wiredfool

It’s really a bad idea to put whole, intact hot peppers in a wok and fry them.

They explode, splattering oil and possibly jumping onto the floor. And in the process, make lots of airborne hot pepper oils.

In the case of Thai Dragon peppers, that’s sufficient to feel like a bystander at a Seattle protest.

Rule #1 of blog meetup is that you _must_ blog about blog meetup.

We answered questions. Silly questions. Answered thusly. IF I were successful and had 5000 readers, I would change my posting patterns to include more cat pictures, since what this world really needs is more cat pictures on blogs.

So to promote the idea that I have a successful blog:

Rule #2 There’s something about peeps

Rule #3 Some toys should run for Governor

Rule #4 Keep the silly string inside so there’s enough light to photograph it.

Google’s up to something interesting: http://labs1.google.com/cgi-bin/gviewer.cgi?q=Zeitgeist . Kinda like “I’m feeling lucky” once a second.

Local Feeds: http://seattle.localfeeds.com/ (or, for the slightly less local overview, http://www.localfeeds.com)

Thanks to the wonder of spare corporate tickets from Rose’s office, I got to see the Mariners beat up on the Red Sox (and the fans bleat on the umpire).

The Mariners got out to an early lead, nearly making it 3-0 in the second when the home plate ump made a questionable call on a tag. He called out, the crowd bleated boos on him for the next inning or so and sporadically thoughout the night.

The Red Sox caught up in the 6th and made it 4 all. Then the Mariners got a shot, one on, the Sox missed the first half of a double play at second, then mishandled a grounder to short to load the bases. Ichiro came up to the plate, fowled off 5 or 6 pitches (even one into the upper deck) and then belted one to right.

All of a suddden, it’s 8-4.

And then the Sox load the bases and get one walked in. At least they were nice enough to reciprocate in the bottom half of the inning.

It’s good to see that Microsoft is going to be flipping the switch to turn on the XP internal firewall by default. In the long run that is going lower the number of people affected when something like this week’s exploit happens again.

It looks like there are at least four ‘minimal care’ practices that should be followed:

• Firewall, default to closed.
• Up to date Security patches.
• Virus Checker – updated including email.
• Spyware/popup blocker.

The last two could be taken care of using alternate mail readers and web browsers. The last three items are going to require ongoing maintence, which is one of those things that has to be completely automatic for the majority of people to deal with.

Those of you with windows machines, or who know people with windows machines have probably already heard of this one. Even slashdot knew of the vulnerability a couple of weeks ago when the patch came out. There was a rustling and murmuring that this could be bad, since it takes no user action to spread.

But it’s not as bad as it could be. I’ve only seen a couple of hundred packets that might be probes for infection (as opposed to the usual bozons). It is apparently reasonably obvious that something is happening when you get infected. This slows the spread. It opens more than one port for communication that isn’t normally allowed by firewalls. (Hell, none of the ports it uses should be accessible through a firewall). It’s a tcp scan, not a udp one. There’s a whole communication loop that has to happen for each infection instead of just spewing packets into the ether.

Someday we’re going to see a worm that is:

• Udp based – with single packet infection.
• Has a vulnerable population of ~ 50%+ of the net community
• Has all the warhol worm ‘efficient search’ ideas down.
• And goes off when the net is already overloaded, such as the annual victoria’s secret fashion show.

And it’s not going to be pretty.

French for ‘what diet?’. This is great served warm over ice cream or could probably be used as a cake frosting. Or just eating out of the bowl. This has a port reduction, which is not necessary if you don’t want it. It’s also possible that you’d rather drink the port and leave it out of the chocolate. That’s good too.

• 1/2 cup port
• 1/2 cup cream
• 3 oz semi-sweet chocolate. The better the chocolate…

Simmer the port until it is reduced to a couple of tablespoons, and somewhat thick. There is a transition where it clearly becomes more syrupy from the initial liquid. Pour over the chocolate. Warm cream till just off a boil. Pour over chocolate and mix till smooth.

Chard done quickly – makes enough for 2 as a side.

• 1 bunch chard – from the box.
• 3 cloves garlic – minced
• 1 Thai Dragon pepper – chopped
• a few mint leaves – chopped

Wash, destem and chop the chard into bite sized pieces. Boil/steam for 5 minutes until tender. Drain and remove as much water as possible.

In a small fry pan, saute garlic and pepper in olive oil, a little generous on the quantity. When the garlic is nearly done, add chopped mint leaves and saute for another 15 -30 seconds.

Toss with chard and serve.

I appreciate a good bit of chaos, especially as a spectator. So California is shaping up nicely.

Between the actors, porn industry, people changing their name for advertising reasons, a possible husband/wife pair in different parties, there are only a couple of categories that they haven’t covered: real politicians, plants, and house pets.

Seattle had a cat running as a write-in candidate for mayor. So I think that the Stanford Tree should run in California.
I don’t see how it could make the situation any worse.