I'm not dead yet. To prove it, I'll quote from somebody else who hasn't been writing much lately:

Think of how much better the world would be if everybody—young and old, black and white, American and Russian, Time and Newsweek—spent part of each day playing with an Etch-a-Sketch. Think how great it would be if they had public Etch-a-Sketches for you to use while you were waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. And imagine what would happen if, instead of guns, our young soldiers carried Etch-a-Sketches into battle! They would be cut down like field mice under a rotary mower! So we can't carry this idea too far.

-Dave Barry, from "Making the World Safe for Salad," as published in Dave Barry's Greatest Hits ©1988

...and skip one or two of the "summer blockbuster" movies, and go see Once, if you can find a theatre playing it. It's so worth it! A beautiful little film about people trying to be understood—particularly through music—yeah, it's all about the music. With Glen Hansard (of band The Frames) and Markéta Irglová as the leads and songwriters, music just flows in and through the whole movie.

Er, it's also about the relationships. Yeah, it's got the whole guy-and-girl-meet,-have-troubles,-and-work-it-out kinda-thing goin' on.

But I'm not gonna spoiler it for you. I'll just say this: if you communicate through music, than you will understand this film. Just listen, and I'm sure you'll appreciate it.

Sometimes the new euphemisms and metaphors (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, knowhatimean?) of rock-n'-rock escape me these days. I mean, it wasn't hard to miss "Puff the Magic Dragon" (although my darling wife has yet to be disillusioned).

But a recent song from a Paste Magazine sampler leaves me open-mouthed—nevermind that the guy's voice sounds like Bob Dylan, Victoria Williams, and nails-on-a-chalkboard in trio. Take a look at these words, which are the entire lyrics to the song! Are they flattering to the presumably-female "you" subject of the song? Do they make any sense whatsoever to you?!?

I wanna go out but not really
Keep droppin' the bucket until it's dry, until it's dry

I wanna go out but not really
I keep stuffin' the musket until you cry, until you cry

You could be my diamond ring
I say you you could be my diamond ring

—Joseph Arthur "Diamond Ring" from Let's Just Be

I finally decided to get more serious about learning the Ruby programming language. My thoughtful and Internet-savvy mother-in-law got me the Ruby Cookbook off my Amazon Wishlist back at Christmastime, but it's been sitting on my shelf, just itching to be touched. Still, I don't know why I chose now in particular to get into it, when I'm about to take Part One of the CCNA test, but hey...

Finally managed to fit a meeting of the local Ruby User's Group this week, too—lots of fun, in a geeky sort of way. Nicholas Stuart presented to a ragtag handful of misfits on some random features of the language, while we toodled on our laptops and tried them out or asked inane questions. (BTW, why don't they call the user group a RUG? I think that's a great acronym!)

Then, to stem off boredom the past couple evenings, I've read some of Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. I must say: perhaps I didn't take enough hallucinogenic substances as a youth, because much of the author's randomness seems waaaaaay out there to me, but it does keep you reading. And the theory says that maybe I'll remember it better that way, rather than skimming a very dry programming manual and forgetting it almost immediately. The Guide is probably aimed at less-informed programmers, in that in tries to explain concepts that you would already know well if you've programmed before; but it is entertaining and, uh, possibly psychotic.

So anyway, I'm enchanted with Ruby nonetheless, and looking forward to much lazy, impatient, hubric scripting in the future.

Once again, I must say, in the words of Mark Twain: rumors of my recent demise have been greatly exaggerated. I'm still breathing (barely, sometimes); I just haven't posted in a while...

Anyway, I recommend you read the following article, even if you're not interested in InfoSec software: How Security Companies Sucker Us With Lemons.

That's all for now.

Attn: Security Wonks

If you have not already checked out version 3.0 of the Metasploit Framework, it is high time you did so. It is pretty darn amazing, even just for the fancy interface!

To see it, you don't even have to install: just check out these intro vids at EthicalHacker.net: Part 1 and Part 2.

(Oh, and while you're there: you may enjoy Tom Liston's latest "Skillz Challenge": Microsoft Office Space: A SQL With Flair.)

One of the smartest things that Ainsley & I have done was to take a class from Dave Ramsey on managing our money. The more we follow the advice, the better off and more peaceful we are.

But—wouldn't you know it?—just recently I've found an even easier system. You can learn about this remarkable financial management system from this short commercial they showed during Saturday Night Live.

I've been studying for the CCNA lately, and it inspired me to create the following nerd joke:

Question: What do you call a 100Mbit Hub?

Answer: Half-Fast Ethernet

If you get it, this is funny on so many levels (or not). If you don't, it's not. I'm mostly amusing myself here.

Still dealing with some fallout from the last webhost switch and Postnuke upgrade. Admittedly, if I were to do it all again, I would not choose PostNuke as my CMS... and sometimes I think when I get "free time" (I know: "What's that?") that I'd like to make a database converter to move the content from PN to another more popular, more manageable, more flexible CMS. But until then: oh well.

Anyway, last night a friendly fellow named Chris informed me of some issues with new-user registration on this site. A little investigation showed that it's the XUser module I've been using to ease the registration process, and of course it's all but abandoned. So, until I find a replacement, the place to go to register an account with the site is ewall.org/user.php. Sorry for the fuss... Maybe I'll have some "free time" this weekend.

Oh, in other site news: I did fix the Repacking for Windows Installer index page. Urp, sorry 'bout that—I know that's pretty much the only reason many of you come to my site. But it works again.

Today when I logged into my work computer it informed me that there was a new version of the venerable Gaim open source instant messaging client I use... but when I browsed to the Gaim site at SourcForge.net, it was gone. It turns out that, once again, another fine Open Source product has been forced to change it's name by legal battles with the Big Bad Corporations. Dang them! Now, The Program Formerly Known As 'Gaim' is called Pidgin. Okey-dokey.

The last time this happened [to me] was with Ethereal—I still can't get used to the new name Wireshark, and always have to go looking on my computer to figure out what it's called now. I guess this is why companies invest so much in branding and don't want to change their names... and why the Big Bad Corporations love forcing the Open Source products to change!