General

I'm a few days late reporting this, because I've been busy, but on 8/13 my wife delivered our baby girl! A full account of this ordeal can be found here.

So I'm listening to online radio, and one of the commercials i keep hearing is for this service called Privacy Defender. They tell you how all of this information that you thought might be private is floating around the internet. The continue to scare the crap out of you by stating that prospective employers, significant others, and others might go find this information online, and it could affect their opinion of you.

First I'd like to say that this is nothing more than a company preying on your fear and dis-information to try to make a buck. The idea that you could hire someone to go about erasing your identity from the internet is ridiculous. You may or may not be aware of how "The Internet" works. So I'll give you a basic run down. There is no thing called "The Internet" which is operated or controlled by some group. The network that we perceive as this mysical thing which you can go play games on, chat with your friends, or (imagine this) research things you'd like to know more about, is a conglomeration of many computers, all containing data, which is then shared out to all the rest of the members on the network. If you're reading this blog, on your computer, sitting in your living room, you're an equal member of this network as any other machine that's connected. You could be a web server, you could be a mail server, providing that your ISP allows you to.

You control your information. If you don't want others to have it.... Dont share it! Keep in mind, that a lot of your information is considered public knowledge, and can be obtained through the court house, or even your local library. If you've already jumped in both feet, and your information is everywhere, well, go try to get it back. A lot of web site administrators will cooperate with you if you go to them in a professional manner. I don't know if they're legally obligated (or, even if they should be) to remove your data, but ask them, if theyre reasonable, they'll help you out. If they won't, don't sue them. It's different if they've obtained private data about you and published it without your knowledge. If you've posted some embarrassing pictures of you and your college room mate making out at some frat house party in college, you put it there, you should have thought better of it before you posted it. If someone else posted it because they were at the frat house party, and took a picture of you, and you let it happen, then maybe you should have thought of that and tackled them and deleted the picture from their phone. Contacting the site operator is essentially what services like Privacy Defender would do. Of course, i don't know what goes on under the sheets of Privacy Defender, but knowing what i know about running a web server, what else could they do? They can't go and remove things from my server, they have to go to Me, the operator of the server, and ask nicely. The only power they have that you might not, is a knowledge of the law and perhaps sleazy lawyers that know how to exploit it.

I recently watched an interesting video, where Eben Moglen spoke in front of a group about "Freedom in the cloud". I'll embed the video in a moment, if you'd like to watch it. He made some very good points regarding privacy, a user's role in the internet, and how we've all blindly given our information away. If you use Facebook, i'd highly recommend you watch this video. It's a little dry, and some of it's a bit technical, but it brings out some very important details about what the guys at facebook (and other social networking sites for that matter) can do with your data!



So, why am I posting this? Well, watching that video really made me think about our society, and how intertwined our lives are with our online lives. Slowly they're becoming one and the same. This is a cool trend, but also a scary one! When companies like facebook can, via a nicely worded EULA, claim ownership of all of the data you decide to post, where does your privacy go?

When i started getting involved with computers, BBS's, web communities, and things of the like. I always used an alias, an avatar, to identify myself. This is how it was done, this is how everyone did it. If someone signed up with their full name as their username, you knew they were naive, and not privacy minded. At that time, if you chose to sign up with some online community, the only person who had access to your data (other than the data you chose to make public) was the operator. Was there still a chance of that operator doing nasty things with your data? Yes, but that was your responsibility. You tried to keep track of who you were giving your data to, and what you gave them.

Today, we share some of our most private data without a through on sites like MySpace, and Facebook. Sexual preference, the town you live in, how many kid's you've got, what their names are, what your favorite hobbies are, where you work, your political affiliation. I could build a profile on you based on the information you post daily on Facebook. On top of that, i can find out what you looked like from your picture gallery, or if i were a predator, what you're 14 year old daughter looked like... Combine all of that data, and someone could literally show up at your door, or stalk you at work, or god forbid, your children at school.

Am i saying we should all leave social networking en-mass? No, just be careful what you make public. Keep in mind that ANYONE on the internet can find that data. Dont set the password to your bank account online to some data that i could phish out of your facebook profile.

-War

Just a quick note.

I've taken a little time to setup categories, and then took a bit more time moving all of my entries into their appropriate categories.

Given the random nature of this blog, i thought this would be helpful for those of you who like reading my tech articles, but dont really care about my other topics. Now you can subscribe via RSS to just the categories you'd like to read.

Enjoy!

Well i finally gave in, and replaced my custom written blog software with a prebuilt package. Serendipity. It's still free/open, and i can modify it as needed. It also offers a bunch of cool plugins. It has more functionality out of the box than anything i could have written in as much time.

I took some time to change the color scheme around in order to fit serendipity into the overall look of underground.org.

So, if you are one of the few that actually read my blog, enjoy the new features. I'll be adding functionality as i find plugins and whatnot that i like.

Two for one today! I've got memories floating around in my head of TWO, not just once, incident regarding tennis ball bombs.

For those unfamiliar with a tennis ball bomb, follow along, you'll get the idea.

Because this deals with amateur explosives, i'm going to say it first that anyone reading, with the common sense of a lamp post, should either STOP reading now, or convince yourself that this is a fictional writing, and that it wont actually work in real life. Fire, and explosives are dangerous. My friends and I were very careful.... erm.. well.. maybe very lucky is the right term... We didnt burn down any structures, vehicles, forests, or people in the process.

Ok, now that that's out of the way.

A very long time ago, when the internet was still new to me, i was very thirsty for information, not the kind of stuff you can find in the library, but stuff that you can only found in underground sites on the web. Things like, the Hackers handbook, the Anarchists Cookbook, phone phreaking, hacking, general mischief sort of stuff. I was pretty safe in the things i actually tried. I wasn't dumb enough to try calling Asia for free with a blackbox, nor was I ballsy enough to try hacking some bank somewhere. But i did read, a lot, about how those sort of things would be accomplished. One of the things that was really neat about the Anarchists Cookbook was how much information they had about explosives. Wow, that sentence looked really bad, the Obama gestapo will be monitoring my e-mail and web posts for the next 7 years. So, MR. CIA, if you're reading this, I'm not advocating anarchism, or the use of explosives without a license... That would be.. dumb. yea, definitely.

So anyway, one of the devices I read about was the famed tennis ball bomb. For those of you that dont know what a tennis ball bomb is, it's just what it sounds like. A bomb, made out of a tennis ball. Designed to be thrown at something (or.. someone?) and exploding in a firey spectacle. These things aren't particularly powerful, nor are they all that dangerous. I'll get into that in a bit.

So a few friends and I decided to try to actually make one of these things. The theory is simple. You take an average tennis ball, cut a slit in it, just big enough to fit match heads through. Then you take strike-anywhere matches, and cut the heads off, leaving just the heads, as little of the stick as possible. Then you stuff as many match heads into the tennis ball. Then you seal the tennis ball up with tape. When you throw the tennis ball at something, if you did it right, the match heads strike off of each other on impact, causing a chain reaction. As they flare up, the pressure in the tennis ball becomes great enough, that the tennis ball splits open, and the match heads come flying out, LIT, from the pressure. The result is a star-burst sort of effect. Sort of like very small fireworks.

So one day, after school, we're bored, if memory serves this attempt involved Me, Wetzel, and Jose. We're at my parents place, i'm pretty sure no one else was home. My sister was in college at the time, so she was probably off at class, my dad worked till 5, my mom worked nights, so sometime early afternoon she left for work. Anyway. I had a tennis ball. Probably an old dog toy, we certainly didn't go buy tennis balls for this. We had just one. We had to buy the matches though. So we had one box of strike-anywheres, a few pairs of dikes (get your mind out of the gutter) and a roll of white electrical tape. Now, you're supposed to use duct tape. it seals better, but we were poor, and had no duct tape. We probably spent all of our money on the matches!

So we spent about an hour cutting the heads off of these matches. Then we cut a hole just small enough to fit the heads through in the tennis ball, and started stuffing. Now this is sort of tricky. If you stuff things too tight, you could IGNITE the tennis ball right there in your hand. That would be.... bad. We probably could have packed it tighter, but we didnt want to burn the house down, or burn ourselves, so we played it safe. Then we carefully wrapped the thing with the electrical tape.

So now, we had one tennis ball bomb, and about an hour before any supervision was going to arrive. Where to light this thing? I had the perfect spot. There's an unmaintained road near my parents place, that leads up to the Flagstaff in JT. We headed up there. Now, the only one of us that had a car at our disposal was Wetzel. Wetzel's driving is... erratic, at best. Or, it was at the time anyway. So we hop in his car, we're looking at a 4 minute drive at best. I think Wetzel wanted to see if he could do it in 3. We're not wearing seatbelts, because it's a 4 minute drive, and we're dumb high school students.

Well there's this hairpin turn that we have to go around to get on to this road. Wetzel's driving, i'm riding shotgun Jose (a big hispanic guy) is in the back seat HOLDING the bomb. Most NORMAL drivers slow down to about 5mph for this turn. Not Wetzel, he must have taken at it 20. Which doesnt sound like much, but you need to see this turn. Now, Jose's in the back cradling this bomb like its a damned newborn. So both of his hands are taken up with keeping this thing from enduring any jar's or shocks, after all, we wouldnt want it to explode, in the car, right? So wetzel takes this turn, Jose, who has no hands to hold on with, weighs probably better of 225lbs (maybe more) gets tossed across the back seat from the force of this turn, slams into the drivers side rear door, and quickly exclaims "I've got a BOMB back here!!!". We laughed and continued on.

So we got to a "safe" place to finally try this thing out. Wetzel is elected as the designated "thrower". We find one of these cement drainage things. it's got a little raised wall made of cement. We figure, cement doesn't burn, cement's sturdy... Perfect! Wetzel winds up, and throws. Now, here's the part no one told us.....

Remember how i said the matches ignite, and start a chain reaction, build up pressure, and THEN explode? Well it takes 3-5 seconds for this to happen. We expected contact and BOOM, nooooo.. it doesnt work that way. Here's somethign else we didnt think of... Tennis balls (even those with a hole cut in them, stuffed with match heads, and wrapped in electrical tape) BOUNCE!

So the scene played out something like: Wind up, throw, bounce, look of slight confusion from Jose and I (who are safely standing back), look of terror from Wetzel as he realizes that the tennis ball, containing what may or may not be a chain reaction of igniting match heads, is headed STRAIGHT FOR HIM as it bounced directly off the wall, and back in the direction it came from. Well, Wetzel's never been called lethargic, he spring into survival mode and as the tennis ball bounced right between his feet, he jumped as high and as fast as he could, and IIRC, tumbled out of the way. Sure enough, right as it hits the ground, it explodes! Rather anticlimactically. The electrical tape didnt form enough of a seal, the pressure wasnt contained long enough, and it just split the tape right at the hole we made for the matches.

We studied the result, took notes for next time, and headed back to my parents place.

We didnt try the tennis ball bomb idea again for a little while. Wetzel joined the air force and spent 4 years defending our country, and the rest of us went on to either college, or some other sort of after high-school things. Well one day, Wetzel's in town, on leave IIRC. I get a call from one of our friends, they invite me up to Wetzel's parents place. Everyone's together, and.. making tennis ball bombs! This time we're all working, we all have a little money, we all have cars. So many more possibilities. So i hop in the Jeep, and head up there. I get there, i forget everyone that was up there, but at the very least it was the 4 horsemen, maybe pecic, i forget if he was involved in this particular disaster, or.. i mean.. event.

I find them sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by bowls full of match heads, and a standard tube of tennis balls. Also a few rolls of duct tape. They sprang for the good stuff this time. This has promise. I grab some dikes and start assisting in the match cutting. Wetzel's dad was a Marine, in Nam, seems everyone I know that served in Nam is a lot more easygoing when it comes to things that could kill you. So he was actually right there giving us pointers, and sort of supervising. His family had foster kids as well, they were there, some watching, i think waiting for us to light ourselves on fire, others excited to see the result, others completely dis-interested (they had a lot of foster kids...). so we cut enough heads to fill 3 (iirc) tennis balls. We were a little more daring this time, and packed them just a tad tighter than the last time. We were older now, and smarter (right?). Then we carefully wrapped them in duct tape. Then we loaded them up in someone's car (pretty sure we didn't let Wetzel drive this time). We head to this little lot in the middle of nowhere that wetzel knew about. It's one of these little lots that you find at the entrance to state game lands and things. Except this ones paved, instead of gravel. Perfect! Pavement is hard, sturdy, and doesn't burn!

We learned a little from last time.
1. There's a delay
2. Tennis balls filled with a chain reaction of igniting match heads DO bounce
3. DONT throw the tennis ball at something that MIGHT bounce it back at you.
4. STAND THE HELL BACK!

We have 3 attempts this time, so a few of us get a shot at it. This time, we stood on the pavement, and threw the tennis ball, as hard as we could, at an angle down on to the pavement. This made them bounce up into the air, and AWAY from the thrower. This, we found, was the RIGHT way to do it. It worked perfectly. It was dark. We used the KC HiLights on my Jeep to see what we were doing until the toss, and then i cut them off just as the thrower was doing his throwing. Spectacular! each one worked perfect. It bounced, and at about 20ft up, it popped. The match heads exploded outward in a star burst, and burned up before they hit the ground.

So there you have it. Fun with explosives!

-War

Call me odd, but sometimes, when my mind isn't occupied by any of the thousand things a day it seems I have to think about, it starts to wander, sometimes to daydreams, sometimes to ongoing issues in my life that I've been mulling over, and sometimes, to memories of the past. I have a good memory when it comes to good times (or sometimes bad times) from my past. Sometimes i can remember some of the oddest details from some party I was at, or some event that friends and I attended, or a date I had with my wife. Oddly enough, i have trouble remembering to take out the garbage, run the dishwasher, or pick up something my wife asked me to at the store.

So I've decided to start sharing these memories. So here we go, "4WD is useless on ice!".

In 1998 I graduated High School, and moved on to the working world, and of course, College. If you could call it that. I went to Allentown Business School, which later became Lehigh Valley College, and later became... bankrupt. Without going into too much detail, we'll just say i may as well have bought the degree they gave me online, I probably would have saved money, and come out of the deal with just as much knowledge as I left ABS with, But that's another story. During my first quarter at ABS, I had no car. I car-pooled with friends, got rides where i needed to. I had also started my first job, 2 weeks after school started, I started part-time at PenTeleData, in technical support. Still, i got rides from friends to make it to/from work, they were kind enough to schedule me with others that lived in my area. It was working out ok, but it was a little less than convenient. One day one of my friends decided he was going to cut some classes. I had just started my adventure into college, and wasn't too keen on this idea. I wasn't able to convince him to stay for his classes, but I wasn't about to skip mine. So he left......... Left me stranded at school, i had to find a ride home. Luckily a friend of a friend was going to the same school, and she gave me a ride home. After that, I decided it was time to get a little independence. I started by convincing my dad to let me use his pickup to go to and from school. That worked ok, and got me through the quarter, but i wanted my own vehicle. Something I could call mine, customize it, be proud of it, and most of all, not have to give it back to its owner, and ask permission every time i wanted to go somewhere.

ABS was kind enough to give us a week off between quarters. So i used that week to find a vehicle. A 1989 Chevy S-10 Blazer. 2 door, 4wd, Black... it was perfect, well, at the time anyway. I still miss that truck sometimes. So we're talking something like October when i picked this vehicle up. For Christmas that year, my mom bought me a nice brush guard for the front. "Euro Style" i believe they called it. It was one of those that wrapped around the front, had guards over the headlights (yes, this fits into the story). Am i losing anyone yet? Keep reading, it all makes sense later.

Now, my dad's always owned a pickup, of some sort, as long as i can remember. His current pickup (at the time of this memory) is a 4x4 chevy full size. We'd been off-road in it from time to time, for hunting, boy scouts, things of that nature. And i loved it. I'd wanted a truck as far back as i can remember. I recall standing in the showroom of the local chevy dealer when i was something like 8 years old, looking up at this beautiful black Chevy while my parents were getting their car worked on. Just thinking about how cool it would be to own one someday. Now i had my OWN 4x4, you better believe I'm going to wheel it.

So a few months go by, it's February or so in Northeast PA. I've had the Blazer for a few months, I've been through at least part of the winter in it, I've driven it in snow, ice, a few other not so nice conditions. I took it out on a few very mild trails... To date, I've never had a problem with traction, getting stuck, stopping, nothing. I'm feeling pretty comfortable with this 4wd thing. Mind you, I'm not an idiot. There's too many people out there that think that because they have 4wd, they're impervious to the elements. But I'll admit, I'm starting to get that "I can go anywhere" feeling.

One evening, Chuck and I are out in the Blazer. I don't remember what we were doing, but for some reason we were in this little development in Albritesville. A friend of ours has something of a summer home up in this development. He and his family moved off to Philly, but kept the house for whatever reason. Just as a get-away I suppose. Well we're up by his place, I guess looking for un-plowed roads just to test out my driving skills. We drive to our friends house, no one's there of course, we didn't expect anyone to be there. The roads are plowed, but not well, so it's mildly amusing. We stop at his house, so did the snowplow apparently, past his driveway there;s a snow covered road in front of us. His house is the last before a very steep hill with a very sharp turn. My guess is that no one drives this road in the winter, and the plow driver isnt willing to risk his neck to plow it. Well we decided to get a little closer to the bottom of the hill, you know, see how it looks. We pull into the un-plowed part of the road and continue on. There's probably about 100 yards of relatively even road before it comes to the hill. We get to the hill and come to a not so happy realization. First, the hill is a sheet of ice, and second, there are no tire tracks in the "snow" behind us, you know, the "snow" we just DROVE THROUGH. There are no tire tracks because it is also, a SHEET OF ICE. The good news is, we're stopped, not sliding around, just stopped. The bad news is, we have 100 yards of ice behind us, a very steep, sheet of ice in front of us, tree's to the left of us, and about a 4' drop, with tree's to the right of us. The road we're on slants slightly to the right of us, probably for run-off.

So there we are, on a sheet of ice, too wondering what the hell we should do. Well i figured, turning around on a sheet of ice is probably a bad idea. so we'd driven in without even noticing that it was ice, we should be able to just put it in reverse and back right out the way we came, right? So i put it in reverse, and slooooooowly start driving out in reverse.. I notice that we're slowly starting to get closer and closer to that 4' drop off to the right, this doesnt seem good, i drift to a stop so i can re-think. The blazer stops, and then continues to slide to that damned drop off!! What can i do now? my tires have broken traction, i cant think of any other way to stop this thing! Obviously, a 4' drop isn't going to kill us, but it IS going to damage my blazer, and probably leave us stuck there. This is the days before everyone has cel-phones, so we'd be stuck walking out to someone with a phone. Then I'd have to call my dad, who'd no doubt give me hell for even getting into this mess, then we'd probably get noticed by development security or something, and get some kind of fine for being in there in the first place.

For whatever reason, the blazer stops sliding, we're safe again, but much closer to that drop off, and i know that if i start moving again we'll start sliding again.. Now what do we do? Chuck has an idea. Now, for anyone who doesnt know chuck, let me give you a description.. About 6'10" (thats a guess) and probably 400LBS. Big guy, big heavy guy. He had this blue coat that he wore all the time, we all called him the blueberry. So what's his idea? He's going to get out, and push the blazer away from the drop off.. And then we're going to use his weight to get the blazer turned around, and as far to the other side of the road as possible. Then we're going to get off that ice as quickly as possible. So he gets to the rear end of the blazer, and gets himself into position. Puts his feet on the snow on the side of the road so he has some traction, and starts to push with all of his might as i drive in reverse. Guess what.. It works! He starts to push the rear of the blazer toward the woods on the "safe" side of the road! Ok, so we get to the point where the bazer's across the road, the front is facing the side with the drop off, the rear is facing the safe side. But i can't get enough traction to back up! the tires just spin, i go nowhere. So Chuck once again braces himself, and plants his hands on that brush guard on the front of the blazer. I put it in reverse, and he pushed as hard as he can. Once again, it works! he pushes me into the tree's on the safe side. At this point, i dont care that i backed into a few saplings, I'd rather have a few scratches from little tree's than a blazer flopped on its side from a drop off. Now my back tires are on the snow on the safe side of the road, and I have enough traction to back up a little. I back up as far as i can and turn the wheels down to the clear part of the road, and ever so slowly get the blazer to the point where it;s facing the proper direction, and the two drivers side wheels are on the rougher ice at the edge of the road so we get some traction. Chuck hops back in, and off we go.

Moral of the story? 4WD does NOTHING FOR YOU when you're on ice. And always keep a blueberry with you when you're wheeling.

-War

And now, for Amy, and anyone else who finds my blog depressing....

Tell me something...

What's the best way to turn average people into rude, arrogant, violent, murderous, assholes that don't give a damn about their fellow man, or the property of others?

Simple, you cut all of the prices on all of this years most popular Christmas gift items, and then advertise it as the start of the holiday shopping season. People line up at the doors to every retail store in the country, and when the doors open, they race as though their lives depended on it (maybe it does.. i'll get into that later) to the items that they want. They push and shove, they lose all patience and consideration, even trample store employee's to death (yea, I said death) all for that mediocre "deal" on a flat panel tv, or Wii.

Have a look over here at the NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/busin ... .html?_r=1

A greeter (and a relatively young greeter at that, not one of these old retired folks) at a Wal Mart in Long Island was trampled to death by a crowd of crazed shoppers. He was trying to keep some order amongst the crowd, and when the doors opened, they pushed the poor guy over, and trampled him! Two hundred some people just ran right over him, not with a car, or a cart, or something heavy, just their greedy, impatient, crazed feet. Now this guy's family is minus one for this holiday season, all because of the craze that this event causes.

Who's to blame? Everyone involved to some extent, except imho the guy that got trampled. He seemed to be the most innocent of anyone. He was just trying to help out by keeping these people at bay until they were actually allowed to get into the store. There's no reason something like this had to happen. I'll elaborate...

The retailers:
These guys have one thing on their mind. $$$ Dont let them tell you otherwise. The days of stores that actually care about their patrons are gone. They all care about the almighty dollar, and that's it. They don't really care about the communities they're in, or feeding the homeless, or curing cancer. Sure they all donate to these causes, but that's all just to make them look like they care. In reality you have some CEO flipping out at his PR department because theyre requesting 20Mil to donate to the spotted owl. Do i know this as fact? No, but I bet I'm not far from the truth. They hype up this event, cut their markups from 400% to 300% for a day, make you think you're getting a deal, and they rake in the cash. I heard from a Wal Mart employee yesterday, at the end of the day, their store (yea, just THEIR STORE) raked in over $1,000,000. So apparently the hype works.

The media:
I blame a lot on the media. They're responsible for providing the public with facts, unbiased and fair. There only seem to be a few that still seem to stick to that. Most of them put their own spin on the "news" so it looks they way they want to. How do you think Obama got elected? But that's another blog. Today I'm talking about assholes. The media hypes black friday up almost as much as the retailers do.

The customers:
I don't mean every customer, I'm sure some of them are still civil, and don't fit into my stereotype, but it seems that the majority do, and maybe it's temporary. After Christmas is over they turn from Mr. Hyde back into Dr. Jeckal. This temporary insanity is the problem. Without it, all they hype from the Retailers and the Media would be in vain. The problem is that both sources are so damned good at working people into a frenzy, that most can't resist it! I'd bet that if the media started telling you that Communism worked better than democracy, we'd be ruled by some dictator in a few years. Most of the American people stopped thinking for themselves a looooong time ago, and depend on their TV to tell them how to live their pathetic lives. Harsh? yea, but it's how i feel, sorry.


Every single person that mis-treated someone else on black friday (or any day for that matter i guess) needs to be reminded WHY they're even out there in their shopping frenzy. What's Christmas? We all learn this at a young age. With some it sticks, with others it doesnt.

Presents right? An excuse to spend your money on others, and expect them to spend theirs on you. A day off of work, or a long weekend, or a reason to use a week of that vacation time you've been saving up. Or some time off of school. A reason to decorate your house with twinkly little lights, bows, ribbons, wreathes, and little wintery scenes. That's what it's all for right?

WRONG! We celebrate Christmas because of the day it represents. The birth of Jesus! Giving gifts is a tradition which represents the gifts given to the baby Jesus by the wise men. Yes, they were all valuable gifts. But does that mean that we should be treating our fellow humans like dirt because you want that deal on a PS3? What the hell happened here?

Ok, i'm done.. i think i got the point across.

Have a Happy, Healthy, and SAFE holiday season!

-War

I've been doing a little work on the site. I now have a message forum tied to the blog! So any new posts from here on are tied to the message forum! All you'll need to do is go register and login, and you can join in the discussion. Head on over! http://www.undrground.org/geek/forum/


-War

For the past week Jess and I have been on vacation.  We've had a nice long week of doing whatever we please, staying up late, sleeping in, going out and doing things we usually dont have the time for.

It all started on Saturday, with our anniversary.  That's right! Another anniversary! That makes 5 years! We're hoping for many more.  We slept in a little, and then went to the Texas RoadHouse down by Allentown.  Took us about an hour longer than it should have to find the place, because of some bad directions, but it was a nice drive to Kutztown none the less!   After lunch we shot over to allentown, and spent some money.  Picked up an anime we've been waiting to buy, some tools at Sears, and some essential gear for our halloween costumes!

Then on Monday we took a ride up to the Crossings.  Got some great deals on a few things for around the house, a new tea kettle, a crock for holding our kitchen utensils in, a nice blanket for in the living room, a christmas gift or two. Stopped at Friendly's just to get ignored by the host.  So we got back on the highway to go home.  Jess fell asleep, so i surprised her by not actually getting off at our exit, and driving all the way to Hazleton so we could eat at Applebee's. They didnt ignore us.  In fact, we had a nice meal there.

Tuesday was a bit lazy, we didnt make any plans, so we did a few things around the house, and relaxed.  During the week i'd been flopping between World of Warcraft, and Lort of the Rings Online.  It's a long story, but I'd been working with Blizzard to get my WoW account re-activated.  They'd turned it off due to some sort of account dispute.  See, i'd stopped playing back in... 2005 or so, maybe even earlier than that.  Apparently sometime between then, and now, someone got into my account, built a level 60 hunter, and then Sold (or tried to?) my account.  Blizzard found out, and of course suspended the account.  After 2 weeks of getting a run around from them, I'd bought LotRO.  Hey, i wanted to play, not bicker over account terms.  Then a few days later, they saw it my way, and re-activated the account.  Well i didn't want to pay for two games, so I set out to decide which to keep.  Tuesday i spent a lot of the day playing WoW.

Wednesday we took a trip up to the Hometown Farmers Market.  We were dissappointed...  Not many decent shops, and too many rude people.  We got our french fries (one of the biggest reasons we go there!) and left.  We stopped at Wal Mart to visit Jess's mom, spent longer at Wal Mart than we did at the Farmers Market. We looked at MP3 players, looked to see if they had a Wii Fit (yea right!) looked for Shoes for Jess's costume (yea right again), looked for goggles and gloves for my costume (are you getting the picture yet?).  Jess really wants an MP3 player, to replace her old Dell Pocket DJ.  I cant blame her.  We got them years ago, and theyre just not holding up.  The batteries dont hold the charge they once did, and they have firmware issues.  They sometimes just lock up.  And Dell doesn't support them anymore.

Wednesday night we had plans with a friend we used to work with.  So we went up to her place for dinner, and a nice evening.  We had fun talking about old time's and new opportunities.  She's started up her own home-based business, and she may have work for Jess.  So that may work out nicely.

Thursday was another lazy day.  Hey, it's vacation!  I spent most of the day playing WoW, and Jess spent most of the day working on one of her afgan's, and watching movies.  We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas together over lunch.  Then she watched another movie, which i cant remember the name of right now, and then The Two Towers.  I played WoW most of the day, after spending two hours looking for a group that would like to play with a 28 rogue, and subsequently looking for a guild to join after i found that looking for a group was impossible, and coming up empty.... I logged out, and started playing lotro. I'd started a Human Burglar in lotro.  He was level 9 and i was having trouble getting to 10.  Today when i logged back in, i started looking for quests, and not only got to 10, but right on to 11 in a few hours. I'm really starting to like this game. I ordered some MP3 players from NewEgg.

Friday we were planning on driving alllllll the way to lancaster to go to the Green Dragon Farmers Market.  We've been doing this for a few years, going down there over our anniversary vacation.  Well we decided against it.  We didnt have a lot of money to spend, and with how dissappointed we were with the Hometown market, we were afraid of driving all that way, just to get disssappointed again.  So we stayed home.  We relaxed a bit in the morning, and then went out for a nice bike ride.  I finally got to try out the new mountain bike that Jess's Parents had so kindly bought me.  We had a good afternoon.  Jess also found out today that the ovulation treatment's she's been taking are working!  She called for her blood test, and it came back showing that she'd ovulating.  So that was a nice piece of news! Then Jess's mom joined us for dinner.  Then after dinner, my Dad and I worked on getting ready to paint the slats from the awning that we'd taken off the house months ago when we started painting.  We cleaned up the basement a little, and wiped down and primed the bare spots on the aliminum slats.  The primer stunk up the house.  Man did that stuff have an odor.

Saturday morning my Dad and I were going to head out hunting.  Spend the morning taking the muzzle-loader's for a walk in the woods, but we decided it was more important to get some more work on the awning done.  So instead we painted the slats up.  Only took us a few hours in the morning.  Now my entire garage is coated in a dusting of paint.  The floor has a pretty thick coat of overspray on it, and the slats are all painted.  Unfortunately during cleanup, one slat got bumped, and it fell off of the nail we had it hanging on to dry.  As it fell, it took about 6 others with it.....  So now i need to touch up a few slats before we can actually put them up.  Not that big a deal really, since we're not actually putting them up intil next weekend anyway. We worked until about 11.  My Dad had to get home and get cleaned up.  His church had a pig roast that afternoon, so he had to be down there by noon.  Jess and I went down there at around 1:00, fought our way though the sea's of tourists and picked up a nice meal of roast pig, mashed potato's, saurkraut, apple sauce, and a nice crumb cake dessert.  MMMMM!  Then we spent a little time relaxing while we waited for Jess's Brother, and his wife to get off of work and come over.  Tonight is Randy and Dave's scavenger hunt!  We'd been looking forward to this for weeks!  So i played a little lotro, Jess did some cleaning, and watched some tv.  I cancelled my WoW account.

Saturday Night, SCAVENGER HUNT! We all met at Randy and Dave's place.  We'd missed the first half of the hunt because of our time constraints.  But that's ok, they weren't linked, the first and second half that is.  They were different events. The hunt started at about 5:40.  Our first stop was alll the way out in Hickory Run, we had to meet at the old cemetary, where we got our first clue.  From there we were sent down to Lehighton's bear memorial, then to flagstaff road, then to to ball field by our place, then down to Kemmer park, where I twisted my ankle pretty bad looking for clue's in the dark.  Then up to the bottom of bugsie's hill in Summit Hill.  Then down to the board walk in the woods at the lake.  It was a fun time, full of riddles, hunting for clues in the dark, and a few spooks.  We should have Won,  we were way ahead of the second team, but on the last riddle we got tied up and delayed.  Then at the last location, there were no clues, and that was the riddle, we had to tell Randy that there were no clues.  Well we were all scattered about looking for clues (that didnt exist) and Amy, Tara, and Steph's team were the first to actually say to randy that there were no clues there..... So they won.  I feel cheated.

Sunday at Midnight my first reminder that i have to go back to work this week hit me.  My oncall started... Got worken up twice by pages, one of which i had to crawl out of bed to react to.  Nothing major, but still, something i'd happily been without for the past week.  Today we dont have much planned.  Grocery shopping, and probably another lazy day, to prepare for work.  I need to stay off of my foot anyway, my ankle's pretty sore.  Nothing major, just enough that i should probably stay off of it and let it heal. It's back to work tomorrow, I'm almost dreading what i'll be coming back to.

 

-War

A sad one today.

When we got married, back in October of 2003, my wife brought with her into the family a little Dachshund, Hannah, which I had bought her for her birthday a few years earlier.  Shortly after we got married, we decided to expand our family a bit.  I've always loved labs, having spent most of my teen years with a pair of labs that my parents had. Jess already had her dog, so we decided to look for lab puppies.  We were on a tight budget, so we decided to check the local shelter first.  We thought we could save a few bucks, and save a good dog from the shleter at the same time.

So we hopped in the Jeep, and headed to the shelter.  It was all of 5 minutes from home.  We walked in, and they showed us back to the kennels.  Every dog in the place was jumping about wildly and barking at these two new people that walked into the room.  All save one.  One black dog. A deep shiney black coat, with a spotted chest, and enough white on her paws that she looked like she was wearing a pair of socks. The tag on her pen said that someone left her there, tied to the fence during off-hours.  She sat there, silent, with perfect posture, and a wagging tail. Looking at us as if to say, "Get me out of here... I want to go home".  That about did it.   We went out to the girl that was running the place for the day, and told her we'd like to see her.  After a failed attempt to clip her nails, the girl got us the paperwork, er paid her the $35 adoption fee, and out the door we went.

She hopped up into the jeep, and off we went.  When we got home, hannah had a fit.  She's been the only dog in the house since we first brought her home.  Now we expect her to share her territory with this big oaf.  Lady's her name.  And she's a mix between a lab and a pointer.  She's a little taller than a lab, has some of the body characteristics of a pointer, and the color of a lab.  Her hair's shiney like a pointer, and her spots are most certainly not from her lab heritage.  Hannah soon got used to her, she didn't have any choice.

We had boxes of canned and boxed goods in the house because we had just moved in, she got into those on more than one occasion.  We built a pantry, and put the food in there, she got into that more than once until we got the door put on it.  She ate half a tub of butter the first thanksgiving we had her, we spent the whole night cleaning up dog puke.  She ate numerous napkins, tissues, and various other paper products.  One time she actually ate a box of herbal medicine that we'd received in the mail.  But all in all, a terriffic dog. Someone had taken the time to train her.  She had terrible leash manners, but otherwise, well behaved.  She knew how to sit, lay down, and give you her paw.  You could walk her without a leash if you were in a wooded area.  So she could run about.  She'd never get too far from us, it seemed like she had this fear that she was going to get left somewhere. 

Nightmares... When we first got her, she would wake us up at night with her nightmares.  I dont know what she was dreaming about, but it was enough to make her wimper and cry in her sleep.  After a few months with us, they seemed to subside.  Something happened to her before we got her, we cant say what, but something was giving her nghtmares.  We aimed to make her life with us as pleasant as possible, no more reason to be afraid. And that we did, she had a nice bed, with her own comforter, we even gave her old bed pillows whenever we replaced ours.  Two good meals a day, lots of love, and walks. She even went running with us. Hannah, being a short little sausage, couldnt keep up, and with her spine problems, shouldn't really be walked that much anyway, but lady was eager to go out with us.

She did some of the silliest, and clumbsiest things.  She'd walk into walls, and trip over little things.  Even walk off of low porches.  She'd sometimes trample poor Hannah, and ever trip us.  But that was all ok, we loved her.  She was such a good dog, and welcome member of the family.

Last year it took her along to JAOCMJ, a jeep trip that i go on annually.  She loved every minute, camping, meeting all sorts of people, sneaking food from the campfire.  She didn't really enjoy the jeeping itself, getting tossed around the back of a jeep probably isn't as fun as it sounds.

Well one day, about a year ago, we noticed a lump on her belly.  We took her to the vet, and found out that it was a breast tumor.  Apparently, Lady had at one point had a litter of puppies.  She was only spayed when she went to the shelter, which is something they do to any dog they get that hasnt already been spayed. I guess when a dog goes through their first heat, whether they have puppies or not, it sets some hormones in motion that makes them more succeptible to breast cancer.  So poor lady had what a Woman would call a lump in her breast.  The vet recommended that we have it removed, but money was short, and we couldn't afford the surgery.  So we had to let it go, and hope for the best.  She was still an active vibrant dog. 

After a few months the tumor started to get a little bigger, and it started to bother here, but still, she was alert and not mopey or anything.  We took her back to the vet.  She took an X-ray of her chest, and took a good look at the tumor.  She thought it was getting infected.  Why x-ray her chest?  Because she thought it was cancer, and if it's spread into her chest, then there isnt much that can be done.  So that tells the vet how to proceed.  The x-ray showed spots in her lungs, so now the surgery was out of the question.  The vet gave her 6 months at best.  We cried for our baby girl...  The vet perscribed some medicine that should at least help.  So we took the medicine, and went home...  After about a week of the medicine, lady was herself again!  The lump shrank back to close to its original size, and she was an active dog again.  We took it as a good sign, and took her back for checkups regularly.

After a few months, the lump started to bother her again.  The vet was hopeful though.  She thought maybe it wasnt cancerous after all, and that maybe they were calcuim deposits in her lungs.  She ordered another x-ray.  The spots weren't progressing like she thought they would, so she suggests the surgery again.  This time we didnt feel like we had a choice.  If we left the lump go, Lady would suffer, and it would eventually force us to put her to sleep.  There was a chance that if the surgery was done, and went well, she might be able to enjoy a longer life.  The vet offered to let us pay her weekly to pay off the surgery.  She didn't want to see us give up on poor lady just because of finances.  So we scheduled the surgery.  It wasnt as expensive as we expected anyway.  She was back in a few days for her surgery.  It went well, and she was eager to get out of there!  She was back to acting like lady again!  The vet sent her home with some more med's, A row of staples in her belly, and a cone around her head.

After a few days, her incision was healing well, and she was starting to get more active.  Everythign was looking good, except one thing.  Just before the surgery we noticed that one of her hind legs was swollen.  The vet didnt seem to be concerned about it.  We figured it must have been from the tumor, and that it would be better after the surgery. Well it wasnt, it was still swollen.  We took her back to have her staples removed and pointed the leg out to the vet...  More bad news.  She was worried that the cancer had spread, and it wasn't all removed with the surgery.  We gave it a little time, and at her next checkup, the vet tells us that she thinks the cancer had spread into her lymph nodes... That's it, end of story.  There's not much you can do at that point, except make her comfortable, and lover he for the rest of the time she has left.

So that's what we did.  For the past 2 weeks we've been giving her all the love we can spare.  As of last weeked, she's stopped eating, and she's having terrible trouble just standing up.  She cant use her swollen leg, and she's basically walking on 3 legs.  She cant get up and down stairs, even going outside to go to the bathroom is difficult for her. 

Tonight she's being put to sleep. 

She's been a good friend, and great companion, and even a pretty good jeep dog.

 

She'll be missed.

A few weeks ago we had another visit with our doctor.  Yea, I've been a bit lax in posting this.  The appointment was about 2 and a half weeks ago.

The good news first.

He had us go for bloodwork, the middle of last month, the results were to be sent off to him, and then we were to see him again at the end of the month.  So we went had bled into a tube (again) two vials each. The goal was to find out of the medication he'd put us on was doing it's job.  And if it was, he wanted to test my wife to see if she's ovulating, and re-test me, to see if my sperm count was normal again (last time i was tested, i was completely sterile).

Well of course they lost my results, but they already had a sample from me anyway, so they went ahead and tested my count.  I'm normal! (well, as normal as i can be.. heh).  So half of our problem is solved.  So, he wants me to stay on my medicine for a year, and after that, i "should" be able to stop taking it, and keep my levels where theyre supposed to be.  Which is great!

Now, on to my wife's tests.  Her bloodwork came back normal this time, so her medicine's doing it's job too.  So now that she's got the right balances going on, she should be ovulating.  She stays on her medicine for 6 months, and then, the same as me, she should be fixed.  She's still got this high dose vitamin that she's going to have to take for the rest of her life, because of her thrombophelia, but that's really pretty minor.  So the doctor orders one more test, to see if she's actually ovulating, she bleeds in a tube, and we head home.

 

Now for the bad news (you saw it coming, admit it!)

My wife's blood test says she's still not ovulating.  

So we don't yet know what the next step is, she's going back to see the doctor at the end of august. If i can make it, i'll be right there by her side.  Whether i'm fixed or not, it's still just as much my problem as it is hers, at least, in my opinion anyway.

 

So that's where we sit for now. With any luck, i'll have some good news at the end of the month...     Sigh.

 

This is supposed to be easy.... Remember?

 

Well, we had our visit with the specialist last week.  He gave us a little more information about the med's he's put us on, and what his tests found is, and isnt wrong with us.  First, the good news! 

My wife does not have a brain tumor.  I guess a cyst or tumor near the pituitary gland can cause hormonal imbalnaces, which is what the MRI was for.  THey wanted to be sure they werent dealing with a physical problem before treating it.  Her testosterone level is just slightly high, so the medicine they put her on is supposed to correct that.  After 6 months of this stuff called cabergolene its supposed to fix the imbalance, permenently.  Theyll of course re-test her after 6 months, and see if they were right.  Another test they did (i forget which one...) told them that her ovaries are not failing, which was good news too!  So it seems that her boat follows: She's got thrombophelia, which is hereditary, and is corrected through medication.  She's on a pill called folgard, which contains a number of vitimins that her body is lacking because of the thrombophelia.  So she'll be on that for the rest of her life.  Acceptable if you ask me, after all, it's just vitimins.  Then theres the testosterone thing, which they're pretty confident they can correct through this medicine.

As for me, well they did a number of tests on me too, no MRI's though.  But through their tests they were able to find that my testicles are also NOT failing, which is also good news.  And other than this elevated DHEAS issue that i talked about in my last entry, i check out ok.  They think that the elevated DHEAS is dropping my sperm count way down.  To the point where without treament, i'm pretty much sterile.  Which is a scarey thought.  The doctor seems to be pretty confident that the medicine he's put me on will fix the DHEAS problem permenently after a year.  And while i'm on it, if that was indeed the cause of my terrible sperm count (ive always been bad at tests) my sperm count should start to return to normal. 

We're both to be tested 1 month after we started out medication, to check on the hormone levels, and my sperm count will be re-tested.  That's coming on July 12, less than 2 weeks away.

 

So, for anyone following along, here are the changes we've made to our lives as a result of this: We've both started eating healthier, i've been doing my best to start cutting out caffine.  Apparently caffine (among many many other things) is bad for you sperm count.  So i've cut myself back, i drink less coffee, and i try to limit my soda intake.  I used to drink Mt. Dew like water (a side-effect of working in IT for as long as i have) and by the way, that old "Mountain Dew will make you sterile" myth, it's just that, a myth!  My wife's been eating more food with the vitimins that she's lacking to try to help things along.  It so happens that these are also foods that are generally good for you, and since she's been trying to lose weight anyway, trading that lebnon sandwich for a spinach and pumpkin seed salad at lunch time wasnt that unwelcome of a change.  We've also started working out on a regular basis.  We try to get 2-3 distance runs in a week, and we've been weight training on a bow-flex, again, this all helps with overall fitness anyway, so it's not a big deal.

We're both on our perscription medications that i mentioned earlier, and I've started taking 60mg a day of zinc (2 30mg tablets, one in the morning, one before bed), and i've always taken a Centrum (or off-brand similar) multi-vitimin.

So, that's it for now, i'll be posting again once we get our next round of tests!

When i was young, I thought starting a family was easy.  Find the right girl, settle down, have kids, lfe is good. When i was in high school i had the same torment that all of the other guys my age had.  One half of you wants to find any girl you can, and get into her pants, while the other half doesnt want to start getting girls pregnant so you're almost afraid of sex.  I had one friend who had 3 pregnancy scares over 2 of his girlfriends.  And another friend who got his girlfriend pregnant while i was a Freshman in high school.  He was probably all of 16 when it happened.  I;m pretty sure they actually broke up before the kid was even born.

Me? I didnt have much attention from the girls.  There were two girls in the span of my high school years that were a bit closer than friends, but still not serious enough to be a girlfriend.  So i guess i never really had that scare that other guys did. Finally i met the girl that i eventually married.  When we started experementing, that same fear started to come around.  "What if she get's pregnant?" "Should we really be doing this?".

What's my point?  My point is that I thought that the baby part was easy.  So easy that it could happen on accident, like it did to so many of my friends.  Like you hear about in the high school guidance class videos.  The ones that try to "prepare" you for real life.  Yea, real life...   I always thought that finding the girl was the hard part.  Getting married, getting a house, getting a steady job to support your family.  Well, i've got all of that.  The wife, the house, the job, the stable healthy environment.  What dont i have?  The baby. 

This October, we'll be married for 5 years.  For about the last 2 of those years, we've been trying to start a family.  And for all of the time before that, we havent been trying to avoid it.  We started with the idea that if it happend, it happened.  Then we moved on to, "Ok, now we really want it to happen!".  At first i denied that we might have some sort of fertility issue.  I mean, we were both healthy, how could we not be able to get pregnant? After 5 years of unprotected sex though.... It started to concern both of us.  Finally we decided to see a doctor.

So that's head us to here.. Where's here?  Well, after 3 visits to a specialist, we've already found out a number of things. My wife's got something of a genetic defect, which theyre treating with vitimin pills that she'll have to take for the rest of her life.  Next week she goes to the hospital for an MRI on her brain so they can take a look at her Pituitary gland, and today she picked up her second perscription for a slightly elevated testosterone level.  I've got elevated levels of DHEAS, which apparently leads to infertility.  So they have me on this funky pain killer stuff that is somehow supposed to fix that? We havent gotten the full scoop on that yet, we see the specialist again in a few weeks to get a better idea of WTF is wrong with us. 

I dont think it's supposed to be this difficult.  How is it that our species has gotten so large when it's apparently so common for humans to have these issues?  Common enough that there's an entire field of medicine related to it?  Why do 16 year old tramps get pregnant, and a nice responsible couple like my wife and I have to go through months of consultations, bloodwork, and drugs.

My jeep's been up on stands for months...  I miss driving my jeep.  I need to get back to working on it.

I''m about 1/4 of the way into an SOA conversion.  I have the rear out, and the new springs in place temporarily.  I need to get some bolts, some busihngs, and some u-bolts.  Not to mention shocks, i'll need rear shocks when all is said and done.

I havent even started on the front yet.  I really need to get back to working on it.  Things have been so damned hectic lately.  Now that Christmas has passed, i should be able to set aside some time for working on it.  Hopefully.

 

-War