call this symptom The Golden Handcuffs. Once you put them on, there is no escape.

Now I am faced with the fact that I may loose all of these privileges, and I am truly scared. Scared my girl friend will dump me. Scared I will have to sell my car and cell, cut off my internet connection, and go back to doing data entry work. It is not like I can find another job like the one I have now, not with the current economy. It is always 20/20 hindsite. I wanted to go to Graduate school, but I didn't have the money, or the applications in on time, and so I took a job in a field that is only marginally related to my own: Information Technology Consulting. I am in the Networking group, and this is a farce. I am a programmer by trade. I am also very handy with Computer Science theory, when it comes to networking I am a clutz. I have known this fact for some time, because my father is a networker. You would think that if I didn't pick it up from him, it wasn't going to happen. Fortunately, until now I have been the security guy's backup. There was a shift in organization, the primary security guy is now my boss, and I have become the "primary security guru". I do okay with most of the task that are given me. Aside from one major Fubar last week, my record has been spotless on the security side of things. I get the assigned task done, and I get them done in a timely fashion. Albeit, not always as elegantly as a true professional -- I am a yearling after all. Now the situation seems to be changing. Something in the mix, someone up stairs, seems to think that I'm not earning my keep; despite having more project hours than anyone else (which means more money for the company) -- granted those are all programming projects that no one else has the time/skills to complete, and they don't really fall under the guise of the group I'm in. Now they are pushing me into a role I am unsuited for, and altogether untrained for. I mean really, these fuckers are the kind that only help their cock sucking buddies, they have scarcely taken the time to teach me the skills I need to do the real networking side of my job. They are pushing me into the consulting side of the business. Saying that I am now responsible for spec'ing out equipment, and visiting customers on sales calls. What the fuck? When I started here, I was in a network monitoring/security role; my title is "Network Security Analyst", how does that translate into "Network Engineer". They have a damn good engineer that is the so-called junior engineer, whom they pay peanuts. Meanwhile, the Senior Engineer sits on his ass making 3 times as much money. It isn't right. Now they are pushing me into this engineering crap too? Why isn't the Senior Engineer the one doing the specs for this stuff? They hardly let me get on a router or a switch (not that I really wanted to mind you) while I was an intern, now they want me to spec this stuff out for our customers. I can't handle being: the resident programmer, the network monitoring guy, the off-site consultant, and the firewall administrator. Jack of All Trades, Master of None: it just isn't going to work.
2002-11-12 It has been a while. Hmmm. Let's see, I would have updated sooner, however, I have been rebuilding my computer with Mac OS X.2. The upgrade broke things. Needless to say I had to take the long way. Backup data files I wanted to keep, scrape the drive, and install a fresh copy of OS X.2. It worked like a charm.

At work: I am working on a security audit. It is going well so far. I think that this is the most fun that I can have working for the man. Every audit represents an opportunity to expand my hacking skills (legally).

Personal Note: Subtleties are lost on me.

Music for the night: Anything David Gray 2002-12-06 Work has been keeping me sooo busy lately. I am writing this on the road from Alabama. Stars Fell On.

It has been rainy and cold here, and I miss my friends and family back home *cough* Maryna *cough*.

I registered for the GRE today. I plan on taking it on December 21st. Things are starting to move finally. Maybe in the near future, I will get some reference letters together and then I will really be prepared to apply to some graduate schools. Now I just need to hammer down what exactly I want to do. There have been some ideas, nothing solid; plus that is a big decision.

I finally put up a temporary splash page for my website, no more "under construction". The page that is up is really lame, but perhaps it will inspire me to do something better.

I definitely need to finish the layouts and build up the content.

I feel like I am pulling my life back together after my move in June. It has been several months now, and things have been in disarray ever since then. I have alienated my friends, family, and myself (if that is possible). In other news, today I realized that I don't like my apartment. In fact, I would say, I dislike it very much. When June rolls around I need to find a different place!

Today, I also worked up a CV. It is not polished yet, but it is a good start. Being out of town was just what I needed. What a productive day!! 2002-12-22 I took the GRE yesterday, after studying all week for the vocabulary section. The test was quite challenging for me. My target composite score was 1200, I came up a little bit shy, reaching only 1150. Generally I think the Analytical section would have been my best one, however as you may know, it was retired in October. Sooo... I had to do the Analytical Writing section instead. I haven't written something so good, in such a short amount of time (30-45 minutes), in a while. So I'm hoping for a really good score on that. It has been my experience that this will not be the case. It will come back with, at best, a slightly above average score, but in general _nothing_special_. This isn't raw pessimism. This attitude is simply realistic. Over the course of my existence, I have become (often) painfully aware that I do not fit _THE_MOLD_. I think I more than make up for it with hard work, alacrity, creativity, insight, and fresh perspective. The question is: are these qualities going to prove useful in the course of my career?? Whether it be in academia (as I have always hoped) or in the Maya of the corporate world.

Music for the Night: Everything Claude Debussy (Classical) 2003-01-02 Happy New Year! I look forward to February and Chinese New Year for fliped reasons that I won't discuss here.

Work. What is it? and why do we have to? I have to say it: the American system is messed up -- it is paid slave labor. I thoroughly respect anyone who has escaped this madness. The worst part is the grind, there is no _life_ in it, no soul. I will go mad if I am forced to continue life this way. Mad or dead to the world. Until that day -- I live weekend to weekend. *smirk*

Music for the Evening: Deep Forest III, Deep Forest. 2003-01-14 The treatise for the night: "what good are policies if no one follows them?" and "How childish can grown-ups be?". I have never seen a bigger circus at work, and the worst part is that I am in the middle of it. There are a couple of people that have access to the firewall. While this appears to be a good idea, it is not. Why? The human factor. When there are two paths to obtaining a goal, a manipulative human will always choose the path of least resistance. In this case I have a user (who happens to be a manager of another group) who was requesting elevated privileges as a VPN user. He didn't ask me to do it, why? I would have turned him down. Instead, he went to one of the less surly firewall administrators and asked for the favor. Those of you in the security field know, there are no such things as favors. I (fortunately) happened to be logged into the firewall console (one at a time thank you very much) when the other administrator tried to complete the _favor_. Naturally she sent me an email asking if I would log out so that she could get in. She also attached the original email to her request for me. So I found the information she needed and sent it to her. She then replied, asking if I would add The Manager to X_VPN_GROUP that has higher privileges. I replied to her explaining that in the event that a user's privileges are being elevated, I would need the request to be authorized according to the policy in place at the institution. This apparently didn't go over well with _The_Manager_ because he emailed my manager my response to the request -- getting a bit of a chuckle I might add -- as if I hadn't done my job right. All was fine and good, until _THE_MANAGER_ had me booted from the firewall console. That was abruptly at five o'clock, I decided to deal with the new twist tomorrow. Things could get ugly from here. Especially since the deadline for the firewall migration I'm working on is rushing forward, and I no longer have access to the current firewall.

As I look around, I don't think I have ever seen so many people trapped in Maya in one place at one time. It is absolutely amazing. Monkeys, zombies, and little minded people getting off on the crack of small-town-politics all in one _small_ corporate environment in the middle of no-where Oklahoma, USA.

Plans for the Evening: Work on my current academic paper so I get the fcUk out of the plains, the people here are freaking retards like this.

Music for the Evening: A Rush of Blood to the Head, Coldplay 2003-01-15 Man am I paranoid. Turns out, my _big_beef_ yesterday was purely coincidence. When I got kicked out of the server, it wasn't because _The_Manager_ had booted me from the system. There was a hardware failure on the box, and the server had shutdown. Chalk another one up to over reaction and paranoia.

I am getting worked to death, it is no surprise that my coworkers have become the objects of my delusional paranoia. I need a nice long vacation. 2003-01-21 The longer I hang around this job, the more I realize how out of place I am. The guys are great (in general), and I totally respect each of them for different reasons. I feel as though I am somewhat of a laughing stock for some reason. This is not a good feeling. It is a damaging feeling, and I know that I cannot continually submit myself to that kind of emotional lambast. Further, I think I intimidate those around me because I won't conform to their peer pressure. I'm not immune to peer pressure, I simply don't regard them as my peers. They aren't my peers, not because they aren't smart enough to be, but because our interest are light-years apart. I go home and review academic papers for publication, they go home and watch sports (drink in hand).

Plans for the night: Work on my last paper.

Music for the night: Groove Salad streaming radio. 2003-02-09 I have been a busy bee lately, applying for graduate schools, writing personal statements, and polishing off my CV. Not to mention projects that won't die at work, and my own personal research interest on the side ( which, by the way, I am developing a paper for, as well as a presentation).

All of this while juggling a relationship. Not bad eghh?

In the meantime, I am still stuck at the job I have come to love and hate. I love the money, I hate the job. At this point, no amount of money is going to help keep me here. It is not for me, but getting out is next to impossible. 2003-02-14 I am not living. In need to break out and have an adventure before I am to old to enjoy it. I have been reading my best friend's blog...he is having adventures. God, to be free from the pressures of society, to be able to think, plan, and do good science, what a pleasure that would be.

It is coming for me. I am striving for this. Nothing is going to stop me. 2003-02-21 It is amazing how quickly I can go from a high to a low. Today, I over slept, and decided not to go in to work. I worked the outage last night, and I have put well over 40 hours in, but this won't excuse my absence.

So I have spent this crisp early afternoon reflecting on life; all together not a good thing. I was my happiest as a child. No responsibility, no money, no pressure. The sum of my days spent enjoying God's creations in nature; to understand the deepness of the clear blue skies, to find dandelions and appreciate their beauty, to watch birds flocking from tree to tree, to wonder wide eyed. It has been difficult for me to adjust in the adult world. I guess I am still a child in my heart. Maryna sometimes says that I have a "simple goodness" about me. This is why: I don't care about race, religion, politics, money, work....and I never really have. Oh sure, there were times when I struggled to fit into to the image of what I was "supposed" to be, but those days were spurious and scarce.

I sit here thinking now what? I obviously can't be successful under the circumstances I have found myself. Yet the pressure of these circumstances is preventing me from moving beyond them. For example I have been applying to Graduate Schools for a while now, however, it is more than a struggle to get every thing together in time for the deadlines, the application fees, the letters of reference, and other adult necessities.

There is a man that works in Dr. Paprzycki's lab -- he is responsible for my black mood today. He knows exactly shit about computer science, and yet he has three scholarships, and his "research" is fully funded by the government. I put research in quotes, because he doesn't have any research. Yesterday he was learning how to install linux. Fuck, we should be supporting about a million 14 year old high schoolers if installing linux is worthy of NSF funding. The sick thing is he was working on a machine that had a perfectly beautiful installation of SUSE 8.1 on it. I mean this was a sweet linux box. I offered the root password to him, but he thought it would be better if he reinstalled using Redhat 8.0. I sit here thinking "What the fuck?" Of course Redhat is the first linux that most everyone learns, but to bastardize such a work of art must be a crime.

I think my failure is in life is due mostly to two things. One, my parents never pushed me. Two, I have always been good at everything I do. Now you must be thinking How is this a problem? My parents were fabulous parents, and I am certainly not blaming them for my problems. My childhood was great, but when I needed guidance the most there was none. This isn't exactly their fault, I wasn't exactly running up to them seeking guidance. I was quite the arrogant little teenage bastard, full of pride, and so sarcastic that it would be difficult to have a conversion with me. As for being good at everything, most people would think that it was a blessing, but it isn't exactly. You see, I have problems focusing. I was so widely spread during my adolescence that I never really developed a passion for anything in particular. The things that I did love doing were eventually taken away from me due to circumstances beyond my control at the time. I enjoy life and everything in life. Now, I have a good job. I have a nice car. I have a great girlfriend. I have it all. And yet I struggle with the simplest things in life. Meaning, happiness, direction.

I can't finish anything I do. When I start something new, I am filled with joy and fiery passion, blazing toward some grandiose goal. Then circumstances interrupt this flow, and I just loose all desire to ANYTHING. I just feel so hopeless and desperate. It seems as reasonable to just cease than to continue with the struggle. I think that I am out of energy, that I am burned out again. I think I have been burned out with playing by everyone's ridiculous rules since high school, it must have been my youthful exuberance that carried me through. Now that exuberance has faded. 2003-02-23 Today, I woke to find Tulsa covered in a blanket of snow. It was one of those fantastic events - totally unexpected. Typically I would have rejoiced at the site of a blazing white blanket frosting the ground, but today I was to leave for Seattle, Washington for a Hacking conference. I was afraid that I wouldn't make my flight, or that it would be cancelled. No worries, United got me there!!

The first thing I saw as we banked over the city for our landing, was the Space needle. I smiled in spite of myself. The landmark is about a mile north of where I'm staying, so I'm not sure I will make it that way given the conference is a mile in the other direction. In any case I am totally stoked.

Maryna, the note was incredibly sweet, thank you. I love you. Happy birthday (tomorrow).

It feels good to be out of Tulsa. Last year, when I stayed in Portland, I felt revived. The cities of the Northwest have a swanky groove. Probably the killer coffee, which I will be cherishing tomorrow while walking to the Sheraton Hotel.

On the flight to Denver I contemplated an ideal that I have pondered before. Since others are already hammering out the Grid, I have decided to focus on other (more abstract) areas. When I was growing up imagining being a scientist, I never foresaw the shameful truth of how much a sham science really is. Consider this: papers are the money of science and all scientist have been forced into paper-whoredom. Publish or perish they say. One day I will forge ahead as an unreasonable man. 2003-02-25 The training part of the conference was fantastic. I really enjoyed learning about hacking web applications. I know that this training will make me more security aware while coding web applications -- but then, that's not my job, is it?

At the end of today (the second day of training), there was a hacking ladder. There were ten levels, and the first one to the top won a prize. I made it to the second wrung. I am not cut out for hacking, I guess. I don't think fast enough. It isn't that I'm not smart or can't comprehend what they are doing, I just approach things too differently. I am a triangle in a round-peg world. Today, I actually thought I might try to pursue another field altogether since I can't seem to get things together for grad school either. I contemplated the alternatives. It is a short list.

Ultimately, I feel that my struggles are environmentally based. I can't concentrate on one thing long enough to see it through -- my greatest weakness. I simply get frustrated, or board, or distracted. I can't function within the realm of the world I live in. I used to be able to handle things. The last time I felt I had the touch was in high school. It is like my brain chemistry changed and left me inept like a stroke victim. I don't know where to go from here. I don't know how to rest my mind and refocus my life so that I can be successful at something - anything.

I'm just tired of being mediocre, but I can't ever get past it. I have said it before, and I will say it again here: I am afraid to succeed. I have never been able to handle pressure, and by tracing my self history backwards through time, I realize that I have been this way since I was born. I believe it is a permanent character flaw; what does one do with one's self when you discover a flaw so deeply ingrained in your genes? I have pondered this question and elected to work around it. I need to put myself into a situation where I don't feel pressured. Where I feel that I have latitude to be myself, to express myself, to live life like myself. I may take some doing to find this environment. I may even have to create it myself. I.E. Work for myself -- this presents its own caveats. 2003-02-26 There are so many things to say, and no time or space to express them fully. There are so many things that I wish to learn, yet there is not enough time or money to learn them all. So I have elected to seek after the subjects which ignite a passion in my being. --Dulce Viva

Today it is cold and cloudy in Seattle. It hasn't rained since I arrived on Sunday night, it is Wednesday now, I understand this is quite unusual for Seattle this time of year. I am enjoying the weather, the scenery, and the break from my daily routine. Today, I left my lunch ticket at the hotel, and so I had to find someplace outside of the conference to eat. I stopped at a tiny pizzeria around the corner. The pizza wasn't great, but it was good to flush out the bitter-coffee nausea engulfing my stomach this morning.

Last night, I stayed up working on two things. One, this blog. I finally have a scheme that is publishable (on a temporary basis - as is everything on my web site). You're looking at the fruit of my labour now. The Second thing was purely theoretical. Consequently I do my best thinking while drifting between sleep and wake. It was a restless night, so I made quite a bit of progress on this idea; time vector analysis of the SHA hashing algorithm. While dreaming of a framework to implement this, I delved into a more general arena of distributed pattern recognition, event correlation, dependancy extraction from seemingly random data etc. What is this?? This arena involves: finding relationships, dependent variables, and patterns in otherwise random data sets. For example a SHA hash. Can a relationship between the input and the output be determined. If so, this opens the door to a wide range of attacks on the use of one way hash algorithms. The idea between one way hashes is quite simple: to produce output as unique as possible for a given input, and to use an unstable algorithm. By unstable, I mean: for small changes in the input, we get large changes in the output. This adds to the security of the algorithm. I would like to setup a distributed system, in which a database of each clear text to hash output is stored. In doing so, we would have a good base for data mining relationships with. This approach isn't meant to crack large blocks of data, instead shorter passages, such as passwords or session tokens.

So, how can we find patterns/relationships in this kind of unstable data? Break it into pieces. Allow these pieces to represent vectors in a dimensional space (the dimension depends on the number of pieces that are used -- 3 or 4 would be handy). Now you can use some spatial analysis to look for dependancies within the data. If you were to draw a time-spatial diagram of the data, you should be able to see which input vectors affect the behavior of the output vectors.

Wow, the afternoon session at Black Hat where incredible. I attended:

  • Payload Anatomy by Riley Hassell
  • Vivisection of an Exploit by Dave Aitel
  • Applied Black OP Networking by Dan Kaminsky
  • Securing Your Network Part 2 by Erik Birkholtz and Eric Schultze
    •

    Absolutely incredible information. I could use another week of this kind of lecturing. Throw in some labs and I might actually become a legitimate hacker. I definitely learned some new tricks from the last session. I had no idea you could use NTLM hashes to authenticate a user -- but it makes since. I also understand what "The Egg" in regards to exploit coding, thanks to Dave Aitel. Who by the way has a very nice product called Canvas for $995. Dan Kaminsky mostly discussed Scanrand, and some things that you could use it for. Very nice, it scanned 65,535 LAN addresses on port 80 in 4 seconds. I am considering integrating this into Nessus, if no one has already done it. I could really use a scanner like this to cover more ground more quickly. Once you get some host to answer up, then you can go back with nmap or queso and finger print the host.

    Another super cool thing Dan showed us was this nice QT program called Phentropy using OpenQVIS. All you have to do is pass it a three dimensional matrix values, and it plots them in three dimensions. When I saw this, my jaw dropped. It is incredible for rendering MRI information on a PC -- and it is free. However, the thing that really got me going was that it fits right into the stuff I was thinking about this morning!! With doing a time-spatial analysis of SHA and MD5 hashes. If there are any relationships between the inputs and the outputs, I should be able to construct a suitable way to demonstrate this.

    PS, I am so strung out on coffee. I have to stop drinking it now.     2003-02-27 No thoughts as I walked to the conference this morning. Today I have some very interesting sessions. Stealing with BGP and Securing Wireless Networks should be the most applicable.

    Last night I did some more work on my blog's layout. I think I am getting really close to having bv.pl done. This is a perl script that reads an XML blog, and creates my blog site in html automatically. The next step will be automating the upload to my web host; this automation would be so much easier if I was hosting my own server, but then there are other perils in that.

    Tonight I went on a walk about in downtown. I was hungry and wanted pasta, there were no suitable restaurants for a single to be served. I was really impressed with the restaurants in downtown Seattle. They are all dimly lit. So dark, I could hardly tell that they were open at all. More like lounges than restaurants. They were all trendy (and pricey I'm sure). On my way back to the hotel, a derlick asked if I had any spare change. I have been in a really generous mood here, obliging any one who asked for alms. I had left my change at home, since he was curteous and sober I gave him eleven dollars.     2003-02-28 It is Friday, my plane for Tulsa leaves in two hours. to avoid a rush I arrived at the airport an hour ago, sat and had lunch, and now I wait. The object of my affection (creative affection) lately has been this blog. It has progressed a lot in the last four days - not that anyone reading it will ever know because I refused to post it as straight XML (as it has been since last October). Now it has skin, it is navigable, it is almost presentable. There are a few more touches that I will add. Possibly a navigation column on the left side. The one feature, I have been drooling over since I thought of it is auto-linking with other blogs. What will this do? Just that. I will tell my program <auto-link>www.katzchen.net</auto-link> and it will send a spider to the requested domain, down load the blog contained there, and attempt to match up Minor's journal entries with my own. In this way, a reader will easily be able to get a multi-dimensional view of the world at one particular instance in time. Cool? I think so.

    In other news, Seattle is back to its normal winter conditions: over cast with drizzle throughout the day. I am glad to be leaving, however, Tulsa has had record amounts of snow: 10" for February. I am not looking forward to that.

    I talked to Maryna last night, it sounds like she missed me, and that she was bored. I am looking forward to seeing her at the airport.     date=2003-03-02 I feel upset to be back in Tulsa. I feel like life is wasted here. I can't explain it; I think it is related to the pressure that I feel here. I have not been good at dealing with pressure as far back as I can remember. I need to make some things happen instead of continually talking about them. This week is going to be hell at work - catching up. After that, I am turning over a new leaf. I am going to become fiscally responsible again, I am going to work out every day, I am going to produce some quality work. 2003-03-03 It is 5:24am, I haven't slept all night. So I made some updates on the blog formatting tool. It now supports XML-ISO date formats in a <date> tag contained within the <entry> tags. This also fixed the string sorting problem.

    I wasn't tired at all until 10 minutes ago. Now I am going to need a lot of coffee to make it through the day.     2003-03-04 It has come to my attention that some readers of this journal have become fearful of my disposition on life, seeing me as crying out like a trapped animal. My journal entries, admittedly, have a dark tone, but it should be clear that such is case when I feel the need for expression. When I am over flowing with joy, wonder, amazement, life, passion, and liberty, I am too busy living, enjoying, and revealing in the world around me to make entries at all. So naturally, one would suspect that my balance was obtusely scewed. This is not the case. I am well developed emotionally, exhibiting all ranges of emotion: love, anger, pain, joy, sorrow, humor, and so on. Unfortunately, it is in the darkest hour of despair that my need to express myself drives me into the depths of raw emotion, birthing a shadowy blog entry. I will make every effort, in the future, to make cheerful expressions as well. 2003-03-06 I have seen great things this week. I gave a presentation at the 14th annual Oklahoma State University Graduate Research Symposium. It was fun and tremendously exciting - mostly because I feel that it went well. I would like to thank Dr. Marcin Paprzycki for graciously lending me his Stillwater office for the night so I wouldn't have to drive to Stillwater in the morning.

    At work, I finally made some progress on the firewall upgrade that has been plaguing me for months. The last time I made it this far, I hit a licensing road block, contacted technical support where they promptly "baked" my management console. After rebuilding, I solved the licensing issue myself. Actually this time, things went smoothly - mostly. After a test during tonight's outage I will know if it is really working or not.

    I would also like to thank Dr. Debao Chen for his fabulous smile. I have studied under him in two classes, rarely have I seen him crack a smile. Today I asked him to write me a letter of recommendation for Graduate school, he kindly obliged, and I tried to thank him in Chinese. "Your Chinese is very bad," he said with a huge grin on his face, this after taking a moment to decipher what I had said. Reflecting on his appearance at that moment, I have realized that this is the same smile that my Grandpa Gilbert gives from time to time, especially when he has made a particularly witty comment. My chinese is bad, very bad infact, but it was good to see him smile.

    Now the amazing thing I have seen. St. John Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma officially kicked off their Linux on the Desktop project. The aim of which is to determine if Linux could be used in their environment. I am tremendously excited about this. This is a huge change in the culture of the IT technology. I would like to thank IT President George Kendall transforming this dream into a physical reality. Comments around the office suggest that this project is his final shot across the bow before retiring this summer; George never did like Microsoft that much. Three cheers for Mr. Kendall!!     2003-03-07 I got an email from my mom this morning saying that Dad may have had a heart attack. I was very worried, the EKG and blood work came back negative and I feel relieved. The question is what was it? An Anxiety attack or a panic attack?? Dad, I'll be thinking about you.

    The new firewall's VPN is still broken. Aggghhhh!!!!

    I am deathly tired from staying up all night last night, and yet I feel compelled to work. Work on my Blog, work on the project, work on ideas, etc. I would describe my mood as cheerful optimism. The kind of optimism that comes out of the blue, the kind that isn't based on any signs of hope -- it just is.     2003-03-08 Cool!!! I wrote a script to ftp my blog entries onto my remotely hosted web site. You will probably begin to see more regular updates. Cheers.

    P.S. Happy Woman's Day Maryna!!     2003-03-09 The weather has been absolutely beautiful the last two days. I feel like spring is around the corner, and this brings a youthful optimism to my heart. Today, I read a journal article "SRIRAM: A scalable resilient autonomic mesh" printed in the IBM systems journal. It was quite interesting. I especially enjoyed their approach to spanning trees in their P2P Mesh system. I feel that some of their approaches could be used in the system that I am developing. I did see some small flaws in their design. For example each of the clients is allowed to calculate their own ranking - anyone steeped in security knows: you can't trust the clients (for any thing). And if you take client input, find a way to validate it.

    I also looked at my book list lately - I haven't been reading enough books. I feel this is mostly a reflection of my busy schedule.

    It has been a light and cheerful day. I have not dedicated my brain to any harsh work loads today, and I am thoroughly enjoying the rest. I have let my mind wonder between distributed pattern recognition (Newell Machines), to gather raw information and assimilating it into knowledge (for the e-Travel project), to developing a main page for my blog. I think that the main page (nonexistent at this point) could use some thought - and some work. There is also the cross linking feature that needs some work.     2003-03-11 Today was the best day that I have had in a while...so I am making a cheerful, positive entry in my blog...enjoy.

    Today was not a great day at work, I am still struggling with the firewall project there. It has become the bane of my existence, in the most proverbial way. At lunch, however, I received a bit of exceptional news: my presentation on clustering in distributed systems won the award for Best Paper Presentation for Research in Physical Science. It comes with a fifty dollar reward, which is nice, but I'm more excited about the new shiny golden bullet I can put on my CV.

    Also in the news today, my best friend Minor Gordon has passed his German test, and so it looks like he will be spending quite a bit more time in Berlin *grin* Congrats Minor, best of luck.

    Now back to my rotten day. There was another good thing that happened tonight. I was sitting and having some coffee with Maryna at Starbuck's. I was drinking a very pleasant hot chai, and she had a rich cup of mocha. I was completely worn out when I arrived, I had spent the last hour and a half napping. Being near her gives me strength; I feel revitalized.

    Music for the night: Coco de Mer

    Plans for the night: ALIS (Agent Lab Indexing Spider) version .01.     2003-03-14 I came home from work today completely frustrated with the world. Granted, I'm mediocre at my job, it is not a reason to disrespect me as a person. Everyone deserves a basic level of human respect. I am not afforded this respect by my employers, and certainly not by many of my coworkers. I told myself "Don't feel sorry for yourself, change your circumstances". After meditating for two hours, and taking a shower, I feel I have recovered from the de-humanizing humiliation that I was put through at the office today. People think it is fun to tease me, because I "take it well". I am like the Chinese in this respect - I smile when insulted. I wonder sometimes what they think they are accomplishing by ridiculing me in such a way.

         2003-03-16 Life will not surprise me, if when I awake in the morning that the United States is at war with Iraq. The deadline was set for the 17th, that is tomorrow. I am not worried. I am not particularly for going to war with any nation, there are times however when it becomes necessary to ensure the safety of innocence, whether near or abroad. Is this one of those times? I cannot say. I can only ashamedly say that I feel our nation has been set on war for the last 8 months, when we shipped out the heavy armer from a Fort where my parents live. I am deeply concerned with the consequences of such an engagement, yet reserve some hope for the best possible out come. 2003-03-17 An Ode to Nerdom It is St. Patrick's day, I am sitting in a deserted Cafe Borders reading over academic papers. No reviews today, only trivial pursuits of personal interest. The fact the cafe is empty makes me smile a bit. It isn't often it feels so barren, and so personable.

    I am also reflecting on my entry from the 14th. Interestingly enough, I realize that I shouldn't take such jauntings seriously, but there are days and times when it gets under my skin - especially when I feel I have had enough of life. It is the kick me when I'm down syndrome.

    No war today, it looks like tomorrow, or perhaps Wednesday, things will break out. This morning, the United States of America officially suggested that the United Nations Inspectors withdraw from Iraq. The US also withdrew from debate on a new UN resolution mapping out peace for Iraq, all in all, things look fairly bleak.

    Dr. Paprzycki called me to ask about my applications into RPI and FSU. I just rounded up my test scores and transcripts and mailed them off last week. I hope that they will find their way on to Smansky's desk sometime this week. Still stymied on FSU - I need to round up another letter of reference.     2003-03-19 As I sleep tonight, my country is at war with Iraq. Anticipation troubled my sleep last night, perhaps tonight rest will come as less of a struggle. 2003-03-20 The bombing in Iraq continues. Today I am thoroughly exhausted and frustrated. I have been battling the firewall upgrade at work so much that I have forgotten what it is like to complete a task.

    Today, I purchased a book on Carbon programming. Carbon is Apple's programming interface for OS X. I intend to do some damage *grin* I would like to see a native GUI for Nessus - as well as a scanning tool built on top of Scanrand, because I believe it has superior scanning speed. So much to do, so little time.

    I haven't heard from RPI yet ;( I need to get back at it, but I am just so worn out lately.     2003-03-23 To those without understanding I envy those to who life seamlessly flows;
    to those whose circumstance lend ease of travel
    from thought invoked inspiration,
    through trivial tribulation,
    and onward to completion.

    As for the rest of us, on with the struggle.
    For we enjoy the sweeter victory when success does pay homage,
    for it has been difficultly earned - borne on weary shoulders.     2003-03-24 Laundry I did laundry tonight. After starting my loads, I briefly surveyed the crowd. The obese Hispanic women gossip frenziedly, straining to ignore their children rampaging around the room emitting glass-shattering squeals of excitement while barreling from corner to corner as if it where the very running of the bulls in Madrid. The Hispanic men wait outside, easing their boredom with the soothing drone of mellow Latin music streaming from car speakers nearby where they sit, smoking.

    There are the poor white hicks with their drawn accents colorfully chewing out insightful statements - hardly worth the breath vanquished in the effort to speak. They are the worst groomed and worst dressed among the busy crowd. It would be no surprise to find several high school drop-outs among their ranks. Still they are humble and intriguing, and I ponder frequently how any grown person could enjoy "Monday Night Nitro" so much.

    The occasional drunk stumbles in from the bar next door; tonight yielded a short American Indian man with grey hair handedly hidden by a yellow baseball hat. His speech so slurred even the white trash had trouble understanding his muttering. "Peace," he stammered, trailing off into a string of grunts and groans so mangled as not to be English at all, but a language of his own design. What high praises he must have uttered! To high for us to be sure. Perhaps a diatribe, through slovenly lips he sowed? Only God knows. Three times he spoke, moving from the front to the rear, and three times he spoke again coming from the rear again to the front before wheeling around the corner and reentering the bar. The small crowd, stunned, paused momentarily from the monotony of their chores; and shaking their heads, they gawked in awe and amazement. My jaw also dropped before a smirk creept over my countenance, pulling it back into an awkward and cockeyed smile. Holding a second, the smile relaxed, fading back into my normal unconcerned expression. My momentary interest adrift quickly - I returned to my book.     2003-03-25 There were reports of heavy fighting today in Iraq, the good news is that it appears as though some of the Iraqi population has begun to revolt against Sadam's ruling party. Hopefully this will help and not hinder the war efforts.

    I have decided to buy a wireless access point for my apartment. While I have plans to secure it eventually, initially I will just drop it in place. So much for being a Security Professional!!

    Work was good today. Thursday night I will doing a risky procedure to try and wrap up the firewall migration. I really pray this works, my strength for dealing with this issue has drained completely and my frustration level is rising daily. ;(

    In other news, I am struggling to make it past page 500 on Stephen Wolfram's new book A New Kind of Science. It is an informative and eye opening read, but not terribly stimulating as reading goes. Perhaps the fact that after 500 pages of reading I am yet half way through the book causes me some vexation. After making it this far, I realize that when I finish I will have to begin anew in order for me to master the subject -- it is just that big. Everything from Biology to Physics under one cover.     2003-03-30 Two Giraffe and a Papasan!! What a great couple of days! I took the last few days off from my extra-curricular activities to rest, relax, and reflect on topics of varying nature. My best friend from high school, Brian Wunderlick, came to town on Wednesday night. We had a blast catching up, playing pool, playing basketball, and discussing relationships. Here's to Brian, who always knows when to step out for a few minutes - I owe you one.

    A very good friend of mine from college, Anthony, then dropped into town on Friday. Him, myself, and Maryna went bowling. It was also a blast. I forced Anthony to stay and bowl 5 lines, to my surprise and his amazement, he bowled a 207 on the 4th line and a 198 on the 5th. This turned out to be his two best games ever. Needless to say, he kicked mine...although I did win the first three games *grin*

    Today, I saw Fritz Lang's Metropolis for the first time. It was a newly restored version, targeted to match the original movie opening - before edited by the Nazi's in Germany and MPAA here in the States (notice a correlation here?). Around 25% of the original footage was still missing, and is considered destroyed, this version however included some great scenes missing from previous releases here in the States.

    After the film, Maryna and I stopped for a cup of joe and went shopping at Peer One. This is one of her favorite stores - mine as well. While we were there I found a nice looking Papasan chair, which I readily bought for my thinking spot. My thinking spot is a place in the front of my apartment were the warm summer light filters in through the blinds, carrying with it energy and inspiration. Previously I sat there with Bean-bags, but I'm getting too old to recover easily from that kind of abuse, so I have sought out a more accommodating arrangement. Maryna had suggested many times that I move one of my two sofa's into the front window to take advantage of the light, but this would mean displacing my beloved plants. I've always thought a nice reading chair would fight there handedly - now a solution has presented itself quite nicely.

    While at Peer One, I also scoped out a pair of giraffes which are book ends. I am going to re-arrange my desk, the whole back room in fact, for these critters. Cheers.     2003-03-31 Dispirited Esprit I had far too many desperate and depressing thoughts today. Mostly these leeching thoughts were the results of comments maid to me by my coworkers. First Greg Brooks, in reference to my desktop machine blue screening , says "Great, just what I need from you, lower productivity". That really set me off. I am a "Security Professional" so it is essential that I maintain an up to date system. I was applying the latest hot-fixes for Win 2000, resulting in a blue screen. If Greg wants to demerit my work he should do it at a more appropriate time, not when I am trying to do something right. Incident number two: Sean Mullen says to Jimmie Byington "Here is our second clown right here," upon seeing me in the Com Room. Yes, and these are the guys who have repeatedly lectured me on what they feel a "professional" should act like; note, they never say that a professional should be like anything, all they infer is acting a certain way. Does any one else see the difference? One is only surface deep, and the other has weight and merit.

    Needless to say, my morale went straight into the dumper today. I went to lunch and contemplated flatly resigning, this marks the first thoughts along this line, previously I imagine leaving to go elsewhere. I actually made a list of my grievances.

    Why I must leave:

  • My employer takes for granted the things I do well while repeatedly and deeply denigrating my mediocre performance on activities I struggle with.

  • I am the recipient of verbally abusive treatment

  • I am publicly humiliated, including in front of the company's customers; laughter at my expense is quite entertaining to my peers, one might say that I was the company laughing stock

  • My character and esprit are mocked jovially and continually.

  • My work, schedule, performance, work-load, punctuality, attitude, and every other quality are scrutinized to a degree far beyond that of any of my peers.

  • Everything I do is second guessed - including suggestions that I make; granted sometimes it is necessary due to my bantam ability in the networking arena.

  • Finally, it should be noted that I learn as a child learns - by my mistakes, and there is no room for this approach to learning in this environment
    •

    In short, I feel that I have every reason to resign, and yet I have no where to go, and so I stay.

    On a lighter note I bought an 802.11g Wireless access point in order to enjoy the Internet from the comfort of my new Papasan chair, pleasingly placed in my favorite thinking spot. While trying to configure the access point, my Virtual PC crashed, and so I went ahead and bought the upgrade...ahhh!!! Even though I have a Macintosh, I am still paying out the yanger for Microsoft crap. I was hoping to be able to post this entry from my chair, because the thought gives me a smile, but it doesn't look probable for tonight ;(     2003-04-01 I made a small break-through with the firewall today. Yesterday when I tried upgrading the production firewall, the installer died with a Dr. Watson error - not good. Neither myself nor support really had an idea why it did this. After digging around today, I realized that many of the objects in the database where designated as 4.0 objects, and these are no longer supported. So, today I spent all my time deleting and recreating 68 out-dated firewall objects - joy. While it makes me feel good to have discovered this problem, it will probably still bomb out on the install, because that is how this project has gone.

    Tonight, I filed my taxes - I would like to thank George Bush for the gracious return that I will be getting.

    I am exhausted. Bedtime.

    Not quite, I did a little work on my blog uploading script. Now I should only be uploading files that have changed, where as before I was uploading all previous entries each time I made a new entry 2003-04-02 When Al-Qaeda Strikes... I had a night terror about a spider at 2am this morning. I distinctly remember having a night terror about a spider about two weeks before September 11th, I pray that it is merely coincidence. In the first night terror I woke up screaming: " I saw a spider!!". This morning I woke up in a cold sweat screaming: "A spider is biting me!!". Neither case produced any physical evidence of a spider.

    My sister's husband John holds a theory that I rather respect: Al-Qaeda attacks against America (September 11th, the Kenya attack, etc) are spaced apart by about 18 months. This April represent the space roughly 18 months after September 11th.

    Well, I made some progress on the firewall at work, only to be stumped again. It looks like a file permissions issue, but I checked the permissions, and they appear to be fine.

    Terri "The Devil" Blevins sent me an email today. She was my undergraduate advisor at Oklahoma State University, and an obstacle that every student must overcome. She noted my award in the Graduate Symposium and inquired whether or not I had considered obtaining a PhD. I replied, "Of course I have, and I intend to move that direction." She immediate response back with "What is wrong with OSU-Tulsa?"

    Let me count the ways:

  • 1. I would be their first PhD student at OSU-Tulsa for Computer Science...LOL, I don't think so. Maybe they like me so much, they decide not to let me graduate!


  • 2. If I stayed, I would be taking "Master's" level courses that I already took as an undergrad. The same professors, the same subjects, the same classrooms - no thanks.


  • 3. It is not likely that I would receive full support and stipens - no they like to reserve that for highly qualified Linux installers for the various labs around.


  • 4. No one in academia would respect me if I graduated from Oklahoma State. (This is the thing that Terri doesn't understand )


  • 5. There are no fresh ideas floating around the students here; that is where the magic happens.


  • 6. Limited research opportunities.


  • 7. Limited post-graduate research opportunities.


    • That about covers it. I have to say I would rather stay in the industry than get another degree from OSU.

    Music for the night: Bach, Bach, Bach!!! I just can't get enough in the Spring.     2003-04-03 I started reading "An Introduction to Carbon" tonight. It is very good, actually after a few minutes of reading I realized how easy the Carbon interface is; it appears to be superbly laid out. I remember when I was a freshmen in College I looked into some GUI programming for Windows and X. While I didn't spend much time investigating X windows programming, Microsoft Windows is extremely complicated (IMHO). Not so with Carbon. I think I'm in love *grin*

    Maryna started reading this book by Rodger Penrose: "The Emporer's New Mind". She was amazed at how closely related Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) is to Philosophy alla Plato, De Carte, et al. I was very pleased that she is taking an interest in my field, not that I'm a nazi about it. I'm perfectly happy with her intellectual abilities, and even though we might never have a meaningful discussion about first order logics, she could lecture me for hours about renessance artist. Non the less, it is very cool that she is reading this book. She is already beginning to see why my eyes light up when discussing great topics in Computer Science, and this is a joy for me.

    Dr. Paprzycki killed my desire to write academic papers - at least for a while. It was good that he was working with me on my Clustering idea, but it was a huge disappointment that he was trying to work the angle. He is always trying to work the angle, trying to turn me, trying to get me to devote my life to his allegence and his project. There are various aspects of the system that I find somewhat interesting, but I am not interested in the project as a whole. I can only follow where my energy goes. At the same time, I have an urge lately to contribute, unfortunately, work has been kicking my arse - limiting my available energy and willingness to sit in front of a computer out side of the job.

    On a similar note, I noticed that I have been reading less (in general), but desiring to produce some programs. I feel confident that within six months I will have a very descent repatoire of programming examples. Some in NASL, some in Carbon, some in Perl, and perhaps some in Java. I feel like it is about time to add another bullet to my CV.     2003-04-05 A day without rain... I spent the morning sleeping. I could have gotten up, I wasn't really tired on this beautiful Saturday morning, but as usual laziness prevailed as I lay in bed drifting periodically between sleep and wake. Drifting. Drifting. Waking.

    My friend Anthony called me around 11am, just after I stepped out of the shower, he wanted to do lunch. We made plans for noon at Wendy's in Utica Square. At 11:30 am he called back and said that he would call me when he was leaving. Noon passed, then 12:30. I went to lunch without him. He called around 12:45 or 1pm. This is a pattern with him: he has trouble breaking away from his AOL connection long enough to get ready, so he is continually late. ;(

    After eating, I spent a leisurely afternoon reading and studying at the local Starbuck's coffee shop. It is intrusively loud here ( I say here because I am writing this as I sit ). The background music isn't; not even my headphones can prevent the invading sounds - no matter how mellow the tunes. The patrons are loud gaudy Americans, so one can expect the accompanying ruckus, still the coffee is good and the shop within walking distance of Wendy's.

    Tonight, I am going to a party with Maryna. It is her friend's birthday. Birthday's are huge with the Slavic crowd. I heard a statistic a couple of weeks back stating that 60% of Russian men were alcoholics - I think that number may run a little low *grin*     2003-04-06 Perhaps it isn't fair to say that Dr. Paprzycki was solely responsible for killing my desire to write. One, it is wrong to blame any one but myself more my current lack of motivation. Two, a person can only have such an effect if you let them. That is it - my will is no longer strong enough to fight off attacks; indeed if we can call these attacks, resistance is perhaps more correct. I am tired of the resistance people provide so freely, this by their human nature: disbelieving, distrusting, self-centered beast-hood. Truly, Dr. P is not responsible for his self-promoting, self-preserving behavior, this behavior was learned. The academic system is at fault for this, corrupting its patrons, transforming them into a twisted version of their once pure pursuits. Papers, papers, papers. Who will write? Thinking is no longer required, you don't write the truth, you must write what the crowd wants to hear.

    In all fairness, there is some terrific work being done in academia. World changing work - but this work is obscured by the mass of illegitimate ramblings of the game players.

    What is science?? I was taught that science is posing a question, and then systematically defining an experiment to answer the hypothesis. Has it changed so much? Few care whether their methods are truly scientific so long as their "results" are "publishable".

    Yesterday, I had some mental progress (indeed this is what I will call all of my ideas from now on - until I implement them) on the Newell machine. It came difficultly. I had some vague idea, some visualization of the workings of the machine, but no idea what I was trying to express, until now, now I have an inkling. I wanted Cellular Automata to be able to compress files, to generate transformations, recognize patterns, multiply matrices, to be a black-box calculating machine grinding through millions of calculations with the ease of 4 or 5 simple rules. I am picturing the wedding of Cellular Automata with Genetic Algorithms. I am picturing a parallel system. I am picturing emergent behavior. I am picturing discovery - simply discovery. 2003-04-07 What great fortune today, Greg asked that I go to a Windows XP training class this morning (He really thinks that I am not proficient with Windows because I don't like using it - and I was behind when I first took this job but not so much now, even though there are still things that I don't know ). In any case, I ended up winning a copy of Windows XP professional ( the full copy, not the upgrade version ). This presents some very interesting opportunities. Like the possibility of buying another laptop ( a cheap one ) to put windows/linux on... For now, I just installed XP on my Virtual PC box - now I have an unpatched version of Windows 2000 and XP Professional.

    I went to Barnes & Noble and got on the free wireless network, good coffee and the Internet - you can't beat that. Tonight I have done a little research on various things, nothing serious. Now I am going to play a few games of chess and get to bed.

    Music for the Night: Bach 2003-04-08 Gidget is my new name for Checkpoint NG because it is a total tease. Today, I successfully pushed a policy from the back-up management console to the back-up firewall on version 4.1. It took most of the morning to get the damned things to version 4.1, I should have stopped and waited a night so that the server would get backed-up, however, given the extremely overdue nature of the project, I pushed forward. After the upgrade to NG for the second time, the backup management console exhibited the same behavior as the production console - I couldn't manipulate objects in the object database, nor load licenses with SmartUpdate. Before I gave up from exhaustion around 5:45, I tried manually upgrading the objects database, which bombed out leaving me with the proverbial pile of rumble. Tomorrow, I will see what I can do to resurrect the beast. Perhaps I can put it back on the network, copy the production (4.1) configs over and try to do the manual update once again. 2003-04-09 The Words of the Profit Isaiah Chapter 13, verse 2 Prophecies about Babylon [Iraq]

    Lift up a standard on the bare hill,
    Raise your voice to them,
    Wave the hand that they may enter the doors of the nobles.
    I have commanded My consecrated ones,
    I have even called My mighty warriors,
    My proudly exulting ones,
    To execute My anger.
    A sound of the uproar of kingdoms,
    Of nations gathered together!
    The Lord of hosts is mustering the army for battle.
    They are coming from a far country
    From the farthest horizons,
    The Lord and His instruments of indignation,
    To destroy the whole land.

    2003-04-11 I ran a five kilometer race tonight. It was tough, I haven't been training very rigorously since Minor left, but I had an okay outing despite this. The thing that hindered my performance the most was having to work the outage the night before, staying up until 4:30 am while getting only 4 and a half hours of sleep before a road race is not a good thing. I kept a good pace, but I did have the drive to push my self. After we maid the turn at 2 and a half kilometers I was feeling the fatigue. Still, I tried to stay with the pack that I was with. In my head I kept telling myself: "That's your pack, stay with them." As we neared the finish line, I found myself looking for Maryna in the crowd.

    My time was a little over 21 minutes even. I'm guessing that I came in around 32nd place - but I don't know for sure. Minor probably would have ran a 19 something on this day *grin* I was pleased that I beat all the other runners from my company.     2003-04-12 Today I played my second round of golf for the season - it was a rough outing, but fun. I took in too much sun as well. I came home to find an auspicious letter waiting for me in my postbox, mail on Saturday is unusual. The letter was a communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Graduate school I applied to recently, I decided not to open it until I could share the moment with Maryna. It could be a moment of triumph or defeat, either way I am glad to hear something. 2003-04-13 Herds and Herds of <i>God's Little Cows</i>... I held the envelope in my hand, my breath quickened, for an instance I let myself slip into a day dream of what life could be like after opening this envelope. The move away from the corporate world and back into my beloved academia, where my days would be filled with intrigue, discovery, research, passion, so on and so forth. I intentionally waited to open it until I could share the moment with Maryna. She sat across from me smiling, waiting intently for the news, always hoping for the best, knowing that it is the desire of my heart. A smile flashed across my face, I waved the unopened envelope through the air jocundly, ignoring for a moment the weight of the news contained within. The day dream faded, I came to my senses and started opening the edge of the envelope. I slid my finger under the flap tearing it gently - then I ripped off the end of the white tomb. I unfolded the crisp white letter slowly reading my name and address as a warm up to the news.

    There is something about letters of this nature which inclines the writers to break the news as early as possible; after two words I knew I had been rejected. My eyes began to burn as I tried to hold back tears, Maryna wrapped her loving arms around my neck comforting me and kissing my forehead. I nodded in acceptance, telling myself that I had been prepared for many rejection letters on the road to finding a scholarly home; still, the first one's bite penetrated me, leaving a bitter stinging sensation in its wake.

    Later that evening, Maryna and I went for an evening stroll to enjoy the remarkably beautiful weather. On the way we passed a clover patch, and as a child delighted with simple pleasures in life Maryna bent to marvel at the smooth greenness. A smile crept over her face as she combed through the turf. I crouched down with her, watching with amazement as she plucked a single stem from the clutter. She smiled as she gave it to me, "Here we go," uttering one of her favorite delightful expressions (even more delightful with her slight British accent). It was a four leaf clover. "I feel that my luck is changing already," I replied with a grin.

    God's Little Cows is the literal translation of the Russian word for a Lady-Bug.     2003-04-14 I played golf today as part of the Corporate Challenge, I had a hot putter and nothing else. It was a good day of rest. 2003-04-18 Coffee brings us together Coffee brings us together. Young and old, male and female, punk and prep, coffee brings us together. It is a warm spring day. The wind running from corner to corner, wrapping its warmth around all. A middle aged man with a pony-tail sits in the shade with a block-chined younger tatoo'd man. It looks like they are having quite the conversation - though it doesn't survive the glass separating us. Coffee brings us together. A hispanic couple sit in the corner by the front window with a friend, I don't know much spanish, but it sounds as though they are discussing plans for a restaurant. A young intense man sits on the right side of the room, he is intently reading some white papers, occasionally glancing up to check out the passers-by. Young girls shopping with their mothers stop for coffee too, though they don't sit to enjoy it. A middle aged Jewish man takes a seat in the middle of the room, he is waiting for someone - and while he waits he enjoys a rich blend of coffee. Coffee, it brings us together: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, Orthodox, or atheist - coffee brings us together. 2003-04-20 While going to meet some friends, Maryna and I passed another patch of clovers... she stooped momentarily and upon rising, held another four-leafed clover in her hands. Absolutely amazing. I told her I want to start selling them on e-bay. 2003-04-23 Last night Maryna needed some support and comfort to deal with some issues at her job, this left me more than a little tired when I made it home. Naturally, I was late to work the morning after - I didn't make it in until almost 9am. Out walks Dave "The New Kid on the Block" Henderson. He looks at me, then purposefully looks down at his watch - as if it is his job to track what time I come in to work. Then he goes out of his way to harass me about it, "We're going to have to have a talk about your schedule," he says with this smug ass grin on his face. I know you can't see this Dave, but here is the finger to you. You don't know my schedule, you didn't know that I was scheduled to work late on a web server migration, you didn't know that I had issues to deal with outside of work the night before, and you obviously don't realize that I cannot stand smug people who have no business asserting their judgment over me especially in regard to MY schedule. To Dave H., I give the finger not once but twice!!! - neigh three times bia'ch.

    Another ironic bit of information: Colleen stopped by to have lunch with Greg, and Greg mentioned to me that he had a dream that I "pulled a Gomez on him", meaning that I walked into his office and told him "I've had enough" and quite on the spot. I laughed and smiled quite widely as I responded, "I've had that dreams 15 or 20 times!" I followed this up with: "It's not like I get treated extremely well here." A good example would be Dave Henderson's remarks to me this morning - this turns out to be quite a typical thing around the office. People think that because they are a couple of years older than me that they are wiser; they are not. You have to understand the motives of others to be wise - they do not. Not only do I understand other people, I understand myself which makes me not only wise but enlightened. This isn't bragging, I suffered long and hard, through my suffering things came to light - most of these revolved around me and one of several questions: Who am I? What am I doing with my life? What do I want to do with my life? Why am I so lonely? What is wrong with me? What is right with me? The list goes on. When you truly turn your eyes unassumingly and presumptively on yourself you learn a lot. I would guess, that there are not many among our ranks at Tulmel that have done this.

    There was a second half of the dream that Greg didn't disclose. I would guess that one of two events occurred in the second half of his dream: my leaving lead to Greg being demoted or being fired, or my leaving lead to the entire company's demise in the eyes of our customers - meaning the customer exacted a ninety day out after I left. Either of these to options would not surprise me. I can tell that Greg is worried, I could see the fear in his eyes. His actions, on the other hand, reveal to me that he has told himself that it was only a dream; he is not taking heed! It wasn't two hours after he talked to me about his dream that smarted off about my performance review to a fellow employee. The exact kind of thing that makes me want to leave!! First of all, he shouldn't have been discussing my performance review with my peers! Secondly, he said "That's set in stone - six months of zero production!" in regard to my review. Yes, I have struggled with the firewall upgrade. Yes, that daily struggle has meant I had less time to work on other things. I have hardly had "zero production" . While I have struggled with the firewall, I have maintained my other responsibilities fairly well! I have not slipped much on the daily administration of the production firewall. I have not failed to fulfill my on-call responsibilities. I have been supervising the Interns activities, and she has made quite a bit of progress on the WAN site database. I have been supervising our new employee Josh's progress on his first big project - making sure that he didn't drown. Well, that isn't exactly nothing! Granted my production has been reduced, but it certainly isn't zero. If I weren't producing anything, then that means that anyone could stand in and do my job; as far as I can tell, if I left, they would be hurting pretty bad. I have half a mind to make his dream prophetic just to show him that his perception of my performance is more or less skewed.     2003-04-28 musings... Tonight I ran with a fire I haven't had since early in the Summer. I haven't pushed myself so hard since Minor left for Berlin. I think it was because I really felt like getting out for a run, my head was cloudy with thought, running purifies it like a pilgrimage.

    Greg has either been reading my blog *grin* or having a recurring nightmare.

    Maryna is at a poetry reading - one of the great Russian poets is performing at University of Tulsa. It seemed like she didn't want me to go. She said she didn't want to put me into "Russian Culture Overload". Cute. I had much work to do tonight any way, and while I appreciate good poetry - I don't particularly care to hear the poets read it to me; don't get me wrong, there are some poets who are absolutely magical when they read, most are a let down and I would rather hear the poem in my own voice.

    Plans for the night: Working on an Academic Paper.
    Music for the night: Everything Classical (Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven)     2003-04-29 Untitled My Brain is on fire with a madness,
    Business consumes me;
    I am taken with the torrent.

    Hurriedly frenzy, unforgiving rush.
    My mind exploding -- firing every cylinder!
    Desperately seeking convergence, focus, calm.     2003-05-02 Utica Square feels like Portland again today. Leaves nearly illuminescent green against the overcast sky. The sun breaks through some, caressing the tree trunks, tenderly wrapping them in light. I am relaxing after work, Spanish folk music drifts down from the overhead speakers while I stare out the large glass panes facing the walkway outside. The stress of the week eases away. 2003-05-03 This is the way to work. It is a late Spring evening, I am outside by the river enjoying the pleasant weather, the cool breeze, the clouds, and Bach. Everyday should be like today. 2003-05-09 It has been some time since I have updated my blog. I have spent most of my time working. I have more things to do than I have time to do them in. This week I put in around 50 hours at work. The good news is that Greg suggested that I would be getting a raise. I hadn't planned on have a raise, and with my Graduate career taking off slowly a raise is a good thing.

    We have three audits, two underway and one coming quickly. I feel good about my contributions to the current audit. It turned out that it is mostly a web application audit, and although we didn't own the box, we did get into to one of their web applications as an administrative user. Beyond that, I have found a second major problem with their site, as I dig into that, I believe that I will find it runs deeper than expected.

    I read a good quote a couple of weeks ago. I would like to share it here: Success is going from one failure to the next without losing enthusiam -- Sir Winston Churchill

    I have been listening to a lot of R.E.M. and Matthew Sweet lately, a return to my rock roots?? I have also been putting some work into my website -- you can't see it yet it's not finished; I promise you will like it, or at least you should and if you don't too bad.     2003-05-11 Maryna and I went to see the Emerson Quartet on Saturday afternoon. May I say, I believe this is the best string quartet that I have ever heard. They have been playing together for 25 years - they have been playing music together for as long as I have been alive.

    I put about 50 hours in at work last week, this week will likely be around 60. I have two audits going and one coming up the pipe, plus I will be out of the office all week in training - that makes it tough.     2003-05-12 Remember Big Chief tablets from your school days? How about Boys against Girls on the play ground - the modified version of tag, where every member of one gender was it all at once, until they caught one person on the opposite side. Kickball, dodge ball, four square, and soccer. Man, being a grade schooler was the life. Issues included: what to wear to school, memorizing spelling words, what to do after school, and which girls you thought were prettiest, nicest, sweetest, and so on. Times have changed. The hustle and bustle of adult life leaves little time for true wonderment. I want to leave this system. 2003-05-13 Do you remember elementary school?? I am almost 26 now, so it is getting a little foggy, but that isn't the point I want to make. When I was in elementary school, around 3rd grade, I remember our science teachers telling us that "the atom is the smallest unit of matter". This just isn't the case, we have electrons, neutrons, protons, and these are made of smaller units of quarks and various other things. I'm no physicist so I won't get into details of atoms and such, arguments of this kind are of a secondary nature here. The point I want to make today is that: things change. The bleak outlook of one afternoon seems to cast its shadow far into our futures. In reality this isn't the case; after a while of carrying on, suddenly we are past the shadows. My message today is that every Spring needs a Winter. Spring is that wonderful time in life where we bloom as people, are talents are coming to fruition and we start to feel successful. You can't develop your talents without failures, challenges, tribulations, and adventures. Remember the old Webster's definition of adventure: an uncomfortable experience encountered under foreign circumstances. Chin up young people - Spring is coming.

    The mountain which is most difficult to climb becomes a footstool from which our triumphs are harolded. -- Lao Tsu     2003-05-16 I am getting closer to finishing my web site's make-over. I am having issues with Gimp created graphics rendering well under IE; it is almost like the browser knows it should display the image with no anti-aliasing what-so-ever. I hate Microsoft. I bet if I used a Microsoft version of photoshop that it would render 100% better, but I am determined to make the site look as good on Microsoft as it does under Safari on my Macintosh, and so I will continue to slave away at editing the graphics. I burned two hours on this tonight. ;( 2003-05-18 Maryna and I went to Mayfest today. Mayfest is a Tulsa festival of art and culture that happens every May. There was some nice art there. The highlight of my day was eating German Roasted Almonds. 2003-05-19 Maryna and I saw Audrey Tautou's latest film, it was a masterpiece: He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

    There is a new movement in French Film started with Amelie. Vivid, almost surreal colors, deep reds, jade colored greens; deep saturated color only possible with digital processing.

    2003-05-20 nemo servus potest duobus dominis Again, I have grown weary of keeping up with St John business and outside business. 2003-05-22 The Zoo The air smelled as ginger when we walked in - holding hands, smiling, and laughing. It was a clean and fresh afternoon, heavy morning showers cleansed the dense air leaving a light pleasant taste to it. The walls of the cafe were painted with scenes of European streets, markets, and delicatessens, and the attendants quickly took our order. We were the first customers of the late afternoon. Delightfully consuming our lunches and enjoying our rich favored expressos, we decided that it was the perfect afternoon for a trip to the zoo. Maryna and I had never been to the zoo.

    We pulled up to the parking kiosk slowly, realizing for the first time that I had no cash to pay for parking. I began to rummage through the car's ash tray - where I keep my spare change. "Fifty cents," it was not enough. Maryna couldn't find any cash in her purse either and we sat thinking for a moment what we should do. Finally a stranger in a white suburban pulled along side. I lowered the window inquisitively. "Here you go," the kind older woman said, she couldn't have been more than 60 years old, but certainly no less than 50. She handed be a white stub with some print on it. "It is a parking pass!" she said smiling as the car rolled away. Gleefully, I pulled up to the toll taker, who gave me a pronouncedly disappointed look. She was obviously sad to see the generosity of another spare us from paying $2 for parking. I would have gladly of paid the money if I had the cash to do so, I did not.

    The air was quite muggy at the zoo, almost a bit too warm. Still we perused around the exhibits. I had purchased a disposable camera for the occasion, cheerfully and childly snapping pictures as they caught my fancy. Maryna blushed whenever I turned the lens onto her - placing her hands into the space between the camera and herself, as if she was too hideous to film. "Rubbish," I thought to myself. She was beautiful in the afternoon light. The sun gently caressed her cheeks adding a tinge of pinkness and vividness to them. Her lips finely outlined with rouge, curved with perfection when she smiled. She liked the giraffes. They are a curious beast, something between a camel and a horse, but stretched out and speckled brown and tan by the very hand of God.

    God: now that is a conundrum. What is this deity that we hold so high? Truly I say we, I am a deep believer in the righteous and holy God. This doesn't deter me from asking deep philosophical questions about existence, the universe, the meaning of life, God, evolution, and all the creatures on the earth - human, flora, fauna, insects and so on. Curious creatures we are indeed. Last week Maryna, an assistant at a chiropractor's office, was executing therapy on a patient who is of the faith. In deed, a faith stronger than mine, more demanding than mine, a proud faith, a faith that leads her to refer to herself as Pentecostal. She attends a rather large church, if you lived in Tulsa, as I do, you would certainly be familiar with this organization. This woman felt the need to pray for Maryna while receiving therapy. All in all, not a bad thing - as we could all use some prayer now and again. Still, she began to pray out loud. Clearly uncomfortable with the situation, it was all Maryna could do to say thank-you. Thank-you! Yes, thank-you for judging me when you don't know me. Thank-you, for belittling me in my place of employment. Thank-you, for putting me down - I hope you made yourself feel better.

    How judgmental Christians have become. Isn't it written that a man cannot see into the heart of another? Would Christ have handled himself in this fashion - forcing prayers onto someone?? I think no. Christ, even as the son of God in the flesh, humbly approached many of the worst sinners, affording them respect and dignity that others did not. Did he belt out a prayer for Zacherias: "Woe to you, you cheat, you fraud, you sinner. You need God!!! Repent!!!" Again, no. His ways were subtle, tender, and merciful. Maryna is Eastern Orthodox. This isn't a sect that is respected by certain other factions. As I know her, Maryna is a believer; no she might not have explicitly "ask Jesus into her heart"; I ask: is this a requirement? Doesn't Romans 10:10 say: that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that you will be saved (paraphrased)? I attended the Greek Orthodox Easter service, remarkably, it was very similar to any Baptist or Methodist (especially Methodist) church service that I have ever been to, the only exception being the priest sing everything instead of speaking. I am openly ashamed to call myself a Christian, though I am a believer. It is the behavior of the other believers that place this shame on me; is it not shame to cause the righteousness of a holy God to be placed under human desire for proof - for works - to place this holy deity under the judgment of a lowly human?? Is it not shame to place ourselves next to God's righteous Son, whilst lowering our fellow man with labels like sinner. I say to you: I am the lowest man and a decrepit sinner. And yet, I do not label my fellowmen. I say to you that the act of this stranger at the gate of the zoo is more righteous in the eyes of God than the prayer offered by this patient, for in the kingdom of God the least will be the greatest and the greatest the least. This woman became a servant to us, giving us passage into the zoo, and this patient become authoritarian looking down her nose at some poor lost child - little does she know the heart or mind of the child she is judging.
    2003-05-28 I did laundry last night *sigh* I hate doing my laundry. While doing my laundry I finished off the "Tao Te Ching". I found it interesting and inspiring. After finishing the book, I got a bit bored waiting on my laundry to dry and my eyes fell onto the Mrs. Packman arcade game in the corner. It had been many years since I had played Mrs. Packman, I strolled over to take a look. Hmm... the high score was only 34,000. "I can do better," I said as I popped a quarter in the machine. My first attempt felled the high score, but since I had a second quarter, I went ahead and raised the bar again to 54,000. *grin* Satisfaction. I guess it is a little bit like graffiti - knowing that somewhere there is a place for you in the world, even if it is only on a video screen in a laundry-mat. 2003-05-29 I am tired. I have grown weary of the put downs, the snide remarks, the jokes that every thinks are so funny except for me the victim, the butt. I try to ignore it when it is my coworkers making the comments, but my boss making jokes is unacceptable. I can't think clearly; I am entirely disappointed, frustrated, and disgusted.

    I miss my friend Minor, who always understood what I meant by this, and I thank my girlfriend Maryna for being so understanding. It is difficult to be sensitive. People say mean things, they don't always intend to be hurtful, but that is the way it ends up. I am tired. I want a simpler life; somewhere there has to be a place where only the enlightened are allowed.     2003-06-03 "Sorry, I don't touch smooth glass surfaces on the desks of strangers..." I am sitting here at work, polishing off hour number 27 on day two of the week *grin* I am working on a security audit report - I am stuck on the conclusion section. For those of you who know me well, this shouldn't be a surprise. Much like my Father before me, and his Father before him, finishing anything is monumentally more difficult than beginning. However, fast approaching deadlines help. It is going to be a busy month. Sunday night I will be flying to Birmingham for the second time; I will be presenting a security audit for a client there. I come back on Tuesday. The following Sunday I fly out to Coco Beach, Florida for an internal security audit there... that should actually be fun. Ta Ta For Now. 2003-06-04 Three days and 35 hours later... It's Wednesday and I put in 35 hours at the office already. I think I will take Friday off as a comp-day. I solved another problem today, so it looks like I will be able to ease into the weekend. Sunday I leave for Alabama to deliver a presentation. At least next week Josh will be back in the office to take some of the burden off of me.

    I haven't had a deep thought in my head in at least a week. Am I sad because of this? Yes, I believe I am grieving for my over worked brain. Over worked to the point of shutting off all creative thought - it is a sad, sad day. Still I feel up beat and optimistic and driven.     2003-06-13 Today at work I finally upgraded the backup firewall to NG - I played golf to celebrate. I plan on rolling out my new web page layout tonight, it isn't ready but if I don't put it out there now who knows when it will happen.

    I leave for Coco Beach Florida for an Internal Penetration test on Sunday - I am pumped about this: hacking all day, relaxing on the beach by night.

    Minor finally met a woman whose critique of the english language makes his look laid-back.

    Planning on going to Belarus in August *grin*     2003-06-14 I think I finally recooperated from all of the long hours over the last 2-3 weeks at work... just in time to head off to Florida for an Internal audit. Last year we had an internal penetration test in Alabama, we were working 15 hour days... I'm guessing Florida will be the same (at least for the first week). 2003-06-15 I am writing from 29,000 ft. It is a partially cloudy day, take-off was basically smooth. I will be in Orlando, Florida by nightfall.

    I am pumped about this internal audit. This will be my second major audit, the difference between the first one and this one is my level of experience. I am more confident about my ability to hack now. While I still haven't owned a box, I think that this is going to be the trip where I break through. Sure I have gotten into web applications, and some database stuff, and found cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, and worked magic on a survey form so that it acted like an anonymous remailer -- but it is time to own a box!! The strategy this week: scan the entire internal network on port 80, find vulnerable default web pages on desktop machines, get the SAM file, crack it, use credentials to get into more important machines, elevate my privileges. Game over. Greg offered to play the game with me (see who can crack the most boxes)... I turned him down. I tried using that to motivate me last pen-test and fell flat on my face.

    **Big Smiles** Hacking all day, relaxing on the beach at night *grin*     2003-06-16 Florida: Day One Sunny and partly cloudy, 91 degrees. Pen-Test is going well for day one, we have a complete map of their network, a list of web servers, and a list of HTTPS servers... All in all not a bad start, but as Greg likes to put it: "We don't own a box yet". I am hopeful for Day 2. I have three good looking targets picked out: all have IISSamples installed on their web servers, there is a vulnerability for this that should allow me to browse files on the machine.

    Plans for tomorrow: scan the other address spaces for web servers to hack. Launch serious port scans on interests already identified and run Nessus against them. Brute force cisco networking equipment via telnet. Look at resources we can access via shares

    Relaxed at the beach during diner; very nice night.



    I reviewed some of the work I did today! I incorrectly calculated my box total... after going through and organizing nbtdump results, I realized that I own 7 boxes after day one, and I have a log on to an 8th!!!     2003-06-17 Our penetration test is going extremely well. Ate diner at a Lobster place - had shrimp pasta and didn't eat much. Stopped at the grocery store, picked up a few items. Went for a run on the beach. This was the singly most sublime utopian experience I have had in long time.

    For miles ahead there was only beach, for miles behind - beach. To my left miles of deep blue ocean, crested with shimmering white jewels as the breakers folded into the shallows. To the right, the antiquate feeling shore line: palms freely waving in the gentle breeze, dune-grass cropping up along the fences separating the shore from the hotels lining the road. Above me, teal sky peppered with dusty white clouds. Below me, soft, wet sand, rinsed carefully by the rising tide. I ran along the shore where the ocean meets the land. There is a strip of packed wet sand there, it is good for running on. Here and there I strayed into the surf. The cool water poured over my ankles, down into my shoes and quenched the thirst of my feet, warmed from the constant strike of my stride. I went some way, then turned and overran my previous trail. I cannot say how far I ran - it is difficult to judge the distance there; all of the landmark-hotels started looking the same at dusk: sillouets against the golden-orange sunset. Still I found my way...exhausted, but invigorated, I strolled slowly back to my room.     2003-06-18 Work first, then thoughts on my love lifeThe security audit here in Florida is going better than I could have ever dreamed it would. We wrapped up the day yesterday by hacking into a server named security. I have always dreamed about hacking into a security server and taking control of a security camera, just like in all the hacker movies you see, but you think "That could never happen in real life" - today it did. Here is the play by play:
  • MS SQL was running on port 1434
  • We connected to the database and logged in as the SQL Administrator (SA) with a blank password; at this point we owned all of their data but wanted more
  • We were able to execute shell commands from the database, so we mapped a drive to our server (linux box with an anonymous Samba share).
  • The shares drive contained some tools: netcat, pwdump2, lsadump2, vncpwdump.
  • We then ran netcat on our server listening on a port
  • Next we launched netcat from the database, binding the shell to it, and connecting to our listener; we had shell.
  • Got the SAM file with pwdump2, the VNC password with vncpwdump
  • Cracked the SAM over night
  • Logged in the morning using the freshly cracked passwords
  • Found the security application
  • Discovered that we needed a password to login to the application
  • Used our database privileges to create a user in the database
  • Logged in with our new user
  • Figured out how to watch the cameras!!!
    •  I feel like an IT Rock-star!!

    I had an interesting conversation with Greg and Colleen at lunch today. We were talking about relationships. Greg was talking about his ex-wife and how he never wanted to get married, and everything that was wrong with their relationship and how that is different with Colleen. Colleen and Greg basically asked me if me and Maryna were getting serious - but without phrasing it that way, because if they had I would have clammed up. I told them how I felt about the situation.

    Maryna is the loveliest girl I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and I love her more deeply than I have ever loved before. She makes me laugh - she needs to know that I'm not laughing at her when I laugh, I just find her extremely delightful and humorous. Still our relationship is not without its flaws. My mind tends to wander - I have to be constantly entertained, not by the likes of TV or other normal things, but with intellectual stimulation. This makes simple conversation a struggle for me at times, and I know it takes a toll on Maryna, so she is really a dear for putting up with me for so long. I think that Maryna feels intellectually inadequate for me sometimes, but this is not the case. She is incredibly smart. Not in a geek sort of way (like me: computers, math, and science), but if you go to an art museum with her, I promise you, there will be artist there that she knows: where they were from, what period they worked in, where they worked, about their lives; this is extremely cool and I have mentioned this in the past. Still, I am concerned about our openness as a couple. It has been on my mind for sometime now. I don't think that we could be successful as a couple unless we make some changes in our communication. Last Monday, Maryna had to have her Visa renewed - this is an extremely trying time for all foreigners, and she was really nervous and upset about it but didn't want to tell me. Sure, in passing she mentioned that she was worried about it, but she didn't convey the magnitude of her emotion to me. Instead she went to her friend Anya and went out drinking, like she had done all last summer when she had Visa trouble. I don't know if it is Russian thing or not, or if she thinks that I wouldn't understand (that's not to say, but isn't the issue), but I don't need her to be this rock-solid woman who isn't affected by anything. I want her to be real. To tell me how she feels. Not how her friends tell her to feel, not what she expects me to like, and not to put on a strong face for me when inside she is frightened and scared. What good am I too her if she is afraid to confide in me. Confidence, this is what couples must have in each other to succeed. I have confidence in her, I only hope that she has confidence in me. I'm not with out my flaws, I don't want anyone to think I'm perfect, I am far from it. Greg spoke wisely at lunch "I concerned that you can't tell each other everything." Maybe it will develop with time, I feel like we could tell each other everything. I intend to talk to her about this before I post this journal entry. It just isn't something that we have gotten comfortable with. Comfort is another thing that couples need to have to be successful. Without a certain level of comfort there can be no happiness. That isn't to say get so comfortable that nothing ever changes. Life is change, when you have ceased changing, you have ceased living. Comfort in the way of change - change together for the better.

    I talked to Maryna for a while tonight. When she says "I love you", I feel warmth inside. I wished she would say it more often.     2003-06-23 There is a place where the land meets the ocean; here lies a thin path, along which the gentle surf washes over your ankles and the sand breaks beneath your feet, giving way, it is gone with the ebbing tide. 2003-06-26 Every moment, every instance, every experience, and every second of every day has an impact on our lives. Every person we meet, hold in esteem, resent, hate, fall in love with, or be loved by affects us. For good or bad each of these has a deep and resounding effect - an effect profound enough that it becomes ingrained into our very existence and we carry this embellishment along with us to the grave, a token of our human existence.

    Therefore our lives are like a smooth pond of water. The surface, at first, is quiescent. Events are like small pebbles tossed onto the surface, causing a small, ever so slight wave - a ripple even - to radiate across the surface.     2003-06-28 Coming home today; it feels good. At the airport in Orlando Colleen and Greg were offered a spot further up in the line - a nice group of people saw that they had a baby and took mercy on them. They gladly accepted and left me behind... After trying the automated system and being directed toward an Agent, the same people were just standing around, so I stepped up behind Greg and Colleen. Colleen gave me attitude about it. "Those people were kind enough to let us through, you are cutting in line and that's not cool." I shrugged my shoulders, I wasn't trying to get in front of them, I just wanted to stay with my party. I thought we were traveling together, but that kind of shattered that theory. So after we got off the airplane in Memphis I didn't wait for them to get off the airplane, I didn't wait for them to get the massive stroller off the gate-checked baggage. I took off to do my thing. It was nice not to have travel at their slow pace. I don't really care if it pisses Colleen off - she started it. If they don't want to travel with me that is fine - they won't.

    Probably I was just over reacting... I was extremely cranky after such a long trip.     2003-07-04 I stumbled into Barnes & Noble and into an evaluation version of Panther. *grin* 2003-07-05 I have spent the holiday weekend reflecting on life. I work too much at the wrong things. While working is fun for some people, I personally don't enjoy it. It is too rigid for me. I am a creative thinker - no matter how you try to press me into the box that is the corporate world I will be unhappy. I have know this for some time, but keep making excuses for why I should stay, or why I can't leave. I know that my place is in academia. I have loved school and learning since Kindergarten. I loved high school. I loved college, but I was disappointed about the level of challenge presented to me there. My job is challenging, but for all of the wrong reasons. I realized my Senior year of college, that the challenge I seek is one that I will have to invent for my self. Now I know that this will only happen when I am driving the bus. 2003-07-06 I upgraded to Mac OS 10.3 today... some interesting stuff. For example, expose is pretty useful for me. There have been some annoyances as well: X11 died after the upgrade, and it is no longer as easy to customize icons (but we all knew that was coming - lucky I know how to edit the XML properties files to accomplish this ).

    Reinstalling X11 took care of the issue -- and my old configuration was mostly intact.     2003-07-20 I have loved much in life and hated little. Still, if I were to die tomorrow there would be much I left unfinished. Much I wanted to do and did not do. Much I wanted to say and did not say. Much I wanted to see and hear and did not. Much I wanted to write but did not write. Even now I fight off the peaceful seduction of sleep, staving, fighting, writing...expressing, changing the world. 2003-07-24 At five I go for a run. I planned on five miles, but fell short due heat and lack of recent training. I jogged my usual mile warm-up, stretched, ran three and a half, stopped for water and rest, then finished one stride at a time struggling for the finish.

    I eat a mango colada with protein and spirulina for supper. I neglect my overgrown hair, my laundry, my dishes, and my fatigue to sit and write. Its Starbuck's - I sit and write. Sometimes reflecting on my discontentment. Discontentment with my job, my thoughts, my skills, my abilities, my inabilities, and life in general... this is the mark. Though I have moved beyond the self-destructive, my discontentment lingers, driving me...pushing, forcing me up, up, up.     2003-07-25 Cafe Cubana at 5 O'clock The cafe is completely empty besides myself and one barista. Senatra wafts down from speakers on the 16 foot ceilings. The warm yellow walls give a cozy feel to the atmosphere - a warm feeling. A kind of warmth that eases the day's stress. The coffee is earthy and a tat bitter, still, it is enjoyable. 2003-07-28 Cafe Cubana at Noon My allergies are so horrible today that I stayed home from work. Even now, I can't focus my eyes. Painful, because I had a lot that I wanted to finish today - and some reading to do.

    There is only one problem with this fabulous cafe: no power outlets.



    I started cleaning my apartment today...I have a massive overhaul in mind. I threw away all of my towels and bought new ones. I bought a new shower curtain. I am planning on getting rid of my nasty brown sofa and rearranging the other furniture I have.     2003-08-01 Defcon 11 It is the first day of Defcon 11 and it sucks... all of the rooms are full, which means I won't get to hear any of the sessions that I wanted to. I'm stuck in a DNSSEC meeting, which in itself wouldn't be bad, however, I can barely hear the speaker over the constant hum in the background. The inhuman droning of 10,000 hackers. There had to be at least 2,000 people lined up to get into the Apollo room planning for a session three hours in advance.

    Mine is a quiet soul. I left to find the peace within myself. And I ask myself the question that haunts me day in day out for months at a time: what am I doing with my life?. Even in Vegas there is no escape. To the contrary - the stimulation of the surroundings drives me further into my self-reflection, solace-seeking internal struggle.
    2003-08-03 Taxonomies, Ontologies, and Object Oriented Programming Paradigms The most peaceful place in Las Vegas is at the airport terminal waiting for my plane to return home. This weekend has been restful in some ways and disturbing in others. I slept better in my hotel bed than I have in a month at home - distance from the office and associated stresses. I am looking forward to my trip to Europe. I spoke to my friend Minor the other day, he was enjoying the beer festival in Berlin and sound like he was doing very well. We had a short discourse on Taxonomies versus Ontologies the differences, the dependencies of Ontologies on Taxonomies and what differentiates them... we are going to have a lot of fun in Berlin drinking and continuing this discussion. 2003-08-04 Oklahoma Private Security & Investigating Services I just finished my first ever paid web project, take a look. Nothing fancy, just an intro web page...and I'm not really a designer - it is really just a hobby. If you ever need a Private Investigator, David is a really nice guy and he'll do you right. 2003-08-06 Catch ya' Later This will be my last entry for the next two or three weeks. Tomorrow evening I am getting on a plane to New York (without my computer), and the day after that I fly on to Paris and Berlin. I will be visiting my good friend Minor for a few days before moving on to Belarus to meet Maryna's parents. *grin*

    I found out tonight that my old, and best ever, roommate Mark Kuo has a website going. Way to go Mark!!

    Not only this, but I think my Mom is going to be starting a website as well.     2003-08-11 Berlin I will write of New York when I am in a more serious mood. Maryna and I left New York together on the over night flight to Paris. We had planned to go on to Berlin together, however the arrangement of the airport in Paris meant we had to 'enter' France to fly to Berlin - this was a problem. The authorities in France would not permit Maryna to proceed to Germany without a visa; apparently you get one stop in the EU without needing a transit visa, anything more than that requires papers. We walked to the ticket counter for a while before deciding that Maryna would have to fly to Warsaw directly. The parting was unexpected and sudden, leaving me full of emotion as I ran to the gate to catch my flight - it had already left.

    After finding my way to the flight transfer desk and getting myself rebooked on the next flight to Berlin, I sat in the picturesque Parisian airport trying not to break into tears. My eyes burned, "why does France care whether she flies to Germany or not?" I asked myself. Of course, I understood later that they would be liable for her if they let her go. I was angry for a little while, but once I made my flight to Berlin, I was able to calm down and relax.

    I had no problems at the Berlin airport. Minor was at the gate waiting for me. After a warm welcome we caught the bus to Zoologische Garten, an area near where he lives. I changed money at the Deutsche Bank while Minor bought subway tickets for me.

    Berlin was amazing!! The city has no tall buildings and lacks the eminence of New York, still it has 3.3 million people and it is very large. I think that the public transportation system in Berlin is a model for the world - it was simple enough for me to understand after a day and I don't speak German or know Berlin at all. They have four kinds of public transportation: U-Bahn (subway), S-Bahn (train), Buses and trollies. The S-Bahn is an above ground train like you might see in Boston or Chicago - except the stations for the S-Bahn are very near the U-Bahn stations and share station names. The U-Bahn is an underground subway and these go very fast. The trolly and buses cover everything that the trains don't. The trains come every seven minutes with German precision, the trollies and buses are less frequent but are always on time, very reliable and very well designed, as well as clean.

    Minor gave me the kind of Berlin tour that you cannot buy - it takes knowing a local. We covered every square inch of the city from Alexander-Platz to Checkpoint Charlie to the new Sony Center. Berlin is vibrant and fast-paced with a pleasant atmosphere. I like it much better than any other city I have ever been to. It is clean (mostly), there are few bums, few addicts, and while the Germans will run you over to get in line - I don't find this odd for a city. In fact I noticed how in New York people will literally push you out of the way if need be.

    In Berlin, Minor and I spent some time sightseeing after which we would visit the street side cafes or beer-gardens.

    The cafes in Berlin are very common. There is no air conditioning, so in the summer nearly every restaurant seats their guest on the sidewalk. The prices at the cafes were somewhat higher, but they expect you to sit for long periods - which is nice because the waitresses and waiters leave you alone until you ask for the check.

    Our discussions were wide, ranging from the semantic web, agent platform design, the meaning of knowledge (my definition is somewhat more strict than academia in general as it turns out), machine learning (as it is known in the field of CS) versus the theory of learning, Ontologies vs Taxonomies vs Object Oriented Design, the beauty of python as a programming language, why you should never sit down and write a major project in a new language - the need for insignificant tasks in the process of learning, the pain of learning, the burden of work, how to gain respect in the community, how to meet enlightened people and why they are so rare, finally love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "I am purged", I said.

    In Tulsa, the only intellectual I really have to talk to is Maryna. It is wonderful that she is my girlfriend; my best friend (besides Minor). It felt really good to catch up with my only peer - i.e. an enlightened intellectual (more so than I) from a small town in the Mid-West of America who is very interested in Computer Science among other things.     2003-08-12 Grodno, Belarus Maryna and I went out to see Grodno today. It is almost like a small European town - almost. We went to the town centre and saw some of the sights. I wanted to sit at a cafe because I enjoyed them so much in Germany - not to be in Belarus. We had to go inside for service, then the bar wench was very rude to us.

    It feels different here. The locals are very unaccustomed to foreigners - I get sideways glances when they hear me speaking English. Berlin was very accommodating and very comfortable. While Maryna's parents house is a sanctuary, Grodno is less attractive to my taste. It reminds me a Liberal, Kansas, my home town, in some ways.

    Foreigners are required to register with the local passport office within three days of entering the country. Tomorrow will be the third day, I tried registering today but the office is only open every other day.

    After seeing Poland (Warsaw), I have to say that Grodno is about 12 years behind in developement, it is about twenty years behind Berlin. I can't see this changing much if the Belarussian President won't open the borders. It was very difficult to get in the country. Crossing the border was a challenge, even with a valid passport and visa accompanied by Belarussians. The inspectors at passport-control had to phone their supervisors for clearance to let me pass.     2003-08-13 All foreign visitors of Belarus are required to register with the local passport agency, today I went to do this. Maryna's mom had hoped to only show me the best of Grodno, however the passport office is far from the best. Many of the buildings here are falling apart - they haven't been maintained for twenty years or more. The average age of a building has to be around 30 to 40 years. Fortunately, there is new construction in a few areas. They are putting in European style brick side walks and have built some new buildings here and there.

    After registering, which required a state issued insurance policy we came home.

    Before registering we went to the flea market. This is where you can get good deals. Maryna's mom bought me two sweaters and a leather jacket. The are so generous and kind.     2003-08-14 Today, Maryna and I went for a long walk. I wore the sandals Maryna's parents gave me, by the time we returned to the flat I could barely walk - they are the kind of sandals with "massaging" soles.

    Today I bought a nice rug for my apartment. It cost about $50 - in the states the same rug would likely go for $200 (or perhaps $400 because it would be an import ). Then Maryna helped me pick out a watch - it cost $60, a good price I think. I like bargain shopping, and this is definitely the place for it.

    I can't believe how much food they have been feeding me here. I was hoping to lose some weight (5 or 8 pounds) while I traveled because it is easy to do when there is little pressure or stress on me, however, I don't think it will be possible with the cooking here. Their food is very very delicious *grin* Self control is not an option as the locals become very offended if you don't eat what they provide.     2003-08-15 Tonight I am going hunting with Maryna's Dad, her Uncle and a few of their friends. I was concerned by this at first, however I am comfortable with it now. Although non of them speak English, and I speak no Belarussian, we are going to wonder around a feild together with guns performing the most primitive of rituals. This will be my first time hunting as well - while I once asked my Dad to take me, it never materialized.

    Last night, Maryna's Dad showed me the guns that we will be using. He picked out a 20 gauge semi-automatic shotgun for me, he will be using his old favorite 12 gauge over-and-under - they are both Kalashnikovs.     2003-08-16 After the Hunt... Hunting was fun. There weren't many ducks but I got to shoot at one, and later I was able to fire all of the guns. I know everyone thinks I am full-on crazy for hunting with strangers who don't speak my language, and sometimes I question my own lack of fear associations, however this is one thing that I would gladly do again in Belarus.

    The only detriment was being exposed to the local mosquito population. Here, they are call Kamapi ("camarie"). My arrival marked the beginning of a feeding frenzy, and I noticed that they didn't bite the natives as much as they did me.     2003-08-17 Two days later and the Kamapi bites are still burning and itching. Sitting in the middle of a marsh in Belarus was probably not a great idea afterall. Next time, I will definitely take protective measures: mosquito repellant -hopefully this will work on Kamapi also!! I wonder how we were able to spot ducks with the swarms of mosquitos around us!!

    The affects of jet-lag have grown if not diminished at all. I am tired frequently during the day and restless at night.     2003-08-18 I would kill for a root beer right now - icy cold and delicious. 2003-08-19 Banya I went to the banya last night. This was the single most interesting experience I have ever had. May I say, there is nothing quite like sitting in a 90 degree Celcius steam room naked with your girl-friend's dad, beating yourself with a VeNik (a bundle of soft-leaved branches).

    I don't think I can describe this experience, hunting was a big bonding activity, the banya is far beyond description.     2003-08-20 Toured Minsk today. Not much to see if your an American Capitalist pig like myself. For those of you who don't know - and most in the U.S. probably don't - Minsk was where the Communist party was formed. It warms my heart to know that the communist manifesto was witten during a large Vodka party - one which lasted for three days. The party was in the living room while the manifesto was written the adjoining bedroom. As a token of our visit, Andre purchased some communist party pins. There are historic trinkets, some date back to 1948, most have Linen's image on them - who also ironically wasn't a founding member of the party 2003-08-21 Good Dreams in Minsk Last night I dreamed of building a laboratory in [Tulsa??], something I normally wouldn't consider. In the dream, I was awarded a large grant - the grant was paid directly to me, not to my affiliated institution. I used the money to purchase a building an renovate it. The first floor contained the server farm, the servers were under the floor and the cases were water cooled. The front entrance lead to a glass wall with a badge swiper. The sliding glass doors opened letting the person enter a man trap. There was an unoccupied window to the left - room for a security desk. To exit the man-trap there was a key pad where a PIN had to be entered. If entered incorrectly a door to the right would open. The intruder would enter the room to the right were there were smaller holding cells with Internet access, TVs, telephones, chairs and cots - they would have to contact the on-call person to let them out because the doors locked behind them. If they entered their PIN correctly, another glass door opened in the front leading them to a divided staircase - one to the left, one to the right. They both lead to the lab space on the second floor. The ceiling on the second floor was glass and high ( I imagined it something similar to the F gate at the Paris airport). There were ergonomic terminals there divided by cells - not cubicals as there were no walls. The space was open and free. There were large glass covered whit boards in the front on the left and right - places to think.

    The white boards had viewing areas - circular sofas sunken into the floor partially for the effect of separation.

    All the monitors were flat screens with ergonomic keyboards. All access to the server farm was done via VNC or similar approaches. There were house plants growing in pots on each desk, but the green only accented the bright white surroundings, it did not over come it.

    The corridor was moderately long with perhaps six desks on either side. There was plenty of space around each desk. The ceiling was also lit so that it could be used at night. Each desk had smaller white boards - the main focus of the work space pressed against the wall. There was room to breath - room to walk and meditate. Above the main entrance, where the man-trap was downstairs, there was my office. There was only a glass wall, which doubled as a white-board, separating my office from the others. There I had my desk, a leather s