tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84426416464068578342024-03-13T21:43:21.808-07:00kdc-blogRandom stuff direct from Kevin's brain.kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.comBlogger157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-74415119496277456362017-09-18T20:36:00.000-07:002017-09-18T20:36:48.368-07:00Kancamangus Pass, Bear Notch, Crawford Notch, Franconia Notch, Kinsman NotchOur group rode this route in June 2017.
This was a fun ride. I'm glad that I rode with such a great group of people too!
Kancamangus Pass was easier than I thought it would be, but, then again, my legs were still fresh. Bear Notch was trivial going in this direction. Crawford Notch was a bit tough. My climbing legs were pretty much gone by the time I got to Kinsman kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-72524035783875974162016-10-13T18:45:00.000-07:002016-10-13T18:45:24.651-07:00Bumper Sticker Seen At Work(moderately geeky)
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-10912625394452967422016-06-05T18:38:00.001-07:002018-02-12T20:56:47.898-08:00Mis-Adventures In Security EngineeringOne day, I found myself working at a new {dayjob}. I was enthusiastic about this job ; I thought I could make a real difference at this shop and work with some interesting tech.
But the environment in this shop was chaotic, and I spent a lot of time fighting fires. Every day brought its own challenges...
Early on, I became aware of a security problem in the product I was supporting.kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-3573938615440609062015-09-22T18:42:00.001-07:002015-09-22T18:43:56.486-07:00Blue Man Group -- Baba O Riley
I watch this every once in a while, and I think that it is awesome....
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-35773654694353844322015-09-19T20:01:00.001-07:002015-09-20T07:39:53.739-07:00The Casa Sui Performance ProblemOne day at {dayjob}, I was asked to take a look at a system that was
suffering from a serious performance problem. The end-users who used
this system were having a difficult time. The phone was ringing, and
people were complaining...
So, I took a look at the
system. The first thing that I noted was that the 15-minute
load-average on the system was running at around 10, kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-55809790626236155552015-07-15T20:03:00.000-07:002015-07-15T20:03:30.685-07:00An Appreciation for _Programmers at Work_A few months ago I learned that an important book in my life had been "republished" in the form of a blog. The book is/was Programmers at Work. I'm happy to see the content in this book available on the web, because I dimly remember giving my own copy of this book away to somebody else who I thought could use it.
I found this book to be useful when I was younger because back then I kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-59533422010393844432015-06-17T19:27:00.003-07:002015-06-17T19:27:57.528-07:00Adventures in Virtualization and Storage ManagementOne fine Sunday while I was doing some work around the house, I received a series of dire work emails from people in the management of ${employer}. Early that morning, one of our marquee customers had some problems with an appliance that we supported at their site. From what I read, it seemed like the appliance had suffered a significant failure...but the actual cause of the failure kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-63810923000225100822014-11-02T12:00:00.001-08:002014-11-02T12:00:10.625-08:00Philosophy Tech SupportI'm pretty sure that Philosophy Tech Support from Existential Comics is the funniest thing I'm going to read all day.
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-41808223576146622112014-09-05T17:40:00.001-07:002014-09-05T17:40:35.730-07:00Hanover / Chelsea Loop -- August 2014
This was a nice ride! Gloomy skies for the entire day, but it never actually rained on us. Even though it was August, I wore arm-warmers for the entire day, and a vest during descents. The roads were super-nice, with a fair amount of dirt, but I rode all of it with no problems on 700x25s.
Just before we rolled back into Hanover, we stopped by a store that is frequented by kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-11171651808039503082014-08-18T17:19:00.000-07:002014-08-18T17:19:54.587-07:00Some Humorous Truth About Java
I think that Java is well-designed language that comes with a very functional/useful set of class libraries. There are a fair number of detractors of this language, but many detractors are fans of languages that aren't (in my opinion) nearly as well-designed as the Java ecosystem.
However....sometimes Java can be difficult to work with. I suppose that every professional Java kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-194032905396623032014-06-30T16:27:00.000-07:002014-06-30T19:44:47.346-07:00 Judo In Security Engineering (first story)One day at {dayjob}, I decided it was time to tell the VP of Engineering about my concerns regarding the product's security. Specifically, I was concerned about the security of a part of the product that I was helping to design+implement.
We were starting to get some enterprise and government interest in the product, and I wanted to have a sensible security scheme in-place before we kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-20002380545390293792014-05-22T07:04:00.000-07:002014-05-22T11:08:14.299-07:00My Take on Aaron Maxwell's "Use the Unofficial Bash Strict Mode (Unless You Looove Debugging)"I enjoyed Aaron Maxwell's Use the Unofficial Bash Strict Mode (Unless You Looove Debugging). Read it -- seriously. Mr. Maxwell is clearly somebody who knows what he is talking about.
I'm a shell hacker too. My fascination with the shell has....evolved over the years. I no longer reach for the shell as my first tool of choice...I more have the following heuristics in my kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-56829799793026678642014-04-10T14:56:00.000-07:002014-04-10T14:56:59.718-07:00Protocol DesignI agree with what Dan Kaminsky wrote:
Protocol design is miserable, nothing is elegant.
I do like working in the area of protocol design+implementation. There are a lot of interesting problems to work on in this space....problems that fully engage your mind if you care about doing it well. But...wow...it can be a frustrating area to work in too. If you are not on top of your kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-51830675128449083092014-04-03T08:52:00.001-07:002014-04-03T08:52:19.490-07:00The Expertkdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-22734741236430664262014-03-31T14:38:00.000-07:002014-04-01T05:49:22.578-07:00DebuggersRecently, I enjoyed reading Ellen Ullman's book The Bug. I picked this book up a long time ago and just hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. Overall, I thought this book was interesting and worth the time that I put into reading it.
Here was one of my favorite sections:
Better fix that bug, Harry had said. William Harland is acting like he never saw a bug before.&kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-61774251186863152722014-02-17T07:11:00.001-08:002014-02-17T07:11:26.358-08:00Lily at Trailside
My heart melts when I watch this cute little dog named Lily.
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-89371885674479148392014-02-16T11:38:00.000-08:002014-02-16T11:38:58.015-08:00UNH needs a $25M stadium like I need a hole in my headI was disappointed to read the following news release from my alma mater:
January 31, 2014
UNH Outlines Plan for New Athletic Complex as Part of Campus Master Plan
DURHAM, N.H. – With a focus on meeting its strategic
priorities, the University of New Hampshire is moving forward with
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-45812849873496927962014-02-01T21:01:00.000-08:002014-02-01T21:01:16.014-08:00Fsck'd KioskWhile walking through the local mega-hardware-store, I saw this:
This is a kiosk for Behr stains, running Ubuntu.
Cool. Of course, it'd be even cooler if the kiosk's storage mechanism (flash drive, I hope) hadn't died.
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-83566039966842147172014-01-07T12:59:00.000-08:002014-01-07T12:59:07.286-08:00Aristophanes would enjoy the current state of computing, methinks.Today's Dilbert Desk Calendar yielded the following:
I liked this cartoon a lot!
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-27983462184817060312013-12-18T14:35:00.002-08:002013-12-18T14:35:40.360-08:00Why DOS attacks stop - behind the scenes...
I first saw this here:
Hilarious.
kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-75897976489322446252013-12-01T20:29:00.000-08:002013-12-02T06:11:03.885-08:00Arcade Volleyball on the first date? Let's use Hamming Codes for protection...
This shows you what some of my earliest interactions with computers were like:
Even the world's worst Perl code has nothing on this.
I used to be a computer-store-rat who would beg/borrow and occasionally purchase copies of Compute!'s Gazette (which, IIRC, was oriented towards the Commodore line of computers). In each month's exciting issue, there would be "source code" kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-8930580826552571092013-10-18T07:04:00.000-07:002013-10-18T07:04:41.100-07:00REAMDE comes to life
Taken from this story:
According to multiple participants in the month-long discussion,
CryptoLocker is true to its name. It uses strong cryptography to lock
all files that a user has permission to modify, including those on
secondary hard drives and network storage systems. Until recently, few
antivirus products detected the ransomware until it was too late. By
then, kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-5415903383312325612013-10-14T11:00:00.001-07:002013-10-23T13:15:40.822-07:00Fun With Real-World Network ProblemsA long time ago, on a ${Dayjob} far, far away, somebody from Support found me in the lunch-room and said "Kevin, can you give me a hand? I'm having trouble with a Customer-site and I can't figure out what is going wrong". "Okay", I said, as we walked back to his desk.
As we walked back to his desk, the Support guy warned me "look, this Customer is not going to be easy to deal with.&kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-80567378764324202222013-09-10T12:25:00.001-07:002013-09-10T12:25:46.376-07:00Real-life conversation I had recently...Person: What is the deal with this....."shibboleth"....issue? I'm not even sure how to pronounce this.
Me: It is extremely ironic that you just said that.
Person: What? What does it mean?
Me: I think that you'd get a better explanation if you looked it up for yourself.
Person: Whatever... It probably doesn't matter how we kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8442641646406857834.post-48886641226131682142013-09-02T19:52:00.000-07:002013-10-12T07:38:33.055-07:00Gonzo sed codeIn the last few weeks the juxtaposition of two things has made me laugh a bit.
First, there is this quote from Neal Stephenson's REAMDE:
Like any Russian, Sokolov enjoyed a game of chess. At some level, he was never not playing it! Every morning he woke up and looked at the tiles on the ceiling of the office that was his bedroom and reviewed the positions of all of the pieces and kdchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13243996312428924150noreply@blogger.com0