This morning, I took the tags off of the “Old Nole,” my 1990 Honda Accord EX. I’ve owned it for four years and driven it many, many places. It’s kind of sad to see it go. Cars become a part of you (if you’re lucky, they do so only figuratively). It’s been a super car, though. I’ll miss all of its quirks as much as its excellent service.

The Old Nole is going to a good home, though: tomorrow, my brother becomes the third Turner to drive it. I expect he’ll enjoy it at least as long as I did. Possibly longer. She’s still got a lot of life left in her.

The new ride is a 2001 Honda CR-V. I’m still getting used to the idea of driving an SUV. Its nice to drive a newer car, but bigger isn’t necessarily the direction I wanted to go. Of course, once I see how many computers I can stuff in the back before next month’s TriLUG meeting, I’ll probably fall head over heels for it. Or when I see how it drives in snow. For now, though, we’re still feeling each other out.

It was a busy weekend, but fun, as is typical. I brought Chinese home for dinner Friday to greet my returning family, back from a week in Virginia. Got good Daddy Time in before the kids’ bedtime. Hallie REALLY missed her Daddy, judging by the way she wouldn’t let me out of arm’s reach all evening. Her usual bedtime of 30 minutes or so stretched out past 90 minutes, as Hallie would get weepy every time I made a move to exit her bedroom. “I don’t want you to ever leave!” she kept repeating through sobs. She was obviously tired, but in no mood to be reasoned with.

Finally, I got a clever idea to hand her off to Mommy. When Kelly returned after two minutes, I was flabbergasted. “How did you do that?” I asked in amazement.

“I just told her that I wasn’t leaving,” she answered.”She was going to bed.” Kelly obviously has a better handle on the three-year-old mind than I do. She ought to: we’ve been married for six years.

I spent Saturday morning working with my Dad on our lawns. We rented an aerator in preparation for fall seeding. In a little over two hours, we had hauled that thing across both our yards, poking nice holes in the turf. It was hard work, though not as hard as I expected. We saved lots of money by doing it ourselves, too.

Kelly left to go to a workday at Hallie’s new preschool, the Children’s House of Raleigh. I spent most of the morning after the aerating entertaining the kids (snacks work wonders). Once Kelly returned and naptimes were initiated, I raced out of the house to drive to Virginia for my buddy Wade‘s 30th birthday surprise party. Though I didn’t make it for the surprise, it was a surprise for him to see me there.

As Wade was opening gifts, he noted how everyone standing around him made him feel like he should be laid out in a casket. Not missing a beat, his father said “well, see, that’s the other surprise…” I can see where Wade gets it. Two hours in a room full of genuine comedians made the drive worth it.

I cooked a nice pancake breakfast with the help of Hallie, our Noisy Chef. Then we snuck out for a quick walk to the playground of Durant Nature Park. Hallie and Travis swung in the swings, ran around (well, as much as Travis can run around) the playground, and had fun laughing with the other kids.

After lunch and naptime, I attempted to cut the grass. The 20-year-old Honda mower balked at starting, possibly due to a clogged carbureator. After many attempts at starting (my right arm is twice the size of my left now), I finally got it running.

A nice dinner followed. More play with the neighborhood kids, and then a smooth bedtime. A nice way to wrap up the weekend.

I read with amazement the situation now facing the Battleship North Carolina, the World War II battleship-turned-museum moored in Wilmington. It seems the commission keeping the battleship afloat is looking to offer overnight camping on the ship to civic groups. State officials are calling for the ship to be heavily modified, adding accessiblity and safety features before it can happen. The ship fought in every major Pacific battle of World War II and now its greatest enemy are modern building codes. In bureaucrat-speak, they call it “a building whose shape (and coloring) resembles a ship.”

Uh, yeah. It resembles a ship, because it is a ship, dumbass! Do you think the Japanese lookouts, when they saw it, said “Captain, I see a building whose shape (and coloring) resembles a ship off the port bow?” I think not.

Now, I’m sympathetic to those with disabilities, and I applaud the role today’s building codes play in keeping the public safe, but this is a friggin’ battleship, people! It was designed to kill people! It’s inherently dangerous! You can easily crack your skull on the hatches. The ladders (stairs for your landlubbers) can make you dizzy, they’re so steep. There are pipes everywhere, rivets poking out of bulkheads, open hatches in the floor. Probably asbestos everywhere, too.

It’s a warship. It’s not the Holiday Inn. It was designed to do battle, not comfort. I hope the folks applying the codes and regulations can come to their senses and that they’re dealing with a ship, not a “building which resembles a ship.” Anyone berthing onboard ought to be sharp enough to notice the difference.

When it comes to damaging a battleship, enemy torpedoes can’t hold a candle to modern building codes.

The family and I spent some time in the swimming pool a few weeks ago. I brought my dive masks along and had some fun popping up right in front of the kids. Most divers use masks to see underwater. Being a contact lens wearer, I have another reason to wear a mask.

As I adjusted and readjusted my clumsy mask, I started pondering what purpose it serves. It provides an air pocket with which to bend the light rays back into a form which makes sense to my eyes. Yet, light does travel through water. Fairly well, sometimes. Why is the air needed?

Why do our perfectly-good eyes become useless underwater? Is it because water as the medium is thicker and scatters the rays? To what extent does the pressure on the eyeball contribute? Do light rays travel in a straight line through water? If not, why does putting on a mask line them up again?

Could contact lenses be designed which could make one’s eyes more effective underwater? Such an invention could revolutionize diving! No longer would a diver’s vision be limited to the cramped confines of a leaky mask. The underwater world would explode with color and sharpness! It would bring people much, much closer to the world of the sea.

It’s a half-baked idea, of course. I admit I haven’t spent much time going over the details. I probably sound pretty dumb to those reading this. But the idea is intriguing enough for me to study it further.

Y’all fire away.

I’ve been invited by Jeff Pulver to attend the VON tradeshow in Boston next month. As an influential VoIP blogger, I hope to provide insights that only the thirteen readers of MT.Net are accustomed to getting.

I’m still making my travel plans, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to cover this event. Stay tuned for more details.

I just submitted Weave’s nessus findings to Slashdot. Wait for server meltdown in 3…2….1.

Hey, while y’all are here, sign up for Blogbeat and get free tracking information about your weblog visitors!

[Update]: Looks like Slashdot rejected my submission. Too inflammatory, I suppose. Their loss. I’ll find another, more respectable news outlet to pick up this story.

In the open-source community, there is strong camraderie between developers. Developers code for the love of coding and for reputation, rather than for profit. This results in some innovative, dynamic projects, like the Linux OS, the Apache web server, the Firefox web browser, and the OpenNMS network management suite, among many, many others.

Commercial companies take advantage of this innovation to build equally innovative products. Linksys‘s WRT54G routers and the Tivo DVR use Linux. These companies can do so as long as they honor the GPL license, which gives one the right to do whatever one wants with the source code as long as any changes get released back into the community. This encourages collaboration, which in turn lends itself to some amazing tools as hackers can modify any project to suit their needs. Indeed, Linksys and Tivo all but encourage their users to hack their products. Often, their users’ cool ideas wind up in a future version of the mainstream product.

On rare occasions, a project will grow to the point where a contributor becomes greedy. Parts of the project become proprietary. The company begins to benefit from the work of others without sharing anything in return. Such is the case with the world-class network security tool, Nessus and its primary sponsor, Tenable Security.

My friend Brian Weaver works in the security industry and uncovered some dirty tricks in Tenable’s release of Nessus source code, tricks clearly designed to sabotage the GPL versions of Nessus. Why would they do that? Because they sell a commercial version which now competes with the free version.

It appears that Tenable is violating the spirit, if not the letter of the GPL agreement. And the proof is right in the source code the GPL obligates Tenable to release.

That demonstrates another wonderful aspect of open source: accountability. Dirty tricks have nowhere to hide. With the work of Weave and other Nessus contributors, these actions will not go unnoticed. In fact, companies pulling stunts like this have been known to have their project’s open source developers take control of the GPL project. The activity continues around the free version, leaving the commercial version to whither and die. See SSH and OpenSSH for examples.

In short, everyone is expected to play nice in the open source world because reputation is everything. Cross the line into evilness, as Tenable seems to have done, and the community will ostracise you. It will be interesting to watch the repercussions of this one.

Last evening, I sat down at the piano. For the first time in many years, I attempted to read music. My fingers were rusty, but after a few clumsy songs it began to come back to me. It was fun, though I am glad there was no audience!

This morning, a different type of keyboard was on my mind. I read with sadness about the death of Bob Moog this week. His synthesizers spawned the birth of electronic music. He was the Les Paul of keyboards. Much has been written about him and his influence on music. As a kid, I remember my dad always pointing out the Moog synthesizers in whatever song we were listening to.

I’m wishing now that I had time to go to Moog’s memorial service today in Asheville. The organ music should be out of this world.

The office where I work has never been a thing of beauty. There was the time we had a freak rainstorm and the place nearly flooded. Then there was that spring where the floors were crawling with millipedes. The power goes out probably once a month, which became only a minor irritation after the generator was installed. Its freezing in the summertime and cold in the wintertime. And a few weeks back, a rattle in the plumbing shook the office with bone-jarring noise.

The latest addition to the office is … mold. I’ve been reading up on mold, using sites like North Carolina, the CDC, and the EPA. In any office or home, mold is present. Its a natural part of the environment. Only when it begins to sprout legs and crawl across the ceiling does it become a problem. And its been a problem for a while now. A few ceiling tiles have always been a bit moldy. Most people who work in this office have had (or are having) headaches and sinus problems. This winter, I spent a few weeks on antibiotics to chase the moldy buggers out of my head. Sneezes happen frequently. Eyes burn. It’s nasty.

Lately its gotten worse. The rattling pipes have shaken some stuff loose in the ceiling space, which has left a growing line of water stains on the ceiling tiles. There is a large growth of mold on four or five tiles. My fix-it nature drives me to take a look up there, but I don’t dare without a respirator and gloves. Or maybe a full-body suit.

The office landlord has been notified and has promised to look into it. I hope he gets someone out here before we all get carted off by this alien fungus. Only time will tell if we survive or if we …. ARRRRGGH fjkl.;23462k,obmj