Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

OK... i don't get it... i really don't.

I've had the pleasure of working late a lot recently... and as such.. i've gotten to know the cleaning crew and the security guys pretty well.

Today I had the pleasure of walking by the bathrooms at work while they were being cleaned. I'm very familiar with the guys bathrooms in the office. They are like bathrooms... blue tile floor, which extends about 4 feet up the walls with a lighter tile above that (i think.. i'm going off memory).

But, i caught a look into the woman's restroom... and theirs is carpeted (granted, same rugged office carpeting), and they have mauve wallpaper.. and chairs to sit around in.

This raises several interesting questions... Do people hang out in the bathroom at work and relax? Do they talk to other people? I know in the men's room, its all business... you rarely acknowledge other people (except for those few people who don't seem to know that rule, and they make everyone uncomfortable). And carpeting? I wonder if that extends into the other areas or if thats just in the lounge area that I saw... but a carpeted bathroom sounds like hell to keep clean. Or maybe guys are just slobs. or maybe they thing that the guys bathroom appeals to guys more...

Do they really put thought into this kind of stuff?!? Are consultants that do research on this and recommend to companies how their bathrooms should be?

i have about a thousand other questions... but i think i need to go back and look again next time I'm alone in the building. One thing is true... I've put FAR too much thought into this already...

Ok.. my tastes in almost everything are very diverse. As a result, I've found some really obscure bands online that I really like, thanks mostly to Last.fm and their fantastic service.

I happened across a local act, Sid Maudlin and despite having only 20 people there to see her, you could just tell that she had something special.

So, I've seen her several times, and I expose some friends to her music... but all the while hoping she won't become so popular that EVERYONE is listening to her stuff and its impossible to get in to see her perform.

Its a catch-22... She obviously needs some success so that it can be profitable for her... One can only put so much time and effort into a labor of love until it gets abandoned because you have to do something else with your time so that you can pay rent or buy food.

I went through that with Veruca Salt.... Chicago band... saw their early shows, was one of their first groupies, and two months later, 'Seether' hits Q101, then MTV, and before you know it, they are on a nationwide club tour and then playing arenas opening for Live. That was fun only because I got to tag along for part of the tour and was a DJ at the radio station down at school when they came in for an interview.

On one hand, its cool to see them do well and to know you were among the first, but on the other, it sucks when people jump on board and take away the small intimate atmosphere.

Anyway, back to Sid... I always knew she had a lot of potential. Really catchy sound, witty lyrics, and a look that would fit right in on the pages of Rolling Stone. So, I guess it should be no surprise when I found this webpage!

Go ahead...

Click on it...

Look at it...

Be shocked and amazed...

Ok... you were either too lazy to actually go look at it.. or you're back... Either way... wow! Its great for her and the exposure will probably lead to a big record deal with videos and everything that goes with it... but its probably the end of her local club appearances... which is really a shame.

Checking her schedule.. she has a show on the 14th downtown... which I won't be able to make... here's hoping that she has at least one more small show before she gets too big for places like the Double Door or the Metro.

I guess this means I'll have to watch some TV to see these commercials... hmmm

omg... i hate network solutions with a PASSION! Sorry in advance for the long post.. but this is just too funny...

used to be back in the day they were the only people to register domain names with. And as such, a previous business partner of mine went off and registered a bunch of domain names for our clients. Well, he later fell off the face of the planet and disappeared owing a lot of peopel a lot of money. Good Times.

Even better.. was that one of the clients continued on with us.. and his domain name stayed on this other guys network solution account... to which we had no administrative access.

The domain is coming up and about to expire... So I call the fine people at network solutions and ask them what to do about it. I paid them $35 towards the domain to keep it registered, but they wouldn't give me access to the account. Great.. well.. I bought myself another year.

The following year it came up again for renewal. I called them again and asked them what my options were. They actually suggested first that I continue to pay on the domain, and once the domain it is registered to expires, i can grab HIS old domain name (another $35 for network solutions) and set up email addresses for the administrative emails and I would effectively regain control of the domain.

Sounds like a good plan.. except that that domain had about 4 years left on it. And, I actually needed to make changes to the DNS Servers on my clients domain so I NEEDED to have access to it NOW.. not 4 years from now.

So, their next option was to allow it to expire, and then buy the domain outright. We liked that plan and I called on the DAY that it was supposed to expire to make sure it would go to plan.

It didn't.

That was a year ago in June. Some company called New Artisans, LLC bought it.. and directed it to a page that said it was for sale. The form didn't allow for an offer less then $1,000 to be made. I sent in a form offering $1,000 and saying that i wanted to talk about the domain.. never heard from them. There's some speculation on the internet that New Artisans is somehow in tight with Network Solutions.

So, I called up network solutions after seeing that the domain name IMMEDIATELY switched, and their response was. You lost ownership of the domain and its theirs now. There's nothing you can do.

So.. fast forward one year. Their gamble didn't pay off.. because there aren't many people with Eric's name who are in his profession and need the domain name (leaving it vague just in case someone wants to steal it... since it isn't ours yet.) Anyway, they allowed the domain to expire. That was June 6th. I was expecting that our backorder would kick in and snap it up right away.

WRONG.

Apparently there's a 30-60 day redemption period, which New Artisans was afforded the full 60 days. Just today it flipped to having a status of 'pending deletion' and i called network solutions to see how long it will take for them to release it.

First, I was told that there was no timeframe. This is quite shocking.. since i'm fairly certain that they can't hold onto the domain forever. When asked about this.. they said they indeed have to release it eventually. All I was asking for was a estimated range. I ended up playing some crazy guessing game with them. So.. this could be years before its released? No NO no.. of course not! ok then.. 2 months? no.. it will be before that too.

Ok, a month? 2 weeks? i can't promise you that. Ok, so 2 months it is! No, it will be less then that.

WTF!?!

And to top it all off.. I started by giving the domain name, and my name.. and explaining that the domain is for a client of mine named Eric. (My name's Ryan in case you were confused).

So, about 5 minutes into this conversation, she tries to console me by using my name. A classic sales/support technique to try to establish a relationship with the customer. Except she screwed that up too because she called me Eric. After the 4th time, and once it was clear that I wasn't getting any answers from her, I stopped her and said... 'Will you please stop calling me Eric? I told you my name was Ryan when I first called, and mentioned several times that Eric is my client'

Her response? Oh, I'm sorry, I must have misheard you. But as I was saying, Eric, I don't know.....

At which point I cut her off and said, 'I just told you that my name is NOT Eric and to please call me by my name, RYAN'... and went on to say that this was the kind of service I'd expect if I was paying $5 per domain, but for $35 I'd expect some GOOD service and people who can give me answers and know who they are speaking with. Finally, I explained that this is the exact reason why I avoid network solutions at all costs and have long since moved all my domains away from them.

I then proceeded to end the call by telling her that I know its out of her hands and she's doing the best she can and that I just want to be done with network solutions and have absolutely nothing to do with them.

As if it couldn't get any better.. her response: 'Well, thank you for calling network solutions, is there anything else I can assist you with'

I said, 'uhhh.. no... i guess you haven't heard a word I've said'. Right after I said no, she started her ending speech, 'thank you for calling network solutions and have a good day'. I can only assume that's the end of it because i hung up once I realized she had no clue.

Wow man.. just wow... you can't make this stuff up! I couldn't even find a place to embellish the story..

So yeah.. I ended last time talking about how you can securely send something when you don't know te recipient well to have a prearranged encryption scheme or trust the transportation involved. Thanks for all the answers that were submitted, but it was Lilith who got the answer right! Some of the answers were very creative and I hadn't heard some of those approaches before, and that's the first time anyone has ever figured that out!

Anyway, you may be wondering, when am I ever going to send something to someone I don't know? The answer is that you do it all the time! Everytime you go to a secure website or use a cell phone you are using this form of encryption and you don't even know it! The 3 roundtrips happens quickly in the 'handshaking' that happens when setting up the secure communication.

But what are these locks and keys? Well, it all hinges on the fact that there's no easy way to factor two REALLY big numbers. For instance... quick! figure out what two numbers can be multiplied together to get 12,835,384,025,881,369? That's actually a tiny number in terms of modern encryption, and there are some shortcuts, but its still a daunting task. Its compounded by the fact that its the product of two prime numbers. So, there are only 4 factors: 2 two prime factors, 1, and the number itself. There's a lot of REALLY smart people who are searching for a way to factor numbers efficently. There are some ways, but it doesn't scale well to large numbers. If you manage to come up with a way, there's a nobel prize in it for you and you will have effectively rendedered all modern encryption meaningless. (Conspiracy thoerists already think our governments have a method to do this, which is why they allow such strong encryption.)

There's more math magic that happens, but essentially, a public/private key is a pair of large prime numbers and through some mathematical conjuring, they are paired so one of the primes can be used to encrypt a message, and then it can only be decrypted with the other one. You can highly publicize one of the numbers, but the other is kept secret. Like wise, your secret key can be used to generate a signature that can be verified with your public key.

So, with this technology, its possible to send a message that can only be decrypted and read by the intended recipient. Of course, what he does with the decrypted message is up to him. So, if you send him your credit card number there's nothing keeping him from posting it to the internet, but at least you can be sure it got to him safely. Also, anyone can verify that a message was truely sent by you, and wasn't modified in anyway.

The only missing piece is... how does one verify that a key truely belongs to who they say it does? Enter the "Web of Trust"! I'm sure you've heard of the Kevin Bacon game. Where supposedly everyone in Hollywood is connected to Kevin Bacon by people they have worked with with no more then 6 steps. The same principle applies to PGP keys. I can meet someone who has a key, verify their identity, and then sign their key. Essentially, I am attesting that they are who they say that they are, and this allows people who trust me, to also trust this new person. The idea being that I can create a key that says I am Bill Gates, but without having people sign my key I won't be able to fool many people. Needless to say, the signing process needs to be taken seriously, as with some effort, you can poison the web of trust with false data. But as these incidents are exposed, they can easily be handled by revoking signatures.

A report on my key shows that there are currently over 32,000 people that I can have some level of trust of who they are. There's 1 person that I can get to in 15 'hops' but the average is about 5.8 hops. And there's over 20,000 people that I can get to within the 6 hops that Kevin Bacon uses. Like that there's a few 7 step paths to get to Wil Wheaton. There's tons more I can say, but this is already getting long.

So.. why am I writing about all of this? Well, signing keys is crucial to expanding the web of trust and shortening the paths within it. So, I'm planning on hosting my own Key Signing Parties, once a month, at a local Starbucks. So, any fellow geeks who are around Lake County, IL... The first tuesday of the month (today), I'll be hanging out at the new starbucks on Route 60 between Butterfield and Aspen road (click for google maps).

All you need is a print out of your key fingerprint, along with the ID and email adress so you key can be located, and a form of ID. You can read more about key parties and how they work, but this is going to be small and informal for now. If you show up... I'll be the guy with the long brown hair in the grey EFF shirt. I doubt there will be many people that fit that description! lol

Yes yes... I'm a big nerd.. I think I'm done rambling about this... for now at least..