Scattered Thoughts

Wow! What a beautiful day here in Bloomington. Our high today was near 70 degrees.

The weather definitely reminded me of last Spring, Spring Break in particular. Driving around in John's Jeep, top down, jamming to Dispatch…

The reason it reminded me of that time is because some guy drove by the School of Informatics with a Jeep packed full of people, listening to The General as loud as possible.

I cannot wait until Springtime in Bloomington. There is no better place to be when the weather starts to get warm, the trees start to bud, the birds come back from their winter slumber and all of the students start invading any green-space they can get to so they can play frisbee, football, soccer, basketball, or just about any other sport. The city really comes to life when the weather is beautiful. Today definitely had some traces of that.

One guy in my Capstone group didn't come to our meeting with the instructors today because he was "feeling under the weather". If it was me, and I wasn't already on campus, I would be traveling to a state forrest or a city park to feel "under the weather" on a day like today.

Today definitely made me look forward to the summer more than I previously was. Being outside almost all day is awesome, especially when you are doing something you love.

In other news about my life. I'm still as broke as ever. My vow of poverty worked, I only spent $20 a week the last two weeks. I won't have that luxury this week becasue a lot of bills are coming due.

This weekend was a ton of fun. I got to spend it all with Erin since Valentine's Day was Monday. We ate dinner Friday at Cafe Dijango downtown then went back to her house for some hang-out time with her roomates. Calvin (Erica's boyfriend) was in town. He and I found common interest since we both climb. For those of you who are camp kids, imagine Robbie Babbit with blonde hair and you've got Calvin. Same mannerisms, sense of humor and personality.

Saturday I had to be at the Basketball game, then we hung out with Will and Rachel. We saw Sideways which I highly recommend. Since the movie is about a couple of guys driving around California visiting the Vineyards, we decided to have a wine tasting party. We each bought a bottle of wine to sample and then did the whole tasting thing. We even bought el-cheapo wine glasses to drink out of.

Friday I'm making a trip up to Shelbyville to hopefully see a doctor about my constant inability to concentrate on ANYTHING. It's to a point where it's driving both me and Erin nuts.

That's all I want to spew onto the web right now. Hopefully I'll be able to write again soon.

Peace out all!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Flying Horses – Dispatch

Hero of the Day – Erin for being my Valentine yesterday.

Quote of the Day – "Warm weather makes people stupid!" – Erin when we were driving to dinner tonight.

Current Mood – – Restless

Until the next post…

At 8am this morning, Will and I went to look at a house for next year. It was pretty nice. It has a large backyard and a garage. It's a nice cozy two bedroom with colorful walls. The people who lived there last semester had a dog that they would just let run wild in the back yard.

Where is this house, you might ask? It's at 902 South Vermylia Street, just down the street from where Michael and Neil live now and where Tim and Kyle will live next year. The rent is fairly cheap ($650 a month / 2 people if I remember right) which is far less than what we pay now ($1250 a month / 3 people). It has it's own washer and dryer and basement that we didn't see because the power was off. There is currently nobody living there because they moved out at the end of the semester, but the lady didn't seem too rushed to lease the house.

A few considerations.

• It's right down the street from Hoosier Courts, which has turned into Drama Central. All I know is that if we move into that neighborhood, there will be no Drama allowed past the first step up to the porch. I mean, honestly, why do people still cause this drama? It's ridiculous.
• Street parking instead of visitor parking, definite bonus.
• It's a bit of a hike to campus, but if I buy an E pass, I can just drive to the stadium and take the X bus.
• IT'S CLOSE TO BRYAN PARK!!!

That's about it.

That's all the news that I have for you all today. We took some photos, I'll put them up in the extended entry as soon as I get home.

Peace out all!

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Lump – Presidents of the United States

Hero of the Day – Will Petersen because he gave up going to a bar with Coach Lyons to go to Nick's with Erin and me.

Quote of the Day – "How dare she! She can't compete with the triple threat!" – Will at Yogi's the other night. FRDWKDEDVLEUWLDUGHRFKAHFTZCJJDB

Current Mood – – Restless

Until the next post…
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It's been a long time since I've just flat out updated you all on my life, so here goes.

Tomorrow is my birthday. If you love me, you'll send money or buy me beer, or something. Money is the best option

I think my semester is off to a good start. So far, I've missed only three classes, two of which are optional and one of which I didn't want to wake up because I had a rough night. I'll find out how well things are going tomorrow after my first exam of the semester.

Things on the girlfriend front are good. I love her more and more each day. Things keep happening between us that make our relationship better and better.

Financially things could be better, and this is where the title comes into play. The last couple weeks, I fought with Fifth Third Bank over some overdraft fees; fees that should never have been debited from the account in the first place. Needless to say, the bank won, so now I have taken a vow of poverty in the mildest of senses. The main reason is that I want to get a good amount of money stored up so I can end up purchasing a 12″ PowerBook to compliment my 20″ iMac G5. There are a couple of reasons I want a PowerBook

1. I want to have a smaller laptop than the one I currently have (15″)
2. I'm ready to completely make the switch to the Macintosh, especially since I got Virtual PC working on my iMac
3. The PowerBook is the sexiest laptop on the market right now, and I like sexy

So there it is, I've said it, I'm completely making the switch to the Mac. The switch should be complete about mid summer.

If I can live on $20 a week for the next two weeks, I'll be well on my way with a $400 start toward the PowerBook — hence the vow of poverty "in the mildest sense".

Ice climbing this last weekend was a lot of fun. Our group of guys worked together well and had a lot in common. I feel like I've known a couple of the guys on the trip for more than just a weekend. The actual climbing was just ok, but the group interaction was awesome. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun, but I think I built up my hopes just a little too much and expected ice climbing to be this amazing thing. To be honest with you, I like trad and sport climbing a lot better than ice.

I think that's about it for now. I'll update on more things later if I remember them.

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Wasting My Time – Default

Hero of the Day – Kilroy's Bar and Grille for $2 Cheeseburger and Chips day!

Quote of the Day – …I got nothin'…

Current Mood – – Hard at work studying for an exam and doing other homework.

Until the next post…

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Many of you remember reading an post I made about Phishing. Just to recap, Phishing is an evolving attack where an attacker convinces a victim to hand over sensitive information such as bank account access information, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.

The attack that I described was, at the time, the only attack I knew about. Apparently Phishers are becoming more and more sophisticated.

A report found on CNN.com explains how Phishers are now using malicious software to redirect a web browser from a legitimate site. For example if a customer would type "banking.53.com" into the address bar, the spyware could re-direct the browser to a spoofed web site. This spoof will look exactly like the actual site so that the victim enters his access id and password and hits submit. The faux site will then either throw an error message saying the system is down and to try back later, or it will take the information that the victim submitted, log it, and then send an authentication request to the actual web site making it appear that the site functions properly.

Another new attack that is being devised is to attack the DNS servers themselves.

DNS servers act like giant phone books for the internet. They are the machines that direct a plain text URL to the IP number associated with the site. For example, when you type www.ebay.com into the address bar, the internet browser looks into one of the DNS servers to find out where www.ebay.com is (66.135.208.101). Once it has this information, the browser directs the user to the IP address and loads the page.

If a Phisher is able to gain access to the directory listing on one of the main DNS servers, he can re-direct any page he wants to whatever IP address he wishes. This is by far the most dangerous, but most unlikely phishing attack.

What this all comes down to is that today; we all have to be careful about where we go and what we do on the internet. Pay attention to how long it takes you to go to a web site, be aware of anything strange that happens and challenge everything. If you think something is not right, call the people who operate the website you are trying to use and talk to them. Keep some sort of spyware removal software on your computer. Microsoft has a great one that will even remove the software that causes spyware (This article is much worth the read).

As technology progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep our identities and secure information safe.

That's all for now.

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown

Song of the Day – Sheep go to Heaven – Cake

Hero of the Day – House of Hunan for delivering me dinner

Quote of the Day – "We're going to play a game. It's called piss off the Reds" – A guy playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live with Will.

Current Mood – – Giddy

Until the next post…

Just thought this was cool.

Search for any of the following in Google:

• iTunes Compatibility Lawsuit
• IU Football Sucks
• GSM Authentication and Encryption
• Dead Week Meataphor
• Grubb Road Ghosts
• Scattered Thoughts
• hormones in the classroom
• moveable type on total choice hosting

And you will find that one of my sites is in the top link.

Search for one of these:

• Tom Mason
• Memo Indiana University Basketball
• Snow Go Away

And my one of my sites is on the first page.

I just thought that was cool. And now that I feel like crap, and I'm off work soon, I'm out.