My son is making his transition from being fed to feeding himself. I'm not sure how much more I can add to this discussion.

I have three more days to go to work this week, then I will be running practically non-stop for another three days. PhreakNIC setup at the hotel will begin on Thursday night and there will be something going on at every hour of the day until we close up early Sunday morning. It's hard to believe that I've been doing this for five years, now, and that people still want me to do it. My nickname has become the "Dictator for Life" because of it. After last year, I said that I wanted to step back a bit and have someone else handle the main planning for PhreakNIC, but when the President of Nashville 2600 stepped down, I was back into the top seat. My wife and I talked it over and she's supportive of me because she knows that I'm passionate about the organization Nashville 2600 and the convention (PhreakNIC) that have become part of our lives.

I've had people come up to me at the convention and ask me why I do it, because they're curious about what motivates me. I've also had some critics claim that I shouldn't be considered a hacker because I didn't fit their mold of what one should be. I think that mainly comes from the fact that I've moved out of the technical work and into management, both within my career and this hobby. To me it all boils down to this within the crucible: I do it because I want to counteract the hollywood version of what a hacker is and to show that there are positive examples that are simply people who are curious about how things work. The common thing about hackers as displayed in movies and other media is that they have no moral compass. Those of us within Nashville 2600 have a very strong moral compass. Well, at least in terms of what's legal.

This weekend will be the culmination of a year's efforts and will be over in just a few short hours, but those who attend will continue to talk about it for a long time. I hope to be able to continue to pour my heart and soul into such an endeavor for many more years - maybe even enough for my son to become a part of it as well.

This morning my wife and I took our son to the Walden Pumpkin Farm. It's a pretty nice setup - they have corn mazes, hay rides, a little petting zoo area and, of course, lots of pumpkins.



The thing that surprised me the most was that in this day and age of trying to squeeze every last dime that you can out of people, most of the things that we did at the farm didn't cost anything. The corn maze cost $1 for the child and the parents can go for free (that's the opposite of what you usually see) and the pumpkins cost from $2 to $12 each, depending on the size. All of the extra areas that were set up, which were obviously there for taking pictures, were simply open for you to set up and do as you wish.

Needless to say our little pumpkin had a great time and that put a smile on both Mommy and Daddy's face.

The Tang Soo Do classes are going really well. I'm now up to going twice a week and if I could ever get to the point of not having so much to do on the weekends I'd probably go on Saturdays, too. Last night the instructor gave me a bit of an honor by having me line up with the green belts even though I don't have a uniform yet - it should be in by Thursday, I hope.

She also told me that I needed to go ahead and make a bo staff - basically a 1-2" diameter dowell rod about 4.5' - 5' tall, sanded and finished. I don't know when the weapons become a part of testing, but I do know that they have us practice the forms with weapons on occasion. Last night we went through the first basic form, Il Bu, with the staff. Maybe with a slightly longer staff than the ones in class I can do it better, since I'm so much bigger than the average person. My biggest problem is being able to tuck one end under my shoulder and using the other end to perform a block. We'll see how things progress.

The first testing is the same weekend as PhreakNIC, which sucks, because even though I'm not ready to test for anything, I was hoping to go watch it. I'd like to video some of the forms being done so that I can have a good reference for practice at home. I've got the first three down, but for the rank that they're bringing me in at (comparable to where I was in Tae Kwon Do) I need to be on the fifth form. The fourth one I'm starting to get the hang of but can't remember a thing about the fifth one.

Last night was the housewarming party over at SkyDog's and it was a good time indeed. He's got a nice little house with a decent yard (made me jealous) that makes for really good outdoor parties. Inside parties, not so much, just because of the size of the house, but our group seems like like the outdoor parties more, anyway. The man loves to cook, especially for other people. That much has been obvious with just about every deck party I've had, because he always stops off at the store to buy food to toss on the grill. I'm happy for him to have his own place to be able to do this.

We were going to roll the t-shirts for PhreakNIC last night, but there really just wasn't any room for that. I'm sitting here in the living room watching TV and seeing that the Titans are about to play the Colts. I may grab the t-shirts and roll them by myself, because I'm getting quite tired of seeing the Titans lose by a landslide. Maybe I'll go see a movie or go work on my son's treehouse/fort/swingset monstrosity that I've been building for him.

Tonight is the last Nashville 2600 meeting before PhreakNIC. It's hard to believe that this is the 5th one that I've run, despite my attempt to bow out earlier in the year.

Mirage and I went to the printers to pick up the schwag today. Even after having emptied out my truck before leaving the house, I didn't have enough room for all of it. Mirage is going to take his car back over there and get the last 4-5 boxes. Heh, I definitely went all out this year on the schwag. The stuff that is publicly known so far is that we've got both black shirts and white shirts, plus the addition of hats this year. That didn't take up all of the space, though. It's the attendee schwag (the free stuff) that's so big.

Hopefully this year will be more like a couple of years ago. Last year we tried to bite off a little too much and we had other issues with some people deciding to voice criticism at simply the wrong time or place. If we don't have to call the cops at any point during the weekend and nobody has to get ejected from the hotel then I will be pretty happy. Well, I'd also like to see us run out of schwag, since it would mean that we have over 300 attendees. Our average has been between 300-350 per year for the past 4 years.

About 7 weeks ago I decided to finally start going to exercise classes. In the past I've joined the gym, gone for about 3 weeks and then stopped; all the while paying the contract out for the rest of the 6 or 12 month term. Fitness clubs loved me because I paid and didn't end up crowding the place out. So anyway, the Town of Smyrna, where I live, has a fitness facility that teaches Tang Soo Do martial arts. Unlike any other place I've ever seen, all you have to do is show up and pay $3 for each day that you want to use the facility. No contracts or any of that crap, so the pressure is completely gone. Apparently that's the key for me. Since I don't have to worry about how often I go, I've actually been going at least once a week, and now I'm up to twice a week. I may even go this Saturday, which would make it three times this week.

Anyway, I showed up to class tonight and one of the other gentlemen that's close to my age commented on how much he could tell that I've lost weight. For the record, I'm down 20 pounds since I started about 6-7 weeks ago. Hoowah.

One of the perks of working for a large university is that you often times get opportunities that you wouldn't when working for a smaller company. I just finished having lunch with Steve Prentice of the Gartner Group, which to many may not seem like that big of a deal, but the benefit of it was that I got to engage in a two way dialogue. Gartner Analysts spout out information constantly, a lot of it being noise, but this was an occasion where we had specifically asked (and I'm sure paid) for this analyst to come talk to us. The point of this, of course, was to listen and talk with someone who got to regularly interact with other companies and see technology from such a high point of view that he pretty much looks down just to see the moon.

One thing that he said struck a chord with me and I'm going to bring it to my group of peers in Nashville 2600. "A 30 year old looks at business and processes and sees boundaries. A 20 year old doesn't see any boundaries at all. The problem is that a company will hear me say this and hire on that 20 year old, but put him in a junior position and then ignore everything that he has to say." (paraphrased) I think that age is an artifact associate with the attitude. Those of us within the hacker community already recognize that most boundaries set in place are there for the benefit of a single entity, rather than society as a whole, and tend to ignore them.

My goal with Nashville 2600 has been to show the younger intellectually curious types that hacking isn't about being a skrypt kiddie and breaking into places you don't belong, but it's about thinking outside of the box and doing things with technology beyond the originally conceived purpose. This talk today simply reinforced that goal for me and hopefully as I work with the local community that idea will continue to spread.

So back in the first part of summmer, my wife asked me to go to the sleep clinic to see if they could do anything about my snoring. The first thing that they ask you when you go to a sleep clinic is, "What kind of problems do you have with your sleep?" My answer to this, of course, is that I don't have a sleeping problem. My wife does. Unfortunately, the machines that they hooked me up to don't agree - though how you can sleep with all that crap tied to you I don't know. Bottom line is that I have severe sleep apnea.

Now before settling on a treatment, I wanted to look at all of my options. You know, get the full picture before getting myself into something. This process took basically all summer long, because it took over 90 days just to get an appointment with the Ear, Nose & Throat clinic! All that waiting just to have them shove a camera down my nose and tell me that surgery wouldn't work for me.

So now I've just gone back to the sleep clinic and they've told me that I need to go with the CPAP, which I swear is the device that Lucas drew his inspiration from for Darth Vader. It's a small air pump with a tube that attaches to a mask that covers your face. They make ones that just go in your nose, but screw that, I can't stand having tubes up my nose. Anyway, you put it on before you go to bed and it forces air into your nose/throat/wherever so that you pretty much can't snore. When you breath in and out, you hear the air pressure change, much like when Darth Vader breathes. So, looks like I've got another son, now, and his name is Luke.