All posts by johncohn

Friday night – B-lab

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After a tough day at work i decided to indulge and attend the monthly meeting of the local B-Lab hackers club. We meet at Borders books downtown. It takes me right back to the days when I was a teenager when all my phone hacker friends used to meet at a restaurant or bookstore and trade tools, secretes, equipment, etc.

Tonight we had  really good turnout.. maybe 8 of us.. Some of the guys told us about what they’d learned down at Shmoocon in DC last week. We then talked aboout various exploits and snoop attacks. fun stuff. Many of the guys are in the IT security business.. some of the rest of us do it just for fun.. I’m a relative newb compared to most of the guys.

About an hour in we relocated to the new B-Lab space that some of the guys had set up.. It was my first time there. It’s basically  a one room apartment in a large commercial building. One side of it is full of musical equipment.. that belong to the rooms other tenant. the other side, our side.. has a growing collection of computers, routers, oscilloscopes, books, soldering irons, etc. A total geek man cave..

It was fun hanging out an listening to everyone.. I even learned a new exploit.. It’s called a DHCP tunnel.. it essentially lets you get out through a firewall by disguising your traffic as legal DHCP (ie. directory lookup) queries..It basically encapsulates your IP traffic inside the query and then reroutes the traffic to a fake port for your to use.. Once it was hooked up, you could SSH right through it.. you never new you were using such a goofy and sneaky path. We used my laptop and my friend daves to demonstrate it.. It was amazing to actually see it work…

If you think your system is secure.. best think again 🙂

nite all.. nite sam

-me

ps. please think of me at 11 tomorrow as we jump in lake chaamplain for special olympics. If you want to sonsor me, please check out http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/john-cohn/2011-burlington-penguin-plunge

THursday night – Thulium

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Sometimes.. you just feel like Thulium.. .. Tonight we were looking at the table of the elements place mat that all three kids learned to eat solid foot above.. It’s a rather faded.. somewhat dated snapshot of the state  of physical chemistry circa 1988 when Max was born. It stops demurely at 109 elements.. rather than today’s boastful 118 .   The mysterious spinach (for iron) and banana (for potassium) are there but faded.. I remember so well feeding the kids as they sat in high chair.. going off on this or that element and its properties.

We have the mat  (one tee) out because Matt (two tee’s) and his sister Britt are taking chemistry at the local community college.   Matt likes to quiz me on the use and properties of the various elements..

Today we talked about ‘Thulium’.. I read somewhere that Thulium is considered by some to be the ‘least useful element’.. What a designation to live down.. I happen to know that Thulium provides a very important green line in the phosphors used in florescent tubes.

Without Thulium’s charms, we would look even more ghastly under florescent light.. I also just read it’s used as a bremstrallung target in mobile X-ray devices.. now how cool is that ?!?!?!

I would submit to you that on some days, everyone feels a little like thulium  .. a little useless.. a little out of place..

but consider this.. without thulium, the world would be more badly lit..

Let us all aspire to keep the world lit well.. and contribute our own particular color to the light…as not to make everyone look bad

Go Thulium.. we love you

love you too, sam

-me

Ps. On Saturday I’m going to jump in Lake Champlain in support of Vermont Special Olympics. if you’d like to sponsor me, please visit this link

Wednesday night – Snowday !

Snowday !!!!..   Last night we got the followign message on our cellphones, home phones and email

All schools in the Chittenden East Supervisory Union will be closed tomorrow, Wednesday, February 2nd.
This includes Smilie Memorial, Brewster-Pierce Memorial, Jericho Elementary, Richmond Elementary, Underhill ID Elementary, Underhill Central School, Browns River Middle School, Camels Hump Middle School and Mt. Mansfield Union High School.

Everything in Vermont came to a halt today as we prepared for a huge dump of snow..  It did snow.. but not all that much. I’m guessing we had about 10 inches.. nothing like the two feet that fell down south.. Max says they have a ton. , but it was enough to let pople sleep in, wander around in their pajamas for the day, sip coffee and stare out the window for long stretches.. curl up by the fire and bliss out…well.. some of the family did at least.. I was busy as usual.. I did have a 40 minute gap at 3-4 due to a late cancelation of a meeting that let me get out with diane for a quick cross country ski..  Gabe, Matt and Ian got out for some snowboarding in the woods… and the dogs played outside in the drifts.. Sam loved days like this too..

It so beautiful out there now.. everythign is covered in white.. between this snow and the ones we’ve had over the past few weeks we have at least 2 feet in the yard.. it’s deeper in some drift areas. This is my favorite part of winter… the middle.. Today was groundhog day.. and I suspect he would not have seen his shadow.. that either means 6 more weeks of winter.. or it doesn’t.. i guess t doesn’t matter.. we have more than 6 weeks left.. , It’s like being in the middle of a good book or movie.. it’s as far out as it is in..

Enjoy digging out folks.. but don’t do it too fast, we want this to last

nite all, nitte sam..

-me

Tuesday night – sourdough

just  realized I fell asleep on he couch as I sat down to write.. I’m beat.. but not sure why.. I’ve been feeling pretty low for the last week or so… maybe it’s work.. maybe it’s the the sunlight.. .. don’t know..

hmmm.. not much to report on today. We’re all hunkered down awaiting a big snowstorm. Making big predictions about a storm is a sure way to scare it off. I remember as a kid, the more we prepped for a big hurricane, the smaller the storm turned out to be.. Of we went to the trouble of taping up the windows, the storm would miss us altogether.

Ahh.. one thing I haven’t talked about here is the wonder bread binge we’ve been on. We inherited (adopted ?) a sourdough starter culture from our friend Jean.. I believe it’s been in her family for more than 40 years.. and .. if I’m not mistaken.. they got it from a family who’d had it for 75. The goo sits in our fridge most of the time.. I think Diane throws in some flour occasionally to keep it fed.. but other than that.. it just sits their and waits for us.


once a day. diane tosses some of the starter in a big bowl with flour, water and salt, stirs it up .. and sets it to rise up on the china cupboard.. no kneading necessary

then she usually puts it in a cast iron dutch oven, bakes it in a hot oven covered for 15 min then uncovered for 15 minutes..
.. and out it comes..

sometimes Diane makes it with whole wheat, sometimes half and half, sometimes with oats, other times with chocolate and fruit. Sometimes it ends up as pita bread, or pizza crust or rolls.. whatever the shape or ingredients .. it’s delicious… it’s by far the best bread I’ve ever tasted….

and to think the yeast  cultures. has been in the neighborhood for more than 120 years.

OK.. I’m going to try and get some sleep..

nite all, nite sam

-me