Sex, Lies, and Xanga.com - heh, I don't even know what's going on.

***

This site (no, not the link above...THIS blog) for the longest time was the top hit for 'notforprophet' on Google. Now, though most of my other (currently defunct) godzillion 'notforprophet' blogs are still listed on Google, this one, notforprophet-xanga, has disappeared!  Is Google intentionally restricting featuring Xanga blogs in order to differentially promote its own-owned Blogger blogs?  Or is Xanga becoming even more a part of the 'invisble' internet?

***

Current resting heartbeat: 54.

***

I haven't been writing much lately.  I've been embroiled in my office work: doing what I consider pretty damn good work but not getting much acknowledgement for it.  Like busting covert secretly-sanctioned inner sanctum corporate hackers (stealth intruders commissioned to test our network) and not getting even a congratulation (so I tooted my own horn).  Like making a suggestion a week ago, after 12 frustrating hours of converting profile servers from one configuration to another, to "leave them both on" and thus overcome a synching dysfunction - and then having some senior manager take all the credit - while acting on my suggestion (so I spoke up and tooted my own horn).  Like sitting in on a meeting on Thursday morning where the boss said "we need to pay attention to workstation vulnerabilities-we've stopped doing that and need to do it.more" and then discovering, through testing and investigation Thursday afternoon, that their was a dangerous hidden web server (IBM Tuple Server) fraught with sever cross-scripting vulnerabilites running on a good number of our workstations (including my own) - and then have that same boss tell me, after I informed him of this new discovery, "shelve it-you have other things to do." (wtf??...so, amongst some colleagues, I tooted my own horn).

Damn, I haven't even been taking many photos lately.  Here's one photo I slyly took the other day of a cemetery passerby:

I'm taking photos of people taking photos.  I'm writing about other people writing.  I'm wondering about what other people are wondering.

Fuck it.  I've decided I'm just going off.  Going off on a search for excellence.  All out.

Update: first offing led me right back to stomping grounds to run in the rain.  I was on my way to do some outdoor painting, but you do what you can, right?

It’s good to be alive again.

 

And it’s a perfectly splendid day to be fully alive or fully dead but nowhere in between.  After 4 days in Cleveland Ohio of endless overcast, persistent drizzle, and temps suggestive of mid-fall, summer in the form of drunken sunshine, 70s for temps, and a dragonfly scooting atop the headstones on a cemetery hillside has returned.

 

What’s more, because it was so wet over the weekend and through the first part of the week, my lightweight, highly-vented running shoes got so soaked they weren’t drying out properly between my cemetery running episodes.  The formula of wet + sweat = stench was in full force by Monday and led me yesterday to abandoning my stylish Adidas ClimaCools (which I had been using constantly everywhere for everything all spring and summer) for a backup pair of less stylish black New Balance 525s.  That switch turned out to be exceedingly self-favorable: the right side sciatic pain I’ve had constantly most of the late spring and summer has diminished considerably over the past two days with the switch.  Damn, I had forgotten and have now rediscovered how comfortable even just walking can be.  I think the ClimaCools, in retrospective analysis, were just a little too narrow and/or short and/or inflexible for my feet. 

 

So my feet are happy again!  Heh  And my right leg is whimpering less. 

 

Only problem is that the rest of my appendages are now quite jealous since the shoes didn’t do anything to enhance their happiness.  My arms, in time, may get over it.  As I  am, at this moment, putting a can of beer, alternately, in both hands and flexing at the elbows, my arms seem to be loosening up a bit, relaxing, and engaging in amnesiac-like pseudo-enjoyment.  And for the rest: any remaining member in the appendage category (“whatchu talkin ‘bout boy?”) will need to find its own creative way out of the doldrums of a worldly-imposed solitary unmystical limbo.  Huh?

 

Patience, grasshopper, patience.  –advice to Kung-fu Cain

Darkness within darkness, the gate to all mystery.  –directional instruction for entering into an understanding of Tao

Thump. Wallop. Whack. Smack   ::words can make a difference.

 

Bloggart: a presumptuous blogger. One who chain blogs oft-repeated themes as if familiar readers are ever-returning for the latest context-lacking details and/or as if new readers should review past posts to grab some context for themselves.  I know you’re Alexander.  But I will not bow down to you unless you tell/show me how you conquered the world. 

 

Humphrey Bloggart:  a presumptuous blogger who skips blogging on Wednesdays.

 

Maps are relational representations of some reality or some imagined reality.  Most often they are much smaller than the reality they represent.  But that isn’t a prerequisite.  Something that is (somewhat) a map of itself would only be as large as itself and could be any size.  Having my internal organs tattooed full-sized on my outer skin in precise positioning might be one way to achieve self-mapping.  A practice golf swing maps the swing.  The invisible charged lattice work from the ground upward of a bolt of lightning maps the lightning’s subsequent release groundward.  So it is somewhat possible.  Things can be (kind-of)  maps of themselves.

 

But what of a map which is a map of itself?  Would it map anything? 

 

Well, it must since otherwise there would be no relational linking possible and every blank sheet of paper would be a map of itself (maybe they are!).  On the other hand, it can’t since in mapping it wouldn’t be “referencing” but simply being.  So a map that is a map of itself must and cannot map! 

 

It’s also possible that a map can be larger than the thing it maps.  The tattoos of the organs on my body could be slightly oversized, for instance.  But is a map of the universe that is larger than itself possible?  Might not such an over-mapped universe constitute maya (illusion) with the map being mistaken for the underlying reality?   hrmm...

 

*This post was brought to you  by the machine part    

and the letter “U” and constitutes a near perfect map of itself.

If you have a 20six blog, beware: their server has worms!

I won't send you there, but here's my update from over there (first in months!):

Actually, my blog here goes back to practically Day One of 20six.  Yet my 'Next Page' link goes nowhere.  And although my early 2003 archives are still available, all recent archives lead to 'invalid syntax' pages.  Even more alarming, my May 2004  archive on the 20six server is infected by the Netsky virus.  I'm sure of that since clicking on it and then clicking "back" to get away from it has repeatedly reinfected my PC as depicted below. 

This is a very dangerous blog host, if you ask me!

i wish i were as thin

(intellectually taut, physically unfraught, spiritually gaunt)

as a toothpick, wisp of floss, or starved penguin.

 

make me stone soup over a solar still.

 

drop. drip. drop.

 

distilled.

 

distant thrills.

~evolution by brain damage~

"A five-year-old monkey at an Israeli zoo started walking exclusively on her hind legs after recovering from a serious illness...

A zoo veterinarian says he's not sure why she has altered her behaviour, speculating that the illness could have caused brain damage."

Thus appears the long sought-after missing link.

The time has come to get outrageous.  Again.

Or at least irreverent.

Diss seriousity.

 

I roared with laughter when I heard  California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger’s  condemnation of special interest lawmakers as “girlie-men”.  I howled even louder when I heard the “girlie-men” defenders protest Arnold’s invective as insensitive “gay-bashing” and “woman-bashing”.  Where, may I ask, were these outraged terminological censors when the Saturday Night skits featuring Arnold and Arnold worshippers appeared and comically coined the term “girlie-men” to depict wimps that couldn’t measure up to Arnold’s physical prowess?  “Ah,” but the detractors will object, “that was unserious satire, politics is serious, it’s real life.”  Please.  I find many cartoon characters and the make-believe sidekicks of my childhood more real than many politicians.  And if anything, politics twists and contorts ‘real life’ in near the same manner that death contorts a person’s pleasant countenance into a terrifying frozen scowl.  Besides, no one can seriously or reasonably expect any elected politician to abandon previously developed  “character”.  Arnold is Conan the Barbarian.  Arnold is the Terminator.  Arnold is the Anti-Girlie-Man Man.  Just as much as Ronald Reagan was our Mr. President “Win one for the Gipper”.

 

I’d only take exception to Arnold’s characterization in stating that he didn’t go quite far enough.  Not merely some special-interest politicians are girlie-men, ALL politicians are girlie-men.  George Bush is a girlie-man.  John Kerry is a girlie-man.  Ralph Nader is a girlie-girlie-man!  Heh.  Even Arnold himself is a girlie-man anti-girlie-man man ( a case of previous character being dressed in a new occupational fabric).

 

 

~Above~  Jenna, girlie-man Bush’s daughter, peers girlishly out of the Presidential limo while her girlie-man daddy hides behind her in the metaphorical shadow of undisclosed ‘intelligence’ snafus.  Give us some girlie-tongue!  Ah!  Good girl.

 

I don’t want to vote for Bush.  Or Kerry.  Or Nader.  I just wish I could vote against Bush.  Not for anybody.  Just against him.  I’d be willing to have my “against” vote even count only ½ of a vote for him.  So that it would take 2 “against” votes (let’s say, me and you) against any candidate to mathematically and actually negate a single "pro" vote for a candidate.  I think that’s fair.  I also think that it offers a realistic option to party-politics disillusioned voters to make an impact without having to firmly align with what they view as the current disenfranchising party system.

 

Jenna for President.  Though by the looks of it, she’d make a better presidential intern at this time.

A glimpse into my nefarious occupational responsibilities...

The first day of training was informative from an introductory overview perspective.  However, though I did specifically indicate my interest in security concerns, the instructor really didn't have the time, given the rest of the target audience and its programming concerns, to do much more than point me in the direction of the Weblogic Server Administration Console where security rules, security policies, and security providers are managed.  So I spent some hands-on time perusing the interface and getting a feel for console administration.

 

The second day of training (half day) was just treading water: the instructor spent much of the morning troubleshooting and reconfiguring actual server bugs in preparation for a programming exercise.  What little time was spent with the class was dedicated to the programmers.  So while those happenings gave me a better feel for WebLogic from the IT perspective, they did little to advance my appreciation from an IS (security) perspective.

 

I've identified a number of highly-detailed and very well-written resources to assist with furthering our understanding of WebLogic Security.  I'm currently reading/studying the first two below.  If we need to customize security to custom applications, as opposed to just modifying the out-of-the-box provided security for our needs, the material considered in the last two sources also becomes critical.  If we find we only need to modify WebLogic's already highly-featured out-of-the-box security for our needs, the material covered in the first 5 sources is the most pertinent.

 

I will continue to plow through the material in the order listed below.  I suppose matching 'criteria against configuration files' depends on whether we'll need to go beyond the default security architecture and explore the considerably more daunting (by the looks of it) world of programming/custom development.  Understanding and administering the default security architecture is something I feel is achievable ahead.  Going beyond that may require more than just on-line self-instruction.

 

Administration Console On-line Help:

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/ConsoleHelp/index.html

 

Introduction to WebLogic Security:

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/secintro/index.html

 

Managing WebLogic Security:

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/secmanage/index.html

 

Securing WebLogic Resources:

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/secwlres/index.html

 

Securing A Production Environment (Lockdown):

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/lockdown/index.html

 

Introduction to Programming WebLogic Security:

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/security/intro.html

 

Developing Security Providers for WebLogic Server:

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/dvspisec/index.html

Adolph von Bayer.  You know him.  Mr. Aspirin.  Dr. Anti-pain.

But did you know of his more notorious synthesis?

~from an 1897 Bayer ad~

The Sedative for Coughs!   heh    *cough, cough*

"Stone(d) Street*   no less.

So that's what a 'jobber' does.

Work was bizarre this past week… Some slick intrusion-type hackers were stealthily invited into the corporate network to discern our weaknesses.  They were to have the whole week to wreak their havoc, but I caught them on the first day.  And since detecting intrusions is one of my responsibilities, the early detection was considered a “positive observation” and gave me some mild bragging (resume?) rights.

 

I can see it coming… Expect to hear either about teenagers getting into an accident while throwing frisbees between cars while driving or vandal-assailants causing an accident by throwing a Frisbee through the open window of a passing car.  The inspiration?  GM’s Summerdrive commercial campaign (TV) that shows drivers of moving cars acrobatically throwing and catching Frisbees back and forth.GM’s gone so far as to offer a virtual online car-throwing Frisbee game where you can try to hit a passing GM.  Yeah, it’s cool.  It might even become a new sport.  Let me know if you see or hear of any stupid copycat exploits.

 

hrmm...my digital camera betrays it's low res in these pics. I'd love to have a better one.

11 AM postscript:  I realized this morning (shot was from yesterday) that my lens was dirty.  So I cleaned it and went back for a reshoot this morning.  I also manually pumped up the 'res'.  Any difference??

 

not only do i not need you less , i want you ever more.

yet, where once i had you simply, by desire,

as pure immediate  imagined covet of mine,

now, not you or i (of fault), have interjected  this punctuating

somewhat chasm (time is the fool,

money is the proxy) measureless

-ness where but for a  multisense of devotion, much is lost.

and  except for the faithful transmit of a promise

of the devour of a kiss to be fulfilled,

world’s are topsied

and only shells abandoned to shore are tossed.

Although due to irrepressible fatigue and inexpressible preoccupations I haven't had an active 'presence' on Xanga for the last couple of days, the blood pressure machine at the supermarket last night informed me that I'm still alive: 127 over 78 / 59 .   It then printed out a fortune: "Welcome 2 Machine."  Hey, it's the supie-thing. Going back tonight to browse (shop?) for more of life's secret meanings.

I’m hustling today to get my own vehicle upgraded (4 new tires, 16 inchers with an alignment running a little less than $500) so that tomorrow I can drive a rental for my daughter’s vehicle (Hyundai Accent) which tomorrow has to go into a shop for repairs to damaged suffered when she was backended about a week and a half ago.  Daughter can’t drive the rental (too young), so I’ll take it and she’ll drive my RAV4.  Problem was, my vehicle wasn’t really safe anymore: the tread on all the tires was almost gone and on the front left tire it was completely gone.  I guess it really takes some people and things in life that I dearly care about to put my ass in gear.

 

 

~the new tires, right out of cold storage, had to have a sunbath prior to mounting~

 

 

~my head feels like it's been in cold storage lately, so while waiting for the tire change, it gets a sunblogging sunbath too~

I think I'm going to become a fucking hermit. 

On second thought, that probably isn't possible.  I guess I'll settle for just being a hermit.  hrmmm...that wouldn't be too much different from my lifestyle now.

Flawed Thinking + Flawed Information = Bush + Iraq. 

But Iraq is not 'Bush's Vietnam'.  The Iraq debacle is much more stupid , conceptually enjoined, than Vietnam. 

Clinton said he did Monica Lewinsky "because I could".  It appears that Bush did Iraq "because he could", too.  If this keeps up, the term 'president' is going to become a synonym for 'unbridled idiot' soon.

 

I’ve taken a short break over the last couple days from running in Dreamland (Cemetery), somewhat due to the fact that my creaking/aching/breaking body needed a rest, but more so because I realized that the cemetery really needed a break from me.  I mean, how much Resting In Peace can there be if I’m daily leaving a trail of sweat in repeating circles around an encampment of graves like an Indian war party encircling an entrenched wagon train.

 

 

yes, this is an old pic, *duh* ,  I said I was taking a break.

A notion occurred to me yesterday. I n a relationship, both parties should have an explicit agreement about how many 'take-it-backs'  are allowable, say, per month.  So, let's say I call you a worthless pain in my highly-irritated ass and you start crying.  If we had agreed to 2 'take-it-backs' per month and I've been inoffensive until that slur, then I only need say "I take it back." and that is that.  End of discussion.  But let's say you reply: "You insensitive motherfucker. You can't just take back such hurtful venomous insults with mere reactionary perfunctoriness.  Kiss my unwiped ass."  Of course, you immediately follow-up with: "I take it back."  There.  We're even and both of us even have 1 spare 'take-it-back' left for when your doctor informs you that the birth control was ill-implemented and someone's unexpectedly pregnant.  "I take it back!"

The world will never be the same again...

1) Catholicism is a self-proclaimed bankrupt belief system.  Please pass the hat.

  

2) Killer kangaroos are roaming Australia and they treat dogs like cats treat mice. 

 

3) Are you glad to be human?  Thank the fragile old people with Alzheimer’s in nursing homes who give you the finger when you smile at them.

 

4) Koolaid is better medicine than cough syrup.  But is cough syrup better on pancakes?

  

5) The frequency of social deception amongst members of a species is directly proportional to the average size of the its neocortex. That's why all my best friends are lemurs.

 

If you were going to follow-up (of course, no one will) by clicking on just one of the hyperlinks above, which would it be and why?

This past American holiday (including today):

 

Shopped at Home Depot twice.  Bought 300 pounds of mulch and 150 bricks.

Painted a porch twice.  Sand-gritted the high traffic walk area.

Painted an outside aluminum screen door flat black.

Wall-papered a bathroom.

Reworked the mounting of a stained-glass window.

Broomed sand in between the vacant spacing of bricks on a newly laid brick patio.  

Stretched and ran 17.5 miles.

Watched and listened to some fireworks from my backyard.  For me, hearing them was/(is)  more the thrill.

Drank more than my share of beer. (If you didn’t have your share, it’s probably because I drank it.)

Sunblogged (blogged wireless while laying out in the sun—what I’m doing now while watching the sun descend upon Lake Erie).

Wished constantly that wanting and needing were holding and having.

I met wintermute yesterday evening.  Arranged it right here through our blogs, we did, I saying name a day, he saying imminent evening is optimal, I saying name a time, he saying 6:30.  holy junk!  I was out running around Dreamland Cemetery when that last comment hit the blog and picked up on it at 6:25.  So I had to scurry out of Dreamland and over to the Case Western Reserve campus  which, fortunately, is only 5 minutes away.  We joined up at the Barking Spider Tavern and spent about 5 hours drinking 3 or 4 or 5 pitchers of beer.

 

Some points of discussion:

 

Barking spiders do not bite.

Campus drunks and vagrants (the regulars) may well be ex post-graduates who just couldn’t afford to move after post-graduation.

The nebulous origins of Xanga and how I hacked my way into the inner sanctum.

Is the opposite of  'wintermute'  summerloquaciousness?

Authoring not philosophy papers but merely the titles for philosophy papers for a living.

Sumptuous blog-encountered gals.

The intimacies of satellite encounter and capture by/with foreign bodies  (kind of blended into the previous discussion point).

An idea for an interactive restaurant where patrons at tables can watch their dishes cooking via tabletop PCs and kitchen webcams and can chat interactively with the gourmet chefs during the viewing.

Raising havoc with the current state lottery system (confounding the system).

Striving for extreme notoriety as an exploitable source of talk-circuit/book-circuit/speech tour income.

 

 

~awaiting the auto-timer's self countdown~

 

 

~spontaneous warrior revelry~

 

Now mute's off to Seattle!

To be free and out and about and see things (trees falling, bats caving, stars rising) that the hoarded rush of mankind is to busy too ever notice.

To close one’s eyes and hear birds singing, remembering what cummings said: “whatever they sing is better than to know.”

To strip to bare essentials and soak up sun like a hungry jungle canopy never letting a single beam to dimmed floor to hit.

To let Nature be your muse and to be rest assured you’ll be accused of cavorting in the flowers and sucking on the weed(s).

To make time your very own by gauging the precision of shadows creeping and understand that the earth is just a rock in a bright light.

To shuffle through tall grass and listen to the music of one’s steps: *swoosh* *swoosh* *swoosh*

 interjecting a cadence: *swoosh**swoosh*    *swoosh**swoosh* 

and a *swoooooosh* pulse.

To wallow in the puddled tears of storms allowing one’s shoeless feet to stomp and splash the anguished  streaming liquid into a romp of silly splishiness.

To run down a hill leading to a cliff full speed all the way to the cliff edge and then simply stop.

To pound the Earth with your fists, telling Mother Nature: “I don’t like earthquakes, I don’t like earthquakes. Enough.” , knowing that for every action there a commensurate reaction.

To build no pyramids in a desert like so many Egyptian slaves yet to drink their very same sustenance—beer—while leaning against a tombstone obelisk enduring a vision of sacredly spinning for near-eternity on a rock under a bright light.

Stuff

 

 

If people had to shovel a pile of dirt equal to the weight of all the ‘stuff’ they own from Position A to Position B five feet away everyday, either that would:

 

1) strongly discourage conspicuous consumption (needless and wasteful ownership) by having people dispensing of a lot of unused ‘stuff’,

 

2) immensely strengthen a lot of people’s upper bodies and spur them to become expertly fast 'stuff' shovelers, or

 

3) induce people to replace their massively abundant ‘stuff’ with equally useless but lightweight, miniature stuff.

*pic credit: Sally French