Odysseus

1:43am: Vampire Day
Hello every one, and Happy Vampire day to you!

Vampire Day is the time of year we (meaning, basically, me) gather togeather to celebrate vampires-- in particular my imaginary vampire Mister Easter. Any way, here are some fun facts about Mister Easter:

• Easter's favorite food is Elf, blood type 0 negative.


• Easter is 532 years young.


• Once, Mister Easter had a sidekick named Percy Teatherspoon, who was a seven foot tall axe wielding maniac. Every vampire needs a good axe wielding maniac to help disperse angry torch bearing mobs, wash windows, and sort mail.


• Like all vampires, Mister Easter becomes very cross if his mail is not properly sorted. "Properly sorted" means it is filed into atleast three catagories: fan mail, junk mail, and 'letters from people I should eat'.


• Sometimes, on his Birthday, Mister Easter has the local children over to his castle for an egg hunt. Who ever finds the most eggs is deamend a subversive, and summarily stoned to death by the other children.


• Other vampires when faced with a dying mortal whom they particularly like might offer him immortality. Mister Easter would offer you a delicious apple pie.

Okay, that is all the easter facts for now! For next week (or for next whenever the devil I update), send me your questions and I'll have Easter answer them. Okay? Good then. Probably best you don't include a return address, least he file you in catagory number three.

9:38pm: Drunk Leprechaun
Well, here is yet another updated. Are you bothered by the fact that not only do I shift voices between entries, but also between reality, utter fantasy and bizarre blends of both? Well, I suppose I just don't have a consistent interest in writting about the reality of my life. I already experience my own life on quite a consistent basis (I usually only take the week ends off), and although I find it rather pleasent, I have little desire to relive it in a journal. However, to satisfy those who hunger for some factual information about my life, we have the following paragraph:

In the last two months or so I've lived in three different states. New York, Texas, and New Hampshire. Why? I don't even really know. I think I am going back to New York soon, although not perhaps in the manner I would most desire... I am once again returning to Ithaca for more temporary employment (atleast, it seems likely). Now then, onto the true topic of this entry: lepruchans.

Today, I noticed a bar downtown called "Tipsy McStagger's" with a picture of a drunken Leprechaun who is, presumably, named Tipsy McStagger. This almost made me want to go in and have a drink, but then I relized what I wanted wasn't to drink alchohol myself. No, I wanted to give alchohol to a leprechaun, or preferably many leprechauns. What could be more fun than a room full of innebriated green-clad Irish faries, staggering around with bad-accents, stealing each others pots of gold, and peeing rainbows in the corner? Nothing. Well, all right, we could light some of them on fire, that would be more fun. But its probably homocide or a atleast a fire code violation.

So then, why don't we see more of these jolly green midgets drunkly cavorting in our streets? The reasons are primarily economic. It's a said fact that most leprechaun's simply cannot afford to become drunk. For one, most leprechauns are poor immigrants from other countries such as France. For another, most can only speak English enough english to warn people away from their breakfast cereal, which makes finding work difficult (although a few have found sucess in advertising). Combine this with there extream alcochol tolerance (it takes approximatly 63 gallons of pure grain alcohol to get the typical leprechaun tipsy, according to the Bureau of Drunken Imbecils and Made-up Statistics) and it is easy to see the problem.

To solve this problem, I purpose that we create a government subsidy-- The Boozing up the Wee Folk Fund (or the ButWee Fund for short). The ButWee fund, as I envision it, would be used to provide cheap alcohol to these magical creatures, provided that there drunken antics are judged to be amusing by the fund's governing council (no money for those who drink alone!). As this is an election year, the time to bring this into political discussion is now! Tell your congressmen that you support ButWee!

3:55am: Royal Correspondance


From: Odysseus, Grand Admiral of the Ithaca Royal Army
To: Odysseus, King of Ithaca
Subject: Status Report

Your Majesty,

I am pleased to report that The Kingdom of Ithaca is largely intact, despite some minor flooding in the lowlands. There was a breif incursion by roughly 6,000 Corticans, but this force consisted largely of drunkards who were repelled by the local drunkards. The royal treasury was left untouched in a secure location in Dryden, however, this location is untennable as a permenant home-- new accomodations are urgently needed.

Additionally, I must state that a royal carriage is urgently needed. Transportation is a must for any modern monarchy, Sire. The army cannot operate efficiently if it is unable to move. To this end, I have been seeking additional source of funds within the kingdom. I have made some progress in this way, having interviewed several potentials. However, nothing is certain as yet. I will be sure to inform you as soon as a stable source of funds materializes.

Thus concludes my status summary. I look forward to delivering my full report in person.


Yours Truly,
Odysseus, Grand Admiral of the Ithaca Royal Army

8:39am: Eros is mine, damnit!
Well, apparently the fellow behind this website is claiming ownership of Eros. Well, technically, owner ship of any portion of a celestial body other than Earth is banned by UN treaty. However, if any one can claim ownership of Eros, I would just like to sasy this:

EROS IS MINE!

I killed that irascible space potato all by my lonesome. It's corpse is rightfully mine. Hell, its got my knuckle prints all over it! It's my space potato, damnit!

4:58pm: Eros
So, I am Ithaca this week. You may have guessed by my name (Odysseus), that I am infact the king of this place. As it happens, I am also the entirity of the Ithaca Royal Army. However, that is besides the point.

I am in Ithaca this week working on a contract to write a GUI for some ephemeris generating stuff (Hey, I have to fill the royal treasury some how) and in the lab in which I am working, there is a very accurate model of the asteroid Eros. In examing the model, I found that some of the craters perfectly match the imprints of my knuckles.

Based on this, I have a theory on the formation of Eros. Clearly, at one time I was some sort of space giant, and Eros was an evil space potato. Eros attempted to invade my solar system and infect it with excessive ammounts of starch. So, I whacked it good, and today the evil space potato's corpse floats around our solar system. I'm going to have to see if I can get this put in some scientific journals.

2:17pm: Blah
I have not update this thing in a while. Existance here is slowly sapping me of life. Nothing has occured, therefore there is little to write about such things.

I could make something up I suppose, but I don't particularly feel up to it. There will be something soon, I'm not dead yet.

6:13am: Interview With Calan, God of Tapioca Pudding
After yesterday's account of Fanwi's encounter with Antalan, some have asked "What does the Tapioca Pudding God Get?". Indeed, what does the Tapioca Pudding God get?
To help answer these questions, I've invited Calan, the God of Tapioca Pudding here today.

Odysseus: Calan, I'd like to thank you for being here today.

Calan: Thank you, its a pleasure. Honestly, I don't get out that much any way.

Odysseus: All right, to begin the interview, I'd like to point out that you appear to look like a gigantic, vaguely animated lump of Tapioca pudding, which talks by from no discernible mouth by kind of... burping. Are you in fact a divinely vivified puddle of tapioca pudding?

Calan: Hmmph. Well, I don't go criticizing the fact that your a mostly bald, water-filled meat sack, supported by an endoskelton, which speaks by squeezing air through your disgustingly wet orifices, now do I?

Ody: All right, I wasn't trying to be critical, I was just curious. But, on to the thing our readers really want to know: What is your preferred form of offering?

Calan: Blood! BLOOD FOR THE TAPIOCA GOD!!

Ody: Uggg, there's no need to get so excited... I'm covered in tapioca...

Calan: Oh, sorry about that. Don't worry, my bio-mass doesn't stain.

Ody: All right, so, since you like blood so much, and Atalan the Blood God likes tapioca so much, why don't you two work together?

Calan: I'm against same sex unions, Odysseus.

Ody: Um... What does that have to do with--

Calan: Leave me alone! Just because we did a little experimentation in college. It doesn't mean anything!

Ody: Uh...

Calan: Homosexuality is a sin, you know.

Ody: Well, if you say so. Now, about you and Atalan--

Calan: DON'T JUDGE ME!!!

Ody: Did you and Atalan have some kind of relation-- Oh my god!


Interviewers Note:
At this point, Calan began to boil, forcing me to flee least I be buried by a tsunami of anthropomorphic, scalding, closet-homosexual tapioca pudding.

4:22am: Story Time
Fanwi stood before the the throne of Antalan, the Blood God.

"Oh Might Antalan! I have brought an offering for you!" cried out Fanwi. He had traveled far, knowing that those who brought a gift pleasing to the blood god would be well rewarded.

"You may place your offering upon my altar, and its worthiness may be judged." Said The Blood God. The voice of The Blood God was so deep that it sounded as if the speaker were over twenty feet tall. This could be because Antalan was, in fact, over twenty feet tall.

After hearing the God's command, Fanwi steped forward. Once before the altar, he removed from his person a small vile of blood. Now, It was not just any blood-- it was the blood of virgins. Not just any virgins mind you, no-- the vial contained a single drop of blood from the high preistesses of each of the twenty-one lands. It was not just any drop of blood from the virgin high-priestess of the twenty-one lands mind you, that would never do for the blood god. Rather, the vile contained a drop of blood from each of the virgin high preistesses of the twenty-one lands gathered with a silver pin at the stroke of midnight during the Silacian blood moon. This alone would be enough to please the blood god, thought Fanwi. And so he poured the blood over the altar.

"BLOOD!", roared the Blood God, "Foolish mortal, I'm the Bloody Blood God! My power is to produce any kind of blood at will! What the hell do I want with more blood? I desire TAPIOCA PUDDING!" and with a gesture, a torrent of O negative blood sweept Fanwi from the God's chambers. "Stupid mortals." lamented Antalan, "Blood of all things. And he thought the high priestess of Sulabi was a virgin."

1:24am: More on Electronic Voting
Okay, I was going to talk about diebold (the company making touch screen voting machines used in 38 States), but this aritcle on Salon (If you are not a subscriber, you'll have to watch some adds to get a day pas, it's well worth the 20 seconds it takes though) makes the case better than I could. Here is a lovely block quote for you:

I got a call from one of our more brilliant computer programmers -- he's got quite a few advanced degrees -- and he called me on a weekend and he said, "I want you to go to your computer." And he walked me through it just like a support tech does -- open this panel, click this, do this, do that. And as I'm doing this it was appalling how easy it was. Once you know the steps, a 10-year-old can rig an election. In fact it's so easy that one of our activists, Jim March in California, put together a "rig-a-vote" CD

1:45am: Electronic Voting
Okay, I know I said I was going to talk about 802.11b networks, but I've changed my mind. Instead I am going to talk about electronic voting. Done properly, electronic voting could result in extremely efficient, accurate elections. However, done wrong (as it is being done now) it can create an election that will make Florida look immaculate.

The first problem with electronic voting as it is conducted now is that the machines are essentially black-boxes-- no one can look inside to see how they work. The reason for this is that the software running on the machines is (like most commercial software) kept proprietary by the companies producing the machines. With the code kept secret, no one can look and see what the machines are really doing. There is nothing except a companies good word to guarantee the machine performs as specified. This leads to three disturbing possibilities: The first is that the software contains errors which could influence election results. The second is that the an electronic voting company could deliberatly introduce 'errors' to influence results. And the third, and possibly most disturbing, is that the software may be lacking in security such that third parties can break in, subvert the software, and modify the results as they desire. With out access to the source code, there is no way to audit the correctness and security of these electronic voting machines.

The companies producing the machines argue that making their code public would also make public any security flaws it contains. However, this argument does not hold up to scrutiny. Microsoft (as do most commercial software comapnies) keeps all of its code proprietary. You would think that this would leave them impregnable to security vulnerabilities. However, with the huge number of well publicized security flaws found in there products, this is obviously not the case. A sufficiently interested and skilled individual will be able to find security flaws in a product, with our with out source code, and I suspect that the electoral system will generate "Sufficient Interest". At least if the code is publicly available, it can be verified that security mechanisms are in place, that flaws which are discovered become fixed, and that errors are kept to a minimum. (Legon)

So, that is the current state of electronic voting. Ballots are cast into magic black boxes that we can only assume correctly tabulate the results-- we aren't allowed to actually look and see. If only this were the worst of it. Not only is there the possibility of huge tampering issues with electronic voting, but atleast one company (DieBold) has been shown to have all the security of a saftey-pin on its products.

I will be adding to this entry tomorrow, when I will discuss DieBold. For now, I am tired and must rest. Below is a link where you can learn more, and also note that I have sited my sources.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/ Black Box Voting is a site dedicated to the covering the problems with current implementations of electronic voting.


Legon, Jeordan. "Electronic elections: What about security?". CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/11/05/touch.screen/index.html

6:46pm: I intend to try and update this atleast once a week, but I can't think of much to say at the moment.

What is up in my life? Well, I am unemployed, and I am stuck in a place I hate. Living in this bleak pit of dispair hasn't really gotten to me yet, but I need to escape it soon...

I seem to have nothing more to say about such topics... I think I will post something about 802.11b (aka. WiFi, aka Wireless Ethernet) latter.

1:25am: Token Sucking
I just got back from a trip to NYC. One of the things I noted was that they had compleatly phased out metro tokens. It used to be that you had a little coin-ish piece of metal you placed in the subway turnstyles in order to get them to allow you passage. Now, instead, you get a little metro-card which has a finite amount of magic subway juice (not a technical term), and a little of the MSJ is consumed each time you pass it through the card readers on the turn styles.

In talking with one of the magic-subway-juice vendors, I learned that one of the reasons for this change was to stop the practice of token sucking. Allow me to explain this practice: One shoves some gum, or a wad of papper, or some other obstruction into the token slot. Then, one lurks in the shadows, awaiting another who attempts to use a token. Their token becomes stuck in the obstructed slot, and they swear a bit, or strike the turnstyle, or maybe do some sort of angry jig, but ultimatly, they take their leave and their token remains stuck. Then the token sucker springs forth from concealment and places his lips on the turnstyle (over the token slot) and sucks, inhaling the token and no doubt some of the most foul, encrusted matter in the free world. The tokens only cost two dollars! Who would stick their lips on a New York City subway turnstyle for two dollars? I would rather french kiss some of our nation's most vile hobos (I've met some of them). Additionally, the hobos could offer much better pay.