Checksum Arcanius

I hate the Lakers.
I hate the Lakers.
I hate the Lakers.
I hate the Lakers.
I hate the Lakers.
I hate the Lakers.

“One lucky shot deserves another, my butt – Duncan is excellent, Fisher is a benchwarmer. Watch those plays again – Duncan knows what he has to do and does it in the face of adversity – competitive excellence, not luck. Fisher wasn’t supposed to get the ball and just throws it up – luck, not competitive excellence. In my opinion. Thank you, now on to game 6.

Richard invited me to go up to the pass with him and a buddy of his. I hadn’t gone yet this season, so I readily accepted — but first, I had to go to photography. So I waited around for an hour — actually, I fell asleep reading the photography book (volume 7!). Then when class rolled around, our teacher showed up to tell us how much or a moron he was because he forgot the slides he was going to show us�

…So the seven people that actually showed all got up and left. I asked the teacher about the last assignment we handed in; in turns out its been sitting in the out box in the photo lab for a few days now. I grabbed mine out, but didn’t get around to opening it until later. Since Dan hadn’t arrived yet, I gave him a call as I walked out and let him know that class had been canceled. It turns out he’s terribly sick — so get well soon Dan! He asked me to take down his dry film for him — which I did (I actually recognized which film was his this time — another time, I couldn’t figure it out, and the teacher asked me to stop looking at other people’s film because “they might have pictures of themselves having sex with their children or something.” He seriously said that. I promptly stopped looking for Dan’s film, kinda freaked out. I think maybe Carlos has spent a little too much time around photo chemicals).

Anyway, back to the story — While on the phone, I overheard a girl from the class trying to arrange a ride home. Since I had some time to blow before my class was supposed to get out, I offered her a ride home. We had a wonderfully engaging conversation all the way to her house in Sammamish – and she’s cute to boot. Yes, I have designs. Its fun to be in this position again, its been a while. Oh, Amanda also opened up my returned photography assignment for me, and I got an A-. I’m happy with the grade — good, but still with room to improve. A lot like the photographs I turned in.

So, once I dropped Amanda off and we said out good-byes, I headed back home to get my skis and then I headed down to Richard�s. A little later we took off to pick up Colin, a friend of Richard’s, and head to the pass. We got there just before 4, so we waited until 15 before then headed up and got the night passes. With a coupon, it came out to $20 a person — pretty good.

Once on the slopes, my skiing form came back to me pretty easily, but my quads aren’t what they were at the end of last season. I was feeling the burn pretty good by the end of the day. Of course I was with two snowboarders, so they wanted to do the terrain park while I was more interested in runs like triple sixty face. But I thought I’d give another shot at learning how to jump. You see, I had a bad experience when I was young. When I was 13 years old, I went off a big jump and ended up landing on my head. The ensuing black out has caused me to shy away from jumps ever since. When I did go over bumps, I tended to take it up in my legs.

Today, however, I decided it was time to face down that fear and give jumps another shot. I’m glad I did. With a few pointers from Richard and Colin and a little bit of practice, I was able to consistently land my jumps. It still doesn’t feel natural, but I didn’t wipe out on any of the landing, and by the end of the day I was catching significant air. And it’s exhilarating beyond anything I have done on skis before. I hope to extend my distance and airtime over my next few trips.

On the way back from Snoqualmie, we stopped at North Bend’s Denny’s for dinner. I had an excellent sirloin steak with applesauce and a baked potato. It hit the spot. Food is good. On the way out, I popped some money in the big machine with the claw that grabs stuffed animals � and for the first time in my life, I got one out. It’s a strange but cute green teddy bear in a black and yellow jester outfit. Hopefully I will post pictures soon.

With my recently won prize, endorphins from skiing and jumping, and a girl to top it off — life is good.

Linux kernels before version 2.4.23 had a security hole that would allow a non-privileged user to gain administrative privileges on any Linux system. Version 2.4.23 was released on November 28, 2003. Silverfir.net had been running with no significant changes to its setup since May, 2003. The kernel hole, along with a security hole in the gallery software I use on this site, PHPix, allowed attackers to gain privileged access to the silverfir.net machine. Apparently, one succeeded. But whoever it was, the attacker must have been disappointed at the level of machine he or she gained access to. A Pentium Pro 180 with a nice but unremarkable Internet uplink isn’t exactly a conquest worth bragging about. Furthermore, nothing even remotely commercial happens on the machine, and all of my email is boring. Besides, something seems to have gone wrong: with the privileged status, the attacker seems to have replaced my INIT — the program that starts up before all other programs and guides the system though its startup routine — a common first step once a root kit (the tools used to crack open a system once administrator privileges have been gained) has been installed. However, this seems to have made my system quite unstable, and with several convenient power outages (thanks Amy, and Puget Power), the problem soon manifest itself with silverfir.net becoming unstable and generating all sorts of errors. In due time, after I got around to reading the logs, and reading security news bulletins, I was able to piece the story together. Of course, I am dumb, and I haven’t updated my (extremely changed by me) version of PHPix yet, but I figure as long as users can’t gain root with a kernel exploit, I�ll let them run strange commands on my system until I get around to getting the real replacement server working (probally FreeBSD or OpenBSD on the dual Pentium II). But at this point, that is a ways off.

After watching the movie last night, I stayed up even later to, among other things, update this site. The result is that I slept in until 1:00pm today, just long enough to completely miss church. That wasn’t planned, mind you. I had breakfast, read some, and then watched the New England Patriots narrowly defeat the Carolina Panthers in Superbowl XXXVIII. I was cheering for the Panthers simply because they were the underdogs; things looked grim in the first quarter for them, but both teams picked up the offensive pace towards halftime…

Another aside: At BYU, I took an introduction to economics course that covered basic micro- and macroeconomic theory. One of the books I read for the class was called “Hard Heads, Soft Hearts.” Written by Alan Blinder, a liberal economist from the Clinton administration, the book is about how liberal fiscal policies could also be economically grounded. I hope that all politicians in this country, both “conservative” and “liberal” (although the differences these days are slight) would read the book and follow the advice. The reason I think of this now is that in the introduction to the book, Blinder declares that you can tell if someone is liberal if they root for the underdog team in a sports contest when they have no personal loyalties to either team. But he is wrong. I am one of the least liberal people I know (not necessarily to be confused with classic conservatism), and I enthusiastically root for the underdogs, as long as the one projected to win is not the UW, BYU, or a Seattle team. Take that, Mr. Blinder! But seriously, especially if you are liberal, read the book, then we can have a decent conversation about our politics.

And back to the main story: despite the slow start, the game turned out to be quite good, except for the fact that we had the same ending that we had two years ago (although I did not watch that game, to be honest) and the fact that the Panther’s should have tried something really wild on that last play. Getting tackled should�ve been the last thing they let happened � I mean, seriously, who cares if you let the Patriots score again, you still loose, but try some laterals and pull your entire team back for some voodoo magic and at least make the final moments an exciting bang instead of a lackluster whimper. Oh well, I guess that’s what we have college football for.

Turkey day has come and gone. Got up at 8:20, did breakfast, then went down to Newport High for the annual Turkey Bowl. Returned home, cleaned my room, watched Cowboys loose to the Dolphins, then made mashed potatoes and had an incredible dinner dozed, and chatted. Fun day.

Yesterday, Amy wasn’t feeling well, so I ended up leading the girls to Larry’s house where they got to do drilling, riveting, bandsawing, chopsawing, and soldering. It went well.

Dialup speeds suck.

One thing that Polaris did for me was keep me on a healty earlier schedule. Sure I was late a lot, but never by more than 30 miuntes and usally just a few. Now I stay up consistently past 1 and don’t wake up until around noon. Not the best lifestyle.

Today, I went to church, then to the Sonics game at the Key Arena with the McIvor’s (I took Kellie’s spot due to her working at Starbucks). The game was fairly lackluster – it was 36-24 at the half. The Washington Wizards came back and led late in the game, but the Sonics got their act together and made the last 17 seconds pretty long and exciting – and in the end a win is a win.

The cell phones started working today at various times. I like mine. The coverage is pretty good – inside the house is spotty, but seems to work in my room. I dropped one call on Forest drive so far, but otherwise its been pretty crystal clear. Can’t wait to get the data adapter and ditch this modem (I’m on the modem right now; wireless internet isn’t cooperating right now.)

UW def. WSU – Not entirely happy about that, even though I am usally a Husky fan – I wanted another PAC-10 team in the BCS.
USC def. UCLA – A good result
Oklahoma Rolls – For some reasons I don’t have a problem with this like I do with Miami when they’re #1
Utah def. BYU – 3-0 score. How ridiculous is that? Coach Crowton sure took a nice franchise and ran it into the ground pretty well after a strong first year. This game breaks a 28-year home non-shutout streak.

Slept in Way late – 1:00. Flew plane, broke it again. Went shopping for cell phones – after hours, and a trip to Costco, ended up getting Cingular family plan with four phones from this dude (hopefully Ben doesn’t read my blog often, its a surprise for him) with a national plan. Cingular has good national coverage (though not the best), good rates (though not the best), rollover (the best), and we are told, the best coverage in Washington, although we will find out how true that is tomorrow when the phones come online. I’m getting a data cable so I can use my phone as a modem, using just plan minutes (I’ll use the night and weekends for this) to update this blog while I’m on the road.

So I’m set for my road trip. And Florida had better be on the itenerary.