It would be funny if it weren’t so damn plausible.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

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I got my IPhone the day after the last post I made.  I must admit it was worth the wait and by the far the coolest device ever created by humans.

Now all I need is SSH and RDesktop clients for.  They have VNC and mainframe/midrange term-emulation, so it can’t be far off.

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My wife and I waited in line early morning the day of the IPhone 3G launch.  By the time we got in the AT&T store they had sold out of all 16gig models so they put them on order for “direct fulfillment”.

She got the white model and received hers two days ago.  I got the black one and still have not received mine.

My buddy, Billy, went into the same store after work the day of the launch and signed up for the direct fulfillment of the same model I ordered.  He just received confirmation that his is at the ATT store ready to be picked up.

So why did I wait in line?!

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Missy and I hopped in the line at our local AT&T store this morning at 7am to try and get ourselves two iPhone 3Gs (16gig).  At this point the line already wrapped around the side of the building.  We finally got into the store at about 11am to find that they had sold out of the 16G version.

They set us up with “direct shippment” of the phones so they should arrive within 5-10 days.
I can’t wait!

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Missy and I started doing home brewing (beer micro-brewing).  Its really a blast and provides us with lots of a high quality and inexpensive beer.  The average 5gal batch costs about $20-25 and yields about 54 (12oz) bottles.  Thats about $0.37 to $0.46 per bottle.

Our favorite supplier is Materagaia.  They supply organic, pre-measured, complete recipes as well as all of the supplies and starter kits you could want.

The hobby has a bit of waiting involved, but if you properly plan and stagger your batches you can bottle as often as you like.

We currently have 1 porter batch that has almost been entirely consumed (Rev. Porter).

We also have the following in the works.

Primary Fermentation (1 week to 10days till secondary)

• Dark Horse Stout
• Pale Horse Raspberry Ale

Secondary Fermentation (1 week till bottle)

• Pale Horse Ale
• Sunny Smiley Happy Summer Whit (Belgian Whit)

We also have a few recipes already purchased and ready to go

• Barbie (American Blonde)
• Honey Kolch
• Strawberry Creme Ale

And have the following in the works

• Blackened Voodoo Clone
• Pete’s Wicket Ale Clone
• Commie Bastard (Russian Imperial Stout)

The Pale Horse that is in secondary will be ready to bottle today and ready for early consumption this weekend.  The Belgian Whit will need to be transfered to another secondary vessel, and the stout should be good to transfer to secondary this weekend.

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I installed Windows XP service pack 3 yesterday and found today that wireshark would not detect any of my network interfaces.

Reinstalling winpcap fixed it.

FYI

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irq13: It’s in my queue
irq13: that word is spelled so weird
irq13: queue
irq13: queueueueueueueueue
./xysm: its looks so canadian
./xysm: with all the u’s
./xysm: favourite
./xysm: colour
irq13: Hahah, flappy headed bastards
./xysm: im not your buddy guy
irq13: Im not a guy buddy
./xysm: see, us canadians, have a good sense of humor, we laugh our asses off when we get made fun of
./xysm: maybe its because we are happy our existence is even mentioned..
irq13: Hahha, the smart Americans just hope to fly below the radar these days.
irq13: thats why when we travel abroad we always wear maple leaf adorned clothing.
irq13: Oh man, this exchange is totally going on my blog.

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Today I left from Battle Creek, MI to Chicago, IL via the Amtrack train. This is my preferred method of travel when going to Chicago as plane trips costs literally 10x as much and are down right scary. If you have ever heard the term “puddle jumper” you will know exactly what I mean.

Leaving from East Lansing means leaving around 7 in the morning and loosing a whole day or work, so I either take the bus (super scary) or have someone drive me to battle creek.

Each time I leave from Battle Creek I have a unique and enlightening experience. Today was no different.

A young man got off the train muttering something in the standard ghetto slang about being kicked off for “cuss’en out the train people” and wanting to know where he was and how far from ‘Dee-troit” he was.

A couple minutes later police descend on him from both exits and take him away in cuffs.

I always have to wonder about people like that. Are they intentionally seeking attention or do they just not have that filter that the rest of us have? It just seems counter productive if you plan on getting to Detroit to spend the night in jail. All it would have taken is to keep his mouth shut and he would have been there in a matter of hours. Is this attention or lack of filter worth that? I would think not, but then again I guess these are the type of people that jails/prisons are made for.

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I have to present at a meeting today and spilled coffee on myself. Tied Stain Stick didn’t do the trick so I went to the rest room to get the stain out with water.

As I was wiping up the coffee I tore open a hang-nail and got blood all over myself.

I give up. I just give up.

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If you have been living in a cave for the past few months you may not be aware of Comcasts recent practice of “shaping” bit-torrent traffic.

Specifically they insert RST packets into, what they believe to be, bit-torrent sessions and forge them to look like they came from the host at the other end of the session. For those of you not familiar with hot TCP/IP works, a RST packet is normally sent to tear down an established session. If this is erroneously sent in the course of a communication (as is the case with Comcast) your computer will get confused, drop and have to re-establish a connection.

The primary issues with this are…

1. In order to associate the RST packet with your bit-torrent session they have to forge it to make it appear as if its from the other host you are communicating with. This violates a number of U.S. computer crime laws.
2. They do a pretty crappy job in determining what bit-torrent traffic is. A number of reports have surfaced indicating the Lotus Notes and a number of other protocols are being improperly “shaped” as a result of this.
3. A large number of legitimate software packages are distributed ONLY via bit-torrent. This is often the case with open source and free software as the developers are usually unable to afford the bandwidth required to distribute their works.
4. I have yet to receive an sort of “Terms of Use” update informing me that this traffic is being mangled.

Another things that irks me regarding Comcast’s media handling of this is a position often stated by their PR and Executives.

Cohen also reiterated Comcast’s position that it doesn’t block traffic. “Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any websites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services,” he said, pledging to work with the FCC to “bring more transparency for consumers regarding broadband network management.”

They don’t seem to understand that inserting a RST packet is “blocking” traffic. A number of hardware Intrusion Protection Systems use that method to block intrusion attempts when they are not configured “inline” and have the ability to kill a session normally.

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