Frenzied Daddy

Ayup, I’ve paid the bills again. And it’s stressed me so far as I’ve added Google’s adwords over there on the right. Ignore them at your peril. Seriously, I believe they pay per click (as opposed to pay per purchase) so the more times you click on them, the longer it is before I start begging you for checks.

I also tossed up a free PHP script to use a form to send email over on the ArghWebWorks site. Feel free to use it.

My apologies to whomever this is.

Browsing at work on Friday, I stumbled across someone’s weblog. It was probably linked to from a blogroll on one of my normal routes, I thought it was the ZeroBoss, but I don’t see it over there. Reading it was like reading the scrawls on the caves of my brain.

She had started running in the summer. But she was competitive at heart, and running just for the sake of running got boring after a couple of months. I’m not particularily competitive, but I can understand the ‘boring after a couple of months’ part pretty well. And then, she said, winter came upon her and running became a chore-in the cold clammy wet, who would want to run?

I pointed this out to my wife a few weeks ago and she told me I was being a sissy, and that I didn’t need a three month gym membership so I could run indoors.

She, this unknown blogger, was introduced to some group that would train her, if she promised to either run a marathon, a decathalon, or … or … something else. For some ungodly reason, she chose the marathon (because it sounded easiest). A few weeks of workouts with her new buddies and she suddenly realized : she had committed to running a marathon, and she could barely run five miles. So she had a lot of work to do.

Unknown blogger, I salute you. I, too, tired of running every morning. And I too, tried to play the “cold and wet” card. But you’ve succeeded where I’m stalled; you’re out there running, even three days before the solstice, and I’m sitting on my ever-widening butt.

Miss B has been delighting in the Droon books. Tonight, she’s been remarkably quiet. I looked over at her, expecting her to be conked out on the couch … and I see this!

As a child, I loved to listen to my father’s record of … of … I don’t remember who actually did the speaking. But he had a gravelly voice, a voice of a man who had been smoking in 60 below weather, a voice of a man who sounded like I imagine Robert Service sounded. The cover of the album had the guy and a hokey looking moose on it.

I’ve always loved the ballads of Robert Service. His was the voice I heard when I read the stories of the Yukon gold rush, of the miners who carried their homes on their backs, who climbed up a 45 degree incline, who were lost in the wilderness. And yes, yes I will share a taste with you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching —
But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

(Robert Service, The Call of the Wild, in part)

I think I’ve mentioned him before. But in case you’ve never encountered Robert Service before, some must read pieces are The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Go. Read. Be happy.

I’ve been wracking my brain lately. We store customer credit cards on our server at work behind a firewall and whatnot. These are encrypted with a 1 to 1 cipher (like the cryptogram in the paper, “that tat” becomes “fuhf fhf”, and then encoded with ‘base64 encoding.’ Now, I am presented with a challenge- to be able to do a partial search of a credit card. So we could look up a card that had “1111″ in it.

This is a challange because of the way base 64 works (and this is pretty cool, so bear with me). Each character in the computer is represented by an ascii number. Each number is represented in the computer as a “byte” (yes, that kind of byte), 8 bits, of a sequence like 01001011. Now if you take three of these numbers, you have 24 bits. And then you can um. Split the bits up into a different number- maybe take 6 bits per byte and you get 4 sets of numbers. Actually, I think it takes 12 bits, but the principle’s the same (actually it’s whatever number of bits is the power of 2 that makes 64- base 64 encoding) The important thing is this: you then have the series of bits (101001 10010 etc) that are in the same order as the earlier bits, but grouped differently. And finally, you re-encode these bits as characters. What this means is that when you translate each credit card number into it’s base64 version, all of the characters are inter-dependent. I can’t just base64 the search string and look for that- because I don’t know what’s on either side of the string or where the bits start. I’d have to (hmm, lightbulb goes on) translate the search string into binary, translate each credit card into binary, and then search for the binary search string in the binary card numbers.

Whoever thought this up is a freakin’ genius. How would a cryptographer approach the problem of un-base64 encoding a message?

When I was a kid, one of my favorite Christmas traditions (of my mother’s) was getting a box of mandarin oranges. Something about a whole box of fruit, each wrapped individually and packaged carefully, really made an impression on the young me. The oranges tasted different from the regular oranges, they had seeds, and they even peeled differently. The whole thing was like-normal but not like-normal.

Now, of course, I see the boxes of mandarins in the store, and I can’t bring myself to bring them home. I imagine that my kid (the one with teeth) won’t eat them because they have seeds and they taste funny. My wife won’t eat them, because, well, she doesn’t like them. So, in my mind, if I spend the five to seven dollars to enjoy a whole box of oranges, it’ll be just for me. And they’ll rot before I get them all eaten (because I can eat one, maybe two oranges a day for a few days before I get tired of them).

It makes me kind of sad, actually. So I have to console myself with eggnog (yes, straight out of the carton- the divine Ms B can’t stand the stuff, so I sneak it around.)

This picture is of Baby K, playing in the kitchen. Notice how she’s completely ignoring the toy, the ball and the teether. She’s going right for the Tomato Soup. Yep, she likes Campbell’s too!

Baby K’s first Christmas tree is up. I used to call them Solstice trees, but they die and, in my household, they don’t really get reborn, they get stuck out by the side of the garage until I take them to the dump about three years after they dry to tinder. In an amazing, surprise move, we have a variety of colors of lights on the tree. Generally, we have blue and white. Just like the house. Just like the Navy. But this year, we put up multicolored lights, and it’s .. lovely.

We popped open some Knudsen’s Apple Cider, and the three of us with motor skills sipped it from wineglasses. The highlight of the evening was putting up the ornaments we made this year. I had taken some Fimo clay and made a little wreath, and asked Miss B to decorate it before I baked it; then I went to work and she took over. She and her mother took that idea and ran with it— I came home to find a whole assortment of clay ornaments decorated with glitter and jewels, ready for the oven. And they insisted that I make one too. How could I refuse?

I do have to admit, however, that I cheated last night on the tree. I let the women do all the hard work of dressing the tree, and I held the baby and introduced her to the tree and some of the ornaments.

I think I spent way too long in the SCA. I cough signed up to help set up for the UU Christmas Pageant this year; Miss B has been in it every year for the past three or four years, and it was probably time to pitch in and help.

So I arrive about ten minutes early and find a place to loiter. Shortly after, the pageant coordinator comes and shows me what she needs done; she needs five or six heavy plywood stage pieces brought up from the boiler room, up a narrow staircase, and into the sanctuary. I and her father sweated and grunted, but got it up and assembled in less than the allotted half-hour. All the time, I’m comparing it to “moving the king and queen’s crap from the royal encampment to court,” “setting up the Adiantium pavilion,” or any of a number of supporting tasks I did in the SCA. And it’s about the same; every where we go, people need stuff set up or taken down. At least in the SCA, the laborers usually get thanked during closing court.

And then, coming into work today, I heard one of my favorite Christmas songs. But I don’t know the words, and so I had to make them up (especially when it was blended into the Mark and Brian show introduction.) Here’s what I came up with:

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day, On Christmas day
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day?
And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas day in the morning?

Viking warriors swinging iron,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day
Viking warriors swinging iron,
On Christmas day in the morning.

The Vikings razed my town
On Christmas day, on Christmas day
The Vikings razed my town
On Christmas day in the morning.

You know, it’s probably just as well that when I finished that stanza, I drove into my parking spot at work.

Hey, you, outta my gene pool.

Fundies! Argh!