Will I lose my dignity? Will you still care?

Woke up early, which was kind of refreshing, this post is going up around 2:30am though, so I’ll be giving Konstantinos the key to the Technology Center since I may oversleep, hopefully that doesn’t happen though.

Let’s see, what all went on today, there were a couple different conference calls, one with Michael, in Sweden(? I’m not sure where he was, but it was somewhere in Europe) this one had video, he has been working hard on getting u-boot into the shape that it needs to be to upstream all the EfikaMX bits. I haven’t had a chance to look at it, not that I know much about boot loaders.

One with Sandy, at Freescale (no video in this one, unfortunately), in Taiwan, so it was nice to meet her as well, although she had a cold, so hopefully she feels better. Definitely look forward to working with her, if I decide to do something.

Miscellaneous hacking occurred, as always, and great conversations as well. Started getting the machines ready to build a buildd cluster for Konstantinos, need to finish getting that set up tomorrow.

Had an amazing dinner at (I think it was called) Thrumunz. Their power was out however, which oddly, only added to the atmosphere. Even though I had steak yesterday, I had another one today, with a baked potato, and a slice of their Key Lime Pie for desert. Very delicious.

I also met someone else today, I unfortunately can’t remember the spelling of his name, Mauricio (maybe?) but he is the president of Genesi Americas. While we didn’t get to talk for a long time, we will be getting together again in the morning. And it is definitely nice to meet more people on the team!

And in unrelated news to the hackathon, the Detroit Lions won their game. Even more incredible was the fact that they scored 23 points in the 4th quarter. Of course, I was happy.

I have 2 patches for Neko from Saleem Abdulrasool, while they (probably) don’t fix anything, they do cause some oops to… not. I need to mail those off after I finish this blog post. I’m trying to think of anything else that I’m missing…

Ohhhh, actually yes, the teaser post from earlier…

smarttablet

Okay, it is 3am now, didn’t hit my target goal of 2:30. Off to mail the patches, and then to bed!

Woke up around 9:15am, Bill called due to me having the key to the office (sorry!) This has to be the earliest I’ve been up on Saturday in I don’t know how long, unless you count the days where I’ve gone to bed shortly after this time

I met Raquel and Dave, Raquel had read my blog about my flight in, and they bought Mountain Dew AND some shaving cream for me. Completely unexpected, but very awesome. Thanks!

We had breakfast at an amazing Bistro, I had scrambled eggs on a croissant, very delicious. Conversations about UDS and how well things went with handing out the EfikaMX at UDS. Loved hearing about people’s reactions.

Also, I discovered that although I’ve been pronouncing it ef i ca, it is prounounced Ef EE ca.

We came back to the work room, Bill took a picture of us hacking away, picture is up on their blog. I’m on the left in the front of the picture, playing with my new EfikaMX smartbook. (Yes, I’m still in love with it. Heavy usage and still got around 7 hours of battery life; with a 3 cell battery!)

For dinner we went to Boardwalk 50/50, I had the Flat Iron Steak, medium rare, with mashed potatoes, green beans, and Texas toast. Dr. Pepper to drink with it. Lots of conversation, and I learned a bit more about everyone. I also tried to explain baseball to Konstantinos. Never realized how involved the game is until you try to explain it to someone who has never seen it before, aside from in the movies.

More work ahead tomorrow, looking forward to it, but for now, I think I shall head to bed!

So I am currently sitting in the Tulsa International Airport waiting on my flight to Houston before heading off to San Antonio.

I’m excited to be going and finally putting some faces to the names in the irc channel.

I’ll be posting more as the week progresses and wanted to thank Genesi for hosting this.

The Efika MX TO3 arrived the other week and though I haven’t had any time to work with it yet I should hopefully have some this week as the firewall from hell is finally done building.

As some people know, I do play World of Warcraft. Recently there have been quite a few people in our guild who have been “hacked” – as in, someone got a hold of their password some way or another, and was able to take over their account, and do naughty things like steal items from the guild’s bank, sell all of that character’s gear, and so forth. All well and good, Blizzard, in an attempt to allow people to be a tad bit more secure, offered up the ability to use a free authenticator, which runs on your mobile phone (iPhone, Android, and a few other misc phones as well) or you can get a hardware key, for 6.99 or 6.50 USD – somewhere there abouts.

Our guild was recently discussing them, as someone in the guild had this happen to them for a second time… And in going back and forth between myself and someone who thinks that Blizzard is making a mint off these things (hint: they don’t) Someone else replied with the following in the thread, and I thought I would share it with a much more general audience.

PERSONALLY

I think the only real, permanent, and logical way for blizzard to fix this ‘hacker’ problem is by raising up a massive army of Undead Nazi Vampires, lead by a shirtless Gerard Butler to lead an invasion into China and Russia, overthrowing the local governments on a crusade to flush the hackers out from where they live! Blizzard would then consolidate power and turn the two largest countries in Asia into worlds first corporately owned country. With this display of power, combined with their new military might, no one would dare try to hack a blizzard game ever again!

This plan has drawbacks however, as legions of undead vampires (who happen to be nazi’s) would soon grow restless, and crave human flesh. After blizzard loses its hold on such creatures, the Vampires would launch a full scale assault on Israel, instantly springing the United States, the UN, and NATO to its aid. By this time the other middle eastern countries, now coupled with their new found undead allies, would join in the onslaught and unite against the rest of the world. World War III would break out, the devestation would be horrible, and the world would cower before the unstoppable Undead Vampire Nazi’s.

That is…until the Dave creates a super virus that will specifically target and destroy the ‘undead’ plague; Effectively crippling the Undead army, and their lust for flesh. With the them out of the way, the path would be clear for the Allied nations to finish the war in a quick manner. Millions would have died in the first global war in nearly 70 years.

The world will want someone to blame. At the UN trial, all the execs from Blizzard will be put on trial, and tried for war crimes for creating the Undead Nazi Vampires in the first place. All of their property will be seized, and all the WOW servers will be shut down, effectively ending the happiness of me, and millions of others around the world.

…..

So unless you want THAT to happen…Get an Authenticator. Its not a perfect solution, but its better than undead Nazi Vampires.

Well done.