i have received quite a few links recently regarding the predicted bacon shortage of 2013. i have been advised to start stocking up, which is always good advice. i even have been accused of being part of the problem, about which i have no beef (pun intended).
some on twitter recently termed this catastrophe as “aporkalypse.” well tagged, i say. if this shortage is indeed our future reality, stocking up is the best plan you can have.
am i stocking up?
please!
i have been stocking up bacon for the zombie apocalypse, which could break out at any time. i don’t need to word paint the picture of zombies overrunning the planet and having zero bacon while trying to survive.
even if you don’t believe in the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, who doesn’t have some bacon in their house? if your pantry has pancake mix and/or your fridge has eggs, then breakfast is imminent. and you know that calls for bacon! wutup?
after almost 11 years working for the e. w. scripps company, i’m moving along to another job.
in september of last year, they had shuffled people at corporate around for some upcoming organization changes. in january of 2012, they announced that they were moving operations back to cincinnati. (working remotely wasn’t a business model they felt was effective, or at least that’s the reason they conveyed for this choice.) job opportunities would be available for us if we wanted to move to cincinnati. there were a few who took them up on that offer, but most of the group started to find other jobs, most locally.
i updated my résumé, passed it along to many people, and posted on linkedin, monster, and dice. most of my relative hits came from dice. i had a few interviews for a couple of positions which were telecommute. i had wanted to stay in the area since my family lives very close to me but was willing to move if needed. however, none of these positions panned out. i am continuing to follow some local leads and have hope one of them will work out soon.
i will miss the people at scripps with whom i’ve worked. i had one of the best bosses and will miss working for mike. i enjoyed the team i worked with, the occasional long nights launching projects, collaborating on events like #coffeefriday (started by will hortman), and watching journalists in action (while sharing space at the knoxville news sentinel and visiting other papers such as treasure coast in florida). i worked with some very sharp people and learn much. many great memories.
UPDATE: twitter responded a few moment ago with this notice:
@dino has resolved this issue for me much thanks to @dino for this response!
ORIGINAL POST:
at least, that’s what i’ve been told by @dino at twitter.
so, let me lay this out: in 2007, i signed up for twitter using the handle @mock. i used a simple password, not one complex, because i wasn’t sure if this twitter thing would take off. i should have changed it long ago, but i didn’t and that was my fault.
a week ago monday, i noticed i had been receiving twitter email digests and wanted to turn them off. when i tried to log into twitter as @mock, i couldn’t. after a few times of failure, i requested a password change email. it never came. on closer examination, i noticed finally that my username was changed from @mock to @mockockocklol. what?! i felt anxiety starting to load as the realization of what had happened unfolded. when i tried logging in with that modified username, i was able to get in with my original password.
notice the username had been changed to @mockockocklol
after more investigation, i found that some skiddie named cody (@pump) had used tools from @z_o_m_b_ii_e to acquire certain twitter accounts by logging in, changing the usernames, and then immediately signing up with those now freed usernames, in effect, stealing identities. from the tweets on those accounts, you can see there was an attempt to hack twitter accounts and acquire them for whatever purpose.
hacked @mock account (with a few taunts)
@z_o_m_b_ii_e's twitter account which links to his site for exploits
cody's @pump account (which might be not be his originally), reference hacking twitter accounts
i was quite the mad. and helpless. i appealed to twitter @support for help. they suggested i open a ticket about it. i opened two or three. one finally did catch their attention. the initial response was the same plastered all over their support pages: request a password change and change it something really good. i replied and told him i had already done that and explained in detail again what my real problem was. he replied back telling me the ticket was being routed to the “appropriate team.”
shortly after, i got the first email from @dino. he informed me he initiated a password change request email for me and suggested i change my password. again, i replied telling him that was not my problem. i explained in detail again and offering (again) to provide proof that i’ve owned the account since 2007, and that i didn’t change my username. he reviewed the new @mock account and found it “to be a legitimate account that claimed the username in the normal process of creating their Twitter account.” he also informed me that “don’t reclaim usernames from active accounts that aren’t in violation of our rules or Terms of Service.”
i replied and told him that i didn’t change my @mock username, it was done by another, and asked if there was any way i could prove that i owned the account that would matter in this case. i have yet to hear back from him, but as you can see it sounds like i won’t.
a few common sense points:
why would i change my username from something like @mock, which is how i “brand” all other instances of my virtual (and real-world) presence, to something lame like @mockockocklol?
if you examined the accounts and tweets from the several involved in this, directly or indirectly, you can see they intend to hack these accounts.
if there was some exploit involved, you’d think twitter would want to plug that hole and deal with those involved.
and now to piece the logic together: dude finds a way to get into my account through some exploit, renames your username to something bogus, then immediately registers that name in order to steal it, and this does not violate their terms of service.
it seems that balance falls in favor of the hackers.
i currently work for a media company. i told some of the online producers about this case and rachel wise drafted this blog about it. i do admit to having a lame password. this situation has been a valuable lesson for me. and in truth, i, of all people, should have known better. and that’s shame on me. that won’t happen again.
one other note i need to make: i have another twitter account (@1mock) i set up in case twitter didn’t handle this as i had hoped. when i tried to change username, i ended up changing the @mockockocklol username to @m0ck_ instead. i wanted to leave everything as it was until the official investigation by twitter was concluded, but i goofed. this still shouldn’t change the situation.
i think the summer is best defined by the set of a sand and ocean and a radiant sun. in my home state, you usually substitute the first two items out for humidity–it’s twice as bad sometimes. since i had some pto available, i thought it would be best to find the first combination before the last twenty days of the ninety expire. you can see what i found on flickr.
i’ve been a little late to the game on the gnome 3 love/hate bandwagon. truth is, i did load up a beta version of fedora 15 with the gnome 3 and messed around with it for brief spot day before the actual release. i liked what i saw, but at the time i was still clutching onto gnome 2 to start using daily. i reasoned that i’d eventually jump in when everything was no longer beta.
release time came, and i balked. my normal rush to install the latest fedora on my personal laptop didn’t happen. i was very apprehensive. i did manage to install it on my netbook and worked well with in that environment. to me, it seemed better fit for that platform anyway. ok, let’s be honest: i was just too used to my compiz and transparent terminals and rotating cube and wobbly windows to give them up. of course, a change like this on my work laptop would mean slower productivity while i unlearned what i had learned.
that’s the boring stuff. i finally installed on personal lappy and work lappy. correction: i finally logged into gnome 3 on both. i found that a few things in gnome 3 had been smoothed over.
what i like:
integrated messaging (using pidgin and the shell extension rather than empathy). this works like it was designed and for me functions just as efficiently.
suspend vs. shutdown. i have seen people suspend their laptops, shove it their bags, and go home. i thought this was dumb since the battery would fade faster than if it had been completely shutdown. but as i have been adopting this behavior, i like it much better. there’s a time for shutting down and a time for suspending. most of the time, i’ve discovered, it’s the latter. and for a desktop, who shuts those down anymore unless you have to unplug it or open it up for maintenance. more often than not, those are the exceptions. what is great is pulling my lappy out of my timbuktu and having it ready to go. a couple of seconds to find a network connection, and i ‘m back in business.
what i am getting used to:
vertical desktop layout vs. horizontal (or in my case, cube). the auto-adding of the screens/desktops when needed is nice. my one dislike of this is the auto-removing when the screen/desktop is cleared of windows. i like things in a certain order. crashed or closed window can rearrange that order.
maximize and tiling of windows. i am still adjusting to this. i would say i like it, but i still find myself accidentally max-ing a window then trying to line it up at the top of the screen.
what i don’t like:
the lack of transparency of my terminals! i read through my term windows rather than alt+tabbing (or alt+accenting) among them, so the transparency is key to me. i do understand this is a side effect of how they did the transparency effect and will be corrected in gnome 3.2. i really want this back. (yes, i know you get your transparency with maximized windows, but i don’t open every single one of my terminals in max size work.)
the message pop-up bar at the bottom. i am still getting used to this. i feel that it’s clunky and needs a change, but i don’t have a good suggestion for a way to change it. i’m not even sure why i have a problem with it. it just doesn’t feel like it works efficiently.
no battery indicator on the top bar. really? seems kinda backwards when they want a more suspend-able mindset only to not show you how much juice you have left. someone wasn’t thinking on this point. i know some themes have it, but this should have been out-of-the-box included.
i’m stoked to see what version three point two will look and feel like. and with a few adjusted themes, i’m happy with the experience. bonus points to all those who have contributed the shell extensions allowing for modification.
the adjustment wasn’t as painful as i imagined. i used xfce for a while before jumping into gnome 3. i even toyed around with fluxbox as an alternative. in the end, i gave it a shot. i mean, c’mon! it’s not like it’s kde or os x.
i’ve had many people contact me via the interwebz about this year’s baconfest. that’s right! it’s a fest of bacon. so, to answer the recurring question: yes, i am going. i have had this event on my calendar for about four months. they just recently started selling tickets. among the many cool things i’ll get to do at this event, meeting allan benton will be a highlight. it’ll be good to let him know how deliciously he has affected the lives of so many with his bacon. that and eating bacon.
really, is there a better way to spend a weekend? i think not!
i traveled to spartanburg, sc, this weekend for southeast linuxfest. i got to meet some of the names i’ve only ever seen on irc. i got to hear some good talks. the favorite was the kdenlive talk by klaatu. (they have really matured that piece of software.)
the f15 media was shipped to us but hadn’t made it to the hotel by friday. a few of us started burning media to hand out on saturday. we made a dent in the stack of dvds by the time it was over. i cashed out a little earlier than the others as i don’t do late very well anymore.
when i made it down to the table the next morning, i found the official f15 media on the table. fedex had moved it from salt lake city to spartanburg by 9:15a. the media is nice, the crowning achievement being the live media which makes it possible to boot into any of four desktops on either 32- or 64-bit. (thanks to spot for that work.)
