For those who don't look at the front page much, or wouldn't otherwise bother to read through to the story, and make the association...

This story

is about a project that Kevin Mitnick and I set up in terms of the technical bits.

Well *I* get a kick out of reading a Slashdot story that has myself in it. :)

I know some of you in the larger circle of /. people who are prodigious sharers sometimes wonder about those of us who don't share much.

I speak here for myself only, of course.

I can safely say that my life is, generally, a whole lot less dramatic than some of yours. I consider myself very blessed for that. My finances are good, I've got my nuclear family, minimal relationship strife. Got a job I enjoy, though it's a bit busy right this sec. Getting ready to go on vacation in a few days. Got my religious beliefs straight (though I'm not getting translated any time soon.)

I happen to be having a number of items of drama in my personal life right now, but I shant be discussing them with you guys. Not my style. I've been dealing with people over ASCII since I was 12. I used to run a BBS many years ago. I have made my distinctions between online life and real life. I have learned not to go on record with personal stuff.

I'm sitting here at work trying to hammer out some stuff that, in an ideal world, there would have been enough resources to get done in a standard work week. Oh, I forgot.... I've got my health, so I have the luxury of working my ass off when needed.

So, I crank the metal, and hope my head does not asplode.

I hope no one feels cheated at the lack of drama I'm willing to display. For those of you who enjoy such things, and would normally like to argue with me/defriend/post AC insults, etc... here ya go:

I'm voting for Bush on Tuesday. Discuss.

I don't think I realized until tonight how many semi-obscure bands I like are on Fat Wreck Chords. I'm a fan of the Ska & Punk. I've mentioned before that I'm also a sucker for the cover tunes. All of that is collected neatly in one label. Plus one of my favorite bands, Dance Hall Crashers, is there as well. (Side note: I've got tickets to see DHC in November. Woo!)

These guys know how to do it, too. Check out their MP3 page. Near as I can tell, they've simply taken a track from each album and posted it. They seem to get it.

I recommend the following:
http://www.fatwreckchords.com/empee/50125.mp3
http://www.fatwreckchords.com/empee/50112.mp3

(No, I'm not going to tell you what they are. Track them down on the MP3 page, or just download them and listen.)

Strange, a handful of the tracks seem to be silence. Also, almost none of them seem to have any ID tags. How could you make those availabe, and not put in ID tags so people can remember what artist it is?

Update:
Strange, the "silence" tracks only have that problem in Windows Media Player. They seem to work fine in iTunes. First time I've encountered an MP3 that WMP wouldn't play.

Take a look here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/07/tv_station_reports_t.html

Scroll down to the reply from Miller, Ted.

Made me think of Sol:

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041005/NEWS01/110050056/-1/news01

Why is it so hot today? It's 89F in the house. I live in the SF Bay Area so I don't have to have real weather.

Just got back from San Antonio. It's hot there, too. I think one of the group is near there, but I was in-and-out, else I would have posted before I went to see if anyone wanted to meet up.

I was there for a demonstration on a government bid. We flew in Friday night, ate, got no good sleep, had to be at the base a 6:30 AM (Central time, I'm normally Pacific time zone. Worked all day, mostly waiting around, no Internet, no phones. Left, ate (BBQ, yum!), slept much better that night, for just a few hours again, had to be up at 4:00 Central to catch a 7:00 flight. Slept on a couple of flights, back home.

And now it's hot, and I can't nap properly!

At least I get a day off tomorrow. More BBQ (Yum!)

I probably haven't explained this before...

Over my many years of doing IT (Information Technology) and IT-like things... I have collected a rather large list of people who have to die.

Now, I don't know most of the specific individuals by name, they are classified by job function. For example, most of the Solaris x86 team has to die. There are a number of people on the Sparc Solaris who have to die here and there. For example, the guy who wrote the installer that allows you to make a >2GB boot partition on hardware that can't boot from partitions greater than 2GB.

The list goes on and on... there are people from Novell, Microsoft, etc..

Tonight, I had to add a few people related to the Shuttle MK35S motherboard. See, some time ago I put together a new machine for my mother. It has been some time since it's been worth my time to assemble the components myself, so I used one of the local clone shops I like. I loaded up the OS. No problems, it was running Windows ME just fine.

So, a bit later, I got her a set of speakers, since she never picked up any for herself. I told her, sure, she could plug them in, that's pretty easy. Well, she's not getting any sound. So I make time to go over. Sure enough, no sound, and the speakers appear to be attached properly. I fought it for several hours at the time, and decided that either the MB was a dud, or something was wrong with the OS or drivers.

I decided that the quickest sledgehammer would be to put XP on. I bought an OEM copy of XP Home, and tried to find time to go over and put it on. So, months go by, and Mom would still like some sound. I go over tonight, and put on XP. For whatever idiotic reason, there's no ME->XP Home upgrade path. (Hey! Whoever didn't write that upgrade path, you can die too!)

So, it's a one-way upgrade, w/bonus trashing of settings. Fine. I take the hit... and I expect to hear sound. No sound. Ah.. device manager says no driver. Apply driver, no sound. Crap!

At least the Internet connection survived, and she has DSL. Nothing worse than sucking drivers and progs over dialup.

OK, I'm figuring the MB was a dud. Seems wierd though, since it's otherwise working just fine. Drivers aren't flakey, just... no output.

I finaly get the brilliant idea to do a google search on "shuttle mk35 no sound windows xp". I get a link to a FAQ... that says "No Sound? Check the jumpers on Page 35."

Hmm... Mom has lost the manual of course. So I grab a PDF version of it. Oh, and I need to download Acrobat Reader again. Sure, I'd love to wait.

So... page 35. It says if you don't have a case with a front audio panel, you have to jumper 5-6 and 9-10.

??

Turns out that the MB is designed for cases with a headphone jack on the front. If you have a set of phone in, it routes sound through the front, else it routes it out the back.

The motherboard was trying to route sound out of the non-existant front jack. The jumpers are to shunt it out the back.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Bastard 60-second fix if I had known about it... stupid SHuttle, why-tf would you make it default to that? Why weren't there jumpers there to begin with? Why didn't the system buid try it with a set of speakers?

Die! diediediediediediediediedie

So, rather than having the problem fixed in 60 seconds the first time I went out.... I wasted multiple hours that time... put it off for months... wasted a couple more hours tonight, AND trasher her settings to boot. I.e. have to reinstall office, resetup her mail settings, favorites, home page, teach her all the XP differeces....

So I've brought the machine home. Machines that won't behave must be punished. As an example to the others. It will be returned functioning, and perfectly well behaved. With sound. I promise.

It's not all a loss. She needed to go to XP at some point anyway, it's just a lot more supportable. I just hate HATE when I make a mistake, and create extra problems.

So, how are all of you this evening?

Yeah, that's not helpful:

Your Results:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%) Click here for info
2. Bush, President George W. - Republican (48%) Click here for info
3. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (47%) Click here for info

So, I went to see Rush on Saturday night. The concert was great. No opening band, just them doing a 3 1/2 hour show with a 15 minute intermission. They did just about every one of their popular songs, a few I didn't recognize (probably from a newer album), and a few cover tunes. It's their 30th anniversary tour. Geddy explained that they were going to do a few songs that "they tried to play, when they were learning their instruments."

I can recall Crossroads (Clapton arrangement), The Seeker, Summertime Blues (Who arrangement), and Heart Full of Soul, for cover tunes.

I had a great time. Due to a couple of friends not being able to go, my almost-14-year-old son went with me, his first concert. He seemed to have a great time, and is now sporting a new t-shirt ("RUSH THIRTY").

So... the WTF part...

I went out to lunch with some of the guys from the office, and mentioned the concert. Every one of them said "who?".

What do you mean, you don't know who Rush is?

So, I've been polling the office... and it's only us people over 30 (with a couple of minor exceptions) that seem to know who they are.

D'oh!

Umm... hello? Most famous Canadian band ever? Three guys? An amazing drummer, fantastic guitar player, one of the most distinctive voices you've ever heard? And that's WHILE he's playing bass and keyboard. (And a little guitar, too. Geddy and Alex did a little acoustic guitar number together.)

I've heard here and there how good Neil Peart is, but I don't think I'd appreciated it until I saw them live. I don't think he missed one hit the entire time. You'd have to listen to his stuff to understand why that's even impressive. Like on "Mystic Rhytms"... you listen to the studio recording, and your brain automatically thinks multiple tracks, some looped effect, r something. No, it's him and his drum set. Absolutely perfect timing on the cymbal crashes, with all the individual runs in-between.

So, how do you not know who Rush is?

So this is pretty cool. I was approached by O'Reilly to write a short story to promote my most recent book "Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent". Link to evil patent-abusing bookseller, with bonus associate ID insult.

O'Reilly is the distributor for Syngress (my publisher) in the US now, which is nice. Apparantly, they do promotions like this. It's also a nice ego boost to see my name in the O'Reilly catalogs, and they are supposed to feature Syngress books in the O'Reilly booths at trade shows and such.

Anyway, I like the way the story came out. It's a prequel for the Stealing books. It's fiction, like the books themselves. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Here's the story.

My most recent book is now officially "out". Frequent readers will recall that I said it would be out Real Soon Now. As of this morning, Amazon shows it in stock, which is the real measure of a book being "out" anymore.

Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent

Note: Has my eeevil Amazon referrer/store link thingy. :)

Also, Fyodor, one of the authors, has his chapter up for your perusal:

Return on Investment

So, I was playing around in Mr. Butcher's journal and I got to thinking...

What's the oldest piece of music on your favorite daily music playing device? (iPod mini for me.) It would have to be recording date, since I've got a bunch of classical interpretations (not by the original artists.) :)

Looks like the oldest in my regular playlist is "It's Not Unusual", Tom Jones. Google says 1965.

Heh.

Side comment: I don't know if group activities qualify as a "meme", exactly. That's not the definition I first heard, maybe it's changed. Shrug.

So, I have next to no interest in the "classic" books. Here's a start to my list of classics:

The Hobbit/Rings triology
Shannara series
Dune series
Xanth/Adept series'
Strange in a Strange Land
Farenheit 451
Any Drizzt book
Any Weis/Hickman collaboration
Most William Gibson books
Cryptonomicon
Dragonriders series
Journey to the Center of the Earth
HHGTTG Series
Narnia series
Oz series
Ender series

There must be hundreds I'm not thinking of immediately. Please add more. I'm thinking mostly SciFi/Fantasy at the moment. I could totally go down the security geek or programmer geek path, too.

I'm much too lazy to look things up and spell them right/get the proper author/make a couple of bucks with Amazon links with my associate ID. :) If you don't know what something is, ask and I'll clarify.

My next book just went to the printer yesterday:

Amazon

Publisher site

Publisher site should eventually have the TOC and a sample chapter, when they get their act together.

Note: Amazon link has my associate thingy for extra flavor. :)

The first copies should be back from the printer in a week or so. If Amazon is up to their usual standards, then they should show stock in about a month.

Bookpool is usually a bit better.

This book is fiction, a bit different than the typical tech book.

OK, so here's something to make a JE about...

Another review of one of my books is about to go up on the main page. That's always cool. It's the Hardware Hacking book I did with Joe Grand. I'm note sure if the link is permanent before it goes up, I'll update the journal entry when the permanent link is up.

And here's the link:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/23/1427228