news, goofy stuff, scripting, rants, etc.

I decided to try my hand at fiction.  Usually, I can only write non-fiction.  And even then, it pretty much has to be memoiric or it is terrible.  I couldn’t sleep one night, and this scene popped into my head.  I didn’t really know what to do with it, but it seemed like a really cool concept.  A combination of Burn Notice (awesome TV about a former spy) and Daemon (not awesome but still pretty good book about a game designer that takes over the world post-mortem).  It sort of hints at a larger story that I am not skilled enough to write.  It is probably also terrible.  Even I think it is sort of cumbersome.  It does pack a lot of interesting computer stuff into it, though.  As far as I know, everything in it is technically possible - although it would take an insane amount of effort to implement.  Without further ado, this is what happens when a computer nerd watches too many spy movies:

My phone is ringing.

Fuck.

My phone should not be ringing.  No ones knows the number - I don’t know the number.  I bought it with cash last week.  The only time I ever even looked at the number was - shit.

Twitter.

I set up a Twitter account with this number so I can text updates.  I know what you’re thinking.  If a guy doesn’t want to be found, what the hell is he tweeting for?  The answer is: I’m not.  Not yet anyway.  I hit END to stop the phone ringing, then jump to the texting function and send this tweet: »wdfifds-deujikjhf_ikbh>d}»g~e6gr{}»

Believe it or not, this is significant.  My botnet, my own PC army, is listening to Twitter.  For this command specifically.

You see, whenever John Q Public boots up his computer and puts it out on the internet, I find him.  I find him, and I attack him, and I take over his computer.  And once I have, I install my own program on it.  This program starts every time ole Johnny boots up his computer, and among it’s many functions, it does these two things: it scans and attacks and takes over other computers, and it listens to my Twitter account for that command.

I am a hacker.  I exploit software (and people), in order to control what I shouldn’t be able to control.  My real name is unimportant. No one who matters knows me by my real name - they know me by my handle.  They know me as pr0metheus.

I know, I know.  Cheesy name, but I was really into mythology when I chose it.  And when I did, I wanted to help people.  It seems impossible now, but I did.  I wanted to use computers to help people.  I was going to give fire to the Greeks.

That went south quickly.  By the time I realized it was time for a new handle, it was too late.  Too many important people knew pr0metheus and his works.  It grew on me, too, I suppose.  Had I ditched like I should have when this whole mess started, maybe I wouldn’t be running for my life.  I guess I have no choice now.  There’s a north-bound bus pulling up.  I hop on and use my Metro Card.  For the last time.  I paid for it in cash, but if they found this phone number in a week, then they have already figured out how to track the card.  I take a seat on the bus, boot my laptop, and plug in my wireless data card.  As soon as it boots up, I launch a script.  This script connects to what used to be one of my bots (among other things, that command tweet told this specific bot to take itself off my network), and starts executing random, meaningless commands.  I disable the power management features, close the lid, and put the laptop back in my bag along with the Metro Card and the burn phone, then I hit the bar to alert the driver that I want to stop.  If I am lucky, by the time they realize I’m not actually on this bus, it - and they - will be in Harlem.

One of the great things about living in New York City is that there is a coffee shop on every corner.  One of the great things about living in the 21st century is that every one of them has pay-by-the-minute public access computer terminals.  I pull a USB stick out of my wallet, pop it into one of these terminals and reboot it.  The computer starts counting down from 5.  I enter my password, and it boots from my USB stick, instead of the OS installed on the computer.  It’s funny.  Most people carry their IDs in their wallet.  I do, too, but it carries much more significance.  It isn’t just a laminated peice of paper with my picture and date of birth on it.  It is essentially my computer.  The hardware is irrelevant to me, but this USB stick contains all of the tools and files and passwords I use every day.  Even that laptop I left on the bus is useless to me without this USB stick.  It is my identity.  It is pr0metheus as much as I am.  The bot that that laptop is (hopefully) still connected to was the only one whose location I had memorized.  The twitter command also told 5 pre-determined PCs to take over as the head bot.  The trouble with not having physical access to your computers is that you never know which ones are going to be live when you need them.  Even though they have dyndns addresses, I can’t remember them.  How am I supposed to remember 3dsvjsdf9.dyndns.org unless I write it down?  And that’s just 1 of the 5.  I pull up the list and blow through 3 before I finally get connected to one.  I don’t know how to access these bots, but they know how to access each other.  I issue a command, and within a few seconds, I have created a tunnel through at least 50 of these bots at random.  Even if they are monitoring the sites I frequent, by the time they trace the IP addresses from the 50th bot to the 49th all the way down to the 1st and then all the way to this coffee shop, I will be on the other side of the GW Bridge.  I hop on IRC and try to get some information from my contacts who actively monitor government agencies and most of the larger crime organizations.  No one knows anything.  Useless.  It is going to take a lot more time and research to figure out how to cut myself loose from this.  Well, I tried.

I login to Twitter and send a few more tweets to take the 3 bots I just failed to connect to, as well as the one I am currently connected to, offline.  You can never be too careful.  I also tell it to designate another 5 bots to register random urls with dyndns, and then email their names to an account I only use for these purposes.  I tell the bot I’m connected to to collapse the tunnel it created.  When it disconnects, I reboot the coffee shop PC again.  It boots from the USB stick again, but this time, I don’t enter a password and the timer gets to 0.  When it does, instead of launching my USB stick OS, it copies a different program into the computer’s memory.  While I am yanking out the USB stick, the PC has already started eating itself.  The program will format the drive, then fill it with garbage data over and over again, until someone turns it off.  Nothing that I was doing should have been written to that hard drive, but given the circumstances, I decide to play it safe.  I turn off the monitor, walk over to the counter, grab a napkin, and ask the guy behind the register if I can borrow his cup-marking pen.  I write “Out Of Order” on the napkin, hand the marker back, walk back to the PC, steal a piece of tape holding up a sign on the wall that details how to pay to use the computer, and tape the napkin to the monitor.  By the time someone realizes that an employee didn’t make the sign, there ought not be any trace of anything on that computer, let alone the data that may have gotten dumped to it inadvertently while I was using the rest of its hardware.

I leave the coffee shop, and as I do I shed the skin - forget the identity - of pr0metheus.  That name is useless to me now.  Any fool that tries to pretend to be me in the next decade, in order to steal my thunder, will end up dead or in prison.  Time to do what I should have done so long ago.  Change my name.  ph0enix, perhaps.

That’s really how you spell February.  Isn’t that crazy?  I had a professor in college who used to pronounce all of the letters in Wednesday.  “Wed - nes - day.”  Still makes me laugh.

Anyway - on to the status report:

1) Exercise

Missed 4 days this month.  That is pretty bad, considering it was the shortest month of the year.  Still, I missed 3 last month, and that isn’t counting the first 8 days.  I can tell the effects of my efforts, too, which is nice.  Nothing major, but there is a slight difference.  And that, really, is the whole point.

2) Be smarter about money

This is one of the resolutions I am struggling the most with.  I wrote the Waterfall Debt Repayment Calculator in an effort to motivate me, and it definitely has.  There is still a lot of room for improvement.  For example, after a weird screw up with my pay check this month, I should have postponed some planned purchases.  I didn’t; instead charging them to the credit card I am trying to pay off.  My justification being that I made a double payment on it this pay check.  Had I more self control, I would have waited until the 15th of next month, when I wouldn’t have to take the credit hit.

3) Find a new job

I have mixed feelings about my efforts on this one.  On the one hand, I am still without a new job.  On the other, I am still trying with the placement company that got me this one.  Even going so far as to look into temporary contract/consulting work.  Just not sure I want to go that route (mostly because of the financial insecurity - see #2).  I am also working with my boss to work from home more.  I worked from home 2 days this week, and will do so 3 days this coming week.  After that, we will meet again to decide if this can be a permanent arrangement.  If nothing else, it will reduce commute stress a few days a week, and might decrease the amount of money I put back on my credit card each month.

4) Meet new people

Not much movement on this one either.  I did wander into a bar a couple weeks ago and chat up some girl, but nothing really came of it.  This is easily the toughest of my resolutions.  I am hoping that if I can be smarter with money (#2), and work from home more (#3 - sort of), it will give me the time and money to spend more time out in the world, where I am almost certain to find new people.

5) Attend church

Still haven’t missed a Sunday - even when work tries to interfere.  Made it to the Ash Wednesday service, too.

6) Write more

I think this one should be renamed to Work on more non-work projects.  Among them are this blog, the Waterfall thing, the podcast, and some projects I have going with friends.  This is going spectacularly well.  I have started re-learning the C programming language, I have decided to try and monetize jieh - the perl-based twitter client I wrote, Waterfall is complete, and I have several other projects either in the works or in my head.  More on those here.

7) Learn to play the harmonica

Not a lot of improvement here, either, unfortunately.  I think this one will probably be the most fun item on the list.  I did finally buy a harmonica (even though I shouldn’t have, as I alluded to in #2).  The harp I bought is here, and a book to learn how to play it here.

I started reading money blogs a while back, after originally being linked from LifeHacker (I think).  The first one that got my attention was Automating Your Money by Ramit Sethi on I Will Teach You to Be Rich.  I have also started reading Get Rich Slowly.  Somewhere along the line, although I can’t find the actual article, I learned about a method of paying off debt called Waterfall Debt Repayment.

The idea is this:

• Find out how much money you can afford to use to pay down debt
• Pay what you can on all of them (at least the minimum)
• Use whatever is left over from the max you can pay, after minimums are taken care of, and dump it all into one source of debt
• Pay off that first source of debt
• This is the key: Now that you have paid off one source of debt, DON’T roll that extra money back into your monthly budget.  Instead, take all the extra money, plus that debt source’s minimum payment, and put ALL of it into paying off the next source of debt
• Repeat until all of your debt is paid off

Here is an example:
I have three sources of debt. A car loan ($5,000), student loans ($50,000), and credit cards ($20,000). The minimum payments are $250, $400, and $100, respectively. I have run the numbers, and can afford $1,200 per month to pay down debt. This is $450 more than the sum of the minimum payments ($250 + $400 + $100 = $750).  I decide to pay off these debts in order from smallest to largest balance.

In one month, I pay the minimums on the student loans and the credit cards, which leaves me $700 ($1,200 - $400 - $100) to pay on my car loan. Assuming 0 interest, my balances are now $4,300, $49,600, and $19,900. After 6 more months, I only have $100 left to pay on my car loan. With $47,200 left on my student loans and $19,300 on my credit cards.

When the next month rolls around, I pay that remaining $100 (again - no interest in this example), and I have $600 left to add to my credit card payments, so I pay $700 (the normal $100, plus the extra $600) on my credit card that month.  I now owe $0 on my car, $46,800 on my student loans, and $18,600 on my credit card.  The next month, I have the full $800 to pay on my credit card (last month, I had to put $100 of that into the last of my car debt), and $400 on my student loans.

After 32 months, I have finally paid off my credit cards, in addition to my car.  Only the student loans remain ($36,600), and every penny of the $1,200 per month goes to my student loans.  On my 63rd month, I finally make the last payment on those.

That, frankly, is a lot of math.  It doesn’t even account for interest or planned credit card usage (I pay off $500 per month, but put $300 back on).  I wanted to know how long it would take me to pay off my actual debt, and if it would be faster to pay it off, depending on which ones I paid off first.  That is why I created The Waterfall Debt Repayment Calculator (with the help of Adrian Hannah).  Add all of your sources of debt, the amount you plan to pay on each, APR, usage, and total amount owed, plus the extra amount you can pay, then chose a priority order (Highest Total, Highest APR, etc), hit calculate, and it will do all the work for you.

Go ahead, give it a whirl.  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.  And feel free to report miscalculations/bugs, too.

Ikea furniture, along with Crocs, consumer-grade printers, and boy bands, are on a long list of things I despise; all for the same reason.  They are cheap, in price but more importantly in quality, and disposable.  I feel the urge to quote Fight Club here, but to do so would put me on the same level as those teenagers who say that they only hang out at the mall to shop at Hot Topic.

“So, you met your friends, spent hours browsing, hit the pretzel stand, and finally bought a sweater?”  “Yea.”  “So how does that make you different from the cheerleader over there that met her friends, spent hours browsing, hit the pretzel stand, and finally bought a sweater?”  “Well, she bought her sweater at Gap, and its pink and has a bunny on it.  And mine is black, and has a decapitated bunny on it.”  “Yea, you’re a rebel.  You’re like James Dean and that guy that stopped the tank in Tiananmen Square combined.”  As I am fond of saying: the counter-culture is still culture.

At any rate, I got a refund this year on my taxes.  I decided to be a good citizen and, rather than saving or paying down debt,  go stimulate the economy.  When I did, I fell into the same trap that everyone else does.  I knew that Ikea is accessible, and will have what I am looking for, and is in my price range (it wasn’t a big refund).  So, I hopped on the 5 train to Borough Hall, and waited for the Ikea Shuttle.

Despite sitting in the front of the bus, I can feel everyone behind me eagerly trying to find the building.  Every time we turn, I can hear heads moving from right to left trying to spot it.  About half way there, I realize that I am on a full-sized charter bus, and everyone else with me has the same destination.  I can’t help but feel like I am on some pilgrimage, but I don’t seek religious freedom.  Instead, I seek inexpensive, poorly constructed, barely-more-than-cardboard furniture.

We finally see the building.  Outside of a handful of sports arenas, and the Episcopal cathedral in Detroit, this is the largest single-purpose building I have ever been in.  This place is enormous, and it is jam packed with people who all seem to think this is the pinnacle of human consumer achievement.  I hear comments on how great it is that shoppers have a place to dump their offspring.  I hear how wonderful it is to see full displays, so that people can get a feel for what this inexpensive, poorly constructed, barely-more-than-cardboard furniture will look like in their homes.  I can’t help but roll my eyes at these comments.  These people have somehow convinced themselves that this crap is as good as it gets, and I feel sorry for them.  I suddenly wish that I had the resources to build my own furniture.  Unfortunately, that would require a source of lumber, countless tools, and much more free-time than I have.  I am a resident of New York City.  The only tools I currently posses are a multi-purpose screw-driver, and some nail clippers.  Even if I had had the forethought to bring tools with me when I moved out here, I wouldn’t have the storage to keep them.  Perhaps this is the appeal of this place.  All you need to assemble this junk is a hex wrench; which they put in each box.

The showroom is a maze.  As I attempt to navigate it, I come to believe that the only reason it is laid out like this is to completely disorient shoppers.  I imagine people wandering around trying to find a dresser or a dinner plate, forgetting which section they were headed for, and getting lost in the bathroom section, wandering out with a toilet brush with a goofy, faux-Swedish name.

The easiest shot to take at Starbuck’s is the ridiculous names of their drink sizes, or the fact that they call their servers “baristas.”  On a side note, that sounds like a feminine title.  What is the masculine version of “barista?”  “Barrister?”  I would be surprised if any of them had law degrees.  The singular of “alumni” is “alumna” for females, and “alumnus” for males.  Does that make a male “barista” a “baristus?”  Together, they are “baristi?”  Anyway, my point is that goofy names seem to be a big deal for these new national brands, so I guess it would be too easy to take a shot at Ikea’s goofy product names.  I will say this though: I would LOVE to hear Jerry Lewis read one of their catalogs.

After about 10 minutes of trying to figure out what the hell I am doing, I find an employee.  I tell her I already know exactly what I am looking for, and all I need to do is place an order and schedule a delivery.  She informs me that if I don’t want to wait 10 to 15 days for delivery, I will have to go to the self-service section (read “warehouse”), find the items, take them to the register and checkout, and then take it to the delivery section.  OK.  That seems off to me, but I’ll roll with it.  It took me another 25 minutes to find a flight of stairs to get to the self-service section, which only further supports my assumption that they are trying to (subtly) jam their merchandise down your gullet.

I finally check out, schedule the delivery, and get back on the bus.  As I sit down, I feel a great sense of relief wash over me.  Nine hundred dollars later (because they rang me up wrong, and had to process the payment twice), I have left the store with nothing to show for it but a receipt.  I have gained nothing.  In fact, I feel like a left a piece of my soul in a Flügen.

…Gesundheit.

I mentioned in the original post, that I think people fail with New Year’s Resolutions because they set goals, but never specify how to achieve them. “I will lose 20 lbs. But I won’t exercise regularly; possibly at all.”  Or “I will learn a new language. But I won’t go so far as to watch a movie with subtitles.”  You get the idea.  Another reason people fail is a lack of accountability.  I don’t know how many people actually read this rag, but if it is more than zero, then I have made my resolutions public, and have someone to hold me accountable.  Although, I am not foolish enough to think that anyone actually cares.  I honestly couldn’t tell you if any of my friends told me they made resolutions, because I haven’t heard about it since (if ever).  The point I am trying to make is that by posting a monthly status report, I hope to make it more difficult for myself to give up.  On the other hand, what if I just don’t post one next month?  …I guess we’ll see what happens…

1) Exercise

I missed one day of exercise since the original post on the 9th.  That’s 1/22 days.  Not too shabby.  Some days all I did was a couple dozen sit-ups, but I did SOMETHING, and that was the whole point.  I didn’t set a target weight or pant size, I just said I will try to exercise every day, and so far I have come pretty close.

2) Be smarter about money

I haven’t really done much about this yet, only because I haven’t had any money to be smart with.  I did get a bump in pay, and I set up an automatic transfer to move the excess to my savings account each pay day, so that’s something.  I also filed my taxes already, and I am getting a refund.  I am debating what to use it for.  Most likely, I will buy some much needed furniture, and use the rest to pay down debt.  It would probably be smarter still to use it all to pay down debt, but I have grown tired of using a plastic dresser I found in the trash.

3) Find a new job

I have started the job hunt, at the very least.  I officially applied to four jobs so far, and sent my resume to the person who got me my current job.  No major prospects yet, but I am trying.

4) Meet new people

So far the only knew person I have met is Carl; a 55 year old way-too-drunk guy who spent a great deal of time describing the various services his wife is willing to perform on him.  Not quite what I had in mind.  I did check out my fraternity’s national website to scope out any alumni chapters, but came up dry.  There isn’t one listed, but I did find an email address for the person who is supposedly the alumni chapter’s president.  I have yet to contact the person, but I am still thinking about it.

5) Attend church

Haven’t missed a Sunday since the original post.

6) Write more

Since (and including) the 9th, I have written five posts on my blog.  I have also written some software, which I will link to once the front-end is up.  (I wrote the functions, and Adrian is writing the GUI).  I don’t actually have any ideas for new blog posts right now, though, so next week doesn’t look good.

7) Learn to play the harmonica

No movement on this one so far, although I did price out a few instruments, and some books for beginners.  Maybe I will put some of that tax return towards that.

That’s all for now.  If I stick to my guns, look for another one of these in about a month.