Tomorrow afternoon I board a plane heading to Kansas. I'll get to see wheat and corn fields up close and personal! Hurray! I haven't seen wheat or corn fields in at least 6 years.

The best news of the whole trip is that I'm taking Friday afternoon, Monday, and Tuesday off from work. It'll be great.

Oh. And I get to see relatives too. I think thats a good thing.

It was bound to happen. After pissing of the entire open source community with their scam, it was only a matter of time until Sveasoft's latest baby - Talisman - would be hacked and made public.

An anonymous fan supplied me the file, apparently it has been released on eDonkey (P2P network) simultaniously.
I do not know who those guys are but they certainly did a good job. They removed the 5-MAC-limit and made some funny "tweaks" to the web-GUI.
Also they were nice enough to include a link to my journal and the forum.

I guess I must have found some new allies, let's hope they keep this stuff coming. Sveasoft claims they will release Talisman source code soon, I'll add it as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Please share the file with others via your favorite P2P network.

Enjoy Talisman - over and out.

Quick update:
Sveasoft is already spreading FUD about the firmware breaking routers. This is a lie, my source told me the code is identical and my tests verified that everything works just fine.

On May 10th a bill will be voted on that will mandate normal citizens of the US to carry national ID cards. A drivers license and SS card are no longer enough for some people..

If you want more information or care to write your senators, I suggest visiting this web site to learn more.

My Tuesday and Thursday nights are free again! Yay! I completed the Intro to Computers class tonight. The quarter ends June 7th, so I have a full month of free time! Yay for having an A in a class *AND* finishing the class early!

Now to focus on my Intro to Psych online course. I made a C on the midterm, which lowered my grade from a low A to a high B. I hope to raise that back to an A before the final.

Maybe I can have a 3.0 grade point average after this quarter. I really wish I hadn't of failed out of some classes from this college two years ago... really drags my GPA down.

Okay, I'm done bragging for now.

I made cheese and chicken quesadillas tonight. My parents enjoyed them. I thought they were okay, and a good try for my first time making quesadillas.

And now I decide: Do I go play Call of Cthulhu with friends and stay up late? Or do I stay around the house, watch movies and paint miniatures and then get up early tomorrow to go get pierced again?

Yeah. I'm in need of another hole in my body. Don't ask.

Sorry for not updating this journal in a while. On April 21st, Sveasoft decided to drop work on Alchemy and release it to the public as it is. It is called final and it should be somewhat stable.

Also, after not releasing any source code to the subscribers for 5 months, they finally made the Alchemy sources available.

Both files will appear on the mirrors shortly.

Development at Sveasoft now focuses on Talsiman, the new firmware. As I previously reported, they added an activation system to their download manager.
A subscriber now has to enter the MAC adresses of the devices he/she wants to install the firmware on (up to five). It was also suggested, that the specialised versions of Talisman (VPN, Mesh, Voip) will cost per unit.
Obviously this implies that there will be no more full source code releases in the future, giving subscribers no option to compile their own limitation free firmware.

It is sad that it came to this and even more sad, that Sveasoft blames me for this. They always stated that the 20$ charge is only for support and forum access, not for the firmware. By this logic, releasing the firmware shouldn't do any damage to them since my releases don't give you access to the paid service.
Turns out Sveasoft lied to their subscribers once again, 20$ is now for 5 units (per WRT version) and installing the firmware on a router you don't own is not allowed anymore.

I made an 86 out of 100 on my Microsoft Access 2003 test. I made a 96 on the practice test, but obviously it was easier than the real thing.

I have on thing left for this class, and that is a Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation. But I just don't care! I have enough points right now to pass with an A, so no matter how horrible I do on the PP presentation I still pass with an A! Boo-ya!

So now the question is, what do I do my presentation on? Do I make brownies and take pictures all the while, and bring those in during my presentation? Do I geek out and show everyone how to paint a pewter miniature? Or do I go real strange and make myself happy and enjoy presenting about different piercings? :-)

What to do, what to do?

(btw, this quarter isn't over for another 40 days. I already have an A in this class because I went ahead just a little..)

For some strange reason I'm waiting patiently for more journal updates from the circle. Reading journal entries (and ignoring work) is like a drug.

My day has been fairly productive so far. I helped one customer get his point of sale station running again, I converted a data file from a vendor into the format we use, and then loaded said datafile for a customer (and changed them $100!), and I've been on hold for quite a bit trying to get help with the credit card software we sell.. but the vendor of said CC software sucks and doesn't ever actually answer the phone or return phone calls.

So yeah. That has been my day. Tonight I have my introduction to microcomputers class, where I will hopefully pass the Microsoft Access 2003 final test with an A or high B. Then when I get home I study for my intro to psych class, and take an online quiz where I'll make an A.

And I'm done rambling now, so who is going to entertain ME?!

The new Nine Inch Nails CD is good. Its not great, but its worth spending a few dollars on.

Compared to Broken, Downward Spiral, or Pretty Hate Machine, With Teeth is lacking the raw hate and anger that Trent previously had. I assume he's getting laid on a regular basis now, and that he's over his drug habbit and over his Ex-wife.

With Teeth comes out on May 3rd.

old serial card entry I made. But I left out any REAL information that might have been helpful. So here is that data so I can search for it in the future and still not be able to find it.

Setting up a StarTech PCI1S550 Serial Card

# more /proc/pci
                        [garbage to ignore..... the last few lines should be similar]

Bus 0, Device 11, function 0:
                        Serial controller : Unknown vendor Unknown device (rev 01).
                        Vendor id=9710, Device id=9820

                        Medium devsel. Fast back-to-back capable. IRQ 11

                        I/O at 0xc000 [0xc001] serial port 1
                        I/O at 0xc400 [0xc401] serial port 2
                        I/O at 0xc800 [0xc801] not used
                        I/O at 0xd000 [0xd001] not used
                        I/O at 0xd400 [0xd401] not used
                        I/O at 0xd800 [0xd801] not used

Pay attention to the 0xc000 and 0xc400 lines. Those first two lines are the important ones. Yours won't match the numbers above.

Next, determine what ttyS numbers are already in use. You can do this by viewing the /etc/inittab file and looking for lines that start with 'S#:2345'. The ttyS numbers that get added by this serial card need to be higher than the numbers already in use. For example, if S0 and S1, are in the inittab file, then we'll be creating ttyS2 and ttyS3 in the examples below.

Add these lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
setserial /dev/ttyS1 port 0xc000 uart 16550 irq 11 baud_base 115200
setserial /dev/ttyS2 port 0xc400 uart 16550 irq 11 baud_base 115200

Add a couple of lines to /etc/inittab:
S1:2345:off:/sbin/getty ttyS1 DT19200 ansi
S2:2345:off:/sbin/getty ttyS2 DT19200 ansi

Reboot. The serial port(s) should work fine now.

I didn't feel like posting all this in my /. journal, so instead you guys will have to check the entry in my other journal.

pictures of painted miniatures and other dorky D&D fantasy things

Comments welcomed (including constructive criticism!)

I was only able to guess two people out of the whole photo list. That just goes to show that I need to get out more :-)

And my superpower (*) did not active tonight. I'm happy.

* I actually have two super powers. #1 I can determine what other people's super powers are... usually after they use them for the first time (look! that man just picked up a dumptruck without breaking a sweat. He must have a super power!). #2 That I can kill almost any conversation with a cute girl in under 5 minutes.

I love classes where you get to work at your own pace. My pace is much faster than anyone else in my classes. So I finished the first three weeks worth of work.. in the first week. I'm taking two chapter tests on Thursday, which is the third day of class.

So far my lowest grade is a 6/10, and my average is 9.5/10. I could do better, but why? An easy B (or god forbid I accidentally make an A) is fine. I've already resubmitted the 6/10 and the 7/10 I made.

So yeah. Apparently dropping out of college 3 years ago was a smart move. Now I'm ready for it, and I'm kicking ass and taking names.

Now if only there were some nice looking (and intelligent) girls in my classes.. of course, I might start making B's and C's instead of A's and B's, but thems the breaks. Distraction == lower grade. And I'm willing to make that sacrifice ;-)