Author: cpuwhiz11

Categories
Philosophy

Edge of the Fire

A quick parable today. Imagine a fire pit at night. Close to the fire it is
hot, smoky even. You get a limited view, but it is great if you like it
scalding hot. Back up a bit and you are in the sweet spot, a foot or two away.
Warm and comfortable with an excellent view of the flames licking the logs. Go
out a few more feet from there and it gets precipitously colder and darker.
This is the edge of the fire. Close enough to occasionally get some benefit of
the burning wood, but never enough to be satisfied. Beyond is darkness. You can
see the fire, but the warm feeling is lost.

The fire pit is analogous to the stages of life. Being close to the fire is
like childhood. Intense and emotional. It is easy to get hurt, and hard to see
with all the smoke, but exhilarating to be so close to something so energetic.
The sweet spot is young adolescence (teenager). A little more wisdom has taught
you to sit back a bit to get the whole view allowing you to enjoy the fire from
a distance. Then again the fire is not really why you are there, it is the
other people around the fire that brought you to the pit. The edge of the fire
is the intermediary stage from adolescence to adulthood. You can still see and
feel the fire, but the feeling is different, more distant. It is not so much
that the fire is less interesting from here, but you have new goals. You could
return to the fire, what you know, or you could venture out beyond the fire
into the darkness. The darkness is adulthood because you can never quite see
far enough to tell where you are going. Yet you still ventured out, there must
be something worth looking for in the dark.

What I am (poorly) getting at here is when all you ever know is one thing or
one lifestyle (in my parable, sitting around the fire) it can be very difficult
to move beyond that comfort zone (the darkness around the fire). This is the
area just on the edge of the fire where you have to make a conscious choice to
leave the fire pit. This choice does not have subjectively better options.
Plenty of people stick with what they know and live fine adult lives. Plenty of
other people commit fully and venture out into the night. You can even live in
the middle ground (with me!) and skirt around the edges enjoying the old and
the new. This parable does not exist to make you unsatisfied with your choice,
but to inform you that you have made one. More than that, that you actively
continue to make a choice on how to lead your life.

Categories
Musings

The Office Walk

It has been a year since I
started the full time cube life and have discovered a peculiar mostly silent
communication system in play at my office. Often I find myself having to walk
around the building to talk to someone, get something, stuff my face with
snacks, etc. On these jaunts I may occasion to pass or see other employees. I
am not sure what happens at other places of work, but here we observe the
following rules based on the distance between coworkers when they first see
each other.

1. If the distance is greater than 30 feet a small chest level wave will be
given. This is done by raising up your hand so that it is parallel with your
chest and making a slight wave. One or two ‘wave’ rotations is all that is
necessary. Your elbow should form an angle grater than or equal to 90 degrees.
Any more and you have committed too much to the wave.

2. If the distance is less than 30 feet, but greater than 10 feet short
quick small talk may be exchanged (less than two sentences) or the
aforementioned hand wave may be done. The small talk must follow these
conversation topics:

  • Weather
  • Weekend plans
  • “Good” -day, -night, -morning, etc

3. If the distance is greater than one foot and less than or equal to 10
feet a small head nod will be observed. The coworker will nod either up 15
degrees or down 15 degrees once. The other coworker will reciprocate this head
nod. This may or may not be accompanied by each coworker saying the other
coworker’s name.

4. Distances equal to or less than one foot should be avoided. if this rare
event does occur a short office appropriate exclamation must be used. These
include, but are not limited to:

  • “Oops”
  • “Sorry”
  • “Oh”

I have found carefully adhering to these rules ensures safe interoffice
travel and adequate daily office socialization.

Categories
Cosplay

Purity Seal Revision The Third

Finished some purity seals today. I think I really accomplished my goals
this time which makes sense as it generally takes three times for the normal
mind. First here is the general look I am shooting for:

The general structure is a wax seal at the top with some symbol of the
Imperium (Aquila, skull, equipment, etc) and about a two inch wide cloth scroll
about 10 inches long featuring a prayer of some sort. It is a sign that the
wearer is of pure faith (untainted by chaos) and is fully devoted to the
Emperor and by extension the Imperium. I like to make them as they are good
gifts for people who recognize my cosplay. However, if I am giving out a lot of
these seals I need a good mass production solution. It is no good to me to make
just one or two really nice seals. I need to make a lot. My first two revisions
predate the blog’s creation so this post, while motivated by finishing a third
revision, will be talking about all the versions I have made.

Lets look at how all three versions line up:

Version one on the
left, two in the middle, three on the right.

Revision One

The first seal was made with apple scented wax. It is a pleasant scent and
very vibrant. I made it by drilling out about a 2.5 inch diameter circle in a
board of wood and filling the inside of the circle with tinfoil. Then I would
pour the wax in. The wax itself I melted and mixed with hot glue. The idea
being the wax and glue would cool together and strengthen the resulting disk.
The actual paper is just lightly colored construction paper I printed some
prayers on. The prayers I used have been attached at the bottom of this post. I
hot glued the paper and a fastener to the back. On the front I used a wood
burner to melt out the Cadian gate symbol and then I painted in the indentation
with black paint.

This was a pretty decent first attempt. I achieved the general shape and
look, but it has the feel of a cheap knockoff. Regardless it was easy to make.
The glue on the back failed on a few of them, but for the most part it seems to
hold things together well enough. The tinfoil mold method works, but the
resulting seal is bumpy and not uniform enough. I made about 30 of these.

Revision Two

Three main changes in this revision. One, I used printable cloth this time
for the scroll part. The scroll is cloth like in-universe so the purity seals
are now more closer to reality. Two, the cloth started out white, but I stained
it with some black tea to give it a more weathered look. I then burnt the edges
using the stove to further this look. Three, I used slightly darker wax which I
still mixed with hot glue. This color is less vibrant, but more in line with
the actual purity seal look. Also of note, this version shows my first attempt
to use a tuna fish can as a wax mold. Aside from it being incredibly difficult
to remove the wax, the seal looks just a bit too big. I only made a few of this
size, the rest I used the tinfoil method described previously.

This seal is a marked improvement over revision one. The cloth part makes it
look much better. Further improvements to the molding process also made for a
more uniform look. I made around 20 of these.

Revision Three

Two big changes in this revision. One, I stained the cloth much darker to be
more in line with the in-universe examples. This was done by two successive tea
stainings. Two, I was able to get a much nicer rounded seal by using a silicone
muffin tray as my mold.

The silicone tray allows me to easily remove it once it is cooled and gives
a very uniform circle.

Two small changes of note. One, the placement of the fastener on the back.
Previously I placed the fastener in the middle of the seal. This unfortunately
makes the seal flap around unnaturally when worn as it will rotate around the
middle. Now I placed the fastener at the top of the seal which reduces the
amount of flapping that happens when worn. Two, I abandoned the wood burner
indentations and instead just painted the gate on freehand. I was a little
concerned I would mess up a few times, but for the most part I exhibited a
steady hand. This sped up the production process and did not noticeably change
the look.

Overall the darker scroll makes these seals look much better. Now that the
seal itself is more uniform I would say this revision is much closer to the
in-universe examples. I made 18 of these and am ready for Connecticon.

Future Revisions

Couple things I want to clear up in future revisions:

  1. I need some way to capture the lip around the edge of the seal. This
    happens because the seal image is stamped down. I have tried to stamp some
    seals in the past, but the results have been very poor.
  2. Hot gluing the fastener and scroll to the back of the seal is not
    sufficient. There is too high a rate of failure with this method, I will have
    to investigate other ways of attaching things.

Further images available at the gallery here.

Prayer Documents: PuritySealPrayers2
PuritySealPrayers1

Categories
Engineering

Why You Should Not Expose Your Failed SQL Query

It is the weekend and as I am wont to do I pay a visit to warez-bb.org. A site focusing on links to
illegal file distribution. They do have some legal links, but it would be a lot
like drug dealers selling candy on the side. Not really their purpose for
being. Anyways the site was down as usual. Seems their host is just generally
bad as this is a common occurrence. Today was different though. It was serving
a relatively unique error.

CleanCapture

What are we seeing here?

This is the exact SQL query
that the server was trying to run which failed for some reason. In other words
when I tried to access the site the server tried to (via the sessions.php file)
create a user session for me within its database. This session would then track
my usage of the site. Not sure exactly what, but possibly how long I use the
site, pages I go to, posts I make, etc. That session creation failed for some
reason and it returned this error to me.

Why is this significant?

This is a significant error as it exposes information the user (client)
should not be aware of. Specifically a database table and columns in that table
that the server uses. This is important because it makes my job easier if I am
looking to exploit the system.

How could I do that?

Let us look at the error we got back. I have highlighted the important
sections here:

EditedCapture

This gives us two pieces of important information:

  1. That the site knows my username (which I have removed).
  2. That the site is using a particular id number to identify me (the red boxes
    which represent the ‘session_user_id’).

How does the site know my username if I have not tried to login (this is the
first thing I see on accessing the site)? The site has checked for an existing
login cookie on my machine. Lucky for us we can look at that cookie and see
what information it is providing. Let us open up firebug and take a look.

WarezzBBCookie

See that red box. That is the same number we are using in the failed SQL
query for the ‘session_user_id’ column. Let us go ahead and use firebug to
change that number and see what happens:

FirebugCookieChange

Luckily for us warez-bb operates sanely in this regard and my attempt to
exploit failed. You can see it just reverts to an anonymous user. That stills
gives us some useful information on how the site operates though. It must be
using the ‘session_user_id’ contained in the cookie, and those other values to
retrieve my username which is not saved in the cookie. Another attack vector
which I did not consider is instead of just changing the ‘session_user_id’ in
the cookie is to inject
SQL into its spot instead. The idea would be the server would execute the
SQL command I provided in the cookie. Based on the result of the first test it
is likely warez-bb defends against this attack by sanitizing whatever input it
gets back from cookies.

Though my attacks failed this is still bad practice. The user of a site
should know nothing about the underlying operation of your server. Any
information you unwittingly provide makes the attackers job easier.

Categories
Philosophy

In Time All Will Be Lost

You will lose everything you love. Your parents, extended family, and
siblings will all die. Your friends and significant others will die. The house
you live in will decay, the art you make will fade, the words you write will be
lost, the pictures and film you record will go missing. Everything you know
will become unknown and everything you hold dear will be destroyed. Given a
long enough time span all will be
lost.

This is not something to fret or worry about though. This is something to be
celebrated! The knowledge of eventual demise is a gift because it gives meaning
to everything in life. Consider a personal example. A few Connecticons ago (the long distant memory that is
2012) I was standing outside watching everyone mill about. It was late (around
1AM) on a Saturday and the Convention hall had closed up, but no one wanted to
leave quite yet. There was a group of people near the doorway dancing to some
techno beats. I was standing with a couple friends idly chatting. People would
come by, take pictures of my friend’s cosplay. Others would walk by resplendent
in their various costumes just meandering around. It was a hot day, but the
night was pleasant enough, not chill enough to need a jacket, but cool enough
to be comfortable. Want to see what this looked like? Here is a picture I took
that night on my phone ‘s terrible camera.

OneNightInCT

What makes this moment important? Its uniqueness. All these different people
and disparate groups had come together to create this one particular moment in
time. Conventions like this happen all the time, but never with this exact mix
of people, with these exact conditions. This moment in time is unique and of
value because it can never be replicated. Each person in this photo made a
choice to spend a finite resource (time) on this event. They might have done
this only thinking of themselves, but they gave me that gift of their time. For
a fleeting wonderful movement they let me enjoy their company. It was only one
moment, but it was enough. You remember the bible story about
the lady who gave two pennies? That is the same thing that is at play here.
If you have an infinite amount of something then giving it to others has little
meaning because you never suffer a loss. The meaning is in the loss. The
willingness in people to spend some resource of limited quantity for the
benefit of others. Only things which are finite can have value.

Everyone in this photo will die. These buildings will become rubble, Given
enough time even the planet this photo was taken on will be destroyed. But that
is ok, I am fine with that, because I got to experience this one moment. I know
that all this destruction will come to pass and I chose to spend the finite
amount time of time I have to experience something. It is this experience that
occurs everyday. The time you spend with friends, or the time you spend
creatively. You know these moments are limited, you know all your work is
futile, but you do it anyway, not to fool yourself into thinking it can never
end, but because it will end, it must end.

You can only ever love something that ends.

Categories
Musings

White Collar Guilt

Have you ever felt guilty for doing the work you do? Not guilty because what
you are doing is illegal, but guilty because you have it easier than others. At
the risk of bragging I have. The
2012 American
Community Survey estimates the median earnings for male full-time,
year-round workers in Massachusetts to be
$60,414. I make a non trivial amount more than that, and that is my
starting salary.

Why does that make me guilty? Because there are people who work far harder
who make far less. Lets look quickly at a couple examples:

  1. Construction worker: $34,490.
  2. Landscaper:
    $25,870    .
  3. Teacher:$40,462.
  4. Police Officer:$52,810.
  5. Firefighter:$42,878.

My job is not 1/10th as hard as these jobs. No way am I cut out to get up
early and go build houses or plant trees. I sweat walking up stairs, I would
die trying to make it through a day. How could I even begin to start teaching
kids, I can barely stand kids. Police officer, lets not joke now I can barely
sound commanding to people I know let alone strangers. And firefighter, look at
that job name they FIGHT FIRE. I cried the last time I burnt my hand making
toast.

Now this is admittedly a small sample set. You can see I excluded people who
work hard and make a lot of money like Doctors. The point is there are people
who work hard who do not get rewarded. Meanwhile they are people like me who
sit in a cool climate controlled environment, work at a leisurely pace, and get
rewarded disproportionately. I do not mean to imply that money is the perfect
metric by which to judge the relative worth of a job, but I will say that money
is social power. The power to choose where you live, how much you work, the
quality of food you eat, etc. There is a tipping point for sure, where each
extra dollar delivers less social power than before, but I am not sure the
average salaries of my examples have passed that. MIT’s living wage calculator
estimates for one adult the cost of living to be $26,316 if you live in Boston,
MA. Granted the cost of living will be higher in a big city, but it is a decent
reference point. So for everyone except a landscaper you would be good to go.
What about having a family? If you are married and have two kids MIT estimates
$43,683 per year. Doable with one parent not working in some cases based on my
example salaries. Probably pretty comfortable if both are working. So these are
livable salaries, but are they fair for the work?

That is what makes me feel guilty.

Categories
Engineering Philosophy

Digital Legos

Sometimes I get anxious, antsy. Spend too long in meetings or clearing out
emails.Sometimes I just want to code. It is akin to an addiction. Do it too
much and you overdose and your quality suffers. Do it too little and you go
into withdrawal, just begging to get that next hit.

Consider this metaphor. In Homeworld the various races travel
around space by means of hyperspace jumping. For all races except one this is
just another form of faster than light travel. For the outlier race, the
Bentusi, it is different. For them Hyperspace travel is an experience, a reason
to live. By their own account, “hyperspace sings in our
ears”. So to is coding to the programmer. To live is to program. You cannot
separate the two.

What breeds this addiction? This affliction differs from person to person,
but for me it has always been to play. Code is just another toy for me, like
legos or Lincoln logs. It is about challenging yourself to make interesting
unique work with the pieces you have. I have a bunch of loops and conditional
statements and variables how can I make a list of unordered numbers become
ordered? How can I make it run fast? How can I make it use space efficiently?
You do not need any special education, all you need is the will to learn. You
can do that right now. Do not even leave this blog page. Go ahead and pop open
the web developer tools (Ctrl+Shift+K for Firefox, F12 for Chrome and IE. Press
Ctrl + 2 after opening up the development tools in IE to get the console). Play
with some javascript right now by typing at the prompt the following and
hitting enter:

alert("Hello World")

This creates a simple popup with “Hello World” displayed. Neat huh, not very
flash but you just did something. Try something else, type this and hit
enter:

confirm("See Some Buttons?")

This creates a similar popup but with an ‘Ok’ and ‘Cancel’ button. Are you
feeling it yet? Play with some math, go ahead and add some numbers at the
prompt:

3 + 3

It adds them for you and shows the result. You can multiply and divide and
all sorts of fun math stuff. Remember my example of turning unordered lists
into ordered lists. That is a solved problem for us. Look at this:

[1,5,2,3,6,7].sort()

What do you get? The numbers come back in sorted order. Try putting some
words in there and see what happens:

["bear", "cat", "chair", "apple"].sort()

Was that fun for you? It is not everyone’s jam, but I live for this. I live
for the thrill of trying to solve problems and build things with all these
digital parts. Its exploration, its discovery, its adventure. For some people
it is just a way to get around, but for others it can be a real journey.

Categories
Musings Story

I Miss Market Basket (Sometimes)

Couple years ago (six or so to be more exact) I was dirt broke. Never was
much of a spender. The less charitable might have used the term miser. Still
when you make zero dollars you can only ever go down. It was this point in time
where I realized I would need a job. I shot high with my first few attempts.
Gamestop seemed like a good fit. I had a friend who worked there, could always
use a discount on games, I am knowledgeable about the subject. I had an
interview (which is farther than some other people I knew got), but no call
back. I moved on. I know some other people who worked at the local CVS and BJs.
Got nothing back from my online CVS application so that was bust. Got an
interview at BJs, but I seem to recall saying I preferred to work alone. Many
people have called this a ‘poor move’ which seemed to be accurate as I never
got a return call. I tried some local independent bookstores, but go no bites
from them. It was this desperate state of affairs that forced me to consider
the grocery store business. I had thought about this before, but I was
admittedly unexcited about the idea. Here is a quick rundown of how I would
have rated part time jobs back then:

1. Paid to do nothing

2. Gamestop

3. Bookstore

….

567. Test subject for radiation experiments

568. Live fire missile target

569. Grocery store

560. A life of destitution and poverty

Granted it is not at the bottom of the list, but it comes in pretty close.
That said, bank account was trending toward zero and Anime Boston was coming
up. Man has got to make ends meet yo. Why Market Basket? Why not the closer
Shaws or Stop and Shop? No real particular reason, a person I knew who worked
there suggested it to me. The thing to know about Market Basket is they are mad
cheap. As in we do not run a website we are so cheap. As in we print half sized
job applications because the full size application would cost to much. That is
the kind of place they are. The kind of place I worked at for four years. The
kind of place I wore a tire, a button up white shirt, fancy pants, and dress
shoes. I remember cleaning up an oil spill once in my nice white shirt once.
Half the difficulty is in staying clean for a day. So why do I miss it? What
could there even be to miss? Long tedious hours, a pay slightly above the
minimum, constant interaction with people. This is the place I got yelled at
because a man wanted a few extra dollars off on a cooked chicken, a place where
one day I cut my hand to pieces picking up shattered glass, a place where I
spent all day sweating it out pushing carriages in that hot Bellingham summer.
My job now is luxurious, a quiet uninterrupted climate controlled environment
to play with digital legos. And to think they pay me to do it too. How could I
even think to compare what I have now with what I had before? Yet it is true,
my job now lacks what I had before: joyful communal torture.

I miss the struggle of trying to last through a day. The pure stress of not
being sure if you can stand one more hour, but pulling through anyways. It is
not just that however, I miss struggling together with everyone else like me.
Market Basket was stratified into two classes of employees: long term lifers
and short term teenagers. The split of about 200 employees was about 40% lifers
and 60% teenagers. That is not the split where I work now. It is more of an
even breakdown of ages. Back then it was thrilling to work with so many people
like me. All at near about the same place in life, similar hopes and dreams.
There is an inexpressible joy in struggling together with everyone. We were
challenged together and did it together everyday. It sounds incredibly sappy to
write that, but since leaving I have not found that feeling again. It is
probably for the better too, I can only endure so many stressful days. But you
cannot replace those frighteningly strong burst of comradery. It is what
motivated me to fill in other people’s shifts, what kept me sane, what kept me
still working.

I work for myself now, but back then I worked for others.

Categories
Cosplay

Two New Projects

Last convention of the year coming up soon so it is time to start
considering new projects for next year. I am looking to do two costumes this
year:

  1. Vostroyan Firstborn
  2. Anatoray Soldier

Vostroyan Firstborn

A Vostroyan Firstborn is a type of Imperial Guard unit that looks like
this:

I have already done two Cadian costumes and while it may be tempting to try
and shoot for perfection with the third one I am looking to try something a
little different.

Areas I am looking to improve in with this project:

  • Armor quality. The Kasrkin armor (latest project) was a step up from the
    Cadian Shock Trooper (first project), but there is still some room for
    improvement here. Specifically I am hoping to achieve a more rigid form for the
    armor plates. Either I will use the foam method I used the last two times, but
    this time with a fiberglass mat backing, or I will try some form of cast. Units
    of this type can have limited armoring (the example photo is probably the high
    end of the scale) so it will not be too prohibitive to iterate a couple
    versions.
  • Costume sewing. Seems odd I have ignored this problem set with my past
    projects. I was able to get away with it before as the actual cloth part of my
    past projects have been pretty basic (read: able to find good matches online).
    This unit type however has a far more intricate coat which I think will have to
    be custom done.
  • The overall costume has a lot more doodads than the Cadian ones which
    should be a good chance to work improving my poor detail skills
  • The Vostroyan Lasgun show here:


Is more intricate than the last gun I made. Prime chance to take what I learned
from the last lasgun construction and make a more detailed/complicated piece.
Probably will stick with the medium-density fibreboard I used last time or get
something with a bit more prominent wood grain. Also prime chance to practice
my paint skills.

Anatoray Soldier Last Exile was one of my first
animes and also one of my favorites (correlation?). It follows that I would
like to try and pay homage to it by making a costume of one of the faction’s
soldiers. Here is a good example of one:

Areas I am looking to improve in with this project:

  • Sewing. No way about it the jacket will have to be custom. Hopefully I will
    be able to find a pattern to work with before I go off script. The actual
    uniform looks pretty basic so it should be within my skill set as long as I
    have some guidance.
  • Custom hat. The hat is a bit different than the Cadian helmet as it is
    mostly cloth, but seems to be a logical progression to work on next.
  • The Anatoray rifle shown here (obscured, but gives a good sense of
    scale):

represents an interesting challenge. Construction should be
relatively straightforward as it has a simple mass produced look to it which is
in line with my past projects. The real issue is in transportation. The height
alone makes this difficult. The final product will have to come apart somehow
so that it is at least manageable to move around. Should be an interesting
challenge.

I am looking forward to many months of crushing disappointment pursing this
work. Stay tuned to watch me post the results of my crushed dreams.

Categories
Musings

One Year at Oracle

Today is a reasonably important day for me. It is my one year anniversary of
starting my first full time big boy job at Oracle. Although a year ago it was
called Tekelec, so things have changed somewhat since then. I would not call my
year spent at Oracle eventful, but I have gleamed some new insight that I would
like to share.

What Did I Learn This Year?

1. I am much calmer than I once was. The four years I spent in college were
stressful and not very enjoyable. There were certainly light moments at school,
but I found it increasingly difficult as I progressed to enjoy them. I never
was able to forgot my obligations. That sounds awfully stiff, but college was
an incredible investment in time and expense the ultimate success of which was
100% dependent on me. I feel as if I spent four years vacillating from total
despair to apathy. It was not pleasant. Now though, having spent the last year
working, I have found a deep tranquility. It is very calming to have an ordered
day. I know what times are for work and what times are not. I attribute this
clear distinction to the big gains in calm I have found. At school I never
could quite turn off. I always seemed to spend a lot of time needlessly
worrying. That is not a concern anymore.

2. I understand how people get old. This was a frightening realization.
Previously I understood the physical act of getting old, but the length of time
it took to get there seemed very long to me. After working a few weeks it is
easy to see how you can just put your head down, concentrate on work, and look
up a little while later and be 40. Not to say that 40 is ‘old’, but that time
can pass by more easily now that you have a set unending schedule. It is scary
to me that my job has no end point. It just keeps going until an outside force
acts upon it. Akin to starting into a void, just an endless expanse. It may be
enjoyable time spent, but the idea of action having no end is unsettling to
me.

3. I have less free time, but the time that I have I enjoy more. This
relates to point one. In school I never could turn off. I always worried about
the next assignment, exam, evaluation. There always was that nagging thought
that I should be studying more, revising more. When I punch out at the end of
the day that is it. Sometimes I find myself idly spinning work problems in my
mind, but I have no obligation to work beyond my set contract. To put another
way, work has established, for my benefit, clear boundaries in time between
work and non-work. As a consequence I have found my time outside of work to be
much less stressful even if I have less of it.

4. I love side projects. I love having little things to work on outside of
my job. It does not have to be technical (although I do enjoy those too), I
just like different problems to work on. For me this has taken the form of
costume work, prop building, etc. I spend a lot of my day working on abstract
technical problems, spending time working on a more physical problem domain is
a refreshing context switch. My skills in this regard are meager, but I feel
the cycle of busting something out and reviewing what I produced have resulted
in marked improvements in quality and speed.

5. I solve problems and I love doing it. This is a brag on my part, but I
have learned I work best solving tough problems. The solution is not always
pretty, but it will work. There is nothing more satisfying than solving a
problem someone thought was impossible.

6. I am liking this blog thing. This is a recent discovery, but I really do
like writing up blog entries. It is nice if people end up reading them, but
irrelevant as for the most part I find the mere act of writing to be very
therapeutic.

What Am I Looking To Explore This Year?

1. Buying a house. It is time to start pursing this seriously. I know what I
want, I have the resources to pursue it, and I am confident enough in my job
stability and future outlook to consider more permanent residence. The idea of
making such a big bet, especially given how unpredictable things can be, is
concerning, but not enough to dissuade me. I am excited to see how this will
turn out.

2. Double down on the costuming. Along with this being my year anniversary
at Oracle it is also the anniversary of when I first started making costumes
and props. I had some major successes in that regard this year, and also some
major failures. I looking to complete two costumes this year. A Vostroyan
Firstborn from 40K and a Anatoray Soldier from Last Exile. More information to
follow.

3. Continue to improve my technical skills. This is going to be a recurring
goal. I should be learning new technical skills every day. If I continue to
make small incremental gains daily it will eventually add up.

4. Look into historical reenacting. Always had a interest in history and
would like the chance to gain a more in depth understanding by taking up
reenacting, specifically American Civil War. There is some expense to this, but
I would like to investigate some options more thoroughly this year.

5. Find old friends. Seems five years after high school some friends I used
to know quite well have phased out of contact. This is my fault. I should work
harder to retain what I have and recultivate what has been lost. I miss the
insight and experience they once provided.

One year down, seven more to go (shooting for the retire by 30 plan).