One More Song

 So, I settle in to watch this generally unregarded kids movie, called "Vivo."  Kids movies should be safe, right?

Well, it starts out with an old musician dying.

And then the lead character sings this song (called "One More Song"), that starts out:

o/' You spent your life making music,

I thought the songs would never end

Now it's so quiet  ...  o/'

and goes on somewhat later:

All I have left is one request

One more song

Just one more

Give us an encore

So, predictably, I'm a mess ...

Mailboxes

Okay, I was given an evaluation form to fill out.  A self-addressed, stamped envelope was provided, so all I had to do was fill out the form, stick it in the envelope, and pop it in the mail.  Simple.  She offered to send me an email with a link to the evaluation form, but I said that she didn't need to bother.  Filling out a form with simple enough.

I should have taken her up on it.

The form was every bit as easy to fill out as I had thought.  So, I filled it out.  But then I had to find a mailbox.  Where is there a mailbox around here?

We have incoming mailboxes in the apartment building.  But there's no slot for outbound mail.  There is a post office up at the Pharmasave, but this happened to be early on a Sunday morning, and it's not open early, particularly on a Sunday.

So, I headed off to early church, figuring that I had to pass a mailbox somewhere between my place and the church.

Well, if there is one, I didn't find it.  Not even in front of the postal depot.  The Pharmasave doesn't have a mailbox outside.  You have to wait until it opens and then you can use the dropbox inside.

So, I figured that I would walk down to Trinity, which, at this point, was the farthest other church away.  I figured I could just barely get there in time for their 10:00 service.  So I started walking.  And walking.  And looking for mailboxes.  And walking.

I did, finally, find a mailbox.  One block before I got to Trinity.  By which point I had walked up and down and criss-crossed seven and a half kilometres of Delta streets.  Without finding a mailbox.

Subsequently, I checked a standing series of mailboxes for houses, which I suspected had a dropbox for outgoing mail, and it did.  It's two blocks away from the apartment.  And I checked out what one old dear had told me at Trinity, to the effect that there was one at 116th and 84th.  Yep, it's there.  The old dear is not gaga.  It's eight blocks away.

What is happening to the mail system?

Squirrel buzz

So, I was walking up to Deltassist to do the watering, and finishing up the last leg of the trip, when there was this *enormously* loud buzzing sound.  Looking up ahead I could see something falling off or beside one of the telephone poles ahead.  It was a telephone pole that had three of the trash can type transformers on it, so initially I thought that possibly one of them had exploded, and I was wondering if the other two were going to go as well.  However, as I got closer I noticed that what had fallen was a squirrel.  Obviously it has done the jumping from wire to wire thing and gotten well and thoroughly fried.

It was quite the topic of conversation at the New Hope community dinner that night.  A lot of people in the neighborhood had heard it, and wondered what the heck it was.  It was loud enough to wake most people up.  Also, a number of them lost power briefly, although apparently the transformers worked and kicked back in within about 10 minutes.

So, after all that I have said about squirrels causing data loss, I have actually seen an instance of it.

Whatsoever things are ... available?

A while back, I was concerned about what choices I should make, in terms of concentration of effort.  And got hit with a bit of a zinger.  So, I figured that I should concentrate on the church areas.

So, I have been.  I'm not just attending, but actively involved with, four churches right now.  Helping with community dinners, helping with getting computers revived, cleanup days, whatever is going on.

The thing is, not much (except the community dinners) is going on right now.  (I finally figured out that one particular church, in terms of the balance of liturgy and informality [and weekly communion, which seems to be oddly important to me right now], was, if not perfect, at least the most comforting to me, in my current damaged state.  So, I decided that I'd concentrate on attending services there.  And then the pastor got CoVID, and then went on holiday, and their services are suddenly, basically, video replays.  Scratch that.)

So, I find that I am back to mostly doing infosec stuff.  Mostly research.  I've got a couple of presentations coming up, and I'm working on an article/research project on psychological factors in the Metaverse that someone asked me to do, and I'm working on either a huge article or a book on the dangers of decentralized finance and all things related to cryptocurrencies.

Am I doing the right thing?  Or am I being dragged back into the mire?

Keeping Up With the Vacuum Cleaners

I tell people that everyone fights about which field of technology is changing the fastest.  I don't fight about it.  I figure security has a lock on it.  Regardless of what else changes in whatever other field of technology, it has an implication for security.

We need to keep up.

We need to keep up with each change in technology.  We need to keep up with the vulnerabilities that are being created as people create more "solutions."  We need to keep up with the latest threats; the latest exploits; the latest attacks; the latest news about who has been attacked, and how.  We have to pursue the news avidly, and effectively, to try and keep up with the most relevant issues of the day.

There are of course people who try to produce newsletters to help us out.  Well, sometimes not to help us out.  Vendors, and trade rags, frequently produce such newsletters themselves.  Unfortunately, since their aim is to promote their own products, they put minimal work, and pretty much no analysis, into retailing whatever stories they consider to have security implications.

There are, however, some useful ones.  The oldest, and preeminent, one is the RISKS-Forum Digest.  It's contributors make up the cream of the cream of those who are interested in the dangers of technology, and to technology.  And Peter, over thirty-five years, has set the standard for the moderation of a quality topical mailing list on the Internet.

The Department of Homeland Security used to produce one.  It's ceased publication on January 27th, 2016.  Odd, that.

Another one is put out by the Security Branch of the office of the Chief information officer, of the province of British Columbia.  It's pretty good.  And it has been running for long enough to develop a track record that I can use to say that.

Les Bell has recently started one.  He's got a background in trade media, but, unlike most of the editors and writers in trade rags, he also knows the field of security.

In a recent version of the newsletter, he talked about the fact that Amazon has purchased iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner.  Les noted that Amazon makes a number of home IoT devices.  Amazon can collect a great deal of information from the devices in your home.  But one thing the devices can't do, is map your home.  Until now.  The Roomba is built to map your home, in order to make its vacuuming more efficient.  So now, in addition to all the other data that Amazon is able to collect, it is able to look inside your home, in a sense.

Les doesn't go any farther than that.  I don't think he goes quite far enough.  Because iRobot doesn't just make vacuum cleaners.  They also make robots for the military, and law enforcement.  And, now that all of this is under one roof, so to speak, Amazon will be able to sell a service to law enforcement.

When law enforcement once to do a raid, they would dearly love to know what they will face once they get inside the door.  Well, if a Roomba is in the house, Amazon will be able to provide them with that information.  Amazon/iRobot will be able to tell you the layout of the rooms, and where furniture is, and (possibly not in real time, but) where people are likely to be.  I'm sure that law enforcement will be willing to pay for such information.  After all, it will be a saving of lives to do it.  Not just police officers, but the occupants of the house, who will be in less danger, given that the police have more information about where they are.

More and more companies are getting more and more information about you.  Some of this information is helpful, both to you, and the authorities.  Some of the information is just useful to the authorities.  And some of the information is going to be useless, and even misleading, and mistakes will be made.

Barcode

Reduce me to a barcode will you? Ha!

When libraries give you a card, they just hand you the next one from the box.  They are all bar coded with your account number.  Your account number is just the one on the barcode they pull out of the box.

This library gives you two cards.  One is wallet size, and one is key fob size.

That's very handy.  I like using the key fob sized card.  The pocket I keep my keys in is much more accessible than hauling out my wallet, which already has too many cards in it, remembering which slot I put the library card in, struggling to get it out, and so forth.  The key fob is handier.

Except that the ink that they use to print out the cards and the fobs is not very durable.  My key fob card started to show signs of deterioration very shortly.  After five months the card reader started to have trouble reading it.  For a another month I was able to get it to read by going to different distances from the scanning laser.  But, within a month, it just stopped working, period.

I'd memorized my account number, of course.  (What, you haven't memorized yours?)  But this library has disabled the function for you to type in your own account number.  It was actually great when they moved, and set up the pop-up Library, because the pop-up Library didn't have any scanners and you had to tell the librarians your number anyway.  I had that down cold.

But when they moved back to the renovated library, it was back to the scanners.  And they still hadn't enabled the function for you to type in your own account number.

But, am I not a security maven?  There are ways around this.  One is to search for a barcode generator, go to that website, type in your library account number, get it to generate a barcode, save the barcode, mess around with editing the image for a bit in order to make it the right size, print it out, and tape it to the key fob.

So, of course, that's what I did.  And I tested it out this afternoon.  And it works just fine.

And I've saved the image, just in case this one wears out, or gets damaged.

Danger: Metaverse Ahead! (Part 2)

Different vendors, and different commentators, seem to have different ideas about the nature of the Metaverse.  (It's difficult to opine about a technology when nobody can agree on what that technology actually is.)  However, all seem to agree that the metaverse will involve some kind of artificial reality.

Artificial reality or virtual reality will provide the interface to the metaverse, in the opinion of most.  Virtual or artificial reality will provide a layer of abstraction, hiding the nuts and bolts of what is going on in terms of communication and processing, from the user.

As has been famously said, any technical problem can be solved by the addition of a layer of abstraction, except for the problem of too many layers of abstraction.

Anytime you hide something in information processing, you are in grave danger of introducing some kind of security vulnerability.

We will be hiding, from the user, who or what they are actually talking to, in terms of machine and network connections.  We will be hiding, from the user, any idea of where processing is taking place.  There will be a lot of processing involved in creating the virtual or artificial reality itself.  Is this processing taking place on the user's machine?  Is this processing taking place on the host platform machine?  Is this processing taking place somewhere else in the cloud?  And then there's the question of what this processing is actually doing and how realistic, or consistent, the presentation to the user actually is.

There are going to be differences in devices that users use to access the metaverse.  We are already seeing inconsistencies and differences in communications devices, and the representations that they make of our communications.

For example, Gloria and the girls and I tended to communicate via WhatsApp.  WhatsApp has a number of communications functions, but we used it primarily for text messaging.  When I wanted to indicate a joke, being old school, I would use the standard text-based emoticons: generally speaking a colon, a hyphen, and a close parenthesis.  And now comes the first question about where processing takes place.  When I typed in those three characters, something, either the soft keyboard that I was using, or WhatsApp itself, would change it to a graphic emoticon, for transmission.  I don't know, for sure, which piece of software did that translation.  (I suspected it was WhatsApp, because the soft keyboard did seem to work differently with other programs.)  In any case the others would see a little happy face icon.  However, Gloria, using an Android device, what often see the little Android character, bearing a smile.  The girls, using iPhones, would generally see the more usual yellow happy face icon.  The three of us would see three different representations of what I had typed.  That is a minor inconsistency, and probably would not lead to any great misunderstandings.  But it is an inconsistency.  It is a difference.  A layer of abstraction has been added, and other people do not know, accurately, what it is that I actually did or said.

Now multiply that by an extensive range of devices from handheld smartphones to vision systems and sensing gloves.  Multiply that from input via text, or speech recognition.  Multiply that by speech recognition using artificial intelligence.  Multiply that by graphical representation systems, that are possibly also using artificial intelligence to both generate, and represent, communications.  The possibilities for mixed representation expand enormously.

Misrepresentation or inaccuracy is not the only possible problem of abstraction.

A number of issues can be hidden from the user and may threaten the security of both the user and the metaverse system itself.

Communication protocols, and authentication procedures and protocols, will also be hidden from the user.  Many issues and many security factors will be abstracted and therefore hidden from the user.  This abstraction will add layers of complexity to an already extremely complicated security situation.  Authentication will become much more important.  The protocols of communication, and authentication, will be hidden from the user.  They will be hidden in layers of abstraction that will add complexity to an already complex mix of communications protocols, networking protocols, middleware applications, and authentication.

The Metaverse, like the world wide Web before it, will attempt to become a grand unified field theory of the Internet.  Everyone will want their application to work in the Metaverse.  Everyone will want their business to function in the Metaverse.  Banking, finance, business transactions, and even real real estate sales, will take place in the Metaverse.  E-commerce will be apart of the metaverse, and will be one of the major drivers.  Therefore, authentication will become even more important.

Authentication will have greater significance.  At the moment, most authentication for many e-commerce functions will operate on the basis of some kind of cookie left on the machine.  This is node authentication, in a way.  But node authentication will be insufficient in a situation where the bulk of commerce is being done on the Metaverse, and individuals must be identified, authenticated, and their authorization verified.  Authentication will become much more complex, and, at the same time, attempts will be made to make authentication simpler for the user and more transparent.  The user will not want to remember passwords or pull out tokens to verify themselves.  Users are already used to the node authentication that places a cookie on their machine so that their banking, purchasing, online shopping, games, and other entertainments are all instantly accessible when they sit down at the computer, or when they pull out their smartphone.  They will not want a more complex system to verify themselves to the Metaverse.

The grand unification of communications and authentication, under the Metaverse, will add complexity, to an already complex environment.  And, of course, complexity is the enemy of security.  Therefore there will be many aspects of the internet of the metaverse that will be extremely complex with layers of abstractions, authentications and communications protocols that must all be verified, and must all work properly together.

If the Metaverse is to be a universal interface to the Internet, and all forms of communication, there will be issues of compatibility.  We are already seeing a variety of problems in this regard, with the existing Internet, and the World Wide Web.  Websites are being programmed in such a way that they will display on any device, screen, or window.  But in order to do this, the displays can be significantly different.  Indeed, in many situations, certain functions will not appear on the wrong sized device, screen, or window.  Certain websites can demonstrate this fairly easily simply by resizing an existing window very slightly.

Thus, in the name of compatibility, we have sites that can display completely differently to different users.  This can create enormous misunderstandings when users are, apparently, using the same website, and see completely different things.  At the very least, it is an enormous problem for technical support.  With the automation of web development, and the inclusion of application programming interfaces, and functional libraries, and point-and-click and cut and paste programming/citizen programming, these differences may not even be apparent to the system's managers, or owners.  Those charged with technical support may be completely unaware of the lack of functionality that different users will see depending upon their device, screen, or window size.

With such differences in our existing Web interfaces, how much greater will be the problems when we are dealing with the Metaverse, and devices ranging from three-dimensional artificial reality goggles, to simple smartphones.

Loooong walk ...

I woke up at 11:30, having had 3 hours sleep.  By a little after midnight, it was obvious I wasn't going to get anymore.  So I did a little work on the computer, and then had an abbreviated morning routine of pills and teeth, and walked over to the casino and back.  By that time it was 4:30, and the Deltassist's gardening day was supposed to start at 7:30.

So I walked up to Deltassist and got an early start on the watering.  It was a good thing that I did, because somebody had turned off the main tap, and therefore the plants hadn't had their overnight soak.  When I turned it on, the drip line was still operating (it's on some kind of timer system), so it did provide at least some water to most of the beds. But I had to do an extra long watering, especially for the new plantings.  When the rest of the gang arrived, I turned over the compost, and then dug up another section of potatoes, and the onions. All together I was there about 4 and 1/2 hours.

But when I had started out the day I had weighed myself, and I made a target, so I walked over to New Westminster, to the New Westminster Skytrain station, to the Spud Shack Fry company, who do some really spectacular poutines (which I had promised myself to try next time I made a target).  Even after having a binge on ( by that time, late) lunch, I still felt too tired to walk home.  So I got the Skytrain back to 22nd Street, and then the 340 to Cliveden, and then the 301 home.  And into a hot bath, to soak my aching feet and legs.  (The way I staggered and wobbled getting on and off the Skytrain and the buses, it's possibly a good thing I didn't try to walk home.)

Google Fit credited me with 38 plus kilometers.  I think it tends to overestimate, but, even so, that is just about a round trip from my (new) place to K's place.

(Gotta go water Deltassist again this morning.  I'm still sore, but probably the walk up will loosen things up a bit.  Probably water main church's raised beds on the way back  ...)

o/' We're havin' a heatwave ... o/'

We're having a heatwave.  At least for Vancouver.

I know that lots of other people will laugh at the temperatures we consider a heatwave.  But Vancouver is used to a very moderate climate.  Very few people have air conditioning in residences.  Somewhat more businesses do, but by no means all.

This particular heat wave isn't extended.  Well, yes, we are having hotter than normal weather.  We've had hotter than normal weather over much of the summer.  Unusually, for Vancouver, we have had only one day's rain since June.  I have been paying more attention to forecast and the weather, because of all the gardening.

Anyway, it is warmer than normal.  And yesterday, and today, are a bit of a peak.  Heat warnings are on and vulnerable people, particularly the elderly, are being warned to stay cool, avoid the heat of the day, and to stay hydrated.

Also because of the gardening, I, while I can slightly avoid the hottest periods of the day, still have to be out for some periods in heat.  Yesterday was fairly busy and so I did not particularly notice the heat as such, all I know that it was hot and uncomfortable.  I was watering at Deltassist in the early morning, and I was helping at a church barbecue in the evening.  Helping at the church barbecue probably meant that I didn't notice the heat as much, since I was around a barbecue anyways.

I did notice that yesterday morning, when I was out early to do the watering, it was almost chilly from overnight from the day before.  This morning I have again gotten up early to go and do a mini garden day at Deltassist, and I want to get a little watering before the rest of the gang gets there.  However, when I left, I noticed that, while not yet hot, even at 5:00 a.m. it's definitely not chilly.  It's pretty hot, and I expect today will be a bit of a scorcher.

If you're going to listen, you have to listen ...

 I mentioned that I needed to tell Gloria's story more.  I mentioned that an event had made me realize that I really, desperately, need to tell Gloria's story more.

He said that he was available to listen.  He admitted that he wasn't particularly good at providing care.  He knew that he was not a particularly caring person.  But that he was available for listening, if I wanted to talk.

Well, it's a bit late for that now.  He has already proven, over the past couple of months, that he's not particularly good at listening.  I have broached a number of subjects, a number of times, and he hasn't been particularly good at listening.  I don't think that I want to keep on trying with somebody who has already proven that he can't listen.

Caregiver support

As I walked past a service station, I noticed a poster promoting some project of theirs to support family caregivers.

Typical. I find these things out too late.  The person I was giving care to has died so I know longer qualify as a caregiver to be supported.  Whatever that support might have entailed.

Morning Sun and Cloud

I still talk to Gloria, at times.  She doesn't reply back, of course.

So this morning, on a relatively early morning walk, but not before dawn or sunrise, indeed somewhat after sunrise, there was a lovely pattern in the clouds because of the pattern of the clouds, and the sun shining through the holes in between them.  So I pointed that out to Gloria.  After all, it no longer matters that she doesn't do mornings well.  She doesn't have to do mornings at all.  Time doesn't mean the same thing to her, in eternity, as it does to us.  So I'm not disturbing her by pointing out early morning sky patterns.

So then, thinking about all of that, I cried and cried.  And I'm crying dictating this.

Musings while walking around checking what's open at 4:00 a.m.

I woke up at 1:30 a.m.  After half an hour it became obvious that I wasn't going to get any more sleep tonight.  So I got up and did a bit of work, and then headed out for a walk.  I didn't go over to Queensborough this time, because there are long stretches on that route where you are not within easy reach of a washroom.  These considerations become more important as you get older.

So I decided to walk around the business areas nearby, and see what was open.  It used to be that Tim Hortons was fairly reliable in terms of 24-hour access.  That's no longer the case in all situations, but it is good to know that a number of them are available all night.

The McDonald's at 86th doesn't post hours on their doors.  The drive through appears to be open 24 hours, but the lobby apparently isn't.  I don't know for sure when they're supposed to open, but the door was, in fact, open so I went in.  The staff person told me that they weren't open and when I asked when they were, replied in ten minutes.  That didn't make an awful lot of sense: it would have been 4:20 at that point.  So, McDonald's is open whenever they feel like it?

Sunflowers

I have noted that I didn't have much luck, initially, with sunflowers.  Oh, they sprouted all right; fairly easily, in fact; but there seemed to be a lot of attacks on the sunflowers.  I tend to blame the squirrels, but little boys with sticks probably bear some responsibility as well.  In any case, at one point, it seemed that none of them would survive.

So, it's a little bit of a surprise that a number of them *have* survived.  At least two have survived in Northside gardens.  (Mind you, I planted at least 30 in there, so two of them surviving isn't a terrific survival rate.)  There are five sunflowers that have survived in the corners of the community garden, and two of them have actually flowered so far.  There are at least five sunflowers that have grown, some of them to eight feet high, in my patio garden although, of course, they are now under threat from the management.  I even have one sunflower in one of the pots that is still alive, although it's only two feet high, and I really wonder if it is going to ever get to the size where it might produce a flower.

It is rather pleasing, that some of the sunflowers have survived.  I'm not quite sure why.  All flowers are nice, and it's nice that these have produced flowers.  Eventually, if they're allowed to continue to survive until the flowers are fully developed, I might get some seeds out of them.  But I'm not particularly looking forward to seeds as produce.  I might want to try replanting some of the next year, and seeing if I can't get the sunflowers to reproduce and germinate, although next year I will probably be limited only to pots.  But I am pleased about the sunflowers.  I'm glad they've survived, and I hope they continue to survive, until they actually produce their seeds.  It will be a kind of a victory of sorts.

Dawn reminder

With the heat, I have been getting up, and walking, trying to be out of the heat of the day, sometimes going walking even before I've had a morning shower.  I have been seeing some dawns and sunrises this way.

Dawn, and sunrise, has become a reminder of Gloria.  Not that Gloria enjoyed dawn or sunrise: she didn't do mornings well.  After she retired we decided that she didn't need to do mornings at all.  She very often didn't get up before 11:00 AM, and sometimes not even until noon.

No, the reason that dawn is a reminder of Gloria was that on Friday, the day before she died, I was, at that time, sleeping overnight at the hospital in Gloria's room.  And, of course, I wasn't sleeping very well.  So I was often up fairly early.  And so it was that on the Friday morning I was up early and, unusually for Vancouver in December, the sky was clear enough that we had quite a lovely sunrise.  I posted a couple of those pictures from that sunrise, late in the rather long posting about Gloria's last days in hospital. It was a gorgeous sunrise, very pink, and, of course, pink was always Gloria's favorite colour.

So, dawn, and sunrise, has become a reminder of Gloria because of that second last dawn.  Pretty much every dawn and sunrise that I see these days (and, with getting out to walk as early as possible to be out of the heat of the day, I'm seeing a lot of them) is a reminder of Gloria.

Early morning routine walks

One inconvenient thing about going for walks early in the morning: they throw off my morning routine.

Well, yes, I'm sure that anything like that throws off a morning routine.  But my routines are possibly a bit more consequential than most.  I rely on my routines for getting important things done.  Important things, but not necessarily interesting things.  Such as, for example, my medications.  I don't like to think about them all that much, so I don't exactly plan them out, or consider what I am to take.  I just take the regular pills, at the set times.  That's the routine.

So, when, for example, I wake up at 1:00 in the morning, try to get back to sleep, and eventually give it up as a bad job and get up and go for a walk, leaving the house at 3:00 a.m., I don't always remember to take my medication.  Because I've skipped the rest of the morning routine.  And when I come back it's no longer morning routine, so I don't do the morning routine, so the medications might get completely missed.  Which probably wouldn't be good for my health.

So, yeah, my routines are somewhat important.  And I'll have to think of ways to remember the important bits, when I throw off my morning routine by going for an early morning walk.

Danger: Metaverse Ahead!

No, I'm not talking about the latest excuse for plot contortions in the Marvel studios movie franchises.

We are being told to prepare for the Metaverse.  We are being told that the Metaverse is coming.  Facebook, indeed, has changed its name to Meta, the better to cash in on the Metaverse.  Whenever it arrives.  Or to create it, and sell it to us.

What is the Metaverse?  Well, it seems to be a sort of virtual reality interface to, well, who knows?  Social media in general?  A social media platform, in the same mode as Facebook?  But with avatars?  (Instead of faces?)

(Today I saw an article about an artificial intelligence program to turn your image, into an avatar, that looks something, not completely dissimilar to, but not really like, you.)

It's all very meta.

We are already being sold the Metaverse.  Perhaps not quite for cold hard cash, quite yet, but we are being prepared for heavy duty sales pitches as soon as somebody comes up with an acceptable platform.

(Maybe that will be a bit of protection for us.  None of the existing social media giants, or indeed technical giants, want somebody else to be the Metaverse.  As long as they are fighting about it, we are safe from it.  Well, relatively safe.  I'm sure they'll still try to sell us little bits of it.)

Why should you be concerned?  Well let me start off with a different question: why would you need it?  As analyst, pundit, and social commentator Neil Postman has said, what is the problem to which this technology is the solution?

But, all right.  Let me address the question of why you should be concerned.  They are going to sell you the Metaverse.  Or, they are going to sell you little bits of it.  They are already starting to sell Metaverse "real estate."  Even the phrase "Metaverse real estate" is misleading.  Metaverse real estate is completely unreal.  In the real world real estate has real value because it's real.  And because you need it.  To have a place to live, or a place to work, or a place to build a factory, or a place to build roads to get goods from one factory to another, or from a factory to the homes.  As Mark Twain famously said, buy land, they are not making any more.  (Well, except for the Dutch, of course.)

Metaverse real estate isn't real.  When they want to sell you more Metaverse real estate, they just make it.  And it's easy to make.  Because it's not real.  It's all just ones and zeros.  They are selling you nothing.

Speaking of selling you nothing, the Metaverse will probably be using cryptocurrencies.  And NFTs.  And using decentralized finance (or defi, for short).  Remember cryptocurrencies?  That system where you pay in real money, to buy cryptocurrency, with no inherent value of its own, because the people who have created the cryptocurrency are telling you that many people will want to buy cryptocurrency, and you will be able to get real money out of the system, because of the new people, who come in after you, and pay real money, to buy cryptocurrencies with no inherent value.  Your return, and the inflation on your investment, depends upon the new people who come in after you and pay real money to buy in.  You will be paid from the money that they deposit.

Didn't someone named Charles Ponzi invent something similar a while back?

Metaverse real estate is not the only unreal thing that the vendors of the Metaverse will want you to pay real money for.  If you want a house on the unreal real estate, they will sell you an unreal house.  If you want artworks in your unreal house they will sell you unreal artworks (at unreal prices).  (But charge you real money.)

The vendors will sell you entertainments.  These entertainments will be popular.  Even if you are the only one attending.  It's easy to create a whole bunch of avatars, filling a theater, and creating a whole bunch of applause.  Pre-recorded applause.  The vendors will sell you games.  The vendors will sell you opportunities to interact with your friends.  The same friends that you can interact with now for free.  Or possibly new friends.  Who may or may not be real.

The vendors may sell you opportunities to work, and therefore make money.  It'll probably be in cryptocurrency, but they'll probably sell you the opportunity to convert it to real money as well.  (For a reasonable fee.) The opportunities to work will probably be real.  You will probably have real clients or real employers, so that they can pay you the real money.  But they'll charge a reasonable fee for the opportunity to get that work.  Of course, "reasonable" will be defined by the vendors.

It may be that, in the Metaverse, you need a thneed to make life bearable, or more enjoyable.  What's a thneed?  I have no idea.  I'm borrowing Dr Seuss's term.  But I'm sure that the vendors of the Metaverse will find one, or make one, or imagine one, and convince everybody that they need one.

Still don't think that there are dangers in the Metaverse?

NOTAGING

Walking around, particularly in the more remote areas around Delta, like over the Alex Fraser Bridge, on Annacis Island, and under various overpasses, I have noticed a stenciled, well, I'm not quite sure what it is.  A motto?  Directions?  Policy?  A social commentary?

This is a stenciled message, painted, for the most part on cement surfaces, which reads, "NOTAGING."

Now, initially, one might look at this and think that it is an injunction, a direction to taggers, not to put their messages in this place.  One might think that it reads, "no tagging."

But that doesn't make an awful lot of sense.  The tagger community is not known for its adherence to rules.  They are not likely to pay attention to instructions not to deface property by painting their messages on these walls.  They are much more likely to take it as a challenge, and to paint these walls anyways, just because somebody told them not to.  And then there's the spelling.  Tagging has two G's.  The painted motto has only one.  Would it be likely that the city crews, intending to prevent people from tagging, would make a spelling mistake?

And then there's the lack of a space.  The message that's painted doesn't have any indications of a word break.  It might just as well spell "not aging."  (That would make more sense in terms of the spelling, as well.  Although it wouldn't make much sense in any other way.)

So, is this, in fact, the work of yet another tagger, intending to promote just the sorts of speculation that I have been indulging in?

Why

The age-old existential question, eh?  2B OR !2B?

Why am I dieting? 

I mean, I know that it's good for my health.  I know that the walking is good for my health.  But why am I concerned about my health?  That only means that I'm going to live longer.  Why would I want to live longer?

I am old.  That means that, in the eyes of the world, I am useless.  Seventy years of learning all that I know, and it is of no use to anybody.  Thirty-five years of learning about security, and it is no use to anybody.  I have no use to the local community because I am no longer in my original community.  Because I am now a "newcomer," I am of no use to the community.

I am old.  I am also bereaved.  Nobody wants to know about that because nobody wants to think about death.  Also, I no longer have my friend, my buddy, the person to talk to, the person to enjoy things with.  So I am not enjoying anything anymore.  It's kind of freaky how little I am enjoying anything anymore.  I'm not enjoying reading.  I'm not enjoying movies.  I'm not enjoying much of anything.  I can't really even say that I'm enjoying walking, although walking is one of the things that is at least, less annoying.  But again, why am I walking?  Walking is only going to make me healthier, which is going to extend my life.  The life, you will recall, that I am not enjoying.

The only thing that I'm enjoying is oversized, unhealthy meals.  And, since I'm dieting, I can only do that about every week or two.

Am I hoping for something better?  I suppose that I must be.  What's that old joke about the triumph of hope over experience?

Am I hoping for a new friend?  I've had few enough really good friends in my lifetime.  Why should one come along just now?  Am I hoping that when I get to Port Alberni the community will be more accepting than it's being here?  Yeah, good luck with that.  A small town?  Accepting?  Not going to happen.  It's going to be more work discovering the community, finding a place in the community, finding opportunities to volunteer in the community, and all of that hard work.  And, I doubt that it will yield a better result.

I guess I just get on with it, regardless ...

Little Gnome Riding Hood

Once upon a time, the little gnome took a plateful of goodies (actually leftovers from lunch, with a few carrots from the garden) through the woods to his granddaughter's house, who was sick in bed with CoVID.

We had dinner outside, seated twelve feet apart.

Emergency alert system bugs and flaws

As an emergency support system worker, and as a security maven, and as a data and communications expert, I have been interested in the emergency alert system since they first started to try and put it together.  I have been interested to know the limitations and flaws that have been fairly consistent throughout.

This morning I got an emergency alert.  It wasn't very helpful, and it wasn't very informative.  And the reason that it wasn't either helpful or informative, turns on some of the flaws in limitations of the system itself.

I have, over time and the various tests that have been done with the system, noted that not all phones are capable of receiving the alerts.  And, indeed, at times I have noted that certain providers do not provide the alerts.  But the biggest limiting factor seems to be that, even if your phone can receive the alerts, and even if your provider provides the alerts, you don't get the alerts unless you have a data plan.  You can have unlimited voice communications, and you can have unlimited text communications, and if you don't have a data plan you do not get the alerts.  Any of them.

I have one phone which does not have a data plan, and so, even though it is with a provider which definitely does provide emergency alert service, I never get any emergency alerts on that phone at all.  I have another phone, identical, and, even though it is with a rather cheap provider, because I do have a data plan with this provider (even if it's rather limited), I do sometimes get emergency alerts on that phone.

I stress the "sometimes."

This morning as I was walking up to do my garden volunteering, I got an emergency alert.  As I say, it wasn't particularly useful or helpful.  It informed me that the incident was no longer considered a threat and confirmed, someone unhelpfully and not particularly comfortingly, that there was in fact just a single suspect.  No further details were provided.  The details had been provided on an earlier message, which I had not received up until that point.  I had not received that earlier alert because I had been at home.  And this brings up yet another limitation of the emergency alert system.

The emergency alert system not only requires that you be that you have a data plan with your provider, but that you be using that data plan at the time the emergency alert is issued.  If, for example, you are at home, and your phone preferentially connects to wifi (instead of the cellular providers dta plan) in order to reduce drain on your data quota, or reduce data charges (when you are doing application updates or streaming, for example), then you do not receive the emergency alerts while you are connected to wifi.  This also happens if you are connected to a hotspot.  As long as you are not using the cell company's data plan you do not get the emergency alerts.

Your mileage may, of course, vary.  This is what happens with my provider, in my area.  It is not inherent in the emergency alert system.  It would be simple enough for the emergency alert system to use text messaging or even just straight management channels, to alert the emergency alert app to check wifi for emergency alerts for the area.  It would be a simple and fairly minor tweak to correct this bug in the system.  That would eliminate this problem of not being able to receive emergency alerts.  Some providers, or some emergency management systems, may have done it already.  But obviously not those in my area.

Broad beans

Broad beans have two theological points to make.

The first is God's wide-ranging and somewhat lavish provision for us.

The second is yet further proof that God is not interested in efficiency.

We harvested about a third of the broad bean crop this week.  We got a ton of greenery from the plants, and the outer pods, that went into the compost bins.  This left us with about four cups of the inner beans, before double potting.

You can, of course, eat the broad beans at this point.  That's the way I cooked them for Gloria for thirty years.  Which, of course, was wrong, or, at least, limited.  The inner husk of the bean is not a particularly pleasant flavor, although it does have some minor nutritional value.  But most of the time what you want to do is double podding.

Actually, before I go on to the double podding, I should note that even before you get to this stage, you can have a meal from the broad bean plants.  First of all, the new growth, even after the plants start producing beans, can be eaten either raw as greenery and salads, or cooked as you would spinach or cabbage.  So that's one form of provision.  Then there are the bean pods themselves.  When they are between five and ten centimetres long, they can be picked directly off the plant and eating like snow peas.  They're not quite as sweet as or flavorful as snow peas, but they definitely are edible at that point.

However, of course, most people are going to wait until they get actual pods with actual beans in them.  This is where the observation about efficiency comes in.  When the bean pods do get to the size where they are actually producing beans, it doesn't seem to matter how big they get: most of the time you still only get four beans out of a pod.  And you're taking the pods and throwing them away.

No, you don't actually need to throw them away. Some people, even with the pod husks, will fry up those husks as a kind of a snack.  We haven't tried that yet, but a lot of people do say that you can do it.  Then, of course, there is the parable of the prodigal son.  At one point it mentions that he would fain have eaten the husks that were fed to the pigs but no one gave him any.  Broad beans are one of the oldest cultivars that mankind has grown, and those husks that they fed to the pigs were probably the outer pods from broad beans.  They still have some nutritional value, and definitely the pigs ate them, and starving prodigal sons would have liked to have eaten them, even though they were probably a bit fibrous and possibly tasteless (without being fried).

Anyway, back to the double podding.  Once you've got the beans out of the pods, you then boil or blanch them for between one and three minutes, depending upon which websites you trust.  You then immediately plunge the boiled beans into cold water to loosen the other husks even further.  At this point you can remove the inner husks relatively easily, although it is a bit of a tedious process.  You simply squeeze the beans between thumb and forefinger, and the inner bean shoots out and you are left with the inner husk in your fingers.  The inner bean, of course, is what you keep, and the inner husk gets thrown away at this point or it goes into the compost heap.

The inner beans are a rather startling bright green after the rather dull colored beans that you have harvested out of pods.  And, even at that point, and even with nothing else done to them, they're rather tasty just by themselves.  But, of course, there are all kinds of things that you can do with the beans at this point.

You can use them as you would any other kind of bean.  You can heat them up with a sauce.  You can put them into any recipe as a replacement for protein, or carbohydrates.  In a quick search L found about forty different recipes of all kinds of ways to prepare broad beans: in quiches, and risottos, and, what really tickled my fancy, some kind of being and bacon dish.

But what we did was mash them.  This turns them into a sort of guacamole, which I immediately dubbed bean-o-nomole.  L added some avocado as a kind of a binder, because the beans don't hold together particularly well.  She also added some lemon juice, grated onion, and grated Parmesan.  Of course as with anything that L does it was delicious.  And I imagine rather nutritious as well, served on toast or crackers.  Or as a dip in any other way.  Probably as a vegetable dip of some kind it would be quite nutritious indeed.

iHOP's brain-dead Website

I like iHop.  I have no problem with iHop locations.

What I have a problem with is ihop.ca, which is, presumably, run by head office.  The people responsible for ihop.ca should be put on a slow grill, and turned frequently, until they come to their senses.  Assuming they have any.

I have seldom seen a Website with more bugs and weirdnesses.  And this affects not merely head office, but seems to roll it's oddities out to any Website associated with any local iHop franchise.

Want to know what is on the menu at the location at 120th and 82nd?  Sorry, you can't.  Well, not unless you are really, really quick on the mouse.  The menu comes up, but then ihop.ca (which is not necessarily where you started) decides that you want to order online.  ihop.ca has decided that 120th and 82nd doesn't do that: they just serve customers who come to their location, and eat in.  (Except that I was just there, and they do serve online orders: they have a rack full of them, with pickup people coming in for the bags while I was there.)  So, ihop.ca helpfully whisks you away to ihop.ca, where you can order online.  In fact, that's all you can do.  You can ask to see which locations order online, but ihop.ca will only let you know the ones that it decides will do that, and it has decided that most of those that do, don't.

You can't even complain to iHop HQ about their brain dead Website, because ihop.ca, when you click on the "Contact Us" button (ostensibly https://www.ihop.com/en/contact-us ), it loops you back into the online order page almost immediately.

So, anybody in any of the franchises know how to get in touch with HQ?

(Oh, and, by the way: "Start you order"?)

That's nice ...

I was thinking about the new church.  It's a bigger church than the others.  Quite populous, especially in the second service.  And I stayed for "coffee" after the service.

It was tough.  I was in bad shape, emotionally.  But I put on a brave face.  And, quite a number of people did talk to me.  Most of whom asked how I had liked the service.  I try to be honest, so I told them, which involved mentioning, briefly, that my wife would have liked it, but had died.  Recently.

I'm only now realizing how many people responded "That's nice ..."

Review of "The Buffet," recidivus

In response to my original review, the buffet stated that they were always trying to improve, and that I should try again. So, after a time to let them get settled, I did.

They should have accepted the original review. (This was all the more disappointing in that I had promised myself a return visit to The Buffet as a treat. I took them at their word that they were trying to improve, and their ambition, stated on the Website, that they were trying to be the best in the area. Silly me: I should have remembered that "the area" could be closely defined, as, say, within half a mile of the casino. That would make their competition Value Village, Lowes, a steel yard, and the bus barn.) First of all let me say a few things that I can praise. The meats on offer were all consistently, and properly, cooked, and were tender throughout. The cooked vegetables, always an important factor in the restaurant, where al dente, and not allowed to turn into gray mush in the steam trays. And I like their cream puffs. The dinner menu, despite being more expensive than the brunch menu, is definitely worse. The salad components are cut into rather large chunks, which, in combination with the none-too-generously-sized plates, makes it difficult to create any kind of a salad. The prepared salads are slightly better. The quinoa and cranberry salad is a fresh and interesting taste. However, again, the potato salad contains large slabs of potato, drowned in a rather thick sauce. Ham and pea was one of the soup offerings; normally one of my favorites; but this one was particularly savourless. There are six Asian, and six Western, offerings on the steam trays. The sweet and sour pork is neither. The tandoori chicken tastes strangely similar to the baked chicken that mother used to make. (Mother never did see the need to add any spices or flavouring to any foods.) It's hard to do anything wrong with the roast beef as long as you cook it properly, and, as noted, this beef is cooked properly. Unfortunately, there was nothing that I could think of to eat with it. Even the dinner buns were dry and hard. (Oh, and the illustrations of the menu on the Website? Well, let us be kind, and simply describe them as ... fictional.) I tried a little bit of everything. And I couldn't think of any single one of them that I wanted to try any more of. (Except the cream puffs.) This buffet is limited, unappetizing, and uninspired. The only explanation I can think of is that they know that, in a casino, they have a captive audience and they really don't need to try to be any good. The staff, even after months, still don't seem to be either trained or experienced in their own price structure, coupons, specials, or simply had to punch in an order for a buffet. Lineups at the beginning of the evening still take longer than necessary to clear. Service is, if anything, worse than before. The staff still don't seem to realize that possibly three dirty plates piled up in a corner of the table possibly might mean that they should be cleared away. I'm pretty sure they do not warrant a third visit.

Family movies ...

I can't help wondering if any social scientists would want about 150 hours of family events (on VHS tape) from about 1995 to 2005, recording conversations and activities. One would think it might have some importance as archives for future study of our times ...

Intermittent bingeing

Okay I promised to tell you about my diet.  Even though I know that it will have professional dietitians cringing in pain.

Generally speaking, my reaction to stress is stress eating.  During Gloria's final illness and death, I definitely wasn't trying to diet.  As a matter of fact, in the month before she went into the hospital, while she wasn't eating very much because she had stomach pains and nausea, I, not having to provide meals that Gloria would eat, was eating out more than usual.  So I definitely wasn't dieting then.  And I wasn't dieting while she was in hospital.  So I was rather surprised, after Gloria died, to find that I had in fact lost a fair amount of weight.  I still wasn't trying to lose weight.  I figured that that was a one-off.  But I also found, a few weeks later, that I was still losing weight after Gloria had died.  So, I figured that I might as well take advantage of the fact that I had lost some weight, and get serious about dieting.

A diet works if it works for you.  And I have also observed that dieting is a fairly selfish, and self-centered, activity.  You have to figure out what will work for *you*, and what *you* can eat, that will still allow you to eat less than usual and lose weight.  There is, of course, the recently popular intermittent fasting diet.  This allows you times when you can eat, and times when you don't eat.  My baby brother is really big on the intermittent fasting diet.  He thinks that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, although, of course, he can't eat any bread right now.  I don't exactly follow the intermittent fasting diet.  I have my own version of it, which I refer to as intermittent bingeing.

I weigh myself every couple of days.  I have, in the past, noted that it's not a good idea to weigh yourself every day.  Weight fluctuates and varies according to some weird schedule of its own, and it gets kind of depressing when you do all the right things, and you still don't lose weight.  So it's not a good idea to weigh yourself every day.  But every couple of days I weigh myself.  And, if I am a lower weight than I have been at any point on this diet, I reward myself, for eating vegetables and salads when I would rather have burgers, by having a fast food pig out.  Yes, I know it is completely unhealthy.  Why couldn't I binge on something more healthy?  Like a big salad!

Well this is the way it works for me.  I binge on unhealthy fast food.  If, that is, I have hit a target, the target being a lower weight than I have been at any point on this diet.

So far it has been working.  Not all the time: and sometimes it can be rather frustrating when I've had a binge and lo and behold I've gained 15 pounds from one unhealthy meal.  But I try to remember that weight fluctuates, for reasons of its own, on schedules of its own, and that eventually it will come back down again.

The walking probably doesn't hurt.  I'm walking quite a bit.  I'm walking long distances at times.  I am, in fact, walking while I am dictating this.  I am walking back and forth around the corner of the Strawberry Hill branch of the Surrey Public Library, in a path that keeps me within the zone of their wifi, so I can keep doing the dictation.  And I'm walking slowly back and forth while I'm dictating this.  I'm probably not putting in a heck of a lot of miles doing this but at least I'm somewhat active rather than just sitting down and dictating.

Anyway, that's my diet.  I do try to eat somewhat sensibly on days when I'm not bingeing.  I try to eat vegetables, which is getting somewhat easier as some of the gardens are starting to produce something to eat.  At one point I was going to the dead vegetable bin at the local grocery store, and whatever was on discount, that was dinner for the day.  However they don't do as much discount vegetables anymore, so it's a good thing that the gardens started producing.  I've also started stocking up on large bottles of vegetable juice (Gloria and I always preferred Mott's Garden Cocktail over V8 or house brand veg juice) so that I can go to the fridge and slug down a drink of vegetable juice, at a time when I would normally go for crackers, or bread, or a handful of toasted corn.  I figured the vegetable juice is probably a better idea.  Hopefully this will work reasonably well.

No, I am not particularly regular with this diet.  Yes, there are days when I raid the candy drawer.  Which still has some stuff in it, although it's starting to get pretty old.  Yes, there are days when I raid the cracker cupboard.  But I'm trying.

Not everyday is just vegetables and salads of course.  I am, occasionally, creating a meal, with actual meat and potatoes in it.  And I've got some frozen boxes of vegetables to augment those particular meals.  When I do that I generally try to do it only once a day, and I try to ensure that I'm not overdoing it with the potatoes.

Steps

I'm walking a lot.  Apparently it is a great surprise to most people how much I walk.  Yes, I do still have a car, and I do keep it gassed up, and every week or two there is some reason why I need to take the car somewhere.  But I try to walk as much as I can for any regular activities where it's possible to walk. So, a walk of five kilometres (so a round trip of ten kilometres) is a regular thing.  No, I am not keeping track of exactly how far I have walked in total.  (Well, the other day I did a rough estimate, and I've done more than two "Caminos" so far this year.)  Yes, I'm spending hours walking.  And no, for people with busy lives, this amount of walking is probably not something that they could do on a regular basis.

So, I'm doing a lot of walking.  But even I am surprised at far how far out of my way I will go to avoid steps.  Or even a curb.  I will walk quite a ways down a curb so that I can get to a driveway, or a wheelchair ramp, so that I don't have to do even one step up onto the curb.  It's not always possible, of course, and, yes, I will step up onto a curb if necessary, and I will do stairs if absolutely necessary.  But it's surprising how far I will go to avoid any kind of steps.

I mean, isn't this kind of weird?  I'm walking for miles and miles.  It's not as if there is any problem with my legs.  Although I do find when I walk several kilometers, and then sit for a while (during Old Guys Coffee Morning, for example), that it takes a little while to get moving again when I start moving again.  Okay, that's just the cost of getting old.  Old age is not for wimps, as Gloria's Grama Campbell used to say.  Frequently.

I find it all the more surprising, since during some previous times of exercise regimes (and, oh yes, I have had them), steps were my preferred form of exercise.  At one point I was climbing a thirty storey building, ten times in succession.  So yes, I have walked up an awful lot of steps in my time.  So finding that now steps are something I will go a long way to avoid is a bit surprising.

Danny Boy

I have three, two-hour, VHS tapes of "Gloria's Greatest Hits."  (Or, I did, until Everlasting Studios overwrote the first one.)

Apparently, I also started a fourth.  There are only five songs on it.  There are two songs, including "O Holy Night," that Leanne and Gloria did for West Vancouver Baptist Church one Christmas.  There is also Gloria singing "Let My People Go," with Trevor on piano, as he is learning to play the piece.

There are also two songs from a Lavender Festival.  The Lavender Festival wasn't Gloria's favorite.  Carol liked it, and Gloria sang for her.  But Gloria always felt better when it was religious music in church.  She didn't feel great about just singing popular songs for some kind of party setting.

This is probably the last time that Gloria is singing at the Lavender Festival.  There is a fragment of "Danny Boy."  It's the last (second) verse of the song.  It's the only time that I have ever heard someone sing "Danny Boy" without wanting to ridicule the performance.  "Danny Boy," as a song, is often so overblown with maudlin sentimentality that the song itself, and even the name, has become kind of a shorthand for maudlin sentimentality in song.  (This isn't aided by the ambiguity of the words.  Is the song sung by a lover?  A parent?  Is it about going off to war?  Or the diaspora?)  But, as I say, this is the last verse of "Danny Boy" that is on the tape.  And, of course, it is a woman, foreseeing her eventual death, and her lover mourning at her grave.  So, I cannot, of course, ridicule that: not now that Gloria is dead and I am mourning her.

Washing machine timing

The washing machine in the apartment has a variety of settings.  Or, rather combinations of settings.  You can't set options individually, just by picking a specific cycle.

There isn't anything in the manual that says what each cycle actually does.  There is a vague description of each.  About the only thing it tells you, specifically, is how long it will take to complete.  When you select a cycle, it provides the time up front.  Then it counts down as it proceeds.

I have suspected that the countdown isn't really all that accurate.  I've now got specific proof that it is hardly even an estimate.  It's more a flat out lie.  (I suppose you could say that, in comparison, a longer cycle time will take longer.  But how much longer is really anybody's guess.)