Auditioning for A Christmas Carol

Number 38

Well, that isn’t something that I do every day.

I just got back from auditioning for a part in the ensemble for Ira David Wood’s A Christmas Carol. I was number 38 of 39 people auditioning tonight and it felt like a whirlwind, and not just because the staff was trying to wrap up an undoubtedly long day.

I had just arrived at the theatre after visiting the Titanic exhibit at the Museum of Natural Sciences with my family. We spent an hour wandering through the exhibit, learning about the various passengers who would soon die horrible, drowning deaths. In hindsight it wasn’t the, uh, best way to put me in a jovial mood to sing my upbeat song.

I decided to audition a few weeks ago when a friend forwarded me an email with the details. Yes, I’m crazy busy: holding down a job with ever-increasing demands, chairing two city boards, occasionally helping out with campaigns, and trying to save some time for the wife and kids. It is nuts that I even considered it.

But you know what? Acting is something that’s been on my bucket list for many, many years. My life may be busy now, but I intend for it to one day get a lot busier. If I don’t take the opportunities that come my way, I might not ever get a chance again. You’re damn straight I was going to show up.
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Cheesy sports bar anniversary

Kelly mentioned that yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the high school reunion at which we met. I pointed out that we actually met for the first time at the icebreaker the night before the reunion, at a sports bar called Champs in Reston, VA. Thus, Wednesday was the anniversary of our meeting.

I’m sure I blogged about this before, but Kelly and I chatted only briefly that fateful night before she bailed on me to go to another party. So Wednesday was also the anniversary of Kelly dumping me at a cheesy sports bar!

Another unknowing Romney Facebook fan


A Facebook user posted this account in Facebook’s forums earlier today:

I was scrolling my feed two nights ago when I saw that my husband ‘liked’ Mitt Romney’s page. I whacked him in the head. He said, “I didn’t do that.” So we went immediately to his account and ‘unliked’ the page.

How can they do this? I know why they are doing it, though: media pundits are talking about social media ratings and how “everybody” is talking about Romney! No doubt they want lots & lots & lots of “likes” to his page, and it ain’t happening on its own.

See? He’s all about “APPEARANCES” and nothing about SUBSTANCE! These phony “likes” will not equate into votes, Mittens. Don’t count on it.

Apparently the Romney Facebook hacking continues.

Car thieves targeting transponder keys

Here’s a video from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) showing (in general terms) how thieves are stealing cars protected with high-tech transponder keys.

Incidentally, the NICB is one of the agencies investigating last week’s discovery of a “chop shop” in Durham. Many of these high-end vehicles get shipped to Middle Eastern countries, which makes me wonder if this is what the man arrested in the Durham case, Samer Othman, had in mind.

Stolen Toyota Highlanders

One couple in Oakwood awoke this morning to find their 2012 Toyota Highlander had been stolen. The owners had both sets of keys so they were mystified as to how this happened. Fortunately for them, their vehicle was recovered this morning, a few miles away. The police said the engine was still hot so they might have just missed the thief.

It seems Toyota Highlanders are popular targets for car thieves. A half-dozen disappeared from one Montreal neighborhood one night in 2009, prompting authorities to wonder if Toyota’s keyless security system had been compromised:

Authorities say they are still trying to determine if an organized crime ring is behind the thefts. They are also trying to determine if the thieves used “proximity keys” to steal electric codes from lock systems — a new technology available on the Toyota Highlander.

The key can capture lock, entry and start codes by monitoring the radio waves given off when the owner approaches the vehicle to leave home.

“They didn’t get the keys,” said Michael Dougherty, a Leaside resident who had his car stolen Wednesday. “Police said apparently thieves can use a laptop computer to disable the chip in the key and the entrance (lock) somehow.”

Another possibility is that the cars are being stolen through social engineering, Thieves could be taking the target vehicle’s VIN to a Toyota dealer and convincing them to make a duplicate key. If so, that should leave a paper trail and possibly a shot of the thief on the dealer’s surveillance cameras:

One explanation for the rash of thefts is that criminals have been able to get their hands on duplicate keys, said Dubin.

In the past, crooks have been able to convince dealerships they are owners who have lost theirs. Another explanation, he said, is that the Highlanders were simply towed away, which has also been a problem.

Having six Highlanders in one neighborhood stolen in one night seems to point to a vulnerability in the keyless system, rather than stealing them with duplicate keys. It’s unlikely a thief would reappear six times at a dealer to get duplicate keys made.

At any rate, if I had a Toyota Highlander I would be sleeping with one eye open!

Using Prey for laptop tracking: smart or foolish?

This N&O article yesterday got my attention. One of my neighbors installed the open-source Prey tracking software, after which his new MacBook Air laptop was stolen. He used the software to successfully recover his laptop:

While still on his honeymoon, Moss got an e-mail from his landlord. It appeared that his house had been burglarized.

That’s when he took matters into his own hands and tracked down his stolen laptop, using his iPad from his hotel on the small island of Aruba.

Prey software, available in both Mac or PC versions, is a web service that’s free for the first three items a user registers.

The software can detect the wireless network closest to the registered device, even if the user is not signed onto that network. Prey also uses webcam technology, if available, to capture images of the device’s location.

I use open-source software every day so I thought I would look into Prey. It seemed like cheap (free!) peace of mind. Then I read one person’s quick security audit of Prey, after which he began steering people away from it:

Prey is able to parse config files over the web and it blindly accepts them with no authentication whatsoever. This means if an attacker used trivial ARP spoofing attacks on a network, a coffee-shop’s wireless for example, s/he could replace your config file with their own. Worse, what is in your config file gets eval’ed by bash with full root privileges. Simply, this means the attacker can run any code s/he wants to. Your hard drive could be deleted, or a reverse SSH session could be set up giving the attacker a command prompt as root.

Granted, his post is over a year old but it does give me pause. I’ve downloaded a copy of Prey myself and will be looking into it myself this weekend. While I’d like to be able to track my laptop if it’s ever stolen, I don’t want my laptop exposed to a giant security hole for 99.99999999% of the rest of the time.

via Raleigh man uses GPS tracker to locate man who stole his laptop – Crime/Safety – NewsObserver.com.