North Carolina’s plank roads

I was researching the new railroad that is leasing the tracks near my home and stumbled upon information on North Carolina’s first road improvement project, the plank road. It is what it sounds like, a road paved with wooden planks ranging from 8 to 30 feet wide. Plank roads were an affordable alternative to building railroads, if not as long lasting.

Below is a good summary of plank roads from RootsWeb. I’ll also reformat the text from the North Carolina Historical Commission’s 1939 story on plank roads and post it.

The Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road

Many people have noticed the historical marker for the Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road on Dickinson Avenue and wondered what it was all about. With the increased commerce and agricultural interests in North Carolina in the 1840’s, transportation became a problem. The use of plank roads in northern states had proved successful and they began to be introduced in North Carolina as the answer to its transportation difficulties.
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Egypt aflame

The Egyptian military had cracked down hard on peaceful protesters supporting ousted President Morsi. Hundreds have been killed.

It will be hard convincing Islamists that the legitimate way to power is through the ballot box.

NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government

This is an astonishing development in the U.S., a nation that, until recently, carefully restricted the power of its domestic spying agencies by forcing them to submit narrow requests for spying authority to a court, which would issue a warrant if the government showed probable cause to believe that the surveillance target was engaged in some sort of wrongdoing. At this point, it’s clear those limits are gone. The United States is now a mass surveillance state.

via NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor – Forbes.

Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald

I didn’t know about Lavabit until they pulled their own plug yesterday, but I deeply respect its owners’ refusal to play along to the NSA’s excessive and unconstitutional spying.

A Texas-based encrypted email service recently revealed to be used by Edward Snowden – Lavabit – announced yesterday it was shutting itself down in order to avoid complying with what it perceives as unjust secret US court orders to provide government access to its users’ content. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” the company’s founder, Ladar Levinson, wrote in a statement to users posted on the front page of its website. He said the US directive forced on his company “a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.” He chose the latter.

via Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

The NSA Leaks Put Our ‘Methods’ At Risk, But Bragging About Monitoring Al Qaeda Emails Doesn’t? | Techdirt

Techdirt points out the obvious: how can the entire legislative branch be crowing about detecting an imminent terrorist threat through intercepted emails and not be divulging sources and methods? Snowden pointed out that the NSA is spying on millions of innocent Americans but government leaders can tell Al Qaeda and the world that we’re reading their emails and it’s somehow okay?

Anyone else get the idea that the American public is being played for fools here?

The intercepted conversations last week between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of the global terrorist group, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, revealed one of the most serious plots against American and other Western interests since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, American intelligence officials and lawmakers have said.

So… revealing that we collect data on everyone somehow turns Snowden into a traitor, while having officials in the government tell the NY Times that we directly intercepted emails between Al Qaeda’s top leaders is somehow perfectly fine? How does that work?

via The NSA Leaks Put Our 'Methods' At Risk, But Bragging About Monitoring Al Qaeda Emails Doesn't? | Techdirt.

Hertz rips me off again

At the end of our recent vacation to Wisconsin we dropped off our Hertz rental car at the Minneapolis airport and gathered our belongings. The Hertz attendant smiled as he approached.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “Our receipt print-out takes a while. If you want you can get a receipt at the desk.”

“Ok,” I responded and let him do his inspection, thinking nothing of it. We left the city without a receipt for our Hotwire-paid car.

I should have known better. Hertz socked us with a gas bill of over $90, in spite of filling up the car only minutes before.

This is the second time Hertz has ripped me off by charging me for a phantom tank of gas. Hertz is a lying, dishonest company and I won’t be giving them any of my money ever again.

Hearing as I get older

The other day I was telling Kelly how I seem to have to ask Travis to repeat what he’s saying a few times. Travis always has a lot to say regardless and I don’t always listen as closely as I could as that would be akin to drinking from a firehose. Even so, it seems that more often I have had to ask him to repeat himself. Kelly responded that the issue isn’t all mine, that Travis does have a habit of mumbling at times.

I also know that my hearing isn’t what it used to be, and that thought brought me back to when I was Travis’s age. I would mumble as a kid and thought it was strange when my parents or other grownups couldn’t understand me. Now as I’m older I appreciate how much more acute a kid’s hearing is compared to an older adult. I have to say that it’s a little uncomfortable being on this side of the communicaton gap!

Creative outlets

"The Highlanders" in a May 2012 performance.

“The Highlanders” in a May 2012 performance.


Since we got back from visiting Kelly’s family in Wisconsin over the Fourth of July holiday, I’ve been feeling the need to be more creative. Part of our time there was spent by me sitting around and playing guitar with Kelly’s uncle. I only knew a handful of chords (and songs) so we didn’t play many songs. The few songs we did play was enough for me to reignite my interest in guitar.

This summer we’ve been doing more with music as a family, too. Both kids’ recitals this year had a portion where the families of the students could perform a piece. Our family performed Ashokin Farewell as “The Highlanders.” Every Sunday evening we would practice the song together, me on guitar, Kelly on flute, Hallie on violin, and Travis on piano. I came to crave this hour each week set aside to play music.
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Wake County manager to retire :: WRAL.com

David Cooke is retiring as Wake County Manager after a 17 year career there. I couldn’t help but think what Cooke might do after he retires, since I happen to know of a local opening for city manager.

Hmm … I wonder if Cooke has any plans?

Wake County Manager David Cooke announced Thursday that he plans to retire at the end of November.Cooke has worked for the county for 17 years, the last 13 as county manager."The past 13 years have been truly wonderful and gratifying," Cooke said in a statement. "I have been very fortunate to work with very capable and dedicated elected officials, smart and talented county employees and an innovative management team. Our collective efforts are what make Wake County a great place to live, work and play."

via Wake County manager to retire :: WRAL.com.

WordPress brute force hack attacks

Since this spring, the world’s WordPress sites have seen a surge of brute-force hacking attempts, where scripts running from “botnets” have been steadily trying one dictionary word after another in an attempt to take over their victim sites.

I was alarmed to discover this traffic hitting my website earlier this week and was stymied as to how to prevent it. Normally when one gets a hacking attempt, it’s a simple thing to block that site’s IP address using firewall rules. In this case, however, the attackers are using a massive array of hacked computers scattered around the world. Each hack attempt comes from a different IP address, making it impractical to block them all.

Wondering if my site would soon fall to these script kiddies, I took some time to configure some analysis tools to get a better idea of what I was facing.

I needn’t have worried. This is what these genius password attempts look like:
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