You're Living In Your Own Private Finest Hour

Had a weird dream last night. Dreamt I was back home (Englishtown); part of it was hanging out at the Humphrey's, or rather on the front lawn, sitting in lawn furniture by a campfire, over near that house next door to them that was always unoccupied, with Peter Humphrey and a bunch of other people, then I was over at the entrance to St. Thomas Moore Church, which wasn't a church but maybe a school or hospital -- I think there was a gymnastic competition going on -- and I got into an altercation with some dudes in a car who came to pick me up, decided to walk home but I left my crutches in the car, and then I was jogging (with my cast) along Jamestown Drive, and then I was back at the campfire, hanging out with Victor Davis Hanson. I have no idea what the real guy looks like, and it was not like in the dream he was all "yadda hadda Bush Churchill Scipio Africanus Islamofascism blah blah," but that's who he was identified as. (At some point in the middle of all that, I found myself in a very, um, non-Euclidian version of the south of France, with Tom A and a bunch of his friends.)

Maybe it was because I finished that bruschetta pizza, and also finshed off the leftover pork tenderloin...

Wikipedia Featured Article: Well, look who made the list! Next up, Nobel Prize.

My friends are off to Moab, leaving today and leaving me behind... feeling kind of blue about it, but not as much as I expected -- woulda been nice though. Tonight Joe C is doing the designated driver thing, chauffering around the wives who were left behind on their "ladies night out." I got an invite to join the fun (George Hrab show at Godfrey Daniels) but I think I'll just get myself down to Which Brew.

Who's That Knocking At My Door?

I was looking at my "security logs" the other day, noticed that every few days someone tries to to log into my computer as "root" from the internet (via SSH), tries to guess the root account password, gets shot down and moves on. It looks like it's coming from different internet addresses each time. I'm not sure if it's someone just screwing around (or multiple people), or if it's one or more malware programs randomly sniffing around the internet for unlocked doors.

I don't have many internet-type services running on my machine; other than mail and a web server, which are both blocked from outside use by my firewall, the only one is the SSH server. That is accessible from the outside, and I want to leave it open, but I think I'm going to lock it down a little tighter: no root access, no access using only passwords. Luckily, I have that new book that tells me how to do exactly that...

Didn't go out last night, by the way, just stayed home with the computer and the leftover bruschetta pizza.

My Hump

Went out last night, down to Emmaus for dinner with Brian. This was that "charity dinner" at the Italian restaurant next to South Mountain Cycles: 20% of the bill went to Mark T to help defray his (ininsured) medical bills following his bike crash. It wasn't really an organized event, you just presented your flyer to them so they knew that's why you were there, and they did the rest. We saw Janna & Eric, and her parents, and Kris and her parents, and a few other PPRAC riders and various other riders there... also saw Mark, who had on a neck brace, and had some discoloration on his forehead but seemed to be in pretty good shape. Not too shabby, considering that he landed on his face, broke his nose & had all sorts of facial lacerations as well as some broken vertebrae & a "non-weight-bearing" fracture in his hip. We exchanged war stories, and despite how well he looked I think he got it a lot worse than I did.

Brian and I subsequently did our share, an antipasto each, followed by two medium pizzas: bruschetta pizza was yummy, the buffalo chicken pizza, not so much. (Brian liked them both.) We gave till it hurt, ordered way too much food, and now I have most of a bruschetta pizza at home on my "to eat list."

Geekout: I see that the Mozilla Foundation donated ten grand to help out OpenBSD/OpenSSH -- good for them! (FYI, that's the flavor of ssh that I use.) Meantime, I took a "How Geeky Are You" quiz last night, got 36 out of 60. It was a poorly implemented quiz, each question -- and they were mainly about gadget-consumerism and media consumption -- on its own web page, reloading advertisements etc each time. That's how I knew I'm not a true geek: I stuck it out, all the way to the annoying end. Looks like I'm not the only one to be less than impressed...

Tonight, if I can handle another food assault, is Mug Club Night at Which Brew.

Thermidor, Tristero Redux

My metabolism has slowed down quite a bit, I now get chilled in just about any situation. Last night I was playing with the computer right after getting home, and I just stopped and climbed into bed, shivering under the covers because I was so cold/lethargic/sleepy. About a half hour of napping and I decided to get up and start moving around. I did a few sets of exercises, maybe a half hour of leg lifts and light-weight, hi-rep upper body stuff, and I was fully warmed up and energized; that's got me through dinner and the rest of the evening. I guess I'll have to remember to keep the home fires going...

Through the Network, Darkly: Saw today that Freenet has just put out a new release.

It's Not Just A Month Of Meat

Try a little tenderloin: Cooked up some pork tenderloin tonight for dinner, pre-marinated in sa peppercorn sauce, one big piece, or half the package that I bought -- it took forever to cook, twice as long as the directions said, and I was done eating everything else before I even cut up the meat, but it was gooooood... I also made some steamed broccoli and some steamed asparagus, quite a bit of both actually since they were both in danger of going bad, and I had to get rid of them. All those veggies meant that I was stuffed when the meat was ready: I planned on eating half of what I cooked but I could only eat a quarter of it. At that rate it'll take four days to eat what I already cooked, then another four days for the other half of my purchase (still have a bunch of veggies to plow through as well), then there's a pot roast defrosting in the fridge (almost a week's worth of food), plus a bunch of pork chops (another week), as well as two pounds of beef stewing meat (a week of chili), in the freezer -- I figure I can eat like crazy, and I won't have to buy more meat for at least another month. (I heard that protein is very important for bone regeneration -- or was it kidney failure?)

Linux Voyager, Hush Now: Started messing with ssh, trying things I saw in that new book I got. I wish there were more places I could use it, since it's pretty interesting, but all I can connect to is SDF.

Reading: All the Pretty Horses, first book in the Border Trilogy. So far so good...

Back on the Sauce

Fifteen days until the cast comes off, two weeks from tomorrow.

So, what's new since late last night? Not much! Appetite seems to be on the wane again; I had a bowl of cereal instead of dinner last night. Dinner tonight will be pork tenderloin & some steamed veggies; tomorrow is a trip to Emmaus for a charity pizza dinner (20% going to help with cyclist/mechanic Mark Taylor's medical expenses, after his own -- uninsured -- cycling crash), then Wednesday will be the day I cook that pot roast. That's the plan anyway.

Skin Condition, Code Red: The skin had a real turn for the worse late last week, very likely caused by a change in moisturizer. Similar situation had occured a few weeks ago, the common factor, between the two different new moisturizers, being the term "non-comodogenic" or something, which apparently means it won't block pores -- whatever makes it "non-comodogenic" also makes it extremely irritating for me. Anyway, I got rid of that stuff ASAP and am back on the good old Vaseline Advanced Healing regimen, and things are already better, though the improvement could have been due to the sunning I got yesterday.

An Enigma Wrapped Inside a Riddle, Breaded And Fried

Little bit of an early birthday present, got some books from my Amazon wishlist -- thanks Mom & Dad! What I got was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy (as a single volume), and SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide, an O'Reilly computer book. They came Friday, and totally screwed up my weekend...

The first one I read was In Cold Blood; I wanted to read this before seeing that new (sorta new) movie Capote, which is at least partly about how writing this particular book ate him up. I started reading this Friday night, and it was so riveting I sat and read about two thirds of the book before getting up -- it was after 2:00 AM when I went into the kitchen for a class of juice, so I forced myself to go to bed. Saturday was the gym in the morning, then I came home and finished the book. Like I said, riveting.

Went out last night to Which Brew (they had Decadence on tap) with Doug and Lori, also saw Eric and Kris when they arrived later. Kind of neat to get Lori's take on Capote, since she's a big Breakfast At Tiffany's fan. Meantime, Kris had just come back from Philly, where she saw that Body Worlds exhibit with a friend, and she had a few tales to tell about that.

Today I got up a little late, in fact I got up a little later because of the "spring ahead" thing, spent a chunk of the early afternoon reading the SSH guide. Lotta good info in there, I already see some things I want to do to improve my own use of ssh. Kind of funny to be delving into encryption and secure transmissions right now, total synchronicity when I see that an Enigma machine is now up for sale on eBay. (The actual eBay link is here.)

I did my reading on the porch, got a little sun & air on the long-suffering epidermis; later in the day Eric came by and helped me with some shopping, that and a trip to the Quadrant for some coffee.