I'll be travelling for the next two weeks. Yes, there hasn't been an update in months. Apparently that's what happens when I pay for a journal—I don't use it.

Here's my itinerary:

Train – Seattle to New York City I'm leaving Seattle at 4:45 pm on 13-July-2008, arriving Penn Station at around 10pm on 16-July-2008. I'm travelling with Andy Filer, a really neat guy. I plan to offer free wireless Internet service to fellow train passengers, using a cellular modem. It goes almost without saying that I plan to log every bit that goes through the connection. No expectation of privacy and all that. But trains are awesome also.

Chilling – Andy and I are both transit nerds, so I'm sure we'll be able to occupy far more time than we have alloted.

HOPE – Hackers On Planet Earth is at the Hotel Pennsylvania for what may be the very last time. Across the street from Penn Station, the Hotel Pennsylvania has the longest continuously active phone number in New York City. It was originally PEnnsylvania 5000, then PENnsylvania 5000 (in fact it was the first exchange in NYC to transition to 3L4N dialling), then PEnnsylvania 6-5000, then 212-736-5000, and now +1 212 736 5000 in full international format. HOPE has some really rather interesting talks this year. It's also my first convention.

Boston, MA – At some point on 21-Jul-2008, we're going to mosey up to Boston, MA. At 6pm we'll meet with John Covert, whom I met when he visited the Museum of Communications (the phone museum in Seattle where I volunteer). The plan is for him to show us around MIT and then retire for dinner and conversation.

Ellsworth, ME – There's a phone museum in Ellsworth. John and Andy and I are going to visit in the afternoon of 22-Jul-2008. I've been deputized to attempt to convince them of the worth of joining CNET, a thoroughly neat project. I guess I have to put the Seattle museum in the directory, as I am sort of the Responsible Person there.

Flying back – Portland, ME to Seattle We're leaving Portland at around 6pm on Wednesday 23-Jul-2008. As all good things must come to an end, this must too. I don't really like flying. (Some people dislike flying because it's scary or whatever. I like to feel of the plane moving around me. That's a beautiful feeling. I just don't like being cooped up for so long, and I don't like how loud planes are inside. Trains have much more leg-room and walking-room, too.)

Mood: excited

We spoke about many things, mostly centered around bicycling (and why I haven't cycled in ages). Nasty accidents, and the best routes around hills. She's a gardener by trade, with one partner and a truck that runs on expensive gasoline.

Then we both went our separate ways, without trading names. It was wonderfully liberating.

I just hacked together a Random Search Engine script. It takes your search and redirects you to a random search engine for that query. If you want to, you can set it as a search engine for your web browser and make the FBI subpoena about 20 different companies.

I've set it to use POST so that your search terms aren't logged on my end. Feel free to use GET if you wish, they both work fine.

Mood: accomplished

I got nothing done today. This is becoming a depressing pattern.

Well, not nothing. I went to class and paid a marginal amount of attention to the lectures. I went to work and did about two hours' worth. I had bubbletea with Kimberly. Then I dumped on her, sort of.

Came home and had some cookies, then went into my room as always. I've been online for 6 hours almost continuously now. Somewhere in the middle I pried all the keycaps off my keyboard and rearranged them.

What have I done? I've poked around on okcupid, talked on IRC, and checked mail too much. IRC is dead these days, but especially on Friday afternoons. Nobody was really on any IM much, either.

I'm just stuck in a rut.

Class ends in something like three weeks, and I'm not ready for it. I don't have a job, and apparently it's too late to find anything fulfilling.

I think the problem is that I'm letting the guilt from not actually doing schoolwork build up, which is uncharacteristic of me. The guilt, not the not doing schoolwork. I usually don't care.

I need hugs, damnit, not encouragement.

Mood: melancholy

Awwww.

From: Watches <postmaster@uclic.com>
To: Replica Purses <(my email address)>

There are so many things wrong with this.

Also, does anyone have suggesions for interesting gainful summer employment in Seattle or environs? I'm trying to avoid working at the Musueum of Flight gift shop again. Not that I hate it or anything, it's just … strangely unfulfilling.

11:35:49 <@octalpuss> we'll be on the campus all weekend
11:35:54 <@octalpuss> we're playing renn fayre

Chemical signs on rail cars: Safety feature or terror target?

By Donald E. Coleman / The Fresno Bee

Monday, March 14, 2005

Fresno Fire Chief Randy Bruegman and others on the front line of emergency response are weighing in strongly against removing diamond-shaped signs from rail cars used to ship dangerous chemicals.

The small placards serve as critical labels to emergency responders, telling them what kind of hazard is posed by a derailment, spill or leak. But federal homeland security officials worry that they could invite acts of terrorism.

( More WTF inside )

I know it's old, but I just ran across it.

This is proof that DHS is run by complete morons. Yes. Let's review what the system is for:

When there's a train crash, and chemicals are leaking onto the ground, emergency responders need to know what to do about it. They also need to stay safe. An NFPA 704 fire diamond will tell you most everything you need to know, within five seconds or so. That's why we paint them a foot high on the side of train cars, and just about everywhere else they'll fit.

For all my life there's been a steady trend toward standardizing warning labels. We've all been trained to believe that this is good, because

Now, there are dangers to this also. People who don't need to know that the material in the train car is poisonous, can learn that easily. They can exploit that knowledge to cause havoc.

So, let's replace the warning labels with barcodes or RFID tags!

What does this get us? If there is a train crash, first responders will have to futz around for a while to find their ruggedized barcode or RFID reader. That's another 5 minutes that toxic chemicals are spilling into the ground you walk on, the water you drink, and the air you breathe. All in the name of preventing vandalism that won't ever happen.

Isn't America great?

Mood: infuriated

From the telephone collectors' mailing list:

Much later, around 1970, MIT set up an exchange program with Wellesley College, a women's college about 15 mi. west. Anticipating much more official business between the two, the MIT Telecom Office set up a tie-line between the two PABXs. (In those days, tarriffs made it cheaper to install metropolitan tie-lines than to pay local business message units among frequently called destinations.) A friend of mine asked the MIT President what he thought of the access number set for the tie line.

"I don't know, what is it?"

"6969"

Within 24 hours, the number plan was changed to 7070. Telecom claimed the number was picked at random, but no one believed it.

Mood: giddy

It's springtime, and you know what that means.

A note to my fellow students:

Yes. I know you're in heat. But if it no longer qualifies as foreplay, would you mind vacating the student union?

Thanks, chronomex.

Mood: relaxed

I interrupt your normal productive day to bring you an important announcement. I hope you like mechanical things.

Part 1 and part 2.

This is awesome because:

1. It's a very thorough view of how a Linotype machine works.
2. It was originally made in Italian and was redubbed in English.
3. The man's accent is interesting. It's at the same time compelling and irritating. It's almost a perfect picture of a schooled Italian accent.

Mood: nerdy

From the stats page:

What type of account do people have?

• Permanently Insane: 1533 (0.9%)
• Self-committed [paid]: 851 (0.5%)
• Early Inmate: 3041 (1.8%)
• Official Asylum: 45 (0.0%)
• Orderly: 7 (0.0%)
• Hospital Administrator: 2 (0.0%)
• Detox Patient: 17 (0.0%)
• Free Patient: 174702 (105.7%)
• Bonus Userpics: 1 (0.0%)
• Permanent Extra Userpics: 281 (0.2%)
• Insane Userpics: 34 (0.0%)

(Emphasis mine) Isn't that number a bit odd-looking?

My check just went through.

Account type: Self-committed [paid], expiring 2009-04-05

I created my LJ account having been dragooned into it by my then-girlfriend jakie_f. She did fanfic. As a result I was peripherally involved in fanfic. At least, I was aware of its existence. I come to InsaneJournal, and fanfic is a much greater presence. I think I like that. I'm interested to see how the change in environment will change me.

Mood: irritated

This will solve some problems.

Everything worked as it ought to, except these things:

Comments. This is what I was really unwilling to lose. They can't be copied over by any of the existing tools. An ideal tool would be able to jack into the destination journal site's database and post the comments as if they had been posted using OpenID from the actual person on the other service. Comments have three restrictions that makes this presently impossible:

• Time — you can't backdate comments.
• IP address — not really important, except for completeness' sake.
• User — this is the most important, and coincidentally the most security-critical.

Custom friends groups. They've got the wrong names. But they're all empty, and I only have five, so it's neither a security risk nor a great task.

<lj user="name">. These should be links to LJ people, not synonymous IJ users.

This is my first post actually targetted at InsaneJournal. If you're reading this, syndication and all that is working properly.

Mood: pleased

From Engineering and Operations in the Bell System, page 134 (copyright 1977):

For applications such as interoffice trunks in metropolitan areas, it may be possible to use a cable in the order of a centimeter thick that contains a few hundred fibers, each of which carries a channel of a few megahertz bandwidth.

From Fiber-optic communication on Wikipedia:

Using WDM technology now commercially available, the bandwidth of a fiber can be divided into as many as 80 channels to support a combined bit rate into the range of terabits per second.

~ Sock Dreams ~

I have a Paid account, expiring April 6th. That's just a week or two away. I'll let it fall back to Basic, because I don't agree with SUP's recent changes.

As if anyone cares.

Mood: pissed off