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a milkshake from another girl’s yard

Bump, stumble, ouch!

The night before we left Florida, I fell down the stairs.

Not a couple stairs; I full-on tumbled down half of a staircase.  It was at my in-law’s place.  The bro-in-law and I were moving an air mattress from an upstairs bedroom to the living room downstairs; moving it fully inflated.  To get it around the corner at the top of the stairs I had to pull it as it had become wedged.  I’m standing on the stairs, pulling it, and my brother-in-law is at the top pushing.

When the thing finally popped free and came unstuck, all my pulling turned into falling backwards.  I took one small hop as I could to try and get a foot down, think I grabbed onto the handrail for a fleeting moment, but ultimately couldn’t stop gravity from doing her job.  I smacked onto the tile at the base of stairs, luckily taking the brunt of the fall on my left thigh.  After moving my hand and fingers to check for breaks, I just sat there under the air mattress laughing.

Falling down the stairs is scary, y’all.

If you, like us here at sounds familiar, live in the United States, you’re also bombarded daily with the fear-mongering, rubbernecking, witch-hunting, and outright un-professionalism of the “modern” media.  And if you’ve tuned it all all over the past few days, you’ve been treated to the newsworthy nugget that is Tiger Woods’ recent automobile accident.  Now, I don’t care about this any more than I cared about “balloon boy” or any other not-really-news story the media hypes unnecessarily… but this bit is funny to me, follow.

Amidst all the tabloids, including the major twenty-four hour news outlets included, speculating about Mr. Woods’ alleged indiscretions, he himself released a statement today on his webpage that was ultimately a public apology to his family.  In it, he uses the word “transgressions” to describe whatever “personal failings” led to this event and subsequent media frenzy.  It was well written, and nondescript enough to protect his family’s privacy while giving some chum to the media sharks.

Funny thing is, if you looked at Google’s search trends page yesterday, you’d note that, right alongside hot queries like “tiger woods affair pictures” and “tiger woods voicemail,” you’d have seen this comedy gem: “transgression definition.”

Ha.  Americans.  We love sordid affairs; just call them something simpler for us, OK?  Instead of apologizing for “transgressions,” how about saying you’re sorry for being “down with OPP ,” “steppin’ out,” “triflin’,” or maybe “getting a milkshake from another girl’s yard.”  Those are things the MTV generation can understand OK Mr. Oxford?  Kthxbai.

Goodnight.

Posted on

keep my waistline in your prayers

Oh yeah?

Keep my waistline in your prayers, brethren.

In October we went to Mexico.  A month later I went to China.  A month later we went to Florida.  Each time a week away from home.  Each time, no going to the gym and no counting calories.  Now here we are in December and two months have passed without me keeping to my still-infantile (in the scope of time I’ve been alive versus time I’ve been doing it) “healthier living” regimen.  Two months may seem innocuous enough, but for me it’s been deadly.  I’m too close to halfway back to where I was when I started.  Guess it makes some small amount of sense, mathematically at least… six or so months of good behavior, three or so of not-so-good, and you erase half of what you achieved.

The new “thin” pants are bunching in strange places and the belts all of the sudden chafe.  My clothes are the first to complain.  “This cannot stand,” seams and buttons and zippers say in solidarity.  It’s then with head hung low and tail squarely betwixt legs that I once again make my face known at the local sweatatorium.  It must be done; this simply cannot be the undoing.  I’ll make my stand by being there every day this week, working hard again to get back on the wagon (off the wagon?).

I went there tonight, in fact.  I listened to the new Beach House record while doing my time on the machine.  My stars that album is fantastic.  When it actually comes out, in 2010, it’ll surely rank up there with the better ones.  Anyway, I went round and round listening to it; burning an hour’s worth of calories.  Tomorrow I’ll go again; early in the morning I think.  Doubling-down, fat; doubling-down.

Goodnight.

Posted on

unhurried & unharried

Not this time, Florida.

Finally.

A week of “vacation” in Florida where we haven’t been rushing from place to place to spend not-quite-enough time with friends and family gone unseen over the past year.  Oh sure, maybe you’d call that a bad thing, on the face of it… but I do hate to spend a “respite” from the sawmill all hurried and harried.

Not that I don’t enjoy seeing family, not that we haven’t, actually we’ve managed to spend time with most of the usual suspects just somehow in a less rushed, frantic way.  I guess what I mean is, the majority of my time off has been spent in this comfortable living room with my brothers and sisters-in-law, our children and their grandparents.  As compared to my ideal Thanksgiving, this doesn’t miss the mark by much, if any at that.

I’ve read hundreds of pages, played Yahtzee and Mexican Train (both family favorites and somewhat of a tradition on our trips home), danced around the living room to Motown with Keaton and her nephew Hobson, watched football and had beer with the men, and spent very little time online.  Keaton occupies her time primping in front of Ami’s (her nickname for Sharaun’s mom) dressing mirror, where drawers filled with jewelry and hair-baubles offer her hours of dress-up fun.  Each time she comes out to the living room to “reveal” her new look, and names herself modeled after a different Disney princess.  Her black eyes seem to be getting a little better, too, but she’s taken to calling the marks her “eyeshadow” and, I think, she’s actually starting to like them.

Even with the lazy slow-paced week, time seems to have passed much too fast and we’re faced with leaving after just another two nights in town.  Upon learning this, Keaton said, “But I don’t want to leave yet, dad.  Let’s leave in four days instead.  I love Ami too much; she makes me good food.  And I like playing with Hobson.  And my new bed; and getting to sleep in the same room as you and mommy.”

Owell, four days would be nice… but I don’t think the airline would honor our tickets, babe.

Until later then.  Have a good weekend and we’ll see you back in chilly California before too long.

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two black eyes

Bonk!

A week ago Tuesday, the week before we left for Florida, which is where we are now, I was on a phone meeting with an employee of mine around 5pm.  As we were wrapping up, with another ten minutes or so remaining in our conversation, Sharaun called my cellphone.  I didn’t answer.  About 50% of the time, when I’m working that is, I don’t.  Usually, she’ll just leave a message or send a quick text, assuming I’m occupied and can’t get to the phone.  This time, however, she rang my desk number immediately after.  When I didn’t a answer that, the cellphone again.  Curious, I politely put my call on hold and answered.

“Keaton hit her head really hard on the table and the size of the bump really has me worried,” she said.  “OK,” I replied, “Was she unconscious?  Did she get sick?  Is she acting funny?”  With a round of “Nope”s in reply, I told her I’d go ahead and get off the phone right away and come home just to check, but it sounded OK to me.

When I got home I was greeted with a seemingly normal daughter, all but for the humongous bruised and swollen lump over her left eye.  Sharaun was helping her ice it when I got there, and a friend who’d stopped by just minuted before I arrived had already given it his best dad’s inspection and “all’s well” report.  I took a look myself, poking it a bit and asking her how she felt (you know, the real scientific kind of diagnosis-stuff I learned in computer engineering school).  After talking to her and prodding her I myself was convinced she just had one heck of a bump (or “hematoma,” as Trapper John taught me). And folks… it was indeed a large  bump… as the picture above somewhat indicates (bad light plus iPhone doesn’t make for superlative photography).

Anyway, as the week wore on, and we got closer to coming back to Florida to see family and friends we’ve not seen in year, the blood in that bump drained down into little Keaton’s face.  First, the bridge of her nose appeared swollen; next, small black circles at the corner of her eyes.  By Saturday, however, when we flew across the country, she had two fully-developed shiners.  We got some looks in the airport, and one flight attendant even stooped to whisper, “I couldn’t help but notice your daughter’s eyes, are they just naturally dark like that?”  “No,” I replied, “She took a header into a table.”

Oh well… part of growing up I suppose.  I’ll spend the last few evenings before we leave GIMP’ing out the black eyes from all the Thanksgiving photos for family, no biggie.

Maybe later this week I’ll write a bit about being in Florida.  In brief though: It’s good to be back and the place feels the same.

Until later.

Posted on

i just didn’t know

Contact low.Friday! Here’s hoping we get on our standby flights tomorrow and get to lil’ brother’s wedding reception on-time. Root for us, K? Thanks.

Blog; let’s go.

It was my turn to put Keaton to bed the other night, the first time in a while since I’ve been out of town. The bedtime ritual involves 1) the brushing of teeth, 2) the using of the potty one last time, 3) the washing of hands and face, and 4) the removal of our daytime clothes (remembering to put them in the hamper) and the donning of pajamas. Past that it’s time to lay down in bed, say a prayer, maybe sing a song or talk for minute about the day, and then it’s kiss-and-a-hug and off to sleep.

We began in the bathroom. Keaton brushed her teeth well, and then sat down to use the potty. Afterward she climbed back up on her stool and put some soap on her hands. Turning on the water, she wet her hands and began rubbing them together, soaping them to a froth. Smiling, she looked up and me and began to sing, “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Tyler! No… no… wait…,” she started over, “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Grammy…” I smiled back at her, thinking she was just remembering that we had called Grammy earlier that evening to actually sing to her for her birthday, and she continued with her song.

As she got past the “… dear Grammy” part I began telling her, “OK Keaton, go ahead and rinse now.” At my urging, she became noticeably frustrated, stopping her singing to stammer something like, “No! That’s not the way we do it!” Thinking this just another manifestation of her three year-old OCD, I again asked her to go ahead and rinse. By that time, however, she’d restarted her birthday song all over again. Now I was getting frustrated because she wasn’t listening to me, and I changed my tone a bit. “Keaton,” I said somewhat firmly, “I asked you to rinse please. You’ve been washing long enough.”

With tears in her eyes, and the most pained and frustrated look on her face she once again turned to me and squeaked something like, “That’s not how we do it!! I’m not finished!” Confusingly, she almost seemed torn or conflicted. Once again I figured she was just frustrated that I wasn’t letting here complete what I saw as just another bedtime-delaying tactic – a favorite thing of hers. Standing firm, I repeated myself, noting that I wouldn’t be repeating myself again. “Please rinse Keaton, I’m not going to ask you again and I want you to listen.”

Broken, and now fully in tears, she obliged me, quit singing and rinsed her hands. After drying them, she ran out into the living room where Sharaun was watching TV. “What’s wrong baby?,” asked Sharaun. And that’s when I found out what all the fuss was about. Her head buried in Sharaun’s lap, she said tearfully, “Daddy wouldn’t let me sing ‘happy birthday’ while I washed my hands.” “Oh,” said Sharaun, “He wouldn’t? Maybe daddy doesn’t know about the birthday song while we wash our hands.” I perked up.

“Oh, is that a thing, or something?,” I asked. Sharaun replied, “Yeah; we sing the ‘happy birthday’ song while we wash our hands to be sure we have enough time to get all the germs off.” Keaton looked up at me through puffy eyes and snuffled a satisfied sniff as if to say, “Duh dad.”

I don’t know why, but when I realized that I’d forced her to do the opposite of something Sharaun had schooled her to do, I felt pointedly terrible. Now I understood the conflicted look on her face and the frustrated tears. She wanted to listen to me, but she was doing what mommy taught her to do. How could she do right by the both of us? No wonder she was upset; I’d have been confused too. What’s worse, I’d been stern with her when she was only trying to do what she thought we want her to do. It’s a tiny thing, I know, but it made me feel terrible. No really, I almost wanted to cry for putting her between a rock and a hard place.

I knelt down and held her arms so she was in front of me and I could look at her. “I’m sorry Keaton,” I said. “Daddy didn’t know. I didn’t know you sing the ‘happy birthday’ song while you wash your hands to make sure all the germs are gone. That’s a really good idea, and I’m glad I learned about it. We’ll do it next time OK? I’m sorry I made you stop singing and rinse before you could finish. I won’t do it again. Will you forgive me?”

And with a big hug she said, “It’s OK daddy. You just didn’t know.”

Goodnight folks. Talk to you next week from sunny Florida.

Oh, and, I do believe it hit another week wall-t0-wall. Go!

Posted on

it all leaks eventually

I am not a crook.

Hi internet.  Hope your midweek was well.

I actually wrote, post-posted (that’s like post-dating when writing a check, remember those?… and that?) this entry on Tuesday night.  I love getting ahead on a week of writing.

So anyway… I wanted to relate a funny story.

Well, I think it’s funny…

I’ll just jump right in:  Recently, a fairly good-sized brouhaha was raised around the fringes of the internet when a piece of software called Microsoft COFEE leaked onto one unnamed-here bittorrent website.  What’s COFEE, you ask?  Microsoft COFEE stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor and is described by Microsoft thusly:

With COFEE, law enforcement agencies without on-the-scene computer forensics capabilities can now more easily, reliably, and cost-effectively collect volatile live evidence. An officer with even minimal computer experience can be tutored—in less than 10 minutes—to use a pre-configured COFEE device. This enables the officer to take advantage of the same common digital forensics tools used by experts to gather important volatile evidence, while doing little more than simply inserting a USB device into the computer.

Oh, so it’s a Microsoft-sanctioned “hacker toolkit” for cops.  Maybe something that would’ve been interesting to me back in college, but not anymore.  However, this little collection of software tools had become one particular bittorrent site’s coup-de-grace.  Sit back and I’ll tell you about it, hopefully in language plain enough that non-nerds can also get a kick out of it.

Maybe a bit of explanation on how some of the “higher echelon” private torrent sites work first (without revealing too much of the man behind the curtain):  Most better sites have request systems.  Simply put, if someone wants something, like the as-yet-unreleased new Strokes album in FLAC format, they can create a request for it.  Once this request exists, other users of the site can add their request to it by voting for it.  In addition to acknowledging that other users would also like to have the file shared out to the community, voting on a request also adds to that request’s “bounty.”  A request bounty is a user’s “reward” for scoring and uploading the item to the site.  It’s a bit complicated here to talk about what the bounty actually is, but those familiar with ratio-based trackers can likely guess that it’s a big ratio-positive.  For simplicity’s sake, think of this as everyone in a room putting a dollar (or perhaps more, as you’ll read shortly) on a table and pledging the “pot” to someone in return for them providing something.

Anyway, long ago on this torrent site someone requested COFEE.  And, over time, the request garnered more and more votes.  In a twist to the standard system, with every vote each user has an option to “pledge” extra bounty towards the eventual uploader (when a requester pledges extra, it comes out of their site “credit,” so to speak) if they are really keen on getting the particular item.  As time went by, the COFEE request became laden with more and more votes and higher and higher additive custom bounty from users particularly interested in getting their hands on the then fabled software. In fact, before the events of the next few paragraphs unfolded, the bounty on the item was enormous, easily the highest in the site’s history and enough to keep any uploader in good graces forevermore.  It seemed that people, thinking the request would likely never get filled, began pledging ridiculously large custom bounty amounts just to drive up demand and make the chase all the more fun.

Then it happened.

Some user actually got COFEE and uploaded it.  Bam.  The site went wild; the uploader basked in fifteen minutes of internet stardom.  And then the moderators began thinking.  I mean, this tool is meant for the likes of the FBI and NSA… and here they were essentially “offering” a link to it (let’s not get technical about whether a .torrent file in and of itself is illegal or not).  Someone with brains came to the conclusion that this would 1) likely lead to some small amount of publicity and 2) that publicity would ultimately be negative for the site in general, as well as any users who might snag the software.  In the end, the moderators wrote, in part:

The resourcefulness of our users never ceases to amaze us. Suddenly, we were forced to take a real look at the program, its source, and the potential impact on the site and security of our users and staff. And when we did, we didn’t like what came of it. So, a decision was made. The torrent was removed (and it is not to be uploaded here again.)

Just to be clear: we were not threatened by Microsoft or any law enforcement agency. We haven’t been contacted, nor has our host. This was a decision made by the staff based on our own conversations and feelings about the security impact of having the software here. We know some of you, perhaps the majority of you, won’t agree with it. To those that feel that way, we can only offer an apology and the explanation that we removed it for your security, and ours.

This is not an indication of any policy or rule changes going forward. This is a one-time decision, for a unique situation. This is not something we will do with other torrents or requests. At this point, the software can probably be found elsewhere, for anyone who wants it. We hope you all understand, and will continue searching out those rare items which attract huge request bounties. Feel free to discuss this here, but this decision is final. Thank you, all.

A sound decision, and the right one, to be sure; and the makings for an interesting story which was ultimately covered fairly widely on a smattering of technology blogs and news pages.  And, they’re right… once the applications hit the internet the walls came down.  COFEE is now widely available, all over the place in fact… so taking it down from the one tracker that ultimately sourced it doesn’t really do anything but remove a single head from the hydra.  As they say, it’s in the wild now.

So, why did I write all this?  Other than being interesting to me, the whole event got me curious as to what request now reigned supreme at that site, being that COFEE had come and gone and taken it’s insane bounty along with it.  So I had a friend who’s a member at this illicit site (and who I don’t really like due to his felonious nature and lack of respect for more-than-fair copyright law) log on for me and check.  Know what’s right up near the top now?

Richard Nixon – Missing Watergate Tapes (18½ minute gap tape)

When the White House agreed to comply with a Watergate investigation subpoena and hand over recorded conversations to Chief Judge Sirica, they informed the Court that two subpoenaed conversations had not been recorded, and that an 18½ minute gap existed on a third tape, tape 342, which recorded a conversation between President Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman on June 20, 1972. The 18 1/2 minute gap can be heard here.

To me, this request is brilliant.  The comedy value is high, and the unspoken nod to the COFEE leak being ever-thought-of as unattainable is nicely relevant.  Not only that but, aside from kitsch value, it really is funny to see this request gaining votes and accumulating bounty.  I mean, who knows?… perhaps the internet as a collective organism has become enabled to do things far greater than the sum of its parts ever could.  Maybe some guy knows a guy who used to know a guy… and bam; Nixon’s tapes leak online.  Anyway, I thought it was hilarious.  Oh, and, anyone who knows a guy who might know a guy… let me know and I can probably find someone who’s a member at this horrible scofflaw website who’d love to get their grubby red hands all over this thing.

Well OK, it was a funny story if you’re an technology nerd… I promise.

Goodnight.