Simple pleasures, frustrations, amusement and insecurity.
Ostensibly I keep my thermostat turned down because I'm only home between 9PM and 8AM typically, and most of that time is spent under blankets in a water bed (heated mattress for the win!). I do keep the thermostat in the bedroom turned up a little warmer than the rest of the apartment, but not much.
Tonight, though, I think I found another reason.
I started dinner cooking, then went to wash the dishes that have been collecting in the sink. For those who don't know, or have forgotten, my apartment complex is a set of four buildings, with four apartments each. I don't know about the other buildings, but as far as I can tell, my apartment is in the exact opposite corner of the building from the water heater.
Needless to say, it takes a while to get hot water to my apartment.
I will say one thing for it though. When the hot water gets here, it's hot.
By the time I finished cleaning the few dishes that didn't go in the dishwasher (the skillet/wok, a pot lid, the measuring cup, and a wooden handled spreader) the water was steaming right from the tap.
I like that. Watching the steam floating up from the sink seems to calm me, somehow.
I was moderately annoyed that a) both washing machines are in use, b) new acts in the Security Theater play, and c) Diebold voting machines can not only be hacked, but can be physically hacked using nothing more than a photo from the Diebold website!
As for the first, this is a weekly occurrence. There are two washers and two dyers for all 16 apartments. Every time I try to do laundry, the machines are in use. I've learned to live with it and just get up a 7 on Saturdays to do laundry.
The second amuses me. Especially the "blogesphere" (I originally read it "blowg-sfeer" but I'm warming to the pronunciation "blodj-sfeer"
The third ... saddens me. I like voting. I enjoy casting my ballot for my chosen candidate and various measures, referendums and amendments. When I was in sixth grade, during the '94 election season, voting booths were set up in the lobby and students from the upper grades were "invited" to fill out mock ballots. I say "invited" because it was a required activity, as I remember. We had the little pin on a chain used to punch holes in paper ballot cards. Simple and easy. It's hard to have technical glitches in a low-tech solution like that.
When I voted in the 2004 election, my polling place was still at my grade school, though the building had undergone extensive remodeling in the intervening decade. The voting booths were more or less the same on the outside. Small platforms with a screen on all sides but one, standing atop four collapsible legs. I said hello to the volunteers recording who had voted, having met them years previous when my parents were still politically active in Colorado. I waited patiently for a booth to open up, and for the official to guide me to the booth and activate the electronic interface.
Normally I'm a fan of computers and modernized technologies. But part of me missed the paper ballots with the little pin. Pressing on the screen to put a few pixels inside an area bounded by another set of pixels didn't feel quite the same, and is much easier to forge results.
How do I, as a voter, have any faith that my vote will be counted, that my will can mean anything? How can Diebold make any claims of accuracy in its results?
The short version of the article, for those uninterested in following the link several paragraphs ago, or those listening on the podcast, goes something like this: In the Summer of 2006, researchers at Princeton University obtained a Diebold voting machine a found that given sixty seconds of access, an attacker could open the lock on the machine and insert a program that would then affect every other Diebold machine to define the results of the election as the attacker saw fit. January of 2007, another researcher, Ross Kinard, noticed a picture on the Diebold website of the key used to unlock the machines. Working with only that picture, a drill vice, three blank keys, and three cabinet keys, Kinard was able to produce three keys resembling those in the picture. He sent the keys to the researchers at Princeton and two of the three homemade keys were able to unlock the machine.
I don't know if any machines have been upgraded in the year since that article was written, but I kinda doubt it. For the new machines' physical security to matter at all, every machine will have to be upgraded, if not physically then electronically, to prevent the weak link infecting the rest.
I feel I should parody Patrick Henry's speech which ends "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" but it's been a long day, and I don't have the energy tonight.
Tonight, though, I think I found another reason.
I started dinner cooking, then went to wash the dishes that have been collecting in the sink. For those who don't know, or have forgotten, my apartment complex is a set of four buildings, with four apartments each. I don't know about the other buildings, but as far as I can tell, my apartment is in the exact opposite corner of the building from the water heater.
Needless to say, it takes a while to get hot water to my apartment.
I will say one thing for it though. When the hot water gets here, it's hot.
By the time I finished cleaning the few dishes that didn't go in the dishwasher (the skillet/wok, a pot lid, the measuring cup, and a wooden handled spreader) the water was steaming right from the tap.
I like that. Watching the steam floating up from the sink seems to calm me, somehow.
I was moderately annoyed that a) both washing machines are in use, b) new acts in the Security Theater play, and c) Diebold voting machines can not only be hacked, but can be physically hacked using nothing more than a photo from the Diebold website!
As for the first, this is a weekly occurrence. There are two washers and two dyers for all 16 apartments. Every time I try to do laundry, the machines are in use. I've learned to live with it and just get up a 7 on Saturdays to do laundry.
The second amuses me. Especially the "blogesphere" (I originally read it "blowg-sfeer" but I'm warming to the pronunciation "blodj-sfeer"
The third ... saddens me. I like voting. I enjoy casting my ballot for my chosen candidate and various measures, referendums and amendments. When I was in sixth grade, during the '94 election season, voting booths were set up in the lobby and students from the upper grades were "invited" to fill out mock ballots. I say "invited" because it was a required activity, as I remember. We had the little pin on a chain used to punch holes in paper ballot cards. Simple and easy. It's hard to have technical glitches in a low-tech solution like that.
When I voted in the 2004 election, my polling place was still at my grade school, though the building had undergone extensive remodeling in the intervening decade. The voting booths were more or less the same on the outside. Small platforms with a screen on all sides but one, standing atop four collapsible legs. I said hello to the volunteers recording who had voted, having met them years previous when my parents were still politically active in Colorado. I waited patiently for a booth to open up, and for the official to guide me to the booth and activate the electronic interface.
Normally I'm a fan of computers and modernized technologies. But part of me missed the paper ballots with the little pin. Pressing on the screen to put a few pixels inside an area bounded by another set of pixels didn't feel quite the same, and is much easier to forge results.
How do I, as a voter, have any faith that my vote will be counted, that my will can mean anything? How can Diebold make any claims of accuracy in its results?
The short version of the article, for those uninterested in following the link several paragraphs ago, or those listening on the podcast, goes something like this: In the Summer of 2006, researchers at Princeton University obtained a Diebold voting machine a found that given sixty seconds of access, an attacker could open the lock on the machine and insert a program that would then affect every other Diebold machine to define the results of the election as the attacker saw fit. January of 2007, another researcher, Ross Kinard, noticed a picture on the Diebold website of the key used to unlock the machines. Working with only that picture, a drill vice, three blank keys, and three cabinet keys, Kinard was able to produce three keys resembling those in the picture. He sent the keys to the researchers at Princeton and two of the three homemade keys were able to unlock the machine.
I don't know if any machines have been upgraded in the year since that article was written, but I kinda doubt it. For the new machines' physical security to matter at all, every machine will have to be upgraded, if not physically then electronically, to prevent the weak link infecting the rest.
I feel I should parody Patrick Henry's speech which ends "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" but it's been a long day, and I don't have the energy tonight.