g m g D e s i g n . c o m

My PGP key was about to expire (ok, in 4 months). My new public key can be downloaded here or from the corporate PGP keyserver (that link works as of today).

Key ID is:  0xBDC999B5

I saw my first real-life wolf-dog hybrid today. The story is as follows. As a German Shepherd owner, I have a soft spot for GSDs. I saw a lady walking her GSD and struck up a conversation. I asked her if her dog was friendly and if she’d mind if I pet him (note: it’s always a good idea to check w/ the owner before petting or approaching a dog you don’t know). She said yes, so I pet the dog.

Then I found out that the dog was a 2nd generation wolf-dog hybrid. It was the grand-son of the product of mating a German Shepherd with a wolf. It looked almost identical to a (text book) German Shepherd, but had more sable and longer legs. I asked the owner if her dog had longer teeth than average and she said yes (wolves have longer teeth than dogs).

The dog was friendly, though. I never would have guessed it was a hybrid, much less a 2nd gen hybrid. That’s as close to wolf as I’m willing to pet given the relative unpredictability of hybrids. Interesting experience.

Recovering from having 4 wisdom teeth removed yesterday. Everyone’s experience is no doubt different. The first day (after the anesthesia wore off) was very tough. The next day (today) has been substantially better. The painkillers are useful for the dual purpose of reducing pain and, as a bonus, helping me sleep (to expedite healing).

Toughest part: not being able to eat. That part is very, very hard. I’m stuck with beef and chicken broth (not soup, just the broth), as well as protein shakes. I haven’t even moved on to soft foods like mashed potatoes or apple sauce yet (playing it extra safe). Drinking my meals gets old fast.

Haven’t posted in a while due to being busy w/ stuff. Tomorrow, we’re getting bamboo flooring installed in place of the carpet. We literally cleared out the living room this evening. It’s been a long, long evening.

I was thinking the other day… many colleges/universities mandate certain courses to get a degree. The argument is often that such courses provide for a well-balanced education. They often include a couple/few semesters of English (writing & literature), history, art, theater, and so forth. Certainly, such courses are useful, and I’m not (necessarily) arguing against the mandatory nature of such courses. But what is curiously absent from that list is science & engineering. Why not mandate a course or two in computer science or computer engineering. I mean, wouldn’t that be consistent with the “well-balanced education” idea? And, conveniently, wouldn’t that lead to greater overall competitiveness after college of this country’s (or any country’s) students?

So why not? Colleges require liberal arts (“humanities”) courses that, for many people, are neither “enriching” nor are they economically useful (again, for most). Why not mandate courses that are (generally considered) economically beneficial and also mind-expanding?

Got back yesterday (Thursday) from my honeymoon. I’m officially married to Amanda as of Saturday, Sept 1! Some pics of the whole event will follow as soon as they come in.

I think about security a lot. I backup my data on removable drives, and those drives are not only stored in a safe, but are fully encrypted. Even the file system structure is encrypted, meaning that if you connect the removable drive via USB, Windows(R) thinks the device is unformatted. I use TrueCrypt to “mount” the device; a new drive letter is mounted and I can access the files/folders on the drive as I normally would. However, if a thief stole the device, that person would 1) not even know anything was on the device, since it would appear as unformatted, and 2) would have a helluva time getting anything useful from it.

On my desktop, I make liberal use of EFS (encrypting file system). EFS is similar to TrueCrypt in that it provides transparent, on-the-fly encryption, but differs in that it is file-system based (metadata is not encrypted, but file contents are). EFS is functionally different in other ways too, but logically accomplishes the purpose of securing data-at-rest in the event that the storage device is physically removed/stolen.

I take a lot of other steps to ensure the security of my data. But this blog entry concerns data at rest. Data is at rest when a laptop is stolen. Data is at rest when a company loses its backup tapes. The computer is not on and the storage device is not plugged in. But when it is, is the data safe? If files are encrypted, is it a certainty that file fragments don’t exist in unencrypted form on the file system somewhere? What about the pagefile? Does it contain plaintext fragments of important, confidential information?

Vista Business (and higher) include the ability to use EFS to encrypt the pagefile, in addition to non-system files in the file system. The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista include a s/w or h/w-based FDE (full disk encryption) implementation (h/w-based when using the TPM, s/w-based otherwise). That can secure the contents of the entire drive (volume), potentially mitigating the “file fragments” concern.

Home users may not be as concerned as government & businesses are (or should be) about security, but for those of us who don’t want our personal and financial docs leaked on IRC, full disk encryption and other easy-to-use solutions may be just what the doctor ordered.