Archive for the ‘Nonclassified Nonsense’ Category

Last night, or rather early this morning, I woke up around 3 a.m. The cat was curled up next to me, rhythmically breathing, sound asleep. Berck was in the downstairs bedroom because it’s cooler down there, and he makes me leave if I wake him up snoring. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I scrolled through Facebook, Google News, and Reddit. The cat woke up with my fidgeting, finally leaving the bed around 4, which is around the time he gets up anyway. He yowled at the kitchen window, probably to the neighbor’s visiting black cat, but only for a while. I finally drifted back to sleep around 5.

What seemed like only a few minutes later, I was awoken by a commotion in the kitchen. At first I thought it was the cat clumsily knocking things over, but then I realized it was too loud and kept going on for too long. I saw a light from the direction of the kitchen and figured Berck had gotten up, turned on the light above the stove, and was rummaging around in the cupboard for the Tang. It sounded like he was having trouble finding it, even though I was sure I had left it right in front on the shelf. Then it sounded exactly like he dropped two ice cubes into a glass, which I thought was strange because he doesn’t usually drink Tang with ice. The rummaging eventually stopped, the light went out, and I never heard his footfalls heading back downstairs.

I was pretty annoyed that I had been woken up right when I managed to fall back asleep. I tossed and turned until 7:30, when I decided to just give up and get up. I was even more annoyed when I came into the kitchen and found the cupboard doors still open and some of the contents strewn on the floor. Berck must have had a rough night trying to find the Tang, which, just as I remembered, was right in front on the shelf.

That wasn’t the only thing on the floor. The plunger for the coffee maker and a coffee filter had also fallen down, and the pepper grinder, a bottle of vinegar, and a bottle of olive oil were on their sides on the kitchen counter.

Berck had made me some coffee the day before, which was still sitting on the counter. I poured it into a mug, even though it wasn’t remotely hot, and got a milk carton out of the fridge with just enough milk in it to add to my coffee. I then sipped my drink and stared past the cat, who was sitting in the kitchen windowsill, staring back at me. I thought about how clearly I could see the tree leaves in the front yard and up to the road. It must be my new glasses prescription, I mused. The cat blinked at me from his perch in the open window.

The open window.

My sleep-deprived morning brain finally registered that the reason why I could see so clearly out the window was because the screen was missing. The cat, who is a strictly indoors cat, had not tried to escape through the completely open window, or if he had, had then returned. I went outside to find the screen lying on the ground next to my other hummingbird feeder along with the snapped piece of string that had formerly suspended it from the eaves. The cat swiveled his head around to stare at me through the open window, with me now standing outside the house.

I put the screen back in place. The screen is made of Kevlar to keep the cat from tearing it up. The cat, in fact, can hang his entire body weight from the screen with his claws without damaging the screen. But now there were five indentations in the screen. That would have taken quite a bit of force.

After moving my cat’s paws out of the way and replacing the screen, I came back inside and stared at the open cupboard. There was something missing. I looked back outside.

Yes, that is a completely empty 4.5 lb bag of Nestle chocolate chips from Costco in the front yard. No, there are no chocolate chips left on the ground.

I started chuckling. Berck came upstairs, complaining about the cat making a giant racket in the kitchen that morning, which confirmed what I already knew. It wasn’t Berck rummaging around the kitchen in the middle of the night. A closer inspection of the cupboard doors revealed some new scratches.

Berck checked the cameras.

This is obviously a big problem, however, it’s sadly possibly a self-solving one. Just like for dogs, chocolate is toxic for bears, though it’s unclear how much will kill a bear (though the Internet suggests around 10 lbs will).

We agreed that it was a dang good thing neither of us thought it was actually a home invader in the kitchen, since any confrontation in that confined a space can’t have ended well.

I had a colonoscopy scheduled for today (everyone at the clinic asked me why I was getting one, and I’d answer, “I’m 50”).  My mom had suggested getting some lemon drops as chasers to the 4 liters of colonoscopy juice I had to drink last night and this morning, but I was having a dickens of a time finding any.  Venture Foods in Divide carries some, but they taste like chalk. All City Market had was some Lifesavers, so I got some of those.  7 Eleven didn’t have any.  Then I tried the Farm Crest store in Old Colorado City.

I usually only go to the Farm Crest store once a year to get eggnog.  I really like their eggnog, and they have other things in their convenience store that other stores might not have.  (There is usually some homeless person counting out change on the counter to buy cigarettes too). But no dice.  Nothing but sour gummies, and I’m not a fan of gummies. 

I was about to exit the store suspiciously empty-handed and was thinking of what I’d remark to the cashier, but she was walking out the open front doors (Tuesday was a lovely day).  She was tall and thin, traits her high pumps and tight jeans accentuated. Suddenly, she stopped and lifted her left hand up into the air and stood as still as the Statue of Liberty.  She was staring at her hand, held perpendicular to the ground, and I followed her gaze to the tip of her index finger.

Just then a dirt-brown moth stretched out its wings and took off from her outstretched hand, which she held completely still until it was clear of her fingers.  A plague of miller moths are the bane of Colorado Springs every spring, but this clerk had taken the time to capture the lost creature and returned it to the outdoors so it could continue its journey up into the mountains to mate. 

(Today’s colonoscopy went well, and I shouldn’t be dying of colon cancer anytime soon.)

This is a boring post about a mostly boring thing that I feel compelled to write. It’s aimed at those of you who haven’t thought much about Internet security, find websites’ increasing security demands obnoxious and just want to go about your life with minimal hassle. Like my Mom. Or Jonah. I find that I’m often giving this advice to people after it’s too late and individually, but now I can just link to this.

I know you’ve probably seen articles that are like “use a password manager,” and those are well-intentioned and have reasonable advice. And you know it’s a thing you should do, but it’s hard and you’ve got better things to do. And really, you probably figure that someone accessing your email account isn’t the worst thing the world.

So I’d like to start by explaining the way actual attacks work and why you don’t want it to happen to you. Hopefully coming from me in my own words means something more to you than some rando journalist.

A common thing that happens now is that someone (maybe you!) uses the same password everywhere. There are a ton of websites that require you to come up with a username and password for no good reason (like online shopping). So you buy some widget online from some little online outfit that runs a store with poor security. Someone targets their website and steals their entire customer database. This means that now they have your email address and your password for that store.

At first, maybe you think this is no big deal. But if the password to your email account is the same password that you used at this store–you’re probably screwed. One of the first things someone is going to do is try to log in to your email account with your password. They’re also probably on to the fact that you think you’re clever by using “secur3passw0rdWidget” for the widget store and “secur3passw0rdGmail” for your gmail. So now they have access to your email, and once they get in, you’re going to have a really bad time.

First, they’re going log into your gmail account and change your gmail password so you can’t access it anymore, but they can. Then they’ll read your email to see what banks you use. They’ll do “forgot my password” at your bank/paypal/whatever, which will send “you” an email to make sure you are who say you are.

The bank might ask for some other identifying information about you. Like your phone number, maybe your date of birth. Which, probably, can be found trivially by searching through your email. Once they get in, they’ll then change the phone number and contact information that your bank has on you to make it even harder for you to get your accounts back.

Chances are good that by the time you figure out what’s going on, they’ve stolen your account information, possibly your money. Maybe they’ve had one of your credit cards reported as lost and shipped directly to them. Possibly they’ve logged onto your Facebook and sent messages to some of your friends to explain that you’re stuck in a city far away from home, lost your wallet, and really need them to send some money to help you out of a jam.

So, here’s the things you should do to keep this from happening, and I’ll list them in the likelihood that you’ll actually do them:

(1) Make sure your email password is truly unique. I don’t care if you write it down on a sticky note and put it on your monitor or carry it with you. It’s not ideal, but this attack vector is unlikely compared to someone stealing it from another site.

(2) Pick an actually secure password for your email. Do what works for you, but it should not be a dictionary word, and doing common letter substitutions doesn’t count. It doesn’t need to be random to be secure. Correct battery horse staple passwords are pretty good as long as you avoid the 5,000ish most common words. (Munroe’s math in the comic involves cracking character-by-character, but a sophisticated attack will build rainbow tables with common words. If someone knows you’re using a battery horse staple password, they’re actually easy to crack if you use common words. Weird, uncommon but memorable words are best.)

(3) Go to Have I Been Pwned and see if the common password you’re using everywhere is in their database. It probably is. Stop using it for anything important, but seriously don’t use it for your email.

(4) Use a password manager! I know you don’t want to. It seems hard. It’s really not. The hassle is just in setting it up, but the good ones have browser extensions and apps for all browsers and phones. Once you go through the hassle of setting it up, it’s going to make your life much easier! You just click “generate random password” in your browser, it’ll generate it and remember it goes with that site. Your random, secure password will be auto-filled way faster than you can type your common password. It’ll then be synced to all your devices magically.

(5) Turn on two factor authentication for your email. There are 3 basic options now:

• SMS – you get a text message with a code
• Authenticator App – You use an app (like Google Authenticator) to generate a code
• Hardware Key – a thumb-drive like device that you stick in a USB port and push a button when you want to log in.

The SIM card in your phone can be trivially cloned by any teenager who works for your wireless phone provider. Then they’ll stick the SIM in their own phone and get your code texted directly to them. SMS-based two factor is way better than not having two-factor, but it’s the worst choice and you should pick one of the others if you can.

Authenticator apps are a better choice, but they leave you vulnerable to phishing attacks where you think you’re logging into your email account, but you’re not. While you type in your password and your authenticator code, an attacker is logging into your account for you.

Hardware keys are the best answer, but can be a bit of a pain. If you want to go this route, Yubikey is the standard choice. You actually need to buy at least 2 of them because you won’t be able to access your account if you lose/break it. The way it works is that you log in to your email with your password, but then it’ll ask you to tap your hardware key. You don’t have to type They are awesome because when used correctly, they cannot be phished or stolen remotely.

The hassle is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can check “remember this device” so you effectively only have to use the key to log in from a new device.

(6) Ideally you’ll turn on Google’s Advanced Protection! It looks like you can now do this with a modern phone, and you don’t even need to buy a security key to do it.

We were lying in bed one lazy Saturday morning, and my husband asked me, “Would you change anything about your body?”

I know he’s a sucker for my blue (useless) eyes and my long (thin, plain brown) hair. I could stand to lose a few pounds… well, maybe more than a few.

“Yes!” I answered. “I’d like to have an exoskeleton.”

“A… what?”

“An exoskeleton, preferably bulletproof. And I’d like to have really strong legs so I could jump a hundred feet into the air like a grasshopper. But when I landed I’d be safe because of my exoskeleton.”

“An… exoskeleton?”

“And compound eyes.”

“What?”

“Wouldn’t it be great to see in 360 degrees?”

“But would they still be blue?”

“Disco, probably.”

“So,” he said, “you’d like to be an insect?”

“I’d also like to be able to eat rocks.”

“Eat… rocks?”

“Yeah, because I’d never go hungry. Rocks are everywhere! But to eat rocks, I’d need to have a funnel type mouth with rotating sets of diamond teeth. You know, to crush the rocks.”

“Rotating… what? How would you talk?”

“Telepathy.” I turned to him, “How about you? Would you change anything about your body?”

He cleared his throat. “I’d like to be shorter.”

I dreamed last night that a Checkers hamburger joint opened up in Divide on Cedar Mountain road. This is, of course, preposterous, because we’re too far north for it to be a Checkers; it would have to be a Rally Burger. I ordered a Checker burger, seasoned fries, and a banana shake, and then Berck started cursing because the total was $18, and I was dismayed because there were children in the restaurant.

The closest retail establishment to our house is in reality a Pepsi vending machine, which is at the campground that is full all summer of people who are trying to get away from it all, that we pass on our drive to our house.

But now I want some fries the way Checkers batters them. Berck tried to make them in his deep fryer once, but the breading all came off and made a huge mess in the fryer.