Qui desiderat pacem, preparet bellum.
– Vegetius, De Re Military, Preface to Book III

Pretty sure I’d seen this before, but its worth linking… Crash Bonsai. [linky]

Just started watching Macross Zero, which is a prequel to all the others. That first dogfight… Oh muh gawd, that was just freaking awesome!

So, for all the ladies I care about… if you find yourself drinking in public, parties, and the like, check this out… its a date rape drug detector. [link]

OK, so here’s a tip for anyone playing around with vegadns… if your web server doesn’t respond as expected (like, you turn off listening on all but one external ip, thus shutting down the 127 connection vega’s updater is expecting), then the updater doesn’t fail in a very graceful fashion… In fact, it will blank your entire DNS ruleset, synch that with your slave dns server and boom, your namespace is toast. Hope you remember your IP.

Oops.

Not really my best week. I feel like I flaked really badly on Travis, even though a lot of it was out of my hands. I never hooked up with one client… still not sure why I missed her one callback… and I wasn’t aware of problems with another major client (they didn’t know they had my cell number, so I didn’t get a call when the problem was happening)…

Major fscking bleh.

So, grandma was dead for a couple minutes on Sunday. Mom performed CPR and she came around… She’s doing… well… she hasn’t died again this week, so that’s good, right?

James found the origin of the Dalai Lama gun quote…

“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” — The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times) speaking at the “Educating Heart Summit” in Portland, Oregon, when asked by a girl how to react when a shooter takes aim at a classmate

Went shooting with dad earlier this week. He had to do his six month quals for his CCW, and I go along with him each time (I usually outshoot him, but I wasn’t ready when he started shooting so I didn’t get to do the quals and get scored this time). After the last time I found that our gun cleaning equipment was missing at first, and I let my gun go uncleaned. We kept agreeing that we might as well just go shooting again before cleaning it, but that never happened… Man, I let that go waaaaay, too long.

Anyway, the place where we’re shooting now is reserved for law enforcement, security guards and the like, and they’ve got a gunsmith on site who will clean your gun for you if you’re willing to part with some green. So, we decided to be lazy and wandered over there. Got some interesting tips about our guns and how to care for them.

One big shocker was when he told me that my gun should be kept well oiled. When Simi PD went to Berettas, they had a factory rep come out who told them to keep them dry. The gunsmith, though, had some broken beretta parts lying around that convinced me.

I also found out that the reason the feeder ramp for my gun always seemed so shiney is because its chromed. 😀 How’s that for bling? Its to protect the barrel and ensure smooth loading.

Oh, the gunsmith also did a nifty trick with a dremel and a bullet shaped polisher that he says can be picked up at gun shows. He greased up our guns with mobil one red grease and we were on our way…

Dad and I both agreed that being lazy and letting someone else clean the guns made the experience SO much more enjoyable.

“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crime. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” –Thomas Jefferson, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in “On Crimes and Punishment”, 1764

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It our job to see that it stays there.” – George Orwell

“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” – Dalai Lama, Tibet

“When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man, and so with every created thing.” – Saint Augustine

“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” – Thomas Jefferson

“An armed society is a polite society.” – Robert Heinlein

“Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense?” – Patrick Henry

“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.” – George Washington

Lots of quotes from here… Hell, I probably should have just linked it and left it at that.

I was just reading over the rules of the Honeynet Project’s Forensic Challenge (long since over), and I came across this…

“The person who hacked the box is NOT eligible”

Awww!