Why my day was terrible, and what made me smile.

This was written the day before yesterday, just for reference.



1. I almost committed manslaughter, or something. I was negligent as hell.

Today, my brother could've killed or injured himself or someone else, and it would've been entirely my fault. I was watching Doctor Who with him in the living room during "nap time," and he wandered off. I assumed he was either watching videos with my sisters in the parlor or playing with my brothers upstairs. He wasn't; he'd gone outside, gotten into the locked shed, retrieved his gun, and gone down to the creek (it's generous calling it that- we're in a rather suburban area). He's eight. Maybe nine. I'm not entirely sure.

Of course, I didn't know that, or I'd have pitched a fit and dragged his ass inside. No, I sat on my lazy ass watching Doctor Who (mreow, David Tennant) instead of thinking to confirm his location.

Needless to say, when my mother got home and couldn't find him, I freaked. Five minutes into our realization that he was missing, he wandered up onto the patio wearing no pants or underwear, his shirt pulled down to cover his pre-pubescent junk.

"What happened to your pants?" Mother asked.

He replied, "I pood in them."

[I am reminded of the scene from Lo when Jeez says, "You look like a small child who just proudly shat his pants."]

We thought that was the end of that. But no.

Later, it became known that my step-dad's keys were missing. We searched and searched, and we found them under the van- if my Mother had gone off with the van instead of wanting to use my step-dad's Mustang (for which I don't blame her), those keys would've been gone.

I'm not sure of the details, but they found the gun- down by the creek, or under the van, or inside the shed amongst broken shit, or something- and put the pieces of the puzzle together. They asked my brother about it and he broke down, sobbing about how nobody loved him.

I almost hyperventilated on the couch when I realized that I could've been the indirect cause of a death or serious injury at the hands of my little brother. That fucker doesn't know how to use a gun properly; I don't know why the hell he has one, even if he's only supposed to use it under adult supervision.

2. I was reminded of my friend who killed herself in May.

My friend Mindy was a beautiful person. She was very reminiscent of Buttercup, if you remember the Powerpuff Girls. She was Asian. She cheated off of me in AP US History. She had a girlfriend.

I don't want to write about the details, but she killed herself in May. It was horrible. I didn't go to the funeral, but there was no escaping the truth. No denial. She's missed dearly, and I don't believe in a heaven, but if I did, I'd take solace in the fact that she could see how much we love her.

All this Chik-Fil-A bullshit is bringing forth a lot of posts by/about gays and lesbians on sites I frequent (read: reddit, reddit, and reddit). I know it sounds shallow, but every time I see something with a little Asian girl or a lesbian (or, goodness forbid, both, my poor heart), I think of Mindy immediately. I think of her on other occasions, too, but this has been particularly relevant lately.

I cried today.

3. No matter what, there's an entire universe to be explored.

But no matter what accidents I cause here or what grief I experience, there's a whole universe- maybe several, but that's getting ahead of the game a bit- waiting to be explored. I've lost someone dear to me, and it hurts like hell, but I have Mars to look forward to, for starters.

This knowledge doesn't make me miss Mindy any less. I'm not expecting to find her. I know that won't happen, and I know that space exploration wouldn't fill the void she left behind.

It's just that every time I get sad, I think of what's out there. What's waiting for me. For us.

Hacker

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested After Bank
Tampering"...Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your
three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look
behind the eyes of a Hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick,
what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a Hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with
School... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they
teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in
Junior High or High School. I've listened to Teachers explain for
the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No
Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work, I did it in my head..." Damn kid,
probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because
I screwed up. Not because it doesn't like me...Or feels threatened
by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and
shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it
happened... A door opened to a world... rushing through the phone
line like heroin through an addicts veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a
board is found. "This is it, this is where I belong..." I know
everyone here, even if I've never met them, never talked to them,
may never hear from them again... I know you all.

Damn kid, tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You
bet your ass we're all alike...

We've been spoon-fed baby food at School when we hungered for
steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were
pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found
us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the
desert.

This is our world now, the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing
without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by
profiteering gluttons, and you call us Criminals. We seek after
knowledge, and you call us Criminals.

We exist without skin colour, without nationality, without religious
bias... and you call us Criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage
wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us, and try and make us believe
it's for our own good, yet we're the Criminals.

Yes I am a Criminal, my crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that
of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look
like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will
never forgive me for.

I am a Hacker, this is my Manifesto. You may stop the individual,
but you can't stop us all. After all, we're all alike.

The Mentor

That was shamelessly taken from one of the realistic missions at HackThisSite.org, my new favorite playground.

Wal-Mart Will Stalk You Through Your Undies

Well, they say they won't, but they certainly will have the ability once they begin installing RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips in jeans and underwear next month, in order to more efficiently track their shipments of your mother's XXL boot-cuts.

But Artemis, you whine, rudely interrupting my subtle attempts at a yo-mama joke, I don't know what a Radio Friggin' Doohickey is. Why should I care? It's like a bar code, right? They've been using bar codes since the seventies, and nobody gives a crap about 'em. At this point, I'm ready to smack you in the face. First off, you interrupted me. That is not cool, my friend. Not cool. Secondly, no, RFID chips and bar codes are not the same thing. They do have one basic thing in common (both of them contain a certain amount of data, and when they're read, this data is sent to a "reading device," like a computer or cash register, which uses that information to do important things like figure out what it is you're attempting to buy or make sure your passport is the real deal), but the way they do their jobs is so different, it's like comparing Elmo (the bar code: sweet, if a little slow) with Oscar the fucking Grouch (the RFID chip: a slimy son of a bitch who'll cuss you out soon as he'll look at ya).

See, a bar code is a printed series of bars that form a code. (Gettit? That's why it's called a bar code.) When a magic wand is waved over this series of bars, elves appear and make the computer register the fact that you are adding the Deluxe Blu-Ray edition of All Dogs Go to Heaven to your pile of things to buy. The bar code must be visible to the scanner-wand, and the average furthest the bar code can be is about 12 inches. On the total opposite side of the tech spectrum, an RFID chip is a small (like, teeny-tiny) chip that is installed- sewn, implanted, etc.- in whatever it is the installer is trying to track. Not only do RFID chips not have to be visible in order to be read, but they also can be read at pretty amazing distances (one was read from a distance of 69 feet at DEFCON, and that was in 2005- just think about how much technology in general has improved since then!). They can even be read through wallets (if a criminal has the right equipment, they can bump into you, get close enough to your credit cards to scan the numbers and info off them, and use those numbers to purchase things online- and you won't even know about it until your statement comes at the end of the month, unless the credit card company decides to freeze your card) and cars (like the FasTrak®, which can be used to drive non-stop through toll plazas in San Fran- the FasTrak® is read by magical RFID-readers inside the toll booths, and suddenly they not only have a record of all your comings and goings through the toll plaza... they have a record of where you've been the entire month!).


If a Wal-Mart employee forgot to rip out or disable the RFID chip in your jeans (the latter of which is actually impossible- they can stop monitoring it, but unless it gets killed- more on that in a moment- the chip will never really be disabled), then all of a sudden Wal-Mart can see where your pants, and therefore you on the days you wear those pants, are going. They'll know where you eat lunch, what grocery store you shop at, that you're heading to Tony's apartment four nights a week. 


My preferred method of killing an RFID chip is sticking that mofo in the microwave. Nuking that SOB for 30 seconds ought to do the trick. Leaves an arc of burnt metal, but whatever. You are no longer being tracked. Or even potentially tracked.