As Slashdot reported earlier today, Diebold's voting machines are much less secure than was previously thought. (Is it possible to have negative security?) Apparently, common desk and minibar keys can open the Diebold voting machines!
Now this is just plain ridiculous. The original exploit for these machines required that you either have a key or a screwdriver, with the key being preferrable. (Dismantling a voting machine is likely to get noticed, whereas simply opening a little door won't.) As it turns out, the key that was used is just a simple office furniture key, widely available on the Internet and from supply catalogs.

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.

This is simply inexcusable. Even vending machines use a more secure locking mechanism. Of course, any locking mechanism can be defeated by the determined attacker, but these machines are not unmonitored. If you make too much noise, "the gig is up". However, by using such a common key, any attacker can access the machine's memory card — virtually undetected.

I fear for the future of this country if these kinds of problems go unsolved.

Yeah, I haven't really been doing very much for the last few… months. (Except playing Gothador, of course.) I haven't been entirely unoccupied, however. Recently, I have had the opportunity to hang out with a few of my friends. Right now, they are in need of computer help… something that I can do quite handily. (A lifetime of experience helps in this regard.) It has been fun, it gives me the opportunity to get out of the house, and allows me to get reacquainted with people who I haven't spoken to very much over the last few years.

Right now, the current dilemma is twofold: a dying Dell workstation and a dying Lexmark printer. The Dell suffers from a bit of Windoze brain-damage (it believes the processor is overheating). A quick bit of troubleshooting reveals — nothing is obviously wrong. The computer won't boot up past the log-in screen because of the error, but nothing seems to be actually wrong. As my friend Tim would say, this is GWG.

The Lexmark printer is suffering from a loose paper-feed mechanism. This causes it to draw the paper into the printer unevenly… resulting in a nasty paper jam. Completely disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the printer was quite difficult, but doable. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fix the problem… and (unrelated) driver issues have made the beheamoth totally unusable.

My personal prejudice tells me that all of these problems are caused by Windows. (Besides the mechanical malfunction, of course.) I would like to take this opportunity to promote a usable, and inexpensive, alternative to Windows: Debian GNU/Linux. I have been using Debian for many years now, and have had longer uptimes and fewer crashes than I ever did with Windows. <end plug>.

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, without whom my days would be much gloomier and boring. You bring a much-needed smile to my face, each and every day.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I had a wonderful thanksgiving with my family, and am very thankful that they could make it. We had a wonderful dinner, with turkey and ham and lots of pies! I'll be posting some pictures soonest.

Digging through the archives, I found a few pictures that were taken of me during the winter time. These pictures were taken at my workplace by Thera Kohler. I decided to clean them up a bit, and put them online for all to see.

These pictures were taken back in January 2004. There will be several more pictures from this and other sets of photos coming soon (and they won't all be pictures of me!)

Hello to all! I would like you to know that I am back, and it's about time. In the last few months, I have done the following things:

• Gotten divorced
• Joined the National Guard
• Gotten chaptered out of the Guard (injury)
• Gotten a new computer

Here's basically what happened: I ended up getting married last year to a woman named Kelly Lewis. Nice girl, knew her since elementary school, massive crush for years and years, etc… Well, apparently I wasn't attentive enough, because she ended up finding "someone new" on Yahoo! Chat. She was telling lots of people online that she was divorced and/or that her husband (ie. me) was "away in Wisconsin". (For those of you who don't know, I live in Indiana.) I found out about all this stuff by looking in the Yahoo! Messenger logs, and looking at a massive phone bill…

Well, at that point, I was confused and upset, and the whole affair was literally the last straw. Our relationship had been fairly strained even before that. (Due to increasingly odd behaviour, possibly caused by untreated hypoglycæmia.) So, the next step was to file for a divorce, which took an inordinately long amount of time. In the interim between filing and finalizing, I took the extreme dumb ass step of allowing her to live with me, as I didn't want her to get stuck with her emotionally abusive parents. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Anyway, while all this was happening, I ended up becoming extremely depressed. (Big suprise there…) Thankfully, a good friend of ours named Ashley was there to talk to. We used to drink coffee and play chess, as well as various video games. She ended up getting me to join the National Guard as a "Multimedia Illustrator". I went to Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, SC. I was in E 1/28th, 2nd Platoon (Wolverines). Not exactly the best soldier (those who know me will NOT be suprised), I ended up getting multiple injuries, and got chaptered out (discharged) due to "lack of motivation to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test." (It is strange what a screwed up shoulder and sprained ankle does to your "motivation.") Instead of a full Chapter 11 discharge, though, I got a "state recall", and my guard unit (Recruit Training Detachment is supposed to finish the discharge. Over a month later, I'm still waiting. I've even gone to a drill since then!

Well, when I got back from basic training, one of the first things I noticed was that my beloved computer, Braxiatel, was totally non-functional. I believe that there was a crack in the motherboard, which meant that if you wiggled the keyboard connector and the processor (a Slot 1 card) a little bit, it would work for a while. After getting it to work, sort of, it finally failed completely. I went online and bought a new motherboard and some associated hardware. I ended up getting a Biostar M7NCG motherboard with an AthlonXP 2600+ processor, as well as 512MB of DDR memory and a new 450W power supply. The new computer is, for the time being, known as Golubo (the Russian word for "blue"), due to its blue lighting effects.

Other than setting up a new computer, what have I been doing with myself since basic? I have been spending large amounts of time with my friends. Mostly we have been playing pool, and a couple of local pool leagues have been trying to recruit me, most notably Chaos & Confusion. (23 SKIDOO) If anyone in the area wants to play pool or chess with me, just let me know.

Employment? Other than my ten-week stint in the Army, I've continued to work for Moyer Process & Control in Fremont, IN. I have been developing various industrial control products for them, including a single board computer and their Wire Feed Montioring System. Since I'm only making about $25,000/year doing this, I am open to other opportunities. (Preferrably something where I can apply my computer experience, like programming, administration or web development.) I'm still sticking to the Tri-State area for now, but that may change in the future.

In conclusion, my life has essentially sucked for the last year. I have tried to make the best of it, however, and I have had many positive experiences. I'm still "looking for love", which my social ineptitude has complicated greatly. I am very happy that I have a good computer, though, and it turns out that the nForce2 IGP isn't such a bad thing after all. More updates to this site will be coming, trust me. (I know, I know…)

To all my loyal readers: thank you for your support and patience. It's been great. If you have any suggestions, please forward them to me. If you have emailed me over the last couple of months, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you. If you have been hanging on desperately for new updates, well HERE IT IS. This is AlexDW, over and out.

I don't really know where to proceed in my life. The Yahoo! Messenger article below should give some clue as to what is going on, but I still don't want to be too specific. Suffice to say some weird things are happening right now. I have just ordered DSL service from Verizon, so that should be nice. I'm getting ready for the high-speed madness! Now I have to figure out if they use the standard DHCP auto-config, or if they are using the "living pain" PPPoE.

Yahoo! Chat is a really neat application. I really like the feature that it has where it logs all of the chat session text for the last few days. I have found out some really neat stuff that way… stuff that I wish that I hadn't. Ah well, life's like that. It seems that I am in "Wisconsin" right now, which is very strange since all of the post offices around here say Indiana…

Regular readers of this site are probably wondering what happened to me. Actually, they have probably stopped being regular readers… Anyway, here's the latest:

• I've gotten married to a woman named Kelly Lewis (now Kelly La Hurreau). She's a very wonderful woman, and I love her very much.
• I've started working for Moyer P&C, which almost pays the bills.
• I've graduated from Tri-State University, with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering
• Due to my lack of funds, I've not been able to get a real ISP, so I've been using Juno. Don't use Juno… just don't.
• I'm hoping for a financial miracle Real Soon Now, so I can get a new computer & ISP. A new job would be nice.

I've got a little time over my Christmas "vacation" to write some much-needed web site updates, so that's what I'm doing right now. The first page that has been updated is the About the Author page. It now describes my new "home town" of Angola, IN, and the sarcasm has been toned down a notch. I hope that you all like it, and Happy Solstice!

In case you didn't see the story on News of the World, British Telecom has decided that it has a patent on the hyperlink. The hyperlink! You can read about it on LinuxMall, or you can read a different article about it on The Register. They have apparently had this patent since the late eighties, but have only now realized that it covers hyperlinks as well! Are they stupid, or what? Or perhaps their patent doesn't really apply to hyperlinks and their just making it all up? It doesn't matter anyway, because their suing all of the ISPs in America. (I guess that includes Locl.Net, doesn't it? And UU-Net? And MCI?) It seems to fit in with all the other a**hole things that they do, like screwing their customers. Can you believe that they told their government (the UK) that it was impossible to provide flat-rate local telephone service? Lying b**tards! They can all rot in the bit bucket!!!