Penny Pinching...

I got this from an old friend and thought it quite funny.

Look at my piggy bank after I bought gas yesterday.


In other news, we are remodeling our kitchen. :) We bought new cabinets over the weekend. Now we just need to pick out a countertop. We're getting white cabinets, and probably a blue with white marbled countertop. We're really excited even though redoing a kitchen isn't really that cheap.

New Digital Camera

We purchased a new digital camera this week. It's a Casio exlim ez-z55 for those who care to know the details. So we had to go out and take some pictures to test it out. There is no better place for pictures than the beach, so off we went yesterday on a picture quest to Huntington and Corona Del Mar beaches. Here are a few small samples below, but all the shots are in a photo gallery on our website. For those who haven't visited our website recently, I finally changed the template and will be updating content soon as well.

My Green Thumb (or lack thereof)

So I was looking at our flowers this evening, and it seems like no matter what I do, I always seem to kill our flowers. Takes these ones for instance:

The plant in the pot on the left died shortly after planting. And the one in the middle has just a smigen of green trying to hold on. The rest has long died off. The one on the right really wants to fight but is it a lost cause? It's not like I don't water them.



These ones are really dead. There's no question about it, I'm a plant murderer. Can I be forgiven?




This is my one hope. A large ficus tree we have near our front door is just doing great. There are even some impatiens in the pot with the tree that are also doing well. Our tree is doing so well, that we've had to cut it back several times because it gets too overgrown and bushy for the location. Both of our parents are also quite surprised at how well this plant is doing since ficus are supposedly hard to grow and keep looking nice. So why do I succeed with a ficus and fail with all the other plants we tried? So do I really not have a green thumb with all the dead plants? or is there some hope after all with the ficus?

Summer Grades

Grades are in. I got a 93 on the final for my summer law class which gives me an A in the class. WooHoo!

Checking In...

Wow, it's been over a month since I last posted. sorry, I'll try to not let that happen again. Let me know if you're still reading this after that period of silence. I really did not fall off the face of the planet, so to catch everyone up with the events of the last month, here goes.

Amanda and I went to Vegas at the end of June to celebrate our anniversary and Amanda's birthday. It we stayed at the Venetian hotel and enjoyed gambling our hard earned money and seeing the other attractions there as well. Amanda's big boast is how she turned $50 into $200 at the blackjack table the night of her birthday. A big birthday present as the dealer put it. I wasn't so lucky, but then again, it wasn't my birthday.

Coming home leaves me to work on my summer Law class for my infosec masters program. This class was taught using the socratic method in an online discussion board medium. We had an awesome professor, and I really enjoyed the class, and the discussion overall. When you study Law, you realize there are so many things we don't consider in our everyday dealings with people. It really provoked my thinking into some issues (perhaps more on this later - does anyone want to know some of the implications of the recent MGM v Grokster decision?). Still don't know what my final grade will be though. We had a killer take home final exam due last weekend. We had to read a fact sheet about a case, and then answer 20 questions. Of course, our answer to each question had to be well researched with appropriate supporting citations. It took me 10-12 hours of work to complete the final exam.

Next weekend my brother Mike is getting married, so this week will be busy with preparations for everything. Yesterday we had an evening at Rainforest cafe, Dave & Busters, and a poker game for his bachelor party.

The trials of home ownership are proving interesting for me right now as I discovered yesterday that the drain pipe for the condensation out of our air conditioner is clogged. This is causing the condensation to back up and overflow the pan which really causes a mess. For now, I've rigged up a way to vaccuum up the water before it overflows. What this means, is that about every 4-5 hours of running the air conditioner, I vaccuum up about 1 1/2 gallons of condensation out of the drain pan and drain pipe.

Well, that's enough for now. Goodnight everyone.

More or Less Rain?

Is there ever a right amount of rain? I keep hearing that this year is going to be a bad fire season because of all the rain (possibly worse than last year when we got barely any rain). Apparantly with lots of rain, the brush grows thicker, so when it dries out like it does every year, there is now more brush to burn. But they also complain about bad fire seasons when we get little rain. You'd think that with less water there would be less brush, but I guess it's just drier. Whatever. I don't buy it at all. Is there a right amount of rain that will give us a "better" fire season? or are they going to complain every year that it is going to be a bad fire season.

I thought of this as I saw two brush fires recently. The first was on Father's Day on my way home from my parents house. There was a fire off to the side of the 57 freeway near the 10 freeway. Then today on my way to my niece Katie's dance recital, there was another fire on the side of the 57 freeway this time in Diamond Bar. They should just make it extremely illegal and really start cracking down on people who throw cigarette's out the window especially in fire prone areas. Have you ever seen someone pulled over and fined the $1000 for littering for throwing their cigarette out the window?

Credit Card Liability Questions

I wrote this for my summer law class, but I feel strongly about it, so I'm also posting it here:

I wonder if the CardSystems/MasterCard case will shed light into this issue of liability as it's exposed. "The data security breach, possibly the largest to date, happened because intruders were able to exploit software security vulnerabilities to install a rogue program on the network of CardSystems Solutions"[1]

I am expecting to see some interesting fall out: (my predictions)
1. CardSystems Solutions will be held liable for not fixing software vulnerabilities or otherwise exercising care to protect customer data. This is a given similar to the TJ Hooper case.

2. Since none of the banks are going to do anything about the known compromised accounts except watch them for fraud and only intercede after fraud happens, I would expect there to be some action against the banks for failing to notify customers that their accounts were compromised. I'll have to do some more research to see if there is any legal precedent for this.

3. Ultimately, except with American Express the merchants are the ones who are going to suffer with the fraud related chargebacks. American express has stated that "American Express would bear the financial burden, assuming the merchant has followed all standard card acceptance procedures."[1] Does American Express's decision set another precedent that the other card companes will have to follow? or will there be another legal battle between the merchants and the card companies over the fraud related chargebacks.

4. Assuming 1, 2 and 3 happen, All the fingers are still pointing back to CardSystems Solutions. And there will be serious ramifications for that company.

While we don't know all the details yet, it seems like a clear cut liability case as CardSystems could have kept their systems patched, or better used technology such as Firewalls, IDS, and other security software (I am not doubting that there were some of these in place).

[1] http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5754661.html

New Web Page Template

We're finally getting around to updating our webpage. We've put together a new template that you can check out at http://www.benlovesmanda.com/new. Let me know what you think. This one will be much easier to update than the previous one which will make it easier for us to keep up to date. Hopefully we'll find time in the next few weeks to complete the new website and replace the old one.

Weekend Fun, School Starts

I just enjoyed a nice weekend with lots of xbox game playing and a trip to Disneyland Sunday evening. I decided to re-sign up for my xbox live online gaming account that I cancelled back in March because I hadn't used it in 2 months. I also spent the first weekend playing several hours of halo2 online since New Years.

It's nice to finally get back into some of that fun, and I hope it lasts, but for the next 7 weeks, I'm going to be a busy boy studying for the next class in my masters program. A law class on cyberlaw. It's the first law class I've ever taken, and it looks to be quite a challenge. There is going to be tons and tons of reading and doing case studies. Also 3 major papers and a written "take home" final all in 7 weeks. Everything including our our online discussion has to be propery cited. An opinion given without proper documented support as well as synthesis of the citation is a negative contribution to the discussion and counts as negative participation points. I hope I survive - I guess Torrey should have prepared me for some of this. In fact the early discussion from today reminds me very much of Torrey.

I'm taking a break during the middle of my class for a little while because it's our Anniversary and Amanda's birthday. We're going to Vegas for 4 days from June 27-30, and staying at the beautiful Venetian hotel. Who knows, maybe I'll win some cash while I'm there too. :) I just hope it doesn't set me back too far in my class to miss those days.

Memorial Day

A time for remembering. Remembering troops who have died to protect our country. I suppose it's also a time to remember great movies by watching the original Star Wars trilogy after seeing the new Episode III. What did you all think about the new Star Wars film? I thought it was great aside from a few small plot points.

Great quote from Empire Strikes Back: Sir it's quite possible that this asteroid is not entirely stable.

Well, I'm on call for work tonight for some upgrade that's going on. I hope I don't actually get called, but I'm supposedly the expert on this system if something goes wrong.

16 Reasons Why Alcohol Should Be Served at Work

I found this on our network at work and it's quite humorous.

16 Reasons Why Alcohol Should Be Served at Work

1. It's an incentive to show up.
2. It leads to more honest communications.
3. It reduces complaints about low pay.
4. Employees tell management what they think, not what they want to hear.
5. It encourages car pooling.
6. Increase job satisfaction because if you have a bad job, you don't care.
7. It eliminates vacations because people would rather come to work.
8. It makes fellow employees look better.
9. It makes the cafeteria food taste better.
10. Bosses are more likely to hand out raises when they are wasted.
11. Salary negotiations are a lot more profitable.
12. Employees work later since there's no longer a need to relax at the bar.
13. It makes everyone more open with their ideas.
14. Eliminates the need for employees to get drunk on their lunch break.
15. Employees no longer need coffee to sober up.
16. Sitting "Bare ass" on the copy machine will no longer be seen as gross

How many engineers does it take to keep a bathroom clean

I really want to post this sign in our restrooms. I guess it doesn't matter how many well educated engineers you have in a building, you still end up with pee on the floor. I've walked in our restroom at times and been absolutely disgusted. And then the sink ends up with a sheet of water on it from people dripping their wet hands.

Support

Support -- so it'd be nice if different groups coordinated their absenses. We had an "emergency" issue yesterday that required the support of Network Engineering, and the Firewall Team. Only between vacation, sickness, and jury duty, there was only _one_ firewall engineer in the entire company who was available to work with us yesterday. And even this person had other priorities that caused her to not answer pages and make us wait 2+ hours for assistance. All the while I was in a different building without a computer to work on and my lead was in Florida on the other end just sitting twittling our thumbs waiting for a call back. Same story trying to get a hold of Network Engineering... seems nobody was also around yesterday. Now I know they are two different teams, and you can't really plan for sickness or jury duty, but come on... yesterday was just ridiculous.

On a nicer note, there is a new NASA program on site that I get to help design the network for. I love all the cool little projects and programs that we get to work on. :)

Grade Reports

Well, Finals went much better than I expected, and I ended up with an A and an A- in both of my classes. Now on to all the paperwork to get work to pay for the courses. (You need a minimum of a B for reimbursement) My first final was way easier than I expected, and other than having to deal with some registration issues at the testing center (they didn't have my student id, so the test wouldn't load), I breezed through that final in less than 15 minutes. Way easier than I expected. My second final was an essay one, and it took me a little over an hour to complete. When I walked out of there, I felt like I was so dead because the questions were on things I hadn't studied as much. Out of 7 questions, I knew I got about 3.5 right. I completely blanked on one, and had absolutely no clue on another. I guess I came up with good enough answers as I ended up getting 38/40 on this final. go figure. The prof said he was curving the test, so I guess that's my curved score. I don't really know my raw score.

New Computer Security Website

Drumroll please...

I'd like to officially announce the launch of the Hepteleos Computer Security Guide website that Jeff and I have been working on for some time now. There are still a few quirks to work out, but the page is now functional and there is content. More content will be constantly added since thanks to blogger, I have an easy way to add articles and content. Most of the page layout is courtesy of Jeff and the content is mine.

For your bookmarking pleasure you can visit the site through either of these links:
http://www.hepteleos.com/
http://www.computersecurityguide.com/.

Please also sign up for our mailing list, and we will send computer security notifications and reminders to your email box. We promise not to spam. =)

Still Coming soon:
Links to other security resources
Bookstore - possibly a full fledged store
.....Let me know what you would like to see.,

Phone Advice Please

I hate Best Buy. Let me say it again...I hate Best Buy (and panasonic)
Don't ever buy an extended warranty or product replacement plan from Best Buy.

A year ago, Amanda and I bought a new Panasonic cordless phone set. 2 handsets, expandable to 3, with an answering machine. We also bought a product replacement plan to go with it just in case. Well, we didn't even have the phones for 6 months before we started having problems with one of the handsets cutting out on calls. The other one was fine and still is fine. We lived with it for a while until the battery also died and won't keep a charge. We haven't even had the phone for a year, and already one of the handsets is dead. They have also been interfering with our wireless internet since they use the same frequency.

In January, I tried to use the product replacement plan to replace our phone. I find out that you cannot return the phone to the store. You have to call an 800 number and they mail you a prepaid mailing label and RMA slip so you can ship the product to some claim center. Once they receive the product and check it out, they then send you a voucher for the original purchase price that you can take into a Best Buy store and use it like cash for anything in the store. Well, our problems started when we never received the prepaid mailing label and RMA slip in the mail. After 4 or 5 weeks, I call back and say I never received anything in the mail. They verify my address (they were missing the unit # of my condo the first time, but that has never stopped mail from being delivered to me), and say they are going to resend the RMA label and I should receive it within 14 business days. Another 3-4 weeks go by with nothing arriving in the mail. I call a third time, they supposedly resend the label, again it never arrives.

I call a 4th time, this time I'm really PO'd at the process. I really just want to take my phone back to the store and deal with it there. The lady on the phone is apologetic and offers to send the voucher in the mail right away so that I can get my new phone and not have to worry about waiting to send my old one back first because of the problems. The voucher never arrives. I called last week after waiting 3-4 weeks to find out about the missing voucher. The person on the phone this time looked at the status and it showed that there was "an error" processing the voucher.... I wonder of there was also "an error" processing all the previous things they supposedly sent me. This person asked me to hold while he looked into the error. He came back on the line and said the error was fixed (without explaining what the error was) and my voucher was on its way and that I should receive it within 14 days. 2 days later the voucher finally arrived in the mail 4 months and 5 calls after my original attempt to redeem the product replacement plan.

So now I have a voucher for $136 to use at Best Buy and I'm not sure what kind of phone to get now. Definately not panasonic again because of our problems, and Amanda knows someone from work who also has a panasonic phone with problems. Problem over half the phones Best Buy sells are Panasonic. We bought a Motorola phone after our wedding, and that lasted less than 2 years before the phone was completely dead. It was a crappy phone that we didn't like anyway - so motorola is out. Since 2.4GHz was possibly interfering with our wireless internet, that leaves the 5.4 Ghz phones. With panasonic and motorola out of the picture, the only remaining brands that Best Buy carries are AT&T, VTECH, and Uniden - and they have to support multiple handsets. Which one to get?

I long for my old phone back. I had a Toshiba cordless phone that was a rock. It lasted me over 12 years from 8th grade through high school, college, apartment life, and our first year of marriage before it finally died. Why can't I find another phone that will last us like that? Best Boy doesn't sell Toshiba, and I don't even know if they make cordless phones anymore. Whatever happened to quality craftsmanship these days?

I am never ever buying another product replacement plan from Best Buy. Possibly never shopping at Best Buy again either.

Scary Finals

I have finals in a week for the two classes I'm taking - May 4 and May 5. I'm scared of what's going to be on them, don't know what to study for, and starting to panic. The thing about Master's classes is that they don't give you nice little study sheets for the finals. Is there going to be a study sheet someone asked? The syllabus would be a good place to start the Professor said. Fortunately the syllabi for both classes listed very clear objectives for each week.

My formal methods class which I only semi understand has a 40 question multiple choice final worth 40% of the grade in our class. This class has been challenging. The first half of the class was spent covering first order logic, and fomal methods in the Z specification language which is based on set theory and first order logic. The second half of the class was spent reading very academic papers on Information Security which used these formal methods to develop formal proofs about the security models they were presenting.

My operating systems class was much easier since I also took an operating systems class at Biola. But this final is going to be 7 questions also worth 40% of my grade. I'm really not sure what to expect here.

I wouldn't stress so much except that I have to get at least a "B" in the class in order for Northrop to reimburse me through our tuition reimbursement program. Having to pay for the class out of my pocket if I don't do well enough is a good motivating factor, but stressful as well.

if at first you don't succeed, then try, try again...

Ok, this is just scary... 272nd time a charm for man on driving test. I don't really want to be happy for him - I'm scared of what he'll do to all the other drivers on the road. Driving just doesn't seem like one of those things you should learn how to do by trial and error.

Greetings from Florida

Well, I'm now in Florida moving those servers that I told you about previously. This whole thing went smoother than we ever thought it would. In fact it looks like we'll be done way early. The servers are in place, configured and seem to be working. There are a few issues that we need to take care of in the morning, but other than that we're done and this was a very successful trip. We planned the extra day just in case something went wrong. Since we're not leaving till Saturday, when we're done working tomorrow we are going to hit the beaches and one of the IT guys in Melbourne is taking us sailing tomorrow afternoon. Then on Saturday we'll hit the Disney parks before we fly back on Saturday night.

You gotta love Spring break in Florida. The weather is perfect. It's sunny but not hot or humid yet (although today had a bit of humidity) . (Funny thing - as I wrote this we just has a brief thunderstorm roll through, the first since we've been here) The only problem is that everyone wants to gouge you. We tried to get a hotel in Melbourne where we're working, the problem is that with spring break, all the hotels near the beach have tripled their prices and sold out of rooms. When making my reservations, I waded through 5 pages of sold out hotels before I found one that had a room available. When we drove by it after we got out here, I immediately cancelled the reservation as it was a trashy hotel in a junky part of town. We ended up staying back in Orlando about an hour drive away. I guess I'm used to the hour commute to work in the mornings. We got a very nice Sheraton hotel by the airport in Orlando for much cheaper than the junky hotel in Melbourne by the beach.

Florida drivers are horrible. I felt uncomfortable driving here when Amanda and I were on our honeymoon, but I think they've gotten even worse. Or I guess I've gotten used the LA drivers. Florida drivers - don't signal, just change lanes even if there is no room, will pull out of a driveway right in front of you, run red lights, and drive eratically. You frequently rapidly come upon someone who is going 20 in a 45 or 50 zone - and everyone just swerves around them without looking even if there are cars in the other lane.

How do they do it?

Long update...Breathe deeply...

How do people normally backup entire computer systems and restore them on different hardware when systems crash? It seems like it would happen all the time. Yet there is neither very many tools to do such a thing, nor wads of documentation to scour on the internet regarding this when things go wrong. It seems that in today's world, it's easier for someone to build a new system from scratch, and then restore any user data on the system from a backup, rather than restore an entire identical system from a backup.

I had the opportunity to do such a thing this week except that the computer didn't crash first. We are moving 4 servers to Florida next month, and we had to build 4 temporary servers to keep operating here in California while the real servers are in transit to Florida. The temporary servers had to be exact copies of the real servers so anyone using them wouldn't know that they were on a different system. If fact the goal is to move the servers without causing any impact. However, to get back to my point, nobody seems to build exact copies of servers on different hardware anymore. It wouldn't be an issue if the temporary servers had identical hardware to the real ones. Since all this has to be done after hours as well, it was a few long days this week. Jeff and I worked 12 hours on Wed, 15 hours on Thurs, and 12 hours Today - and that was only for 4 systems. Even after we did that, there are still some problems with the temporary servers - stuff didn't all copy right or something. But at least the applications seem to be working. And there is overtime $$$ for the extra hours.

On another note, Gas prices seem to creep even higher and Oil has hit a record high of $57 a barrel. This is even after OPEC said they were going to put another 500,000 barrels per day into the market. You'd think that an increase in supply would lower oil prices. But this is a different market now. OPEC no longer has control over the market by their traditional supply/price fixing, profits now are king at the expense of consumers. It seems like we are repeating history. In the past, the end of an oil price boom does not come from an increase in OPEC output to provide a surplus supply, but rather a recession in the oil consuming world. High oil prices cause inflation, which cause rising interest rates and eventually the falling profits and stock markets. Eventually there will be an economic crisis in this or other high demand countries which will slash oil demand and reduce prices to something more in line with what consumers can handle. No oil price boom has ever ended without causing a recession in the oil consumer countries. The real question is how long it will take for this to happen and whether it will be gradual or sudden. In the mean time, I guess I just have to continue to whine and complain about the price at the pump and grumble even more as it goes higher. Bush's plan for exploring the Artic for Oil is good in that it will make us less reliant on OPEC and foreign oil, but it won't do much to end this era of high prices we're in.

I haven't written much about our vacation since we returned. I hope you all enjoyed the pictures. They turned out wonderfully, and Napa is such beautiful country. Of course we visited in the spring when wildflowers were blooming and everything was green for California. We toured several wineries and tasted the different varieties of wine bringing home a number of bottles we just loved. We stated in the cutest Bed and Breakfast that was a historic Victorian mansion. To make it even cuter, they were filming the show "Trading Spaces" at the Bed and Breakfast where they traded with another B&B to redo one room. On our way home we traveled through San Francisco, and on down HWY 1 along the coast. That is a stunning drive if you've never done it before. I could go on and on for hours about the trip, but I put it better in speech rather than in print.