Confessions of a G33k

A Commodore 64?

Heh. Amusing user agent in my logs tonight. Agent: GEOS C=64 Internet Web Browser 6.0

Supposedly a Commodore 64 as best as I can tell. And if it really is one, I want to see screenshots.

wizard.yellowbrick.oz

I started seeing this new referrer in my logs this week, and I set out to investigate the origin of my new visitor tonight. Since doing a search on wizard.yellowbrick.oz in Google Web search currently brings up referrer listings from other sites. Searching the Google Groups shows two posts containing some perl.

So, getting an idea, I search on yellowbrick.oz perl and get these instructions from the O'Reilly Perl Cookbook on how to fetch a URL using a perl script.

Mystery solved. Spoofed referrer in the code. Although I'm not sure who exactly is using this method to pull my pages and why.

Update 9/21: It looks like some sort of bot since I just had this log entry of someone fetching the index page for my site.

Host: 66.17.15.164
Url: /
Http Code : 206
Date: Sep 21 19:15:49
Http Version: HTTP/1.1"
Size in Bytes: 2552
Referer: http://wizard.yellowbrick.oz
Agent: Schmozilla/v9.14 Platinum

Seabiscuit

A few weeks ago, while on a search for something interesting to read, I came across the book Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand in a local pharmacy. On a whim, I bought the book because I heard the movie was so good.

This is one great book. I haven't sat down to read a book like this in a very, very long time.

Not only is Hillenbrand an excellent writer, but she has an exciting story to tell. A part of American history which most of us today haven't heard about. The most interesting part for me, as I was reading the book, was that I had heard my grandfather had liked to follow horse racing but I never knew the sport was so popular back then.

Date night

Thereby, my daughter and I went off to Burger King, since one near us has an inflatable burger-like thing kids can jump inside and Frozen Cokes. Later, we hit Barnes and Noble since the Starbucks inside is open later than 8pm. Of course, going into the bookstore meant we just had to browse the kids section to play with the Thomas the Tank Engine display and to look at books. After successfully dissuading my daughter that she really did not need a book about playing the harmonica nor a Bob the Builder book geared for 3 year olds nor a Mother Goose book with sound, we finally settle on a book about Halloween wiener dogs.

Little kids love wiener dogs. I read the book for tonight's bedtime story, and it was an instant hit. (See, Mom is right sometimes. :-p )

And the bonus, The Economist was displayed right by the check out.

However, I really, really wanted to see the guy with the cellphone in line at the cafe give up on his phone conversation because the immediate area got suddenly loud. If your conversation is that important why the heck do you stay in line and attempt to order something and then get ticked when the barista doesn't understand what you want? How I wished I had a screaming infant with me at that moment. Really.

"Stop, pretty please" says ICANN to VeriSign

Via Slashdot, ICANN issued an advisory Friday asking VeriSign to stop using Site Finder until reviews about the service have been completed.

At least it's something, although it still appears the service is operational as one can directly go to Site Finder via a direct URL. (I'm unable to test the wildcard service otherwise.)

Tokyo astronomer predicted this week's earthquake

Tony at Technically Speaking picked up on a very interesting story from Japan. Earlier this week, Tony blogged about Yoshio Kushida who predicted a major earthquake occurring somewhere in Japan's Kanto plain where Tokyo is located this past week.

Guess what happened yesterday...an earthquake in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

While Kushida's predictions of a 7 magnitude quake were not correct (thank goodness), he did predict the time pretty accurately.

Here is the site for the Yatsugatake Observatory www.yatsugatake-eorc.org, and here is babelfish, where you can cut and paste the URL for Japanese to English translation.

Update 9/25 EDT: There was another, more serious 8 on the Richter scale earthquake off the northern island of Hokkaido today.

Saturday

Me and my daughter are hanging out at home after an unsuccessful attempt to go to the movies. I wanted to go see Finding Nemo at the dollar theatre and we drove all the way out there, only to have my daughter protest that she didn't want to see it again and she insisted we go to the dollar store. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed, but we walked around the shopping complex and lo and behold, found a dollar store. We are both dollar store connoisseurs, if you really wanted to know.

After the dollar store adventure and exploring a new shopping complex, I was driving towards home, thinking of a place to get a snack when I looked in my rearview mirror only to find that my daughter had fallen asleep. She had a really busy day yesterday, so I was not surprised. Seeing that she was sleepy, I drove home and decided to let her rest for a bit.

So here I am and my daughter is trying out her foam bow and arrow set. There should be the Summer Olympics in 2012, right?

Dean fights property tax charge

By Sam Hemingway
The Burlington Free Press

Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean wants a late charge waived for failing to pay his Burlington property taxes on time. He said he sent in a check before the deadline that city officials say they never received. "I submitted a check on July 16 for the entire amount," Dean said in a handwritten letter on file at City Hall. "The check was never posted by the treasurer for whatever reason."

Kathy Dunn, the customer service supervisor at the City Clerk and Treasurer's Office, said no July 16 check from Dean arrived at her office, either before or after the Aug. 12 deadline.

"We never received it," Dunn said. "It happens sometimes with the U.S. mail." As a result, the city is demanding Dean pay $76.01 in interest and penalties.

Dean claimed in his letter that he was unaware the check for his taxes had not been received by the city until he checked his bank statement in August.

"I am paying the entire year's tax in a lump sum because my campaign keeps me so busy I do not want to miss a payment (ironically)," Dean's Aug. 20 letter concluded.

Dunn confirmed that a new check was hand-delivered to City Hall on Aug. 21. The check, for $6,080.20, covered the entire year's property tax on the home Dean owns with his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, in the city's South End, but not the late fee.

Dean's waiver request, along with similar requests from 12 other property owners, will be reviewed at Monday's meeting of the City Council, sitting as the Board of Tax Abatement with Mayor Peter Clavelle and Brendan Keleher, the city's chief administrative officer.

Dean was campaigning in New Hampshire on Friday and was unavailable for comment. Bob Rogan, Dean's deputy campaign manager, issued a statement late Friday defending Dean's decision to ask that the late fee be waived.

"The governor is exercising his right, as a citizen of Burlington, to appeal the $76.01 in interest and penalties and will abide by the decision of the board," Rogan said. "This will come as no surprise to Vermonters, who are well aware that Howard Dean is a tightwad."

Dean's waiver request was initially considered at a Sept. 10 meeting of the Tax Abatement Committee. It voted 1-1 on the request, with Chairman Russell Ellis, a Democrat and Ward 4 city councilor, in favor of the abatement and Cheryl McDonough, a Progressive and Ward 2 councilor, against it. The third member, Phil Fiermonte, a Progressive and Ward 3 councilor, was absent.

"I think highly of Dean," McDonough said. "I almost voted with Ellis because of who he (Dean) is. But I had to step back and say, 'That's not right.'" She said the rules are clear that it's solely the taxpayers' responsibility to pay their taxes on time.

Ellis disagreed and said he will ask the full board to loosen the rule in cases where people unintentionally are late with their tax payments for "technical or communication reasons" beyond their control.

"These are people with a long record of paying on time," he said. "I don't think we should alienate them."

By city ordinance, all decisions of the committee are automatically subject to a review and vote by the full board before becoming final.

The Dean home is valued for tax purposes at $221,300. A year ago, Dean and his wife listed their net worth at $4 million.

Note: The Burlington Free Press doesn't keep articles archived online for more than a few days.

odd

My rootblog entry.

I have no idea why the RSS feed is from someone else's blog.

Update: I have no idea where my blog listing is now. Jeez.

Avast ye me hearties, the PowerBook is unaccounted for

Yarr, me hearties, yesterday I get an email from those people over at Apple revealing the secret that the PowerBook, hey hey, has been shipped via Airborne. Unable to keep my pirate-like curiosity in check, I grab ye tracking number and look up wether or not me booty is in the Airborne system. It is not.

Aye, yes, I was very disappointed, so after I recieved a copy of me booty's invoice, I find an Airborne Waybill number listed. I track that Waybill number and see that my particular piece of booty had been picked up as part of a shipment with some other booty from ye island nation of Taiwan. However, I cannot tell if that shipment of booty has reached Apple's warehouse, where it seems (according to me tracking number) my booty should be shipped from.

Airborne still has two more business days to get me booty to me house, or else there will be a sad pirate around these parts.

(For those who are humored impaired, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

Update: Me booty has passed through US Customs in Chicago today. Yarrr.

Izzy is such a flirt

Well, just so you all know, the only effects of now Tropical Storm Isabel here in Vermont has been sporadic gusty wind, a minor amount of drizzle (including the odd occurance of seeing rain only in the far part of my backyard) and some dramatic looking clouds rushing past the summits of the Green Mountains. The clouds looked cool as I was driving my daughter to school today.

All that, and I swear during last night's Nightly News, Tom Brokaw kept on calling Isabel "Israel" instead.

Update: My parents in PA (outside of Philly) lost power and the word on the street is that they won't get power until NEXT WEEK. (!!!)

Update 9/21: My parents got their power back early Saturday morning. Also heard that the storm surge on the Chesapeake Bay was something fierce.

VeriSign getting sued

From Reuters via Forbes, VeriSign is getting sued by a little known search engine company called netster.com because of Site Finder.

Looks like a PR stunt, but still interesting nonetheless. Still no word from ICANN about this.

Hot Isabel Action!

Live, from Raleigh, NC.

US Commerce Department grants ICANN three more years

Roy Mark
dc.internet.com

The Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Wednesday agreed to extend their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for three more years to transition management of the Internet domain name and numbering system (DNS) from the U.S. government to the private sector.

Commerce currently serves as the "steward" of critical elements of the DNS while ICANN is the private sector entity responsible for day-to-day management of the system. In November 1998, Commerce entered into the first MOU with ICANN and subsequently the U.S. government and ICANN have signed a series of one-year agreements.

...

The MOU highlights ICANN's responsibility to ensure the stability of the Internet and foster its globalization. According to the MOU, ICANN will implement an objective process for selecting new Top Level Domains; implement an effective strategy for multi-lingual communications and international outreach; and develop a contingency plan, consistent with the international nature of the internet, to ensure continuity of operations in the event of a severe disruption of operations.

Meanwhile ICANN hasn't done a thing about the VeriSign Site Finder fiasco.

The PowerBook

It has been shipped. The funny thing is, for a piece of equipment that has five different numbers assigned to it: Order Number, Sales Order Number, Delivery Number, Customer Number, PO Number -- it can't be tracked by the shipper's tracking number yet. Irony.

Now we'll see how fast expedited shipping really is.

Update: I recieved Yet Another Confirmation email from Apple this morning stating that the PowerBook has been shipped from California. (And the girl told me yesterday that she thought it would be shipped directly from overseas.) There ya go.

Doing an endrun past Verisign's Site Finder

For those of you who are not techie, you might not have heard about the latest shenanigans from everyone's favorite domain name registrar, VeriSign. According to this Wired article, when someone mistypes a .com or .net domain name, instead of getting an error message, Web surfers are directed to a VeriSign page called Site Finder with possible suggestions.

Here is an example of how the current VeriSign system works, using the fake domain of exampless.com. (At this writing, my ISP, Earthlink is currently allowing the VeriSign redirection of the bogus domain names.)

The redirection of a bogus domain poses two big problems, first because VeriSign, a for profit company, is breaking the time honored protocol of returning error messages for mistyped domain names. Secondly, the redirection to Site Finder is causing some anti-spam software to believe that bogus domains are operational, thereby allowing spam with a bogus from: address to pass through spam filters.

So, at this point what is occurring is that the software which operates most of the Internet's domain name lookup capabilities, called BIND, has a new patch available to bypass the VeriSign Site Finder page. According to what I've read, ISPs should be updating their BIND software. In addition, there are calls to pressure VeriSign to drop their Site Finder service since they are indeed a contractor under ICANN.

UPDATE 9/18: Earthlink has apparently blocked the Versign Site Finder. Good for Earthlink.

WUSA's problems change career goal

By Adam Zagoria, Herald News
Found on NorthJersey.com

Until Monday, Carli Lloyd had a pretty good idea of what career she wanted to pursue after graduating from Rutgers. Lloyd, a member of the United States U-21 women's national soccer team, had already played exhibition matches against the San Diego Spirit and San Jose CyberRays of the Women's United Soccer Association. This past summer she trained with the Philadelphia Charge.

An attacking midfielder considered one of the most talented collegiate players in the nation, Lloyd had her sights set on joining WUSA as a player.

...

But after the WUSA board of governors announced on Monday, five days before the opening of the 2003 Women's World Cup, that it was shuttering the league because of a lack of revenues, Lloyd can no longer look forward to playing professionally in this country. Neither can the 56 players from around the globe who played in WUSA this year and are about to kick off the World Cup knowing they will soon have to look for jobs.

Led by Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Julie Foudy, those women had served as role models for thousands of girls and young women across America competing in rec leagues, on club teams and in high schools across the country.

"It's kind of a bummer," Lloyd said of the WUSA's demise.

Let me note that there are three soccer balls currently sitting in my backyard.

Democratic Candidate tracker

Thomas over at grabbingsand has a unique method to keep track of the Democratic candidates.

Ok, so I was amused with the pictures.

NEW 15" PowerBooks announced in Paris!

OH YES THIS JUST MADE MY DAY, THANK YOU SLASHDOT!

Updated 15" specs. Still has the G4, although running at 1.25 Ghz, Airport Extreme, backlit keyboard...

w00t!

ps: I shall eat a little crow for my dismissal of big announcements on Tuesdays. ;-)

pps: Before I order the machine, is there anything that you Mac folks would recommend getting with the machine? I have my digital camera and I have a copy of Office for the Mac. I'm thinking about the wireless mouse.

Update 9/17: No new 15" PowerBooks with SuperDrive at SmallDog, I was just quoted a 5-7 day wait at least. :-/

Final update 9/17: ORDERED!

IBM Families Ask, 'Why?'

Another OP-ED about workers suing IBM by Bob Herbert in The NY Times

Nancy LaCroix has worked for about 20 years at I.B.M.'s huge plant in Essex Junction, near Burlington, Vt. She said she worked in areas in which she was surrounded by chemical fumes ("it really smelled bad in there") and employees at times had to leave their work stations because of burning eyes and nostrils.

In 1999 her daughter Ally was born with severe bone defects, including encephalocele, a condition in which a portion of the brain protrudes through a defect in the skull. Ally's fingers are stunted and "tapered like a starfish," said Ms. LaCroix, "and she really doesn't have toes."

The child has had eight operations and extensive physical therapy. Now 4 1/2, she complains about headaches "every single day," her mother said.

There is a long list of young people and children who have suffered tragic birth defects - spina bifida, missing or deformed limbs, a missing kidney, a missing vagina, blindness - whose parents (in some cases both parents) worked for I.B.M. and are now suing.

Plaintiffs' lawyers contend there are higher than normal rates of birth defects among I.B.M. employees who have worked with the toxic chemicals that are common to semiconductor manufacturing.

One of the lawyers, Steven Phillips of Manhattan, said: "These cases are extreme. I've never seen children as badly hurt as these."

Tunbridge World's Fair

Like Fred Tuttle, the Man with a Plan, my daughter and I made the pilgrimage to The Tunbridge World's Fair.

And we were able to get up close and personal with an ox.

From where we live, driving to Tunbridge is a about an hour and 15 minutes or so. The day was nice and the drive through the mountains, from Montpelier down south was pretty. Some trees in the higher elevations are already turning colors, ever so slightly. I get off the interstate at exit 3 and wouldn't you know it, in typical Vermont style, there were no signs for the event. Luckily I had directions, so we drove through Royalton and South Royalton and take a left onto RT. 110 which takes about 10 minutes. Because of all the traffic, the South Royalton rescue squad thought it would be a good idea to have a coin drop. After turning on RT. 110 and traveling north, I hit the Tunbridge Fire Department who also decided to have a coin drop. This was the excitement.

A few miles north of the second coin drop was the entrance to the fair, so I followed the directions of the guy wearing the orange vest and waving a flag and wound up driving in a field with kids from the Corps of Cadets at Norwich University directing traffic. Here is a covered bridge just before the field.

After parking, my daughter and I find out that we're about a good 1/3 of a mile from the main fairgrounds, so we walk to the entrance to purchase our tickets from one of the Norwich cadets.

Just inside the entrance, we stopped to watch what was going on in the horse ring. As it turned out, the horses and riders in costume were parading somewhere else and we couldn't get to the main grounds since the pathway was blocked off for a few minutes so as to allow the horses free passage. I would tell you the story about the family obviously from NYC who couldn't understand why the rest of us were waiting patiently for the horses to proceed, but that would be your typical city slicker tale. Here is the view of the fairgrounds from the horse ring.

From the horse ring, we actually veer right and walk uphill to where some living history and other exhibits were. The first place we walked into was the 1840s school house, which was quite neat.

My daughter was becoming increasingly impatient to go on some rides, so we skipped the rest of the history stuff and went down to the midway which was located behind the grandstand. Needless to say, she wanted to play at every game stand and purchase every type of food we saw. Finally, we make it to the kiddie ride section, where I purchase some ride tickets for her. She went on a car ride, a huge slide, and the merry go round. After the merry go round, we go to procure some lunch, so we get a caramel apple for her and some water. I wanted a bowl of french fries but thanks to a grumpy middle aged woman who blew me off, I decided to sample some pulled pork from the BBQ place which didn't have vinegar (heathens). Because there were so few places to sit down, we ended up sitting a hill behind the midway to enjoy our lunch. These are the pictures I took from our location.

This is what we saw to the left of us. The left side building is the agricultural building. The right side was an exhibition ring which at the time was hosting a children's goat costume contest.

After lunch, I convinced my daughter that we really wanted to go see animals, so we went to go check out the agricultural buildings on the premises. The first building we entered was the left hand side building in the previous picture. In here we saw all sorts of vegetables on display. We Vermonters take our cucumbers seriously.

After the vegtables, we walked amongst the livestock buildings, where we saw everything from cows to rabbits to baby chicks (which we petted) to peacocks to sheep. Here are some cows.

Should I mention that the buildings were so small that we became well acquainted with the wrong end of an ox? Oh also, the hindquarters of these oxen were taller than I am.

Besides the close encounters with the oxen, here are some sheeeeep.

And a pig.

And a well hidden goat.

After the animals, we then went exploring the grandstand. You can see in the following pictures that the grandstand is on the other side of a dirt track. The reason for the dirt track, for the demolition derbies (another Vermont tradition) of course.

Left side of the track.

Right side of the track, you can see a second midway in the midfield of the track.

What is unique about the stands is that they are painted with the ubiquitous grey paint that you see all over Vermont. In fact, my house has this same paint. And I learned later that underneath the stands there was a beer hall. Fun for the whole family.

After seeing the grandstand and track, I promised my daughter she could play one midway game. She picks this fishing duckie game which allowed her to pick her prize. She of course chooses a plastic toy trumpet as her prize. Oh, the irony. We then decide to take another look around at the living history museum she wanted to skip earlier.

Inside of the museum, there were several displays where folks were dressed up as if they were in the mid-1800s. The candy store was a big hit, since my daughter could get a lollipop for 15 cents.

Here are some women spinning yarn.

From the musuem, we wandered around, past the stands touting everything from Roasted Corn to the local Democratic party. And let's not forget the Civil War re-enactors and the guys chopping wood with old tools and the blacksmiths. There was a building with displays inside, including Indian motorcycles and the poor guy who was manning the local Republican party table. After this excitement, we then went for a walk around the outside of the dirt track I showed you earlier, since there were some oxen tied to the fences and we wanted to take a closer look at them. We even got to pet a few, including the one in the first picture. And that animal, at the shoulder, easily was 6ft in height.

When we were finished walking around the track, we ended up at the midfield midway. Don't ask me how, but we ended up at this building with lots of people sitting around it, and we were intrigued, so the both of us sat down and wondered what was going on. It turned out that the the oxen pulling contest was to start in about 20 minutes, so we decided to stick around to watch. This image is of the contestants lining up with their teams. You can't see them, but I got a kick out of the male contestants wearing their Carhartt dungarees.

As we watched the contest, we learned that the teams competed to see which one could pull a sled full of concrete blocks at least 6 feet. The concrete blocks intially weighed 3800lbs, but as the contest went on, more and more blocks were added until only one team existed.

In the contest we watched, there were 8 teams of oxen (one of the drivers was one very petite blonde woman) and the challenge was not only to get the oxen to pull the weight, but to actually get the oxen in place to get hooked up to the sled. One poor guy started out with a team which didn't want to be there and it was hilarious to watch him trying to convince his oxen that they really did want to turn around for him.

We didn't watch the whole contest as it was getting late and we had to think about getting home. So we left the stands, and walked around a bit more, finding a leather goods booth by the 12 Tribes Community of Island Pond, and the kids petting zoo. And after finding the homemade lemonade stand, we finally left the fairgrounds after a full and tiring day.

Hurricanes are no fun

Right now, it appears as if Isabel is targeting the east coast.

Of course for the next week, we're going to see reporters in their Columbia waterproof jackets breathlessly describing how folks are boarding/taping up their windows, buying bottled water and flashlights and canned goods and diapers and etc. Having lived through Hurricane Fran when she hit North Carolina in 1996, I can attest that hurricanes are no joke. That night the storm hit was extremely worrisome as looked out the window of the apartment I was living in and saw those famous 100ft tall Carolina Pine trees bending in half due to the strong winds. I will not forget the sound of the wind whistling outside. During the night, I kept the radio tuned to the Wilmington weather simulcast and they were reporting that Fran was following the path of the Cape Fear river.

The next day, walking around the neighborhood and seeing the amount of destruction she wrought was amazing. The electricity was out for about a day in the complex I lived in (although some poor souls in the next building over had theirs out for a whole week due to some odd way they were connected to the local grid). Several cars were completely destroyed, a few roofs fallen in, traffic lights were out and everybody had the day off from school or work.