The next guy to lose the presidential race to Obama recently commented on a problem with his wife's plane, which had to make an emergency landing in response to a fire:

This is also driving a slow-growing twitter tag of #RomneyPlaneFeatures.

However this will never be anywhere nearly as mentioned here as the "58 states" comment that Obama allegedly made in the 2008 campaign.

I see that user has written all of five comments - all in journal entry discussions - as of this time. They did, however, take the time to add me (and only me) to their foes list. Welcome to my freaks list, whoever you are.

My car ins. is thru State Farm. They've started asking for my mileage periodically, apparently to move away from a two-tier pricing system (regular (avg 12K/yr) or low-mileage (under 7500 mi I think)) to better-matched tiers. (Thankfully they're not yet quite as "Progressive" as to ask to put a device in my car that spies on my driving.)

I've haven't gotten around to making my password manager program (and I don't want to have to trust someone else's, and I am a programmer afterall so I shouldn't have to), so unimportant things like this get put on stickies, which invariably seem to be eaten by my desk like socks by my dryer.

This is no problem as I can just request that login credentials be e-mailed to the address they have on record, like Slashdot does. EXCEPT when they implement those stupid "security questions".

My take on them is that they're a huge security hole in an otherwise fairly secure (if you choose an obscure username and a strong password) system. They typically necessite answers in common words (if you want to be able to remember your answers, that is), and on topics that are susceptible to public records and social engineering techniques.

So I do what I think is the best I can do to mitigate this weakest link in all-too-common login schemes and fill these fields with random garbage characters.

So on State Farm's web site I find a # for "technical support". So I call asking for a password reset, and the lady asks me the same questions as the auto function for doing this on the web site. I explained why I'm incapable of recalling the answers to the security questions, and was told they couldn't help me without them.

Well what good is their so-called tech support dept then? If they're just monkeys reading scripts, and can only type things into the public web site like I can, then that's not "technical support".

I called technical support for their web site because I was locked out of my account. I'm still locked out of my account, because their technical support couldn't offer any actual technical support!

After that I found a comment/suggestion form, and typed in my contact info and the current problem and gave my background explano, and got:

Technical Error

We are unable to complete your request due to technical difficulty.

Please click on any navigation link at the top or you may return to State Farm homepage.

With an organization this technically inept, I don't even want to risk having an online account with them. Now I want to close it, and just do everything thru my agent (a system that's been working fine for around 20 years now).

p.s. I guess from now on I should alter my behavior slightly and type in and write down strong passwords (and record which question I "chose" (in case a given site ever changes the order of which one appears first/chosen by default in the dropdown)) for these fields.

p.p.s. Another consideration in using these fields as intended is that I don't esp. want to give away to companies (and their partnering companies?) answers to some of these kinda personal questions. If I were devious I would've tried to corner the market on security questions way back and urged web sites to outsource them to me like that Discus or whatever for web comments, and then build dossiers on people and sell to Google and other such bastards who only generally know about us by what we give away in our searches and emails.

This looks an awful lot like this to me. I don't see too many of them, but the neighbor across the street from my folks got one recently, and they park it in the driveway, mug outwards. It's disturbing.

(Okay, I was gonna end it there, but the plight of the guy who lives there really bothers me, and I think America is forgetting that there's tons of us facing that.)

I think it's his mom's car. This guy in his early 50's lives in a house he bought with his widowed mom, across the street from the house (actually they're all duplexes/attached homes) my folks downsized to when they retired. He apparently used to do technical support for some airline software, working off the computer in the office he set up in his garage, on the phone frequently, and traveling somewhat frequently. Presumably paying pretty well as he bought himself a Boxster. Then the economy tanked and he took a lesser job, presumably just for the meantime.

I had heard from my folks that he was in the running for some networking job in L.A., but apparently that never panned out, as he's been doing the same job since shortly after the beginning of the collapse. He became a cable guy, and I suppose now he'll be what I consider underemployed for the rest of his working life (which might or might not get him to financially retireable age).

His mom had told my folks that she told him to go back to school like I was doing at the time. But all anyone can do is make their best judgment and pick a path. Mine turned out to be the right one, so far at least, as I got back into my planned career. But I was out of work for a very, very long time, and I could've never found work in my profession again, that growing more likely the longer I was out of it. It was a huge gamble. Other considerations were that I had a sizable emergency fund and was under 45 at the time and could afford health insurance. (Kaiser sent me a notice just before I got hired and switched to my new company's group plan that my rates were going up a chunk due to turning 45.)

He might not have had much in savings, and prolly thought he needed to take something where he could get health ins. He also might've thought this would take a while to work itself out, whereas I foolishly assumed it would only be a few months and that what I had initially assumed was just an overreaction and irrational panic on everyone's part would dissipate.

Anyways, on his off days he would park his big company van in front of his place on the street. Right where my folks' tiny home's only front-facing window on the first floor looks out (their kitchen window). Mom cooks and dad does the dishes, and he got tired of looking at this big orange advertisement so asked his neighbor if he would park it on the side street instead (his neighbor has a corner lot). He told my dad to go to hell basically, that he comes home tired from his job (he used to climb poles to install cable TV, but then he finally got a transfer to a newer neighborhood with all underground stuff) and often there's no parking on that side and he doesn't effing want to hear about it.

So maybe his mom bought that thing with the terrible visage and faces it his way to join in! ;)

Every morning you walk out to your front lawn to pick up the newspaper. And every morning the neighbors on each side of you physically assault you.

For as long as you can remember, you've lived in a house with a particular set of neighbors on either side of you. And ever since you moved there, your neighbor to the right, let's call him Mr. Right, would give you a bloody nose.

In talking with him about it, he argued that it was justified to keep the neighborhood in order. Mr. Left OTOH took your side and thought that that was complete bullshit.

But some many years back Mr. Left had started accosting you as well. Every morning he'd slap you in the face, box your ears, and kick you in the shins. And he added things over time, like nipple twists and indian burns and wet willys, and then later added foot stompings and hair pulling and nose tweaking.

In talking with him about it, he argued that it was justified to keep the neighborhood in order. Mr. Right OTOH took your side and thought that that was complete bullshit.

So in summary, nowadays every morning you are assaulted in ten different ways.

Many of Mr. Left's assaults are kind of silly, but can be somewhat painful nonetheless.

Mr. Right's assault is definitely painful, and a big pain afterwards in that you have to spend some time stopping the bleeding each time.

So, which is worse to you? That depends on if you're more like Mr. Right or Mr. Left.

If you're more like Mr. Left, then:

1) Mr. Right is worse because it's more severe to you, and

2) It's actually far worse to you because you have an ingrained, noticeably skewed sense of proportion anyway.

If you're more like Mr. Right, then:

1) Mr. Left is worse to you because he comes at you with 9 times the assaults, and

2) It's actually far worse to you because he's actually continuing to add more and more assaults to the daily barrage, with no end in sight, and

0) You're wondering, in the first place, do you really even need to be assaulted that much, period, for there to be some minimal level of order maintained in the neighborhood.

Michael Clarke Duncan died today. Actor, celebrity bodyguard before that, and ditch digger before that.

Apparently he had a bad heart attack a month and a half ago, and while his GF 16 years his junior, Omarosa from The Donald's "The Apprentice", gave him CPR until paramedics arrived, it only extended his life a little bit to be lived out in an L.A. hospital until finally passing.

He wasn't a fat man, so it's prolly safe to assume that steroid usage was a contributing factor. He was 54.

I didn't first see him in "The Green Mile", but that's when I first took notice of him as an actor. Apparently he was in "Armageddon" and even one of the "Married with Children" episodes that I know I saw.

Being 6'5" and reportedly around 315 lbs, he was heeuge at the time. And not just from the camera angles in that movie.

I also remember him from:
The Whole Nine Yards - As Bruce Willis' assassin buddy (until the end, that is).
Planet of the Apes - As the seargent soldier ape or whatever.
The Scorpion King - Can't remember, except in a kick-ass fight scene with asshole (see his "Punked" episode) Dwayne Johnson.
The Slammin' Salmon - The manic restaurant owner in this "Waiting..." ripoff.

Other movies I saw that I don't remember him in:
Daredevil - Ben Affleck becomes a superhero.
Sin City - Mickey Rourke in a dark, comic book adaptation.

Already released movies I haven't seen that he's in that I want to see:
The Island - Dystopian future tale.

Stuff he's been in that I don't ever want to see:
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby - I don't like Will Ferrell.
A Night at the Roxbury - I hate that other SNL guy, the monkey-boy, even more.
Friday - I can't stand Chris Tucker ever since "The Fifth Element".

Note that for actors, it is their on-screen persona that I like if they're a fave of mine, not necessarily the kind of person they really are. For example apparently he went vegetarian in 2009 and began partnering with PETA to do anti- meat consumption messages. It prolly didn't help his health any to suddenly deprive his body of muscle-replenishing protein.

p.s. I also saw him on the periodically Sandra Bullock produced (and occasionally appearing in) George Lopez TV sitcom, as a wise-cracking dentist.

[From this afternoon, when I didn't have access to my saved link for the older JE creation interface here.]

I'm sitting here with my netbook in my recliner, in front of the tube with the volume muted. I was watching it for some news and then eventually muted it to go on the net, but to occasionally look up and see if FNC was covering anything interesting (usually not).

From the headline above the ticker at the bottom they were playing some of BHO's reaction to the GOP convention, quoting him as saying that Mitt only offered no new ideas and only old ideas of the past.

I watched for a minute and saw serious teleprompter reciting, but with an instance of that characteristic occasional interrupting of it by his snickering.

I have two categories of problems with the Left, in general. The first is that your ideas -- what you want for mankind -- are evil. But what is also just as evil is your tactics. You could be honest and earnest with people and not be evil in this second way, and just be evil in the "what" that you're pushing. But that hasn't worked for you guys, at least in America's history, so you adopt evil in the "how" as well (which is working, fabulously, if much too slowly for most of you).

So BHO publicly states that his opponents' are ideas of the past. This is true, of course. Both sides' ideas are from long ago. In fact, thinking about the history of man, it sure seems like the philosophy of authoritarian collectivism has been around a lot longer than that of libertarian individualism.

BHO is not a dumb man. He knows both sides' ideas are old ideas from the past, just as you and I know this. But the Left's tactics mostly boil down to "fooling the dummies", and that's what's going on here. He's of course trying to make the dummies, of which there is an asston in America, believe thru implication that it is only the Right's ideas that are from the past. (With the further implication that "from the past" is even a bad thing.)

So BHO is hugely despicable in both of the usual ways that all of the rest of you are, save the few here that are a bit clueless or a bit crazy or both. But he takes it one step further.

He's like the guy I occasionally played chess with in college, who was so much better at it than me/had tremendous advantage over me in that game, if he actually would've outwardly laughed as he enjoyed his advantage and how well the tricks he could play on me worked.

Only BHO is laughing in the face of the Right, for how well his trickery works on the dummies. Because he knows that both the Right and the (non-nomimal*) Left know it's crap, but the dummies don't, and furthermore the dummies don't even pick up on that tell (and in fact actually find it endearing!).

Most Lefties are dead serious about their religion, and I can appreciate that, independent of its evilness. For example I imagine someone like Hillary (who'll prolly resign from Sec of State shortly after BHO's re-election, and be the Dem's nominee for prez next time) would only stab you (metaphorically) with the knife multiple times because she just wants you (i.e. your political philosophy) dead.

But that's old-school, and BHO is of the newer, extra-sick variety of Leftist. He seems to want to stab and pull the knife out and then pause for a reaction of pain, and enjoy the moment before stabbing again. I see a little bit of that here, too, where most of you guys are just fighting for your side, but a few just write things to be cruel; where you know the deception won't work in that case, but you pile it on thick and savor the moment of just trying to be mean.

Unfortunately as evil grows stronger in the world and you guys find yourselves winning more and more, esp. where previously a given ploy would've never worked, your astoundment at how successful it's going and the confidence that'll bring will prolly turn more of you guys into effectively sporting the patented BHO smug grin, that can be seen between sections of serious-face and those momentary snickers when he's just laughing his ass off inside.

*My "nominal Left" is the mushy middle of the American electorate; those who haven't educated themselves about Marxism and made a conscious decision and said yep that's definitely for me, but those who've just been slid into it.

I probably shouldn't acknowledge this guy with a journal entry, but since he just wrote one with my name in it I thought I'd make an exception. I won't even go so far as to say that he is of any particular philosophical persuasion, rather that he must be one of the following:

• Incapable of reading and comprehending the written English language
• Lying about actually reading what I write
• Just simply trolling me

It started in an earlier JE I wrote. Slashdot user mcgrew raised an actual point, which I gave my own response to. The rest comes after that.

It was a perfectly sane and reasonable conversation up to that point. Then the user who wrote the journal entry mentioned above inserted their completely irrational "interpretation" of my comment. The only question really is whether or not they actually read the comment, as no reasonable person could possibly reach that user's conclusions from doing so.

If the user is just trolling me, they have indeed succeeded in wasting my time but nothing else. Not much of a victory for them, really.

Unsurprisingly, after being the VP nominee for barely a week, Paul Ryan has already stolen music for his campaign. Of course his predecessor Sarah Palin (who, like him, failed to defeat Obama-Biden when paired with a boring wealthy white guy) set a precedent by using a Tom Petty song (amongst others) without permission.

Paul Ryan's choice? We're Not Gonna take It by Twisted Sister. It turns out Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider ain't gonna take this.

From Dee Snider's web site:

Not that Paul Ryan knows anything about working for money.

With all the news about Missouri republican senate candidate Todd Aiken's unbelievably idiotic statement about rape and pregnancy, I just had to know what the brilliant minds at Conservapeida (alternately "the trustworthy encyclopedia" or "the encyclopedia that only Jesus can edit", depending on whom you ask) had to say on it.

I just looked at their front page, and was not disappointed. Two amusing clips from their "news" column on the right-hand side of the page:

and:

It's amusing to see how the world looks from their perspective once in a while...

First, a new fan:

What was interesting about this, though, was that I received a message about them adding me to their friends list before I received a message about the comment they posted to my journal entry. I then looked through their comments, and found a message they wrote, before being told of that same message.

Apparently, some messages are sent closer to the time of the event?

But you might be sold to a better company?

For those who didn't understand what VP Joe Biden was talking about by being put back into chains, this this getting close to what he meant - and this is what the fortunate ones would get.

From the discussion under the topic "White House Pulls Down TSA Petition":

* On throwing Obama out: Don't bother because all politicians are owned by corporate interests anyways so they're all the same.
* On putting Romney in: OMG he would be far, FAR worse!!!

So they're the same, except one is much more same than the other. Understand?

Mitt Romney started off claiming that he wanted to attract the independent voters, maybe even be a little bipartisan. Then, he crapped all over that notion and named Paul Ryan for VP. Sure, this candidate will excite the conservative base, but they would have voted for him regardless. More importantly, Paul Ryan is about as popular with independents and democratic-leaning uncommitted voters as the bubonic plague.

And perhaps just as much, Romney can now kiss goodbye much of the senior citizen vote since Ryan shows an open desire to gut social security and medicare.

This was going to be a pretty easy race for Obama to win, and it just got a lot easier. He would need an Al Gore-sized failure to campaign to lose now.

It's been a while since anyone has attempted to hack into my system at home. Really, quite a long while in comparison to how it used to go. This morning some idiot decided to go for it. No botnet this time, just one IP address (of course it could be multiple systems behind one IP address, but that isn't really very well distributed then, is it?). Last night they started with "abmsi" and worked their way through the alphabet from there. While I write this they are attempting accounts starting with the letter "e".

The IP address is

They have made over 1,100 attempts up to now, in less than 12 hours.

The WHOIS shows they are in China:

inetnum: 119.254.0.0 - 119.255.255.255
netname: HUARUI
descr: Beijing Guanghuan Xinwang Digital Technology co.Ltd
descr: 2A-2F,Tower A,East Gate Plaza,NO.9 Dong Zhong Street, Dong Cheng Dstrict,Beijing
country: CN
admin-c: WH271-AP
tech-c: WH271-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
mnt-lower: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
mnt-routes: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
mnt-irt: IRT-CNNIC-CN
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080313
source: APNIC

person: Wang Huijun
nic-hdl: WH271-AP
e-mail: chenbincb@sinnet.com.cn
address: Langfang university Langfang Development Area
phone: +86-13311166160
fax-no: +86-64181819
country: CN
changed: ipas@cnnic.cn 20080227
mnt-by: MAINT-CNNIC-AP
source: APNIC

I emailed all three of the email addresses listed, and two (ipas@cnnic.cn and hm-changed@apnic.net) have already failed. I'm not holding out high hopes for the last one (chenbincb@sinnet.com.cn) but we'll see.

Some of their first stuff:

grep 119.254.32.169 /var/log/messages | head -50
Aug 9 21:53:24 web sshd[42266]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user abmsi from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:54:00 web sshd[42269]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user about from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:54:36 web sshd[42272]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user abuhanif from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:55:12 web sshd[42275]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user abuse from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:55:48 web sshd[42292]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user academic from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:56:25 web sshd[42295]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user account from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:57:01 web sshd[42298]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user accounting from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:57:37 web sshd[42303]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user accounts from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:58:13 web sshd[42306]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user accountsc from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:58:49 web sshd[42309]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user achang5884 from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 21:59:25 web sshd[42312]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user acharya from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 22:00:01 web sshd[42315]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user acision from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 22:00:37 web sshd[42334]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user aclinch from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 22:01:13 web sshd[42337]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user acreddy from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 22:01:50 web sshd[42340]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user actaism from 119.254.32.169
Aug 9 22:02:26 web sshd[42343]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user activemq from 119.254.32.169

Some of their most recent:

tail /var/log/messages
Aug 10 09:50:25 web sshd[47473]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user eddiel from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:51:03 web sshd[47478]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user eddyl from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:51:42 web sshd[47481]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user edi from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:52:20 web sshd[47484]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user ediishu from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:52:58 web sshd[47487]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user edincek from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:53:37 web sshd[47491]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user editor from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:54:15 web sshd[47495]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user edphyd from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:54:53 web sshd[47498]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user eds from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:55:32 web sshd[47501]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user edwardchuang from 119.254.32.169
Aug 10 09:56:10 web sshd[47518]: error: PAM: authentication error for illegal user edwardsm from 119.254.32.169

Unsurprisingly they make only one attempt per account. Hence even if they hit a valid account they wouldn't go far enough to try to figure out a password (I presume they are trying blank passwords?). Looks like one attempt every 38-39 seconds. Which for one system, is a pretty good clip - even when it's automated.