Digital Choke Daynotes

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Reports

Back home again. (What? Where did you go?) Well, there was that week-long SANS conference in Los Angeles, which was the main reason for missing a few posting days last week.

SANS always has very good instructors, and very good information to teach. Although their classes are a bit pricey (about $3000 for each week-long class), they are worth it. The instructors know their topic, and you can gain a lot of knowledge by going to the classes. They hold regional and world-wide conferences/classes, so you should be able to find one in your neighborhood. Their big bash is in New Orleans, but I couldn't talk the boss into that one. Their web site (www.sans.org) will give you all the info about their conferences. And if you dig around in there, you'll find lots of written papers on all sorts of computer topics.

They have a certification program that I believe is well-respected. Each 'track' has a test and a written paper requirement. Both are not easy to do. The papers you can see on their site are the results of the certifications. Almost all are very good. Recommended.

The trip home on Southwest Airlines was uneventful. It almost took longer to do all the security checks and wait for baggage at the other end than the length of the flight (one hour). LAX requires a 'shoes-off' check, along with the usual empty your pockets and walk through the metal detector thing.

I got home about 2pm, and was met by the wife, oldest daughter/husband/two kids (grandkids). Much hugging (mostly from the grandkids) and then just relaxed the rest of the day. Back to the grind tomorrow, I suppose there will be lots to do. And there is also the anniversary this week. I probably should buy a gift.

I spent most of the day updating the current project status list. The boss likes to get it monthly, and then it gets passed up the line. It's useful, I think. It does help keep focus on projects. But it does take a bit of time to keep it current.

And tomorrow is election day here in California. By this time tomorrow night (it's a bit after 9pm now), there will be a new governor around town. (More likely, a new "Governator". Which is my prediction, if anyone wants to keep track.) There's lots of problems in this here state, and a new governor won't fix them all. But, it would seem like it might be a good start. It will certainly be interesting. We'll be hitting the polling place when they open up.

In our county, we use a scanning ballot. You fill in the bubbles, and the paper ballot is scanned and counted. No hanging chads for our county. Other counties are going to use some of those touch-screen Diebold voting machines. No paper copy there; it is all stored on a memory chip. But Wired News report that those machines are very susceptible to fraud. Which brings to mind a possible challenge: if there is no valid paper trail of a vote with these machines, how can you guarantee the validity of the numbers stored in the machine? And, will there be a court challenge by the loser (Gray Davis, who has as much personality as his name) because of the use of those machines? I suspect there will be; both of you read it here first.

In the meantime, I get to go to an "Inclusion" class for the next two days. As you can tell from the title, it will be an extravaganza of touchy-feely stuff, which I really hate. I realize that it is important to be 'inclusive' in the workplace, and you have to make sure that you don't hurt anyone's feelings. I am not sure that it takes 16 hours to teach that. But, the big giant boss has decreed that all management types get to take that class, so off I go.

Well, we've got a new "Governator". It was quite a significant opinion that was expressed by the voters. As Jerry Pournelle pointed out today, "Well, 800,000 more voted to turn Davis out than voted to put him into office." And many of those used the same punch cards system that everyone was complaining about, including Davis and other Democrats. It is interesting to note, however, that those same punch card machines were used to elect Davis last time.

So, Arnold will be the new governor. And already we are hearing about how the Lame Grey Duck will be using his remaining time in office to appoint people to some 1500 open positions. And how the Legislature (dominated by Democrats) may be called back into session to approve those appointments. And the one legislator (Democrat, but I didn't catch his name) said that he'd give Arnold 100 days to fix things. It would seem that a few of the legislators aren't listening to their constituents (not that they have listened before).

Sorry for the missing post yesterday. I was glued to the election returns. Not. Actually, after a nice dinner on the patio, and some web-surfing, I got started on the "Lewis and Clark Expedition" show on PBS. Although somewhat interesting, I started fading out, and decided to go to bed early.

After sending up Monday's post, I watch the story about the first transcontinental (US) road trip -- "Horatio's Drive", a documentary by Ken Burns. It's a story about a retired doctor who made a $50 bet that he could drive across the United States in 90 days, from San Francisco to New York. This, in a time that there weren't any roads across the country, and in a car that had less horsepower (12) than the riding lawnmower I used to have. It was quite an interesting story, and the web site has some good background information. Here's a taste:

They used a clever combination of historical still photos, many of them taken by Horatio's companion, and some current-day film that was digitally changed to look like old-time film. And the story was quite interesting; I managed to stay awake for that one.

Other than that, a normal day at work with nothing terribly exciting happening. And a quiet evening at home followed that. We did have some resolution of the car problem that Stacy had back at college. She was driving with her friends last weekend when the car overheated. She quickly got to the side of the road, and used her cell phone to call the AAA road service. They got her car to the garage, and they were able to look at it yesterday. It turns out that the upper radiator hose, which was replaced by a local service shop here (along with other belts and hoses, including timing belts), was slightly too large for the connection to the engine block. The clamp was not able to properly fasten the hose, so a slow leak developed. Luckily, there was no damage to the engine, and the total cost for replacing the hose was about $80.

She is going to send me a copy of the bill, and I'll be taking it to the repair shop here to get it reimbursed. And there won't be any more service done at that place. (It is the same place that replaced the transmission in my son's car, which failed after about 60 days. They did reimburse for the towing charge for that, and put in another rebuilt one without charge.) But I don't believe they have earned any more visits.

Well, it would seem that the CD security software mentioned above will not result in a lawsuit. So perhaps I'd be safe in mentioning the details. But, both of my regular readers already know the whole story, so there is no need to repeat it here.

The big news around here is what happened 28 years ago tonight. I was lucky to get married to a wonderful person that day, and am still lucky (and blessed) to have her around now. I can say that this evening will be much better than the evening 28 years ago. We both got a mild case of food poisioning, so the first night was interesting as we shared (alternately) quick trips to the throne room. We had our wedding reception the next night. The last picture in our wedding picture book is both of us holding a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

A small celebration is in order this weekend, starting with a quiet evening at home tonight. We also treated ourselves to our favorite Baskin-Robins ice cream. And we'll spend some quality time together this weekend. I suspect that tomorrow's post will contain exactly the words you see tonight.

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