March 30, 2005
March 29, 2005
Berkeley Identify Theft
So apparently, some UC Berkeley employee left a laptop computer with unencrypted personal information for 98,000 graduate students, graduate school applicants, and alumni lying around. It was stolen. Consequently, Berkeley has now provided a 1-800 number that people can call into to verify whether or not their personal information was compromised or not. Not expecting much, I tried it and, as expected, received an automated message providing no useful information and was told to leave a name and phone number and would be contacted within two business days. So let's assume a 5% level of paranoia and that most of this paranoia occurs right now given the publicity that this compromise has had in the media. Now let's assume that after greeting the person, "verifying" the person's identity (e.g., via the very identifying information that was compromised), and futzing around with "the computer" that giving a yes/no answer takes 5-10 minutes. Let's be optimistic and say it is 5 minutes and that employees are perfectly efficient, that no pointless berating of the graduate division's security practices occurs, etc. 5% of 98,000 at 5 minutes per call = 24500 minutes or 408 hours. Two business days is 16 hours, so that's 25.5 employees operating at peak utilization and efficiency. I'm not optimistic here.
March 26, 2005
My new filing technique is unstoppable
Brilliant. Buy a copy immediately from amazon.com.
The bargain price is a mere $3.99 with proceeds going to the
adopt a minefield campaign.
March 20, 2005
March 02, 2005
Frogger Flashback
Driving back home, I saw some random hoodlum (running as though he had just jacked someone) sprint across three lanes of traffic today. So he notices that the two leftmost lanes are at a standstill because the traffic signal had just changed. But little did he know that in the rightmost lane there was a car coming in full blast at around 45mph. So he runs across, and like Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network says: BAM!!!!! The car hits him with an audible THUD and tosses him about 5-6 feet in the air like a ragdoll. My jaw just dropped at that point. Amazingly, he wasn't totally thrashed apparently. As the other cars started driving away, I saw him standing on the sidewalk (completely splattered in blood of course) meandering about. Lesson: don't mug people!
March 01, 2005
Supermarket BTK in Training
Remind me never to reveal any personal information whatsoever when engaged in conversation by middle-aged, sleazy, Asian male supermarket cashiers. Actual conversation:
Asian BTK: "So you go to Berkeley, huh?" (noting my sweatshirt)
BNC: "No, I graduated."
Asian BTK: "This year?"
BNC: "No, a few years ago."
Asian BTK: "What you study?"
BNC: "Computer science."
Asian BTK: "E-E-C-S?"
BNC: "Yeah."
Asian BTK: "So .. you employed?"
BNC: "Yeah, I work at Intel in Berkeley."
Asian BTK: "Network administrator? Networking?"
BNC: "No, I do distributed systems research."
Asian BTK: "Oh yeah, how much you make? 50 THOUSAND???" (in a sleazy whisper)
BNC: "Yeah, a little more than that."
Asian BTK: < ... begins asking more random questions ..>
BNC: < walks out >
So if you hear a gruesome story about me being BTK'ed on KRON4 news at some point in the future, you'll know what happened. In response to this, here is what all future conversations with strangers from me will entail:
Stranger: "So you go to Berkeley, huh?"
BNC: "No."
Stranger: "So .. you employed?"
BNC: "No, I'm on unemployment."< walks out >