Sunday Fish Picture

Posted February 18th, 2007 by

Cute little largemouth bassie I caught on Holmes Run.  It’s a “delayed harvest” trout stream (like put-and-take but they make you wait 3 months before the “take” part) with a nice population of the ubiquitous redbreasted sunfish and the occasional bass.

It's a Bass!

This particular fish surprised me.  It was in late December and I was getting hits from the occasional stocked trout (hey, it’s close to home and I needed the fix) and the bass hit hard and pulled me around the pool for a little while.



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Going Commando….

Posted February 18th, 2007 by

OK, Sean Wilson cracks me up.  More than you’ve ever wanted to know about Going Commando.  Reminds me of my other life in a different world.



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Friday Flyfish Post

Posted February 16th, 2007 by

Why fish?  Well, Schneier has squids, I can have fish.

Anyway, this week is brought to you by Gunpowder Falls.  It’s a small stream just North of Baltimore.  The fish aren’t that hard to catch, as long as you wade carefully–they’re very easy to spook.

Information courtesy Maryland DNR

A good map of the area.  The dam is at the far West edge of the map.



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Friday Flyfish Picture

Posted February 16th, 2007 by

Tubing for bass in the C&O Canal, Great Falls National Park.  The fishing was slow, so I’m tipping my fins up and resting my rod.

Fins Up!



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Targeted Spam

Posted February 16th, 2007 by

ust wondering if anybody else out there in the InfoSecLand gets targeted spam on security- and IT-related subjects.  I get maybe one good, well-targeted spam per month.  I think it’s because I’ve had the same work email for over 4 years, and I’m on some security email lists, so I probably got hoovered off an archive someplace.
This is an excerpt of one I got this week:

Hi Michael ,

How are you doing?  I wanted to update you on the recent <DELETED> report titled <DELETED>

The price of this report is $3,395.  Please let me know if you would like to purchase this report.

Research and analysis highlights

Despite robust growth predicted in the <DELETED> end-user research reveals that the banks currently outsourcing a business process remain the most likely to outsource further such processes and that the market growth going forward will predominantly be generated in this part of the market.

<MUCH DELETIA>

 

Thank You.

Warm Regards,

<DELETED>

Account Executive, Technology

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you are not the intended recipient or the person responsible for delivering to the intended recipient, please be advised that it has been sent in error and therefore any use is strictly prohibited.

If you are not the intended recipient, or if you are concerned about the content of this email, please notify our IT helpdesk on <DELETED>.

This stuff is good.  You could almost think that I was on their opt-in mailing list or that I had a relationship with this account executive.  If I was a little bit busier and a little less paranoid, I wouldn’t probably realize what this is: it’s unsolicited commercial email.  The kicker for me was the “intended recipient” tag at the bottom of the mail.  If you think about the irony of such a comment, it will make you die laughing.  The helpdesk number had a UK country code, not a big chance I’m going to call it.



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Can I at Least Get My Shoes?

Posted February 15th, 2007 by

So during the fading light of Web 1.0 known as “The DotCom Crash”, I was working for a little (4 of us total) startup on the West coast.  We subleased some office space from another company who had a search engine product.

This company’s operation was staffed by some grad students (more about them later), and the company president, Mark, was in the process of selling the business.  I think he made 10 million out of the deal, much less than he wanted, but not bad for a mostly one-man operation.

Our residency in the building started innocuous enough.  We were looking at space elsewhere in the same building, and Mark offered to let us sublease for a reduced price.  It seemed like a good deal at the time.  I probably would still entertain an offer like this even today.

So moving-in day arrives.  We show up with our computers and other equipment and start picking out offices.  Naturally, I got the one with the demarcation for the T1.

One hitch:  the personal effects of the grad students (who Mark said had been layed off) were still in their offices, complete with family pictures, track and field awards, you name it.  Under my breath, I asked if they knew that they didn’t have jobs anymore.  A shrug from Mark, and he was off packing up their stuff into boxes.

So we worked out of the office for 6 months or so.  Then things started to get curiouser and curiouser.  People came around asking for Mark, nicely at first, they a little bit more adamant.  Mark didn’t come into the office as much–he was in the process of selling off his empire.  Of course, I didn’t see much of this because I was in the back room furiously coding away, like all good code monkeys should.

Finally, in the winter, Mark announced that his lease was expiring in a week and that we couldn’t stay there anymore.  No problem, we could move back into a home office until we found someplace better.  We arranged everything that we could and took a couple of days to pack.

Mark had an office furniture sale while we were packing.  He was literally selling everything that wasn’t nailed down–chairs, desks, the overstuffed leather couch, organizers, you name it.

Thursday evening, I was beat.  I hitched a ride home and left my bag and my bike shoes at the office.  I’ll come back on Friday and pick up the last of my stuff.

I show up Friday morning at 8:30.  I noticed a note on the door, I didn’t bother to read it, I was just there to pick up a couple boxes of stuff.  My key didn’t work.  Uh-oh, I guess I’ll read the note.  Paraphrased, it said something like “All your stuff are belong to landlord.”

Apparently, while we had been paying Mark the rent for 6 months, he had not been paying his rent.  The landlord was trying to hold the company’s servers as ransom for the rent he owed, and since his only server (remember, this is startup land, logic doesn’t really apply) was residing off the T1 line in the office, he couldn’t really claim to have sold the company if he couldn’t deliver the software.

It took me 3 hours of phone calls to the landlord and lawyers before someone arrived to let me take my gear out of the office.

As far as I know, Mark stuck the back-due rent with the buyers of his company, which is unethical (and probably illegal in some way), but what else would you expect from the guy?  He’s an accountant who started a tech company as an investment, not because he loved the tech.  I think he went back to being a stock broker and got a nice house out of the deal.



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