Category: Uncategorized

Had quite a bit of snow and ice today and there might be some more tomorrow. I wish we’d get a foot of it. I found out today that Oregon doesn’t salt their roads when they’re icy because the salt is bad for the environment. That makes me like Oregon a little more. Humans are expendable but the environment is not. This evening I drove to Corvallis to see a friend and saw quite a few wrecked cars on the way there and on the way back. One lady was way down in a ditch, looked like it was probably a creek. I love driving in weather you’re not supposed to drive in.

This morning I biked to some nearby woods to fix some problems with a geocache that the kids and I found recently. I’ve been itching to try out my new gorilla tripod for something, so I wound it around my bike frame and videotaped my trip there and back.

I just watched What Would Jesus Buy on Netflix and it’s great. Here’s the plot summary for it: An examination of the commercialization of Christmas in America while following Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse (the end of humankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt.) The film also delves into issues such as the role sweatshops play in America’s mass consumerism and Big-Box Culture.

You know, I could take the message from that movie and use it in a way to make what I did on Black Friday seem like a noble cause. My childishness could have meaning!

I met Karalee’s parents this week. In fact, I met most of her family because it was a family reunion, but I’d met her parents earlier in the week when we came over to dinner. Siblings, nieces, cousins, everyone. We all hung around the house all day, played a lot of Wii, and a group of us went wine tasting at 3 different vineyards in the afternoon. I ate a lot of food that I’m not used to this week. Seems like I’ve met everyone associated with her at this point. We’ve bumped into every one of her friends at some point in the past year and I’ve met most of her coworkers and boss. Clearly it’s getting way too serious and I should dump her ASAP. SORRY, KARALEE!

This afternoon I went to make my daily run to the post office. I turn the ignition and I get a bizarre noise that I’ve never heard. It sounded like something was spinning, but the car wasn’t even trying to start. I figure maybe it’s a belt so I check those, but they all seem intact. Then I start checking fuses, but all of those are good. I look around on the internet for suggestions and thumb through the car’s repair manual for ideas, but come up with nothing. Out of desperation before having it towed to the repair shop, I key the ignition for about 30 seconds straight and it finally catches and starts!

I throw my bike into the back and leave, planning to go straight to the repair shop. But since it seems to be doing okay, on the way I decide to stop by the post office and mail all my boxes and letters. I’ll just leave the car running while I’m in there so I won’t have to worry about starting it again. As I make my turn onto the road that leads to the post office, it dies again. Luckily, I’m able to get it started by holding down the ignition for about another 30 seconds. It finally starts up and I continue to the post office. Just to make sure I don’t accidentally turn my car off out of habit when I arrive, I take the key out of the ignition and lay it on the seat. (My key can be removed while the car is running.)

As I pull into my parking space at the post office, the car dies again. Argh. I begin to wonder if I’ll ever make it to the repair shop, which is still 10 minutes away. I grab all of my boxes and go inside. This is when I realize that I’ve added to my problems by locking my keys in my car. Since they weren’t in the ignition, I didn’t grab them on my way out of the car like I usually do. Argh again.

While standing in line to mail my stuff, I come up with a brilliant plan to get into my car without having to pay for a cab ride back home to get the spare keys. I walk to the park behind the post office and into the woods and find a giant rock long, sturdy stick. I’m able to stick it into the top of the window, which was luckily down an inch or two, and press the unlock button on the other side. I’m such a hacker. I jump in and hold down the ignition for close to a minute before it finally starts up again. At every stop I’m throwing into neutral, keeping the engine revved and hoping this will keep it from dying. It works and I finally make it there.

It ended up being the timing belt. I think it’s going to be $382 to fix and I’m supposed to have my car back tomorrow. It’s a lot of money, but my monthly average is still way less than what I used to pay for car payments, so I’m thankful for that at least. Plus I thought timing belts cost a lot more than that to replace, so I actually feel like I’m getting a discount. I’m just happy this didn’t happen while I was in Portland this weekend. That would suck being stranded up there until my car was fixed.

While biking home I realized what an amazing day it was outside. Passing by a bank, I saw that the temperature was 68 degrees. It’s been in the 50’s and rainy for the past week, so it was kind of a surprise. I had a nice ride home and stopped by Dairy Queen for an Oreo Blizzard for lunch. I couldn’t have had a more perfect day for riding.

When I got home I saw the perfect ending to my day – I left the garage door open for the 3 hours I was out. I guess with all the excitement of having my car actually start, I forgot to close it as I left. I left a brand new Xbox 360, still in the box, sitting on the washer and dryer. (Not mine, it’s someone elses.) Luckily nobody walked in and stole it and everything else I own while I was gone. I left my office door unlocked too. It’s not the first time I’ve left the garage open when I left, but definitely the longest.

While I was waiting for my Blizzard, I Twittered about my car problems and Rogue Clown replied to it, “was it a medium pepperoni timing belt?” which I found extremely hilarious. It was a reference to one of the old auto parts prank calls. Thanks for making me laugh, Rogue. I needed it today.

I heard from the Geocaching group today that our picture was in the paper for the Target thing, so I went to 7-Eleven this morning and picked up a newspaper. They only photographed the side that we weren’t standing on, but it was still kind of cool. At the same time, it seems like getting featured in the paper defeats the purpose of being mysterious flash mobbers since it tells everyone who we are and why we did it. A scan of the paper can be viewed in my previous post.

I rarely buy a newspaper anymore since I get all my news and entertainment from blogs now. But while reading the paper this morning I was reminded that Albany had a Veterans days parade, so I took the kids to that. The Albany paper recently started up an online edition of their paper, but to get access to it you have to subscribe to the paper version too. How stupid is that? I’d really like to read the local paper, but only if it’s on the computer. (They have a website, of course, but it mostly just has the front page headlines.)

So I’m thinking of asking on Craigslist if anyone wants to give me access to the online portion of their subscription if I can pay them for half of the paper or something like that. Either that or just subscribing to the paper and throwing it in the trash every day. Or maybe I could pick a random subscriber of the paper and secretly set up an online account for them. Maybe I could subscribe but give them some random person’s address. Geez, why can’t they just sell web-only subscriptions?

The parade was a standard Veterans Day parade. After about 30 minutes of standing and watching it, we decided to join in so we got behind a Christian school group and walked with them for about 7 blocks. The kids both threw all the candy they’d gotten from other parade people back out to the crowds. Payton saw quite a few people he knew from school along the way. We stopped at Big Town Hero for lunch, then, 30 minutes later, the parade was still going on so we got back into it and continued along the route until we were just a few blocks from our car.

I normally don’t announce to everyone that it’s my birthday since I’m an adult and shouldn’t care that it’s my birthday, but there’s no way around it this year because I have to post this roadsign that the Spessas hacked for me. They sent this to me last night on my cell phone and I LOLed.

Spessa has been showing no mercy to roadside construction signs lately, as you can see in the latest two entries on signhacker.com.

For my birthday, I bought myself The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts which are the original 3 manuscript drafts of Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger. He died before he completed it, but it’s still the best thing he ever wrote. I would love for them to make a movie out of this book. It could have so many cool visuals. (This disturbing video on YouTube shows a smart part of it in 80’s claymation.)

I also bought a recliner for the living room a few days ago and I’m going to pretend that it was also a birthday present from myself. It’s another piece of furniture that I’ve been putting off buying for the past two years as I try to find the perfect chair on Craigslist. This one is pretty close to perfect and it was crazy-cheap. It mismatches the rest of my ratty old furniture perfectly.

I watched the Obama’s acceptance speech on hulu.com today. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak and the first time I’ve seen his family. I think it’s cool that most everyone seems to be so excited about him. Was anyone excited about Bush 8 years ago? I think I remember everyone hating Bush until 9/11 happened and then we were required to like him in order to consider ourselves patriotic. Anyway, I’m not excited about Obama. I just have a hard time caring. I do hope he does interesting things, though, since I’m in it solely for the entertainment value.

It’s not that I’m too lazy to vote. It’s that I’m too lazy to follow the candidates and know what their issues are. I didn’t watch a single debate this year. Or in 2004, or in 2000, or ever. I don’t even know what Obama or McCain sound like. I couldn’t tell you a fact about either of them. Even though I read blogs nonstop all day, I’ve quickly skipped over all the entries relating to the election this year. I haven’t even watched a single parody of Sarah Palin or any of the others. My vote would be meaningless since I know absolutely nothing about any of them.

I probably would have voted Obama today, just to shake things up a bit because he’s black. And because Obama doesn’t look like a grouchy old man. I’m tired of grouchy old men in the white house. In 1992, I would have voted Clinton because he was younger and had cool hair. I wouldn’t have voted for either of the Bushes because they look old and crotchety. See why I shouldn’t vote? My votes are based soley on looks and age, not issues. I think democracy is great and America is awesome, but I’m just glad everyone else is so into voting so I don’t have to be. Thanks, people who voted today!

9:27PM UPDATE: Obama won. See? My vote didn’t matter!

9:53 UPDATE: Ugh, does every single blog I subscribe to have to inform us that Obama is president?

Also, Spessa is certain that her Obama sticker campaigns (here and here) were solely responsible for the election results. Way to go, Spessa!

I’ve never been a fan of fat wallets. I like something slim, that I don’t even notice in my back pocket. My wallet has almost always been one of those 2-panel deals, where one side is a clear window for my drivers license and the other side is for my few debit cards, library card, membership cards, and whatever else. I don’t keep receipts, pictures or cash in my wallet just because I don’t like the thickness all that stuff creates.

Every once in awhile I go through it and throw out the membership cards that I don’t use that much, to keep the bulk down. The unfortunate side effect of this is not having certain membership cards when I need them. Like earlier this year when I bought 3 used games for Emily’s birthday at Gamestop, my Gamestop card would have given me a free game. Luckily the Gamestop guy was nice enough to let me use his own card that time. I hate the very idea that I have to carry a card with me to get discounts like that. Like at Albertsons, I can save $10 – $20 per trip by having my card with me. Why can’t they just make it that cheap for everyone so my keychain isn’t loaded down with membership cards?

I finally decided to try something that I read about in a blog earlier this year. I scanned all of my barcoded membership cards into the computer, edited them into a nice looking 320 x 240 JPG, and put them in my cell phone. Now when they ask for my card, I can have them scan my cell phone screen. Here’s what they look like on my cell phone.

I pixelated portions of the barcodes on these images, in hopes of keeping you stalkers from giving me reward points at Fred Meyer. The scanners are able to scan these cards just as well as they can scan a laminated card. Now all I have to deal with is the weird looks people give me when I hand them a phone to scan instead of a card. So far I haven’t been turned away by a rogue employee enforcing a new “no cell phone membership cards” policy, but I’m sure that’ll happen if I give it enough time.

I put all the card images in a folder on my phone called “Wallet Cards” so it’s easy to quickly pull them up while I’m waiting in line. Another thing I’ve always done to enhance my thin wallet lifestyle is keep pictures of my kids in the cell phone too. So if I feel inclined to show off pictures of my kids (or myself, posing with MC Frontalot) I can pull them up on my cell phone instead of digging through a giant wallet for them.

I think this is something that could work on almost any phone. I’m not sure how well a scanner could pick up on one of those tiny screen cell phones, but it’s worth a try. You probably don’t even need to be as fancy as me about it – just snap a picture of your barcode with the phone’s camera and that would probably work just as well.

Last year when I visited my parents I was getting something out of the attic’s walk-in closet and I noticed some writing on the wall. I cleared a few things out of the way and snapped that picture. It appears to be notes from a database program I was writing on my TRS-80 Color Computer to track my grades. Or maybe someone else’s grades. Apparently it was way too much effort for me to go to the other room and get a piece of paper, so I just wrote on the wall with permanent marker.

The I, Y and S are variables in the program. I is initials, Y is year and S is semester. Since it was ’87 it was either my Freshman year in high school or 8th grade. Wait, 4 semesters? Maybe I’m wrong about that one. No idea what FML means. I have no idea why I would want to track my grades with the computer, though. Maybe I was just looking for an easier project to tackle after my database of the entire phone book was such a failure. (I didn’t understand that 64k of memory wouldn’t hold the entire phone book, even if I had unlimited storage on my cassette drive.)

For a couple of years, this walk-in closet was my computer headquarters. I think I moved my stuff in there to get away from my brother who shared the attic room with me. HQ included the TRS-80, a car stereo with cassette deck, a CB radio, phone and television. I fit a lot into a closet. Best of all, it was located over the kitchen which meant I could stay up late harassing people on the CB and my parents couldn’t hear me.

I went to Defcon this weekend. I left for the airport Friday morning and hung out there for a few hours. I stopped at an ATM to take out $300 for the weekend and the machine only gives me $280! I always thought it was stupid to count the money because ATM machines never make mistakes like that, right? But yeah, it kept $20 of mine. It was a U.S. Bank ATM so I called them and they told me to call PayPal since that’s the card I was using. PayPal emailed me a chargeback form, so hopefully that works. I’m not counting too much on getting my $20 back though.

I sat to the most talkative girl ever on the plane (really, she just went on and on and on to me.) and got into town just in time for rush-hour traffic. Arrived at the hotel and bumped into el jefe about 5 minutes later. Had drinks for awhile, then set off to find RijilV and Co. He was awesome enough to somehow get me a free badge so I didn’t even have to wait in line or pay.

We ate at Peppermill, I gambled $5.00 because Spessa ordered me to. I also have to share my winnings with her, which comes out to $0.00 each. We walked all over Vegas for an hour or two and then went back to the hotel.

On Saturday I woke up around 10am and walked to 7-Eleven for breakfast. I tried Dennys first, but there was a line out the door, so I settled for Hostess cupcakes and milk. I ended up trading 2 PLA t-shirts for other shirts that were being sold in the vendor area, which has always been my way of saving a few bucks at Defcon. Set out PLA stickers, media DVDs and business cards on an empty table. I also got the guy at Sticker Nation, who had a bunch of buttons on his table, to take a bunch of PLA buttons and sell those too. I think I gave him about 30 PLA buttons. Thanks, Sticker Nation guy!

At some point during the day, I was walking alone and someone passed me and yelled, “PLA!” Then someone walking behind me yelled back at him, “Cactus cactus!” As I rounded the corner into another hall, I looked back at him and told him there was no cactus here. He ended up telling me that he found the PLA when he heard it mentioned in a Nerdcore song. It was, of course, Trevelyn’s song called Blackhat Life where he mentions PLA Radio. This guy wondered what PLA Radio was, so he Googled it and seems to know a lot about us now. So thanks, Trevelyn, for bringing even more hapless people to the PLA.

Met hevnsnt from i-hacked.com and a bunch of other people in their Skybox. Went with RijilV & Co. to the Star Trek ride which was a lot of fun, even though I’m not much of a Star Trek fan. Was a really great ride, though, and I can’t believe they’re going to tear it all down after this summer.

Ended back up at the i-hacked.com Skybox a few more times and watched their live podcast. Hevnsnt gave me a cool badge with “RBCP” laser-etched into it which gave me a few free drinks. Drifted between the i-hacked party and the 303 party for several hours and met a ton of people that I hadn’t seen in years or that I’d never met in person before. One of those people was Skydog from Phreaknic who luckily didn’t punch me in the face for my phone stunt at the last Phreaknic I attended. He told me all about how he was on the floor, under their PBX system, trying to figure out how we’d messed up their phone service. He said I’m allowed back, but I have to be punished publicly, or something like that. I met Grey Frequency too! I didn’t even know she went to Defcon so that was unexpected.

I woke up pretty early on Sunday but didn’t feel tired for some reason. So I showered and got ready to wander around the hotel. But midway through shaving, I suddenly felt really sick and wanted to pass out and/or puke. I barely made it out the bathroom and fell back to the floor to sleep for a couple more hours. I think it’s been about 5 years since I was hung over. I got up later and went to Denny’s for breakfast. Felt a lot better after that. Attended a lot of talks throughout the rest of the day, mostly just so I could rest.

Rode a Limo back to the airport in the evening – between 7 of us it was $10 each. Pretty uneventful flight home. It’s always funny to see a billion hackers walking all over the airport, waiting for flights home. Got into Portland at 11:30pm and then home at 1:30am. And that was my weekend. Here’s a few pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbcp/sets/72157606674289675/

Today the kids and I biked to some railroad tracks and put coins on the tracks. Even though I’ve lived most of my life near railroad tracks, and played around them often as a kid, I never bothered to try this. Back then I was more into putting logs and giant pieces of metal on the tracks, hoping to derail the trains. We hung around the tracks for about 30 minutes, hoping for a train to stop by, but no luck. We left our coins there and ended up going back home.

Tonight I went jogging and noticed a train passing as I was out, so I stopped by the tracks and picked up the coins. I only got about half of them since I was searching for them by cell phone light and they were hard to spot. But here they are:

I love how the edges still exist perfectly on some of them, but other are cracked and sharp. I honestly didn’t know they would really flatten this well. Or I thought the vibrations would knock them off the track before the train actually hit them. The kids want to go retrieve the rest of them tomorrow. I told them they should try and spend them at 7-Eleven.

A couple days ago, I was reading this entry from Renae’s blog and she mentioned that she always walked with her Garmin GPS to track her distance and speed. I can’t believe I never thought of that! My phone, which I always take with me to play music on, has built-in GPS on it. I use it all the time in the car with Google Maps to keep me from getting lost. So I searched crackberry.com for some software that would track time/speed/distance and found GPSed which is perfect. And best of all it’s a free program. It’s making me love my Blackberry even more.

The program works like a social networking site where you can automatically upload your jogs/hikes/whatever to your profile. It lays out your route on top of Google Maps and displays your average speed, distance and all that. It rules. I could post links to my routes, but they begin and end at my front door and I don’t want any PLA weirdos doing evil things to me. Thanks for the inspiration, Renae! Here’s what the program looks like on my phone…

Looking at my route from tonight makes me realize I underestimated my distance from the other day. I went for about 8 miles, not 6. It’ll be nice to know my exact distance now. Also, I kicked ass with the running tonight. I ran for the first 1.5 miles without slowing for a break. My average speed was around 5.3 MPH. And I ran nonstop for almost another full mile on the way home. I’m getting better at this.

Someone asked what’s with all the fitness stuff lately. I’ve been doing this for almost 2 years now and I’ve lost close to 35 lbs. I plan to lose another 30 or so lbs, which brings me to a healthy weight according to some fitness website. I had a gym membership for about a year, which I kept mostly in private posts. Again, because I didn’t want PLA weirdos trying to figure out which gym I was at. Now that I’m running on my own I guess it doesn’t matter so much.

I also cut down drastically on my horrible eating habits. I still have horrible eating habits and don’t have plans to change that too much, but at least I’m doing a lot less of it. Like, I rarely eat a dozen donuts for breakfast anymore. Or a whole box of those powdered ones. Or 2 orders of Crazy Bread from Little Caesars for supper. Or an entire box of EL Fudge for lunch. A few years back I found out that once you get old that stuff actually makes you fat.

And I’ve given up Pepsi. For as long as I can remember I’ve had at least a Pepsi per day, usually several. Stopping by Quiktrip for a 44oz cup of it was a daily thing for me in Illinois. I always tried to not buy Pepsi in bulk or in 2 liter bottles, because I knew that would make it too easy for me to access. But even then, I still went to the store at least a couple times a day to buy some. But now I’ve quit. At the very most, I only have maybe a 20oz bottle every 2 or 3 months. And strangely enough, the annoying insomnia that I’ve suffered from my entire life has nearly vanished. It’s crazy how well I sleep these days. Speaking of that, I need to quit writing and go to sleep.