Another tool for my Hack Recovery Disk: Busybox, a single executable that replicates much of the functionality of many GNU utilities.

A new project I would like to work on:

A simple BSD or Linux boot disk that contains a few utilities for testing for a hacked box. Initially, the system administrator would boot off this floppy and run the initialization utilitity. It would take an MD5 hash of all the files in specific directories (such as /etc, /bin, /sbin and /usr/bin) and store the results in a text file. Later on, the system administrator could boot off this floppy again and run the comparison utility. It would take another MD5 hash of all the files and compare the results.

Doing this in BSD would be easier for me because I have access to many BSD machines. Doing it in Linux would make it much more widely supported. Can the stock Linux kernel mount FFS file systems? I know OpenBSD can mount Ext2 file systems. Red Hat now uses Ext3 by default, so it would only work with older RH systems. Hopefully I will be able to create a boot disk that would work with most any unix system.

This project could also use Tripwire or a pre-made system disk. Or maybe I will just do it all from scratch just to be a jerk.

Wow, I'll be damned. You know how I said there were two main singers for that crappy opening band, Cuda? Well, turns out, the guy with the better voice is Gar Wood from the Hot Snakes. I just thought the regular bassist was taking some time off, so the guy from the Cudas joined them. It's completely the other way around. No wonder I was so confused, and no wonder there was such conflict, and no wonder his voice is that much better.

Ahh, for the want of broadband at home: Hot Snakes live shows, slick Music Videos.

Laura and I went to the Hot Snakes show last night at the Magic Stick. Neither of us had been there, so we had a bit of difficultly parking. We found the actual place just fine, but we had to settle for street parking a couple blocks away.

To summarize the Magic Stick: Hellhole. The main room isn't too bad, though a bit run down. The pool tables are all 7 footers, and are thus worthless. The bartender was quite the jerk, but what else would I expect? The bathroom was, by far, the worst of it all. Laura was so disgusted by the her bathroom that she wouldn't even describe it. The mens room had two stalls and two urinals, yet no stall doors or seats even. The funniest part was there was just a random roll of toliet paper sitting toward the middle of the room. Who would use that? No door, no seat, just a random roll sitting in the filth of many punks? I will pass. Strike one.

I knew there were supposed to be two opening bands, but I figured they would start playing soon after the doors opened. We got there at 7:30 PM, the doors didn't open until 8 PM, yet we waited and waited and waited.... The first band (Red Hot Legends) finally started at 9:30 PM! They sucked. Musically, not bad. Their vocalist, on the other hand, was so horrid that we couldn't understand a single lyric. Strike two.

A good 40 minutes after the first band screeched to a halt, the second band (The Cudas) got on stage. Musically, pretty basic without flourish, melodical but plodding. The band had two main singers and a female backup singer/keyboardist. You could just tell the two guys were vying for top spot in the band. The guy who called the shots was a cheesy chach, the other guy had a much better voice. Gotta love band conflict. Their lyrics though, simply pathetic. Strike three.

Finally, praise god, the Hot Snakes got on stage sometime after 11 PM. I am not even sure when they started, my eyes were watering because I was so over tired. Without any build up or chatting with the audience, they launched into I Hate the Kids. I was a bit unsure of their quality live at first, but then I think their sound engineer tweaked something. The sound was very faithful to the albums, but with pure raw energy. They also played 10th Planet, Automatic Midnight, If Credit Matters I'll Take Credit, Light Up The Stars, No Hands, Our Work Fills The Pews, Past Lives, Gar Forgets His Insulin, XOX, Who Died, Suicide Invoice and Ben Gurion (wow, I remembered almost all of them).

Laura and I actually left during their show because I was so tired. Hopefully I didn't miss much. Luckily, I got to hear my favorite three songs (I Hate The Kids, If Credit's What Matters I'll Take Credit and Suicide Invoice). It's so hard to rock out when you have to get up before 6 AM the next day. The show was amazing, thus all strikes are taken back.

You know what sucks about 60 gig drives? Defragging.

And I thought acid was bad:

Laura's older sister Carolyn was housesitting/catsitting for some friends these past two weeks. 15 days of this, which was supposed to end yesterday. Since the couple was supposed to be back last night, Carolyn went home. She got a phone call around 11 PM from the FIRE MARSHALL.

It seems that the dryer caught on fire and burned up half of the basement. They found her cell phone number on a note upstairs and called her. Luckily the fire caused a water pipe to rupture, helping quench the flames. She was okay, the cats were okay, no one was hurt. More luck for that family.

And I thought wasps were bad:

Laura works at the School of Public Health as a lab technician. The lab she works in deals with air purity/polution. The air and water samples they collect are stored in generic glass bottles. To insure that these bottles are free from impurities, they are washed in acid, baked in acid then cleaned with various other techniques.

Just the other day, Laura was doing the usual routine of cleaning bottles when she accidentally dropped a bottle of acid into a sink. The acid bottle was open since she was using it, thus acid splashed up and into her EYE. She immediately used the eye wash, which I believe saved her. Though she could see just fine after it happened, she decided to go to the ER just to be sure. They flushed both eyes with a liter of saline each then examined the damage. Just a small amount of corneal abrasion which healed quickly. Thank god.

Facts about poop. If you work in an office environment, skip directly to the section on pooping at work. It is so true, especially the SAFE HAVEN.

Can't view thumbnails in Windows 2000? Broken images? Happened to me, just need to hack the registry.

The things a boy will do for internet access:
As most of you know, I am back at my parents house for two weeks this summer. During this time, my only home net access will be dial up. This would be bearable if I could actually make a connection! I dial up my umich account and the connection will die within 20 minutes (usually after only 1 minute).

I called up Ameritech and they said it could be a problem with the line, or it could be internal wiring. If the wiring was the case, then they would charge us just to come look at the problem. He suggested that I connect a modem directly into the interface on the outside of the house. Problem, my computer is in the basement. Luckily, I am sometimes smart.

I found a phone cord long enough so that I could run it from the external interface, through the bathroom window and then *down* the laundry chute into the basement. Unluckily, the external interface is behind a rose of sharon bush (Hibiscus syriacus). Guess what likes to hang out around these bushes? Wasps! I got stung four times, including twice *in the face*. All for dial up access.