A day of reflection. A day of family conflict too, but I’ve decided that’s inevitable. It’s all part and parcel of being human. Not that I’m making any excuses for their not working things out, mind you.

I drove to Point Loma Military Cemetery for the funeral service of a family member. Not someone I knew terribly well or had spent a lot of time with. In fact, John Christofferson was I person I didn’t know at all. He was such a quiet guy. Sure, I had spent time at his home, had exchanged the usual meaningless banter about this or that. But to claim to have really known him would be an exercise in self-deception.

Nevertheless, the memorial service for John and his late wife was very moving. Full military honors. Honor guard, taps being played after the sharp crack of a uniformly fired series of rifles had been absorbed by the cloudless sky. The presentation of the flag to the next-of-kin. Even the shell casings were preserved to mark the event.

I’ve seen military/state funerals on television, and always wondered what was said at the moment the flag was presented to the survivor. Essentially it’s an acknowledgement of their loss and the “presentation of the flag as a token of thanks from a grateful nation.” Isn’t it odd how a few words from an ordinary naval midshipman can somehow put the whole world back into it’s proper order, if only for a moment? I was very surprised at what he said, and my reaction to it. This honor guard performs a memorial service at that site every hour of every day. I’m sure he’s said those words hundreds if not thousands of times. Yet it was not just lip service. I can spot false platitudes blindfolded at a hundred paces with the greatest of ease. It’s a gift.

I hate cemeteries and graveyards. Did you know that? I’ve been to too many funerals, spent to many hours in them for someone my age. The last thing I would ever want to do is wander around one. But at Point Loma it was actually calming. It was cathartic to see the dignity and honor with which those who served our country are laid to rest, how their final resting places are cared for. How the most beautiful vantage point in San Diego, and perhaps the whole country, was not relegated to the developer with the fattest checkbook but rather the ones who really paid the most for each square foot of that land.

In keeping with the military tradition of uniformity, each of the granite headstones is exactly the same size and shape. From the loftiest admirals to the lowliest ensigns, everyone is treated equally. Jim pointed out that he liked the granite headstones because they presented a physical manifestation of the cost of war. With over 70,000 veterans are buried at Point Loma, I had to agree. I’ve got some photos on an as-yet unfinished roll of film. Once they’re developed I’ll post them here so you can see what I’m talking about. For now, just imagine an army of gravestones dotting the rolling hills as far as the eye can see… a cool breeze wafting through precisely placed rows, one after the other, without end until freshly cut green grass meets blue ocean.

I think there’s something wrong withh me, because more and more lately I just cannot make a choice. I am paralyzed with indecision.

Okay, this is a very minor example–which makes it all the more ridiculous–but I have been trying to come up with a new design for this site. And I can’t decide on anything I wanted to redesign it to look better at 1024×768 and above, because 17″ monitors are becoming the standard for new computers. I use one at 800×600, but I read with incredulity a C|NET article suggesting a 17″ monitor was more than sufficient for use at 1280 by 1024 pixels. Perhaps they should read an article on the leading causes of legal blindness.

But I digress. Indecision just took all the fun out of the re-design. The more I took the site apart, the more time I spent just staring at all these half-constructed ideas I abandoned and what was left of my web site. It was bugging me to the point where I was grinding my teeth in frustration. It’s not about people reading this stuff either. I’ve seen the logs, I know no one visits this site. The doors to the House are closed, the lights are off and I’m the only one here. Perhaps I’m in a bad part of town. What if I sold the House and moved to Newport Beach or Malibu? Naaaaaaah. Who’d wanna live in a multi-million dollar house on the beach, surrounded by movie stars, paroled junk bond brokers, raging parties, and shapely blonds with a knack for silicon? I mean, really.

The inability to just choose happens with other things too. Frustrating as hell. If I had one wish it would be that I could get back all the time in my life I’ve spend in indecision. Well, that wouldn’t really be my wish if I only had one (unless I could use that wish to wish for more wishes, of course). But if I had, say, 13 or 14 wishes, that one would definitely be in there. It would come right after the wish that Paul Moyer would stop anchoring the Channel 4 News in Los Angeles, because frankly the man must be frightening little children with those oddly chapped lips and his unique way of turning the most mundane “news” item into proclamation of “disaster” or make a “hero” out of people who do nothing more than fix a hang nail on a six year old.

But as I was saying. Indecision. Not a good thing.

Oh yeah. Sometimes I also have trouble staying on topic. Hmmm.

I got a call from the network administrator at Pacific Blue Micro today. PBM is a client of mine, and apparently somebody with too much time on their hands decided to hack into one of their Silicon Graphics machines using my account.

They took advantage of a weakness in IRIX and gained access via a brute force type of attack. It would have gone unnoticed but for Super Eric, a former PBM employee and programmer extraordinaire. Eric noticed that I seemed to be logged in at 3 am, a rather odd time. He also noted that I was connecting from UU Net in Salt Lake City, not Deltanet in Orange County. Either I had moved to Mormon country or something was afoot.

So Eric did a “cd /usr/ronr” to see what was in my directory. Lo and behold, it was a C compiler, files for a network sniffer, and other Naughty Stuff. Clue #2.

At this point he decides to make an inquiry:

talk ronr Who are you?

What could have been a stimulating conversation was abrupty ended when Mormon Ron kicked Eric off the SGI. A lesser person might have just called it a night, but not Eric. Eric obtained the superuser password, logged back in and halted the machine.

Game. Set. Match.

You know that advice your mother is always giving you about changing your passwords frequently, choosing hard-to-guess passwords, and never ever using the same password on more than one system? Well I ignored… um… let’s see… yep, all of that advice. So the Mormon Hacker had all my important passwords, because they were all the same. Not good. I had them all changed in a big hurry, and now instead of a simple English word, each of them is a random mixture of numbers, punctuation, and upper/lowercase letters.

We’ll see how long I can keep that schtick up.

Even worse, if Eric hadn’t happened upon this guy (who already had root access on the SGI) when he did, the network sniffer he was about to install would have revealed the passwords of anyone who logged into the network.

But the story has a potentially happy ending. You see, logs are our friends. They tell us where people came from. Like this guy. He connected to Pac Blue from UU Net in Salt Lake City. And even though he was a dial-up user and we don’t know who he is, UU Net will be able to find out. Because they have logs telling them who was logged in to which POP at what time. So our Mormon Hacker is going to get a visit soon from someone with a badge and a gun.