Captain's Log Supplemental

Writing the previous entry, made me recollect something that I was thinking about on the way home from work Thursday or Wednesday. Are passwords outdated when it comes to logging into a web service? Really. I think they are to be honest.

At work and at home, I use ‘keys’, not passwords. My ~/.ssh/config and /etc/hosts files are configured so that I can run ‘ssh pcname’ and log into machines automagically; no need for a password. I do it this way, because while I can set a passphrase on SSH keys: the ratio between chance of theft and frequency of logging in, is wide enough that I’ve little need to worry. If someone walks off with my computer, the SSH keys to my other PCs are the least of my worries, assuming that they didn’t take those too!

Quite readily one could just adapt something like the SSH2 public key authentication to browsing the web; and maybe improve on it while they’re at it. Even better, rather than relying on the browser to “Remember passwords” it can simply be made to ask a key agent. While Windows out of the box has always lacked something comparable to my knowledge, GNOME and KDE have had keyring management services for as long as I can remember; Konqueror was the first web browser that I ever used that integrated with something approximating one (KWallet). Although I rather prefer the GNOME keyring stuff, hehe.

This could then if desired, be linked to your computer login. For example, login to your desktop can unlock the keyring and allow pre-authorized requests to utilize it’s services. There are obvious implications for such things but I rather would like to see what it could do in like the next ~20 years.

All that of course, still means that if you leave your computer unlocked and your bank account open, you deserve what you get ^_^.  For what little I consider it worth, my systems are usually programmed to auto-lock after a short delay, and I frequently lock them before going AFK, if there’s any sense to it. I.e. at home, the PC is more likely to get carted off by a thief, then the one at work, lol.

Today’s the last day for one of our more skilled hackers, so the powers that be decided to cart Engineering out to lunch for the send off. While I’m happy enough to accept the invite, I’m also, well, I just eat a quick lunch and go back to work lol. Asked one of my peers whether he thought it would be rude if I brought the netbook along to get some work done and he thought nothing of it. The guy that’s leaving the company, I’m surprised we could pry him off work long enough for the gathering. Yup.

So of course I’m working remotely off alice by the time the like ~20 of us are filtering out of this Mexican restaurant up the road. What brought a smile to my face however, was when Steve remarked something like, “You just couldn’t leave work?” and then realized we had wifi access the whole time xD.

My closest friends know that I’m kind of a workaholic at heart…. and that I am also insane lol

I reckon going by historical critique, my opinions would differ but I think I may have finally figured out how to give my mother a smile towards Mother’s day.

Last night ma went kind of on red alert when she noticed someone climbing up a ladder outside her window; me of course, why would I worry? If they’re smart enough to use a ladder they’re not stupid and if they break the window, well, you shout at them to be more careful next time… heh. It was far past time for sleeping that short of seeing a TV lowering out the window, little to worry about in my books.

In my shift from tired mode to quick-computate mode, things obviously suggested thief, or someone sneaking in without the parents knowledge. Seeing a young arm hanging out a window, holding a pink ribbon tied to the ladder and trying to ‘remotely’ hide it on the other hand, would suggest the latter to me. So of course, ma had me look up the non emergency number for the local police, which conveniently has an outpost like 2 minutes up the road from here. Sure enough, 17-year old whose probably going to have upset parents.

Nothing like being out in the cold with like four cops poking around to get you wide awake again. *Groans*

The best part about being a penny pinching S.O.B. is when you make a budget that’s designed around being bled like a stuffed pig, unless the car halts and catches fire, the fact is that the reality can’t be toooo terrible when the graph is so good.

How? Driving ~30km per day at a rate of approximately 450km to every 45 litres, seriously beats the ****ing hell out of driving near ~225km per day and using around 38 litres for the same general distance covered.

And my budget for the next month or so is built around the assumption that petrol will cost me around $4.15 a gal, or roughly $1.09 a litre. That’s about a $0.25 higher per hal then it is now.