Wow has it been a long time!  I was maintaining radio silence during my security clearance background investigation.  Now that its all over expect me to post more (honest).

For those of you not close to me, I was hired by the DoD (Department of Defense).  What does this mean?  Well you will never again hear the words “today at work…” uttered again.  That does not mean I will lacking topics to post about.

My security research at home is picking up again.  Expect posts on the topics of forensics, anti-forensics, malware and possibly a new pentest tool or two.

It’s nice to be back and for those of you reading this, thank you for sticking it out and visiting again.

I cant speel or gramer to good.

People poke me with pointy stiks wen I spel bad, but still I sucks.

Seriously though, I have never been able to spell and get silly words mixed up (like then and than or there, their and they’re).  Attending school in a time before computers were common made this more problimatic.  Spell and grammer check have helped me a great deal but have become dependant on them.

My thinking and research are sound, and I enjoy publishing my work, but if I only had a secretary.

When you see a day in the forecast that has a predicted high of 0 degrees F, its time to move.

I don’t need to lecture everyone on why this is so important… your reading this so you are obviously literate and therefor fully aware of why you need to vote today.

I also don’t need to beat the dead horse of vote fraud alarmism, although its still something you need to be very aware of.  In the past I have posted links to different voting awareness sites in posts like “Mid-Term Elections” and “e-voteing“.  All of the information contained in these posts (sadly) still holds true today.

Be aware of your voter rights, and what to look for to ensure voter fraud isn’t happening.

Visit Black Box voting article “What to expect and look for…“

As I mentioned previosly, Missy and I have started brewing our own beer.  We are starting to produce some respectable ales and are cranking out many diverse batches.

Last weekend we kicked it up to the next level and purchased an Oster 5cubic foot fridge, 4 corny kegs and all the CO2 gear to keg our brews.

Its amazing to be able to skip the botteling step and have draft beer on tap in my ‘man cave’.

Bottling involves de-labeling and sanitizing 52 12oz beer bottles, cooking a batch of ‘priming sugar’, sticking the beer in the bottles and capping them.  Then you wait at least 2 weeks for ‘bottle conditioning’ and you drink.

With kegging you transfer from your secondary fermentation vessel to the keg, pressurize it, roll it around a bit and wait a few hours.  You are drinking your beer in less than a day as opposed to two weeks.

I will post pictures and tutorials for the kegging project once its finished.

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.

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?!

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!

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.

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.