helping you stay protected in the digital age

I was tipped off by a friend at, coincidentally, a coffee shop about Microsoft’s new COFEE project.

“COFEE is a USB drive that allows law enforcement to run more than 150 commands on a live computer system and save the results on the portable drive for later analysis. This preserves valuable information that could be lost if the computer had to be shut down and transported to a lab–files that are stored in active memory would otherwise be lost, for example.”

I will do some research this week when I’m finished with work on Friday and try to piece together facts and my thoughts and opinions on this as well as how it could be used with other PC “vulnerabilities” such as freezing RAM chips to bypass encryption.

Lauren and I discovered a really cool piece of New Orleans culture today. At the intersection of Pyrtania and Audubon was a Haiku board. We started to just pass it up as we were leaving Owen’s birthday party but I decided to stop and see what it was because it would be the third or fourth time I’ve just driven by and said “Maybe next time I’ll check it out”.

On a sheet of wood strung between two poles with six different colored magic markers, the community can walk, ride, or drive by and write their own Haiku. Well, the intent is for us New Orleanians to write Haiku but as you can see from some of the pictures some of the writing doesn’t follow the Haiku pattern. I even discovered two written advertisements which I won’t post pictures of (because it is for Haiku not advertising your lawn care business).

We were so interested in it that when I saw the gentleman of the house sitting outside I asked him about the Haiku board and he had his wife, Gail (I hope I spelled your name correctly), come outside as she was the brains behind the idea. She was happy to see us participating.

So, next time you are near Audubon and Pyrtania swing by and visit the Haiku board and add a little bit of yourself to it!

I looked all over for a good coffee table but could never find one that my fiance’ liked. After two weeks I got fed up because we couldn’t find a table we both liked and I said “If you don’t pick a coffee table then I’ll just build one.” This became a great excuse to buy brand new power tools!

And build one is exactly what I did. Lauren found an old door next to the house at which she works which had a glass center. The glass is two-pane and tempered and held together with a metal box “frame” and sealed with a rubber compound. This is of course VERY heavy.

When picking the type of wood the only thing locally I could find in good supply (and on a Friday) was Red Oak. I like Red Oak and have used it in some of my “heavier” constructions a few years ago (a gun cabinet and a table). I consulted with my structural engineer [Blaize] (actually he is just a lot better with math than I am) and we came up with the correct figures and cuts that I needed to make. The glass itself is about 5 1/2′ long and this makes for a long coffee table. I don’t mind the length at all, I’m actually glad when people sit on my sofa everybody has a spot for their feet

You can see from the pictures it is a simple construction: 45 degree cuts on the corners, the recess sits beneath the top and extends out for the glass to rest on for an 1 1/2 inches. I sanded it with my new Dewalt sander once I assembled it (with my new Dewalt drill and clamps) with 120 grit paper then again with 320 grit to prep it for stain. I used Minwax Red Mahogany wood stain.

As an afterthought, my fiance’ wants a shelf to go beneath the glass for books and whatnot. I’ll probably knock this out next weekend. There was also question as to the warping of the table because it spans so long with no center support and is also holding a very heavy glass top. I sorta planned for this by having the glass ends as close as possible to the table legs but I might go back and support the underside by placing on all sides a 2 inch “trim” so the weight of the top of the table is supported by the side of the trim instead of having the trim’s grain run down the table. In other words the face of the trim will face outward.

So in the mean time enjoy these pictures until I get the construction completed and satin finish put on there. Mr. Leonard Acker at Slidell High School would be proud!

There is a very important notice in the Network Stats page! Please read this important notice.

This is a speed test I just ran from Speakeasy…. I’m left speechless!

I try to avoid re-hashing or re-posting news stories as I feel that a website that just republishes the same story doesn’t accomplish anything.

With that out of the way, my most favorite site in the world, Dslreports.com wrote about “Friendly Zombies” and legit computers being used as DDoS bots against bad or malicious bots.

You can read the story at http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Using-Friendly-Zombies-To-Fight-DDoS-Attacks-93820