Last week my son turned one year old, so we had to have a party. I'm pretty sure that the look on his face is similar to a crack head after getting his fix.

I'm simply gobsmacked by this notion:

A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Micrsoft's giant Internet indexes showed that only about 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material.
San Jose Mercury News

I suppose that the internet is for big business. Perhaps this is some crazy way of trying to garner support for the FCC to allow ISP's to create a tiered internet.

My Dream'eo PVP E320 combination portable media player / GPS device arrived today, so of course I had to immediately grab it when I got home and go play with it. My initial review? It cost $199, so it would have to go really wrong for me to say that it sucks. Just like with any device, though, there's good and bad.

1. It's a Chinese made product from a European company. If you need instruction manuals to make something work, this isn't for you.
2. There's no status screen for the GPS like on my Garmin Rhino 120, so you don't know if you've acquired a decent signal or not.
3. It cost me $199
4. The GPS unit is a CF card sticking out of the top, which is both a plus and a minus. The plus is that it's a very well reviewed unit and has a 10' antenna extension so that you don't have to mount the unit in the windshield. However, it does stick out a bit, so it's not the most aesthetically pleasing design. The GPS on this seems to be a bit more accurate than my Rhino 120 in terms of where I am in relation to the interstate. The Dream'eo has US/Canada road maps loaded but the Rhino only has major roads, but it sometimes puts my house on the wrong side of the interstate.
5. The video player doesn't downscale! If your video is higher resolution than 352x240 it simply won't play. That does kinda suck.
6. MP3's play perfectly fine as long as they're encoded at 192kbps or less, which all of mine are.
7. This thing looks to be totally hackable. 400 Mhz proc with 32MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive. I wonder if I can put a bigger drive in it without the BIOS freaking out. May have to borrow someone's spare drive (Mirage) and try that.
8. Braindead designers supply you with a stylus for the touchscreen, but no slot to slide it into.
9. Transfer speed over USB 2.0 is nice and swift, unlike some devices I've seen that are "compatible" but nowhere near the top speed.
10. Just because I needed 10 things. The fact that this came with all of the car mounting accessories rocks.

All in all I give the PVP E320 a "good buy" rating for the price of $199. Maybe even up to $250. Anything over that price, though, and I'd start shopping more on features.

Day care. Ah, the wonders of having someone to take care of your child while you go off to earn a living, allowing you to provide the best of things for your family. The joy of knowing that your child will learn vital social skills so that he or she can interact with society in a rational manner. The ecstasy of knowing that by the time your child makes it to kindergarten, they will have experienced every virus known to man.
This Saturday my son was out and about with us and we noticed that he didn't have much of an appetite. Little did we know that was the precursor to his interpretation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. All over the car seat. All over Mommy. All over Daddy. Sunday was spent in Daddy's lap while I and my wife watched the clock and how much Pedialyte we could get him to keep down, hoping we could keep him hydrated enough to stay out of the emergency room. By Sunday night he was drinking a bottle again, so we thought all was well.
Monday my wife and I both went to work and by lunch time had that feeling of nausea. We coordinated our route home so that she picked up our son and I stopped off at the store for a giant sized bottle of Pepto-Bismol, because we both knew what was coming next. Over the next 24 hours of toilet hugging and sitting, I lost a total of 7.5 pounds and my wife lost 5. Now I know what Nicole Richie secretly goes through after ever meal, only I experienced a month's worth in a single day.

I went to Tang Soo Do class last night and today I feel like I was run over by a Mack truck. We worked a bit on take-downs and some sparring, but did I get matched up with someone else of similar skill? No, I got to spar with the highest ranking instructor in the dojang. Actually, I usually pretty good until I hear the instructors call out "ea-dan", which means "jump". It's one thing to be able to maintain your center of gravity and lift up a leg to do a kick when you weigh over 300 lbs. It's a completely different situation once you start trying to add flight to the mix. So today my left leg is definitely letting me know that it's still there. I guess I'll have to go grab a knee brace to start wearing.
I also found out last night that the do jang is going back to "old school," meaning that the beginner class will truly be just beginner material. Even though the majority of the people showing up have been green belt or higher, the content will strictly be what you would learn as a white or purple belt. I like that in that it will give me a chance to focus on the stuff I have to catch up on, but on the other hand I'll have to start doing the later class to learn the material I'll need to advance. Master Rose placed me as 4th Gup, meaning that the first test I take in Tang Soo Do will be for red belt. That's actually closer to red than where I had gotten with Tae Kwon Do, but there was a whole other belt in that style - white, yellow, green, blue, red, black as opposed to Tang Soo Do's white, purple, green, red, black.
Oh, I found a good link to the Korean vocabulary here.

PhreakNIC 10 was this past weekend and it has taken me most of the week to recover. That's not entirely due to PhreakNIC, as I spent most of what should be "sleep time" this week dealing with a sick baby that wanted the entire house to be awake between the hours of 1AM and 3AM. He's still doing so, but the wife stayed home yesterday to try to recover and had enough rest to allow me to sleep upstairs last night while she dealt with him by herself. Ah, parenthood.

So anyway, about PhreakNIC 10. I think that this year was our best ever. It was good to see the familiar faces from past PhreakNICs, but the best part was during the opening talk when I asked how many people were there for the first time. I expected to see maybe 20-30 hands go up in the air, but the vast majority of the room raised their hands. Our content was hands down the best it has ever been as well. Unfortunately a file system problem caused most of the video from Saturday to be lost to the bit bucket, but then again, that's why you show up to the convention. Our Friday content is very good, though not as security focused. I think that a lot of people will get a lot out of Thomas Holt, PhD.'s talk on academic research of the hacker community. The party atmosphere on Friday night was a bit calm, but on Saturday it was going until the wee hours of the morning. Even I, the old fogie that usually goes to bed by 1 AM on Saturday, was up until 3:30 AM on Saturday night and it was still going quite strong when I went to bed.

I also loved the fact that we had a vendor (The Bot Shop) set up and actually make enough money to say that it was worth their time. I don't know why it has been so hard getting vendors for our group, but it probably has to do with the fact that most of us are used to searching the web for the best price, rather than paying the "now tax" on our purchases. I look forward to seeing them again next year at PhreakNIC 11.

My son is making his transition from being fed to feeding himself. I'm not sure how much more I can add to this discussion.

I have three more days to go to work this week, then I will be running practically non-stop for another three days. PhreakNIC setup at the hotel will begin on Thursday night and there will be something going on at every hour of the day until we close up early Sunday morning. It's hard to believe that I've been doing this for five years, now, and that people still want me to do it. My nickname has become the "Dictator for Life" because of it. After last year, I said that I wanted to step back a bit and have someone else handle the main planning for PhreakNIC, but when the President of Nashville 2600 stepped down, I was back into the top seat. My wife and I talked it over and she's supportive of me because she knows that I'm passionate about the organization Nashville 2600 and the convention (PhreakNIC) that have become part of our lives.

I've had people come up to me at the convention and ask me why I do it, because they're curious about what motivates me. I've also had some critics claim that I shouldn't be considered a hacker because I didn't fit their mold of what one should be. I think that mainly comes from the fact that I've moved out of the technical work and into management, both within my career and this hobby. To me it all boils down to this within the crucible: I do it because I want to counteract the hollywood version of what a hacker is and to show that there are positive examples that are simply people who are curious about how things work. The common thing about hackers as displayed in movies and other media is that they have no moral compass. Those of us within Nashville 2600 have a very strong moral compass. Well, at least in terms of what's legal.

This weekend will be the culmination of a year's efforts and will be over in just a few short hours, but those who attend will continue to talk about it for a long time. I hope to be able to continue to pour my heart and soul into such an endeavor for many more years - maybe even enough for my son to become a part of it as well.

This morning my wife and I took our son to the Walden Pumpkin Farm. It's a pretty nice setup - they have corn mazes, hay rides, a little petting zoo area and, of course, lots of pumpkins.



The thing that surprised me the most was that in this day and age of trying to squeeze every last dime that you can out of people, most of the things that we did at the farm didn't cost anything. The corn maze cost $1 for the child and the parents can go for free (that's the opposite of what you usually see) and the pumpkins cost from $2 to $12 each, depending on the size. All of the extra areas that were set up, which were obviously there for taking pictures, were simply open for you to set up and do as you wish.

Needless to say our little pumpkin had a great time and that put a smile on both Mommy and Daddy's face.

The Tang Soo Do classes are going really well. I'm now up to going twice a week and if I could ever get to the point of not having so much to do on the weekends I'd probably go on Saturdays, too. Last night the instructor gave me a bit of an honor by having me line up with the green belts even though I don't have a uniform yet - it should be in by Thursday, I hope.

She also told me that I needed to go ahead and make a bo staff - basically a 1-2" diameter dowell rod about 4.5' - 5' tall, sanded and finished. I don't know when the weapons become a part of testing, but I do know that they have us practice the forms with weapons on occasion. Last night we went through the first basic form, Il Bu, with the staff. Maybe with a slightly longer staff than the ones in class I can do it better, since I'm so much bigger than the average person. My biggest problem is being able to tuck one end under my shoulder and using the other end to perform a block. We'll see how things progress.

The first testing is the same weekend as PhreakNIC, which sucks, because even though I'm not ready to test for anything, I was hoping to go watch it. I'd like to video some of the forms being done so that I can have a good reference for practice at home. I've got the first three down, but for the rank that they're bringing me in at (comparable to where I was in Tae Kwon Do) I need to be on the fifth form. The fourth one I'm starting to get the hang of but can't remember a thing about the fifth one.