Weaver VS World

Weaver VS. The Dominator

2009.11.13

Weaver

• Height: 6'
• Weight: 195 lbs.
• Armed: Screwdriver, Wits
• Weakness: Temper

MOLD-RITE 2100fx DOMINATOR

• Height: 1' 4"
• Weight: 28 lbs.
• Armed: DOS 6.22 (Upgraded), FAT16 Filesystem
• Weakness: 2 GiB Max Partition Size (FAT16)

There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing a person, obviously defeated, walk into my office and place a piece of hardware that is 20+ years old on my desk with instructions "Here, fix this" ... on Friday the 13th.

Between the whine of the spindle motor bearings and the look of defeat on those that tried before I knew I was in for a treat.

It is not too often in 2009 that MS-DOS skills come in handy. Today I was happy that I spent so much time in DOS as a boy, hiding porn in compressed and password protected zip files courtesy of Phil Katz (R.I.P.) and PKWare, Inc.

With the PLC control application unable to launch I spent a few minutes figuring out how the pre-launch tests were conducted in the launch batch file and soon noticed that the main system drive was out of disk space. Empty, nada, zilch... 0 bytes free.

It was at this point that I got to thinking about how there was a time when operating systems could run with zero hard disk space available. They wouldn't freeze, the kernel wouldn't panic, life would go on. Days go by.

Spoke with the client and informed them of our plan to pull the drive, clone, and expand the partition to 2 GiB.

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am and a little DOS foo and the PLC control PC was back in business.

Winner: Weaver

-John "This is not in my job description. This BIOS better support LBA" Urbanek

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Competent Man

2009.10.30

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

-John "Who is John Galt?" Urbanek

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How Many Years?

2008.12.03

Has Bushy, Dick, Rummy, and Wolfowitz set us back in foreign policy? 10? 20? 30? Maybe more?

http://www.wimp.com/bushfails/

-John

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"Dude, We Are Out of Asswipe..."

2008.12.03

No Problem.

Step 1 - Reappropriation & Fabrication

Step 2 - Implementation

Step 3 - Cleanup & Surplus Storage

-John "What do you mean they didn't have triple ply with aloe?" Urbanek

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The American Heart Assocation Owes Me $200

2008.11.18

It is no secret that I enjoy eating. So much that at times I tend to get a little... excited and forget important nuances that many take for granted. Things like eating at or on a table. Chewing food. Things like preparing the food according to common sense instruction instead of "winging it." Or my personal favorite, changing out of dress clothing before consuming food that, based on historical fact, will be destroyed during the meal.

There comes to mind the time, many years ago now that a single stint with reheated spaghetti managed to stain every, that's every piece of clothing I decided to put on that morning. The affair can be broken into two phases; i. Outerwear and ii. Underwear.

After a few fork twirls of pasta it was time for a meatball. That's when it all came down. In my excitement, the meatball slipped off (let's be honest, it wasn't securely attached) the fork and made contact with the collar of my rugby shirt. Like the opening drop on a roller coaster the seasoned ball of animal carcass obeyed gravity and on the way down bounced off my belt buckle, rolled down my pants and as unnecessary as a kick in the [meat]balls skidded across the sock on my right foot. Staring at the meatball in bewilderment I gasped "Come on!?"

In my excitement to continue the meal I removed the rugby shirt, denim pants, and socks. Begin phase two. Like Steven Seagal in Marked for Death, I was as confused as hell to find out that Screwface the meatball had a twin brother. Following in his brother's footsteps he finished off my undershirt and boxer shorts on his journey from my fork to the floor.

"I hope there weren't triplets." -John Hatcher

Pomegranates and You

Which leads us to today... The lesson learned? Pay the extra and purchase the pomegranate arils pre-plucked by the underpaid grocery staff. If you've never prepared a pomegranate for consumption, prepare for the following.

• Staining and/or destroying most of what you are wearing.
• Staining any and all walls, countertops, cutting boards, floors, and garbage can lids.
• Enduring David Lopan like temporary blindness when a popped aril volleys juice into your peepers.
• Explaining what looks like a murder scene from C.S.I. to anyone unfortunate enough to witness the slaying of the pomegranate membrane and fleshy arils.

-John "I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of my pomegranates" Urbanek

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Word.

2008.11.05

I chose Barrack Obama because he didn't bomb anything. If he somehow dies some stupid person will not get in ofice. Obama is not an oil tycoon yay.

Some other advantiges are he is young and not senile. Barrack Obama is against the war in Iraq. He is a good sport because he didn't sue the Daily show for that funny Obama thing.

Why I don't want Mccain is because he bombed Vietnom. He got dum as bricks Sara Palline as Vice Presindent. So if he somehow gets in ofice and dies boom dum as bricks Sara Paline get in and we are all DOOMED EVEN MORE.

Why I hate Sara Paline is because she hunts animals. Sara and Mccain are both oil monkeys or tycoons. Sara Paline belives in the bible but it says they're was no dinosaurs so. WHERE IS THE STUPID OIL COMING from?

I hope this helps you not chose Mccain. I'm done with this

-Pablo Volaric, Age 11, 9/19/08

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"Same thing we do everynight Pinky..."

2008.10.30

Besides Angelina Jolie, techno music, and a 28.8 bps modem what is the most important aspect of a hacker's workstation? Displays, displays, displays. Not all of us come with the skills of Dade Murphy a.k.a. Crash Override a.k.a. Zero Cool a.k.a. Jonny Lee Miller a.k.a. Eli Stone. Yeah, surprised me too. One day you're crashing fifteen hundred seven computers while swimming naked with Angelina Jolie, the next it hits you that a law degree leaves you ill-equipped to handle an aneurysm that lets you talk to God. But who cares, Katie Holmes returned to network television.

How to take over the world if you are not one of Jonny Lee Miller's collective alter egos Dade Mur... Eli Sto... Elade Smurphy? Now there's an idea. A blackhat stealing wireless from his lamer neighbors with a Pringles Cantenna stumbles upon the HolyNet. After going 0:100 on de_dust to a mysterious player known only as 33_aND-CoUNTing he receives an email from teh_JC@whosyourdaddy.jobs listing Smurphy's first assignments. First, stake out this "Cain" guy's PC. Rumors are flying around that he has been into the Anarchist Cookbook and learning illegal Government ninja moves. Second, investigate the increase in spyware related support calls and porn traffic coming from the Soddom and Gomorrah netblocks. I sense an Emmy.

Back to world domination. A minimum of four displays are required. One for each major inhabited land mass. One for North America, South America, Africa and Eurasia. Antarctica and Australia you ask? Penguins, fur-seals, and Vegemite. Box 'em up, send 'em to Mexico if you're concerned. Introduce them to tequila and handguns, the rest will sort itself out.

-John "Federal Reserve Regulation T ate my homework" Urbanek

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What are the odds? Seriously...

2008.10.21

What are the odds? Seriously. Nothing like lightning striking your winning PowerBALL ticket in hand while standing on an unmowed patch of four leaf clovers, but pretty cool nonetheless.

It's a regular Monday morning. I am happily hacking away at a demo of Orion NPM monitoring a fleet of Cisco Routers. Skype rings and flashes with an unkown number. I pickup and answer with my standard work greeting, "Hello, this is John." The caller responds, "This is Matt [surname removed] from OfficeDepot, can I speak with Sheila please." I inform the caller, "No Sheila here, think you have the wrong number." "Sorry about that. Well, if you see her please let her know her order has arrived for pickup and thank you for using OfficeDepot."

At this point I am confused. Sheila? Don't know her. OfficeDepot? Never set foot in one.

Not two seconds after the call ended did my eyes dart up and to the left as the visual recall systems were putting together a small puzzle triggered by the name and ineptitude of an OfficeDepot employee.

Ah-ha! I knew him. Worked with him at DataWave six years ago. He was the bumbling Sales Engin... idiot who had difficulties grasping IP addresses and their "use of dots instead of commas." Mind you this was a guy selling rebranded Internet T1's and DSL. I spent fifteen minutes helping him enter data into an Excel spreadsheet only to find out that rows and columns were the same thing "at his school." Hard to forget someone with that level of mastery.

So what are the chances of answering the phone to a legitimately dialed wrong number *and* knowing the person on the other end?

Well? I decided to find out. Make note that what follows cannot be considered accurate. Many assumptions are made. It is an order of magnitude estimate, and a poor one at that. Any correctness should be assumed coincidental and the mathematical equivalent of throwing rocks at a cliff face resulting in an exact replica of one of [King] Richard Petty's personalized belt buckles.

Physics 201 Taught Me Things

Like how many New York Sewer rats would be required to feed the rabid fans at Lambeau Field for four quarters of football. Or how much gas would have to be passed from the asses of those Packer fans and burned in the grilling equipment to prepare the rats for consumption. Needless to say, the system is not a perpetual motion machine in disguise.

How Many Names Can You Recognize?

Back to the task at hand. I'll define knowing the person on the other end to recognizing their name. According to "Contacts and influence." (Direct PDF) and other sources online this number is somewhere between 500 and 5,000 persons with the average around 3,000 depending on the individual.

Number of Calls Made Per Soul Per Time

The latest Federal Communications Commision Trends in Telephone Service from 2005 (latest), table 10.2 lists the combined number of both local and toll calls to be 505,834,870,000. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the population of the U.S. in 2005 to be 295,895,897 souls. (Say goodbye to sig figs right now) This divides to around 4.68 calls made per person per day, 32.8 calls per person per week. Bear in mind that this calculation includes all souls, of all ages. The eleven month old diaper wearing, eating, sleeping, shitting apple of somebody's eye to the eleven hundred month old diaper wearing, eating, sleeping, shitting, living holdup on a will. All chattin' away. Note: Since two parties are involved in a given call, the numbers also correspond to the average number of calls received per soul per time.

Number of Wrong Numbers Received Per Soul Per Time

Seeing as I could find absolutely no research in this field, I had to do it myself. I made calls to people I know and flat out asked them. My sample size is 32... ish. Funny enough, I even dialed a wrong number, which I later found out is in line with my results. Averaging out all of the responses I determined people to receive on average 2.1 wrong numbers per month, which divides (for the month of February anyway) to 0.53 wrong numbers per week, and 0.08 wrong numbers per day. This data sucks on the grounds of insufficient sample size, sample distribution, lack of formal questioning of samples, lack of statistical methods, and an altogether lack of effort.

Putting it all Together

Note: Percentages are used as results below, remember to shift the decimal point for non-percentage representation.

First it is necessary to calculate the chance that a given call will be a wrong number. 0.08 wrong numbers per day divided by 4.68 calls per day gives a 1.7% chance that a given call will be a wrong number.

Next, let us determine the chance that you will *recognize* the name of a person sampled at random from the United States of America. Assuming the average of 3,000 recognizable names and a population of 295,895,897 souls, this gives a 0.001% chance.

Now the chance that a given call will be a wrong number multiplied by the chance that you will recognize the name of a random person from the United States of America gives us a chance of 0.00002%.

Conclusion

• There is a 1.7% chance that your next received call will be a wrong number.
• There is a 0.001% chance that you will recognize the name of the person on the other end of your next received wrong number.
• There is a 0.00002% chance that your next received call will be a wrong number and you will recognize the person on the other end.
• There is a 0.0002% chance that you will be struck by lightning in a given year.
• One in 5,000,000 calls a person receives will result in a received wrong number where the receiving party recognizes the calling party's name.
• At a call rate of 4.68 received calls per day (and 4.68 dialed calls per day) it would take 3,000 years for this event to happen to a given person.
• However, in the grand scheme of daily call volume this happens in the United States of America around three hundred times per day. Around ten times per hour. Once every ten minutes. So it is more common across the populace than it would seem.

Final Thoughts

I am not that special. It is highly probably that I am terrible with probability. In the words of my former roommate, "I just did the math, I'm gonna fail Calc."

-John "What are the odds of Metallica's Death Magnetic rocking your socks off?" Urbanek

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Just For You, Dave...

2007.09.11

Everyone else can move along, nothing to see here.

Seanny In His Boxers...

It's about time... IF, DT, CoB, and Sonata Arctica have all made appearances. Wanna duel?

-John "God Bless America" Urbanek

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Two Men, Two Legs, Two DWI's

2007.08.28

Lifted from Postcrescent.com

*Two men arrested for driving same vehicle while intoxicated* *Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers*

ABBOTSFORD - Two Dorchester men were arrested for operating the same vehicle while intoxicated in the Abbotsford area.

Harvey J. Miller, 43, who has no legs, was steering the 1985 Chevrolet truck from the driver's seat while Edwin H. Marzinske, 55, operated the brake and gas pedals, according to the Colby/Abbotsford Police report.

They were headed northbound on Hiline Avenue in Abbotsford when police pulled them over at 2:40 a.m. Aug. 18.

Miller admitted he was too drunk to drive but argued he wasn't operating the vehicle because he couldn't push the pedals. Miller was issued a citation for a third drunk driving offense, while Marzinske was cited for a second. Both men were also cited for operating after revocation.

A third drunk man in the vehicle walked himself home after the incident.

What?

Little attention is given to this mysterious "third drunk man." In his infinite wisdom, he decides to climb in and ride shotgun in the cab of an '85 Chevy, no doubt littered with Sun Drop cans and beef jerky wrappers. He leaves operation of the steering wheel, turn signals, and hi-beams to the better half of Mr. Miller, while Eddie works the accelerator and brakes fumbling for 1390 AM hoping for some Skynyrd. Five-Oh comes around the corner and "third drunk man" suddenly develops a passion for good ideas. Falls out of the cab and walks himself home. What?

Meanwhile, Miller gets cited for his third drunk driving offense leaving Eddie not far behind with the only even prime.

See, I've been to Abbotsford. I've had to hitchhike in Abbotsford, at around bar close on a weekend after spending a few hours trying to fix the fuel pump on an '89 Civic hatchback in the parking lot of Mr. B's. Guess who stopped? A drunken man donning odors whose sources I have only identified in the years following the incident as a young man... namely "stale whiskey" and "unclean woman." It was a learning experience to say the least, and really sold me on Abbotsford, Wisconsin. What?

-John "some things are just beyond me" Urbanek

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