Rorschach.net

Testing an app to post from my phone to the blog.

Our extended family departed on Wednesday and the house has grown strangely quiet. Now that he’s caught up on his sleep, I think Roe misses the family as much as we do. It was a good Christmas. We adhered to all the favorite family traditions with a few shared ones thrown in. Paul won at family poker which we should make an annual occurance as well. Pics are posted of our festivities. If you notice that most of the pictures are taken in the kitchen, you’ll understand how much gym time is pending starting next year.

I was able to “see” my family through the web cam network which wasn’t the same as being together – but did make it a little easier to be apart. In another week Lydia and Chris will be visiting so I am avoiding the post holiday gloom by having another fun event on the horizon. In the meantime, I am trying to get all my music downloaded to my computer as I have become an ipod owner thanks to my wonderful Father and Mother In-Law. I must say, as a gaget geek, I can’t imagine how I resisted such cute miniature technology this long. Now I can listen to tunes on my way back to my pre-Christmas weight.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been quiet and absent since Thanksgiving. It’s been a busy December. My belief in my ability to accomplish many things at once continues to get Paul into trouble. The Paul handwriting on the few Christmas cards I had time to buy may have been the final give away that I had again entered the land of “To-Much-To-Do-To-Little-Time”.

It’s not that I plan on getting behind. I thought I’d finally have some free time. But instead of slowing down, my project at work has continued unabated with 50+ hour work-weeks dealing with Spanish tile being fumigated wrong in Italy and now rejected by customs in the us, new designers not understanding that they should check their own work BEFORE they hand it to me and a seriously over budget (but fantastic looking) project. On top of moving last month and unpacking our new place, decorating for Christmas, completing some long overdue dental work and going to Vegas to visit my brother as promised months ago, I’ve been taking a class in web design with a final due Wednesday. Still, I had a schedule. I had a plan. I was as always, optimistic.*

Then, last Friday, my throat started scratching. The warning bells went off in my head. The vision of successfully completing the “Christmas to do list” suddenly grew dim. I could see the plan collapsing into a fog of Kleenex and cough drops. And it did. Continue Reading »

Dear Motorists,

I would like to remind everyone who was driving on Interstate 15 between San Bernadino and Las Vegas this weekend that you drive in the right lane and pass in the left lane. If there’s an empty lane to your right and you’re not about to pass a car move over jackass.

Love, Paul

Continue Reading »

Skype and the and similar Internet conferencing services may have to be added to my list of “killer apps” for the Internet along with email and maps. Earlier this week we set up a webcam and skype at Amy’s dad and brother’s homes. Now we can conference call Anchorage, San Diego, and McPherson at the same time. One on one communciations include the webcam, if they could get video conferencing to work for more than two parties that would be very cool indeed.

So I’ve got a skype account. Search for my name and you should find me easily if you want to talk to Amy or I without worrying about cell phones.

My Sister-in-Law was a contestant on Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me this week. We don’t allow podcasting or streaming media at work so I’ll listen to it when I get home. That’s a special kind of geek-cred there.

RFID is the concept of putting a little wireless chip into pretty much everything allowing you to track and identify items with a computer and an antenna. Chances are your credit card has one in it, and there’s one in your passport if you’ve gotten it in the last few months. There’s the potential for some interesting things with RFID, (you may remember the commercial of the person walking through the grocery checkout without stopping) but the control is lost to the user since anyone with a reader nearby can check all your RFID tags at will.

So three researchers from the Netherlands submitted a paper about an RFID firewall. It queries all your currently held RFID chips and proxies answers to any other readers, including giving no answer at all. It gives the fine grained control back to the user and is a very, very interesting development in personal privacy in an world where everything has a chip and is wireless.

Well there goes the last free weekend before the holidays. I put some some Christmas lights this year since we’ll be spending time here in San Diego. It was weird sitting alone on the fronth porch in shorts, t-shirt and sandals untwisting lights. One story means a stepladder to hang lights. I think I did a pretty good job, fairly simple with glowing white strings of balls hanging from the eaves in front and strings of lights scattered in the bushes growing through the block wall. Wrap it all up with a string of walkway lights out front along the sidewalk.

I didn’t prepare the lights for rain because, well this is San Diego. I guess it’s like washing your car though since in rained quite a bit Saturday night. But the lights survived and came on last night. Amy finished up the tree as well so even thought the weather isn’t quite what I’m used to it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

A few months ago the then-chair of the board of HP was attempting to find out which board member was leaking sensitive information to which journalist. They hired a private detective agency which proceeded to make claims that they were the targets of the investigation to the phone companies so they could access the phone records. Falsely claiming someone else’s identity is fraud but since it’s online they had to come up with a new term called pretexting.

Although fraud is illegal already the California legislation decided in wake of the HP scandal to create a specific law leaving no distinction on the illegality of pretexting. But the law was shot down once the lobbying power of the MPAA got involved. Why? Because the MPAA and RIAA are using pretexting to find out who is stealing music and movies online.

I learned very early on in my life that two wrongs don’t make a right. Illegal actions to capture illegal actions should not be allowed. Down that path leads the end of the rule of law for certain classes of society (i.e. corporations or the government).