On the way home today, I decided to stop at the bank and deposit my paycheck. Not a big paycheck, but the payroll services messed up my direct deposit, so I had to go to the bank. Oddly enough, the same company messed up both of Kris' automatic payroll deposits, giving me even less confidence in the company.

So, I dashed into the bank on the way home, check in hand. As I walked up to the center counter with all the deposit slips, I noticed an old woman standing there.

I noticed her about 12 feet away from the counter. With my nose.

She had let out the most amazing fart, managing to stink up a 12' radius around her with a normal but very strong fart smell. I originally walked up to stand next to her to fill out my deposit slip, but managed only about 2 seconds next to her, deciding to walk to the other counter quickly.

I left laughing at the whole experience. Apparently my sense of smell is coming back.

I'm sure to forget this, so I'll write it down here, for when I implement the roster barcode scanner part of the rostering system for college. Via Joel on Software's article on How to Ship Anything:

"I didn't really know which barcode scanner to buy, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find any online reviews of barcode scanners. I did find out that the kind of scanner I wanted was a USB keyboard wedge scanner. That means that it has a USB port, which makes connection simple, and it behaves exactly like a keyboard as far as your computer is concerned. I also found out that I wanted a laser scanner, not a CCD scanner, because it works at a distance. I ended up buying a Wasp WSL-9000 along with the stand which you can see in the picture. So far it's been great.

Setting up the barcode reader was the easiest thing in the world. Plug it in to a USB port, and you're done. It comes with a whole book of barcodes that you can scan to configure it to behave in many interesting ways, which you can throw away. Without any setup, when you scan a barcode, your scanner will type the letters that barcode represents on the keyboard and press Enter."

According to Google, though, that's the only place on the web that refers to that scanner as "Wasp WSL-9000", so search for Wasp WSL 9000" (no dash).

And get the one with the USB cable.

My Treo finally synced and I was able to gather up all my mobile blog posts to post them. This one I wrote a couple weeks ago. Yay, sync!

So, I'm driving behind this car on the way to class tonight. It's a fairly new car, but I'm still thinking, "What a piece of sh*t." when I look at it.

After following it for about half a mile, I realize why I keep having that thought: the license plate was 4POS273, which my mind kept translating into "4 piece of sh*t 2-7-3."

I've had an account at Ameritrade since they first opened. I'm not sure why I keep that particular account, but suffice it to say, I have made them a lot of money over the last eight or so years. They claim to have this wonderful security system, that no one can get through, many IT guys working around the clock to ensure all of their clients' personal information is secure, blah blah blah.

So imagine my surprise when I received a virus/spam email address to the email address that I use for my Ameritrade account.

As in, I use that email address for only communication with Ameritrade.

The email I send to them with that email address is encrypted from my system to theirs. The only way, as far as I can tell, for that email address to get out is either from some leak on my Linux box that's been turned off for the last 10 months, or some leak in their internal systems.

As I've done with a dozen other sites and businesses that "lose" one of my very specific email addresses, I contacted them to let them know they had a problem with their systems, please look into it. Usually I get a response back the following day denying the incident, and I respond with a, "no, no, here's the system you need to look at," quoting a particular IP address. Thus far, each and every company I've contacted has eventually responded with an apology and an admittance of a virus.

Not so with Ameritrade. Instead, they let me know that the problem was clearly a bruteforce attack of spammers, by going alphabetically through the dictionary and appending my domain name to the words, they've magically come upon my secret Ameritrade email address (which, by the way, contains no dictionary words in it - none), so clearly there's no virus inside their hallowed firewalls.

Complete and utter bullsh*t.

Any network that is 1. attached to the Internet in general and 2. has people actually using it is not 100% secure, and no one, absolutely no one will ever convince me otherwise. Too many reports (which, admittedly, I should track down so that I have proof of the following statement, but at the moment, I'm distracted) detailing social engineering break-ins, "innocent" downloads or even malicious jpg images, and, well, just plain stupid people in the world to be able to guarantee a completely secure network.

Flippant answers, canned answers and completely wrong answers all annoy me. Tragically, I have little faith any of the other trading houses are going to be any more diligent in their security, or even their customer responses. Hell, a "let me forward this to our security specialists, even though I really don't think this is a problem" is better than a patronizing, "clearly you're wrong if you think there's a problem with our security" reply.

Allow me to say this will document the beginning of the Ameritrade security hole that will most likely be disclosed within the year.

Dashed up to the City with Messina to go to two events, meet up with people (Jesse!) and have dinner. I'm struck with the realization, as I stand here in Andy's jacket (freezing my ass off - what is it with the City and men who own thin jackets?), that I'm very much where I was many months ago: unable to participate in loud social events without wandering to a wall and being awkward. The funny part is that it's the noise that puts me off, not the people or approaching them. What is it with noise that I become so dysfunctional with crowds and noise?

Dang. I need my earplugs.