Category: Life, the universe, and everything…

Enjoy!

After the emergency caesarian, Tanya needed me quite a bit, so I ended up staying in the hospital with her until Friday. The rooms in the MCU are nice, but the fold out arm chairs which become a bed for the odd stay here and there are not so good for my back. Things were a bit strange as we didn’t have Mackenzie in the room with us, but down at the NICU where she was being closely monitored.Mackenzie was a little irritable in the first few days, but in the end, she didn’t need any medicine to help her over the meds that Tanya had to take to make it through the pregnancy.I had my diabetic nurse appointment at 9 am, so the commute two floors down was pretty easy. It turns out I have type 2 diabetes, which is not so good, but the prognosis is good if I can lose the weight, which should also help the high blood pressure and the sleep apnea. We talked about a bunch of stuff, but the main thing is behavior modification, along with diet and exercise changes. I have way more to learn about living with diabetes, including learning to live with pricking my finger four times a day.However, during the diabetic appointment I started having the sniffles, and soon enough it’s turned into quite the rotten cold. I’ve been unwell now for a number of days, which is no good when all I really want to do is hold Mackenzie. I still feel a bit disconnected from it all as we didn’t have her in the room, and because of the cold, I really haven’t had a lot of opportunities to bond with her beyond a feed here or there.

What a week!

Today, we came in for a nice ultrasound with the in-laws so they can see, and maybe beg our obgyn for an earlier inducement. We sort of got what we wanted, and then some! We never made it to the obgyn appointment as things had moved on!

In a whirlwind, it turned from being low on amniotic fluid to immediate inducement followed by lots of pain then to much earlier than expected epidural to … well, let’s just say a lot of folks rushed in and thirty minutes later we are the proud parents ofMackenzie Lynne van der Stock!

Awesome! She might have come a little early (38 weeks), but that’s not a day too soon for Tanya, who has had a very difficult pregnancy.

Mackenzie weighed 2.75 kg (about 6 lbs 1 oz after conversion – even the US folks measure in metric for babies now!) and is 50 cms long today.It’s been very exhausting and I’m using a tiny connection to the Internet via my mobile phone, so things will have to wait until tomorrow. We have photos and movies.

UPDATE: Photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/vanderaj/Mackenzie/

Well, I’ve been extraordinarily busy this year. Far too busy to do much beyond scratch myself. I feel bad as I:

• Didn’t end up writing a book, much to my wife’s relief
• Failed to blog as much as I wanted to, particularly on the layer 7, 8 and 9 issues such as business logic flaws that I love so much
• Left the OWASP Board without achieving anything major organizationally in the last twelve months. I never intended to stay on the board forever, but I achieved far less than I could have in the time I had, such as adopting a proper Foundation / Core / Leaders
• Failed to release any new releases of UltimaBB through complete inactivity
• Failed to lose any weight. In fact, I put on 15 kg since arriving in the USA, the single largest one year bump ever
• Failed to work on the OWASP Guide (much)
• Failed to improve my (weak) Japanese or learn Spanish even though that would be handy as you hear it so much here. My iPod is bursting at the seams with hundreds of Japanese and Spanish lessons, and I’ve listened to like five episodes all up

Listing it out like this, it’s like 2007 was a big fat failure. But that’s not entirely true:

• Moved to the USA and settled down. This doesn’t sound like much, but only if you’ve never moved country.
• Made a baby with my lovely wife. Our daughter is coming real soon now – we’ve had several close calls and she can’t wait to get out by the looks of things
• Saw about 25 of the 58 possible states*. The USA is awesome. I’ve been from Miami to Boston, from NYC to LA, and it’s so totally different and yet familiar. I can’t wait to see more.
• Got the job of a lifetime. The guys at Aspect are everything I thought they’d be and more. It’s a wonderful work environment with great people at the top, funny co-workers, and the work is challenging and varied, which is just up my alley.
• Lead Author and Editor of the Top 10 2007. That was a huge undertaking – incorporating all the other folks efforts. I’m glad it’s out there
• With my OWASP and Aspect hats on, worked on the SANS GSSP for Java with a bunch of other folks. We need certifications to get rid of the unqualified cowboys from our field. I am reasonably certain that multiple choice exams are NOT the way to do this, but it’s not likely my way (a master’s like dissertation or practical project) would fly
• Worked on the SANS Top 20 again (and got Jeremiah in on the act – he updated the first draft this year – much kudos to him!)
• Got the XMB folks back up on their feet with a dynamic set of programmers… which sort of took the wind out of UltimaBB, but that’s okay. XMB deserves all the success in the world after so many years of being effectively mismanaged
• Worked on researching mainframe security for web apps, which seems a total blank slate, yet vital to the world’s financial industry.

So next year, I plan to revisit some of my favorite themes, but I will only blog once in a blue moon by design. The blog entries will be farther apart, but I plan to make them content rich. Many of them will be previews for new OWASP research. In the meantime, I’m sure my life is about to completely change by a small 3 to 4 kg baby girl. We’ll see what happens next year!

* I say 58 not because I’m geographically challenged, just that Australia is the 51st through 58th (puppet) states. We’ll see if the new PM is a bit more independent or whether we trade one colonial master we ignore for another

The old guard has been thrown out. In true Australian style, if you stick it to the battler, attacking and destroying the very fundament of Australian society – “a fair go”, you’re out. And the Australian people have spoken, and it looks like soon to be ex-PM John Howard may even lose his seat. It couldn’t happen to a nicer person so out of touch with the modern day reality. The 1950’s were a long time ago, and we needed a modern government for these last twelve years, not someone who denied climate change despite a 9 year drought right in front of our very eyes. We needed someone who does not think that economic growth is more important than society itself. The Montgomery Burns world view simply does not work.

Good luck to Kevin Rudd. It’ll be awesome to have a Prime Minister who can speak two languages for once. As an ex-diplomat, I wonder if he has the cojones necessary to stand up to the Unions so it doesn’t go too far the other way. Whitlam lost that battle, and that was a worse disaster than even Howard, even though his heart was in the right place and most of his policies (free tertiary education for all, free health care for all) made him one of Australia’s best Prime Ministers, and a legacy that to this day is unsurpassed in Australian history.

I only wish I wasn’t disenfranchised at the moment by being in the USA. I missed out voting entirely as we’re now off the electoral roll. In the future, I can’t say to my daughter that I had a hand in getting rid of one of Australia’s worst ever governments, one which let power go to its head and conduct ideology experiments on an unwilling public. Oh well.

Let’s hope that if Rudd gets power in both houses, or at least Greens as the balance of power, the same thing that happened to Howard’s government doesn’t happen to the Labor party.

Well, I was watching this new show called “The Big Bang Theory” last night (on Tivo-To-Go at the hospital, but that’s for another blog entry another time). It’s written by Chuck Lorre who has done a lot of great comedy, including Two and a Half Men. I quite liked it, as what’s not to love?

• Cosmologically-correct lyrics in the opening titles – sure to annoy literal evangelicals YAY!
• String theory jokes, using the actual differences between the various string theory camps as the punchline
• Actual WoW game as a come-on … as in, let’s play WoW together … in different rooms … so I can get in your pants … somehow

I never thought I’d hear jokes like this ever on prime time TV sitcoms – let alone from the country that watches Britney Spears’ every move as if it’s actually important (hint: it’s not important).What I didn’t like. The stereotypes are really old. The guy with the 60’s hair – never met him. The two guys who play Klingon Boggle. I’ve been geeky since whenever and I’ve never seen this, but maybe I’m not l33t enough in the Trekkie circles. One dimensional geeks. Sure there’s some folks who are Aspergers or borderline so, but most geeks are into a very wide variety of things, and not just intellectual pursuits and Babylon Five. I give it thirteen episodes before it’s canned. This show is far too cerebral and cliquey for the show biz types to go “I haven’t understood a single joke”. It’ll be a shame, as it’s the first US sitcom I’ve ever seen that doesn’t talk down to its audience. For that, you need to see Beauty and the Geek. I’m scared, very scared when I watch that show.  

GM has held this position since 1931, but now Toyota will be #1 for some considerable time to come.

Story here (New York Times)

Why? Toyota produces cars that folks want. A few years ago, they produced dull as dishwater boring cars, or even outright ugly cars (think the Echo sedan – FUGLY! I’m an ex-Echo *hatch* owner and even I think the sedan version is awful), but they were exactly what folks want from cars – utterly reliable, frugal enough, and safe.

GM was “safe” as long as it produced cars roughly equivalent. Dull. Increasingly reliable. But not particularly frugal. And they lost sight of the ball. They worried more about Toyota than their customers. They forgot about their own history and their golden years – the 1950’s.

Toyota got a clue a few years ago, and started injecting all of its models with design, something GM pioneered with its Art and Color (=Design) area. So although Toyota’s current design philosophy (L-Finesse) probably offends the 55+ sedan owner who buys a car once every 20 years, they actually don’t matter. They don’t buy enough cars, and they literally die off. Why target this market at all?

The car magazines here are bemoaning this change left, right and center, trying to figure out who is to “blame”. Well, the consumer is to blame. They stopped taking the car magazines’ advice when the magazines stopped advocating for the average consumer. Not everyone can afford 911’s or a Nobel M12, no matter how driver focussed these cars have become. They are simply impractical.

Look on the roads – you’ll find SUVs, MPVs and sedans, and in more European style markets, hatches, larger hatches masquerading as MPVs, and the occasional “executive” car like the BMW 3 series, which form the remnants of the sedan market (sedans are almost dead over there as they are so impractical and inflexible. I’ve worked out most of the SUVs sold here are basically super dooper hatches – they are the same shape, just much larger on the outside. Most of the SUVs here have such rustic and soft suspension, two wheel drive, compromised tyres that they are not any better at offroading than our Golf.)

What you don’t find in people’s driveways are 911’s, Ariel Atoms or Nobel M12’s. The Emperors have no clothes – they have abandoned the consumer, so the consumer goes and makes choices that best reflect their upwardly mobile aspirations, budget and safety. Thus they have bought Toyota’s and Lexus’s. And they bought lots of them. The Australian car mags, which are actually some of the best I’ve read (I read Car, Automobile, Wheels, Motor, Motor Trends, Car and Driver, and Top Gear), diss Toyota continuously. They rarely review Toyota, and when they do, they hate it. Yet, Toyota has been #1 in Australia for many years. The buying public have better collective wisdom than the onomastic wannabe race boys at the mags. No surprise there.

Car magazines need to pull their finger out of their collective rectums and figure out who buys cars, and write at least a few non-token stories about them. If they want to make changes in cars they hate, they have to review them properly against the likely use. There’s no point in saying things like “The Mercedes Sprinter FedEx truck sucked on the track and had a terrible 0-60 time”, or “This MPV could not sustain more than 0.6 g and took out a bunch of cones at 110 mph”. That’s not how those cars will be used. Don’t review them as if the world is a racetrack. It’s not. Hire a soccer mom who knows a thing or two about cars, and train her what makes a good car and what makes a good car story. Get her to review the family cars as if she was looking to buy one. Road test them with kids and stuff. Hire a skivvy wearing Apple owner to review “Prestige” Euro cars and wannabes like Volvos and Saabs. Teach them what dynamics are and how to not get sucked in by appearances, maybe by letting them have long term loaners. Give an Audi A3 or New Beetle convertible to someone for six months and they will quickly learn good looks does not maketh a reliable car. Don’t let wannabe race car drivers anywhere near family cars and hatches. Make the dark age petrol heads realize that cubic capacity is not everything by only allowing them to take home a MX5 when they’re not reviewing another car. Only allow one single BMW in the long term carpark per year, and give it to the production staff to review. And everyone should have to take the “econobox” cheapy for a week or so to how the rest of us live.

So what happened in the USA with Toyota? Well, design happened. The new Camry is not a bad looker for a sedan. Certainly a lot better looking than the predecessor Avalon / Camry / E300. The Prius is good looking no matter which way you look at it. The new Echo hatch is pretty good (sedan still fugly). The RAV4 definitely talks to its market even if I don’t like it. Lexus IS looks better than the 3 series and is better value. The trucks they sell here are polarizing – not slab sided, but beefy, which suits the “built like a brick shithouse” crowd who buys them (again trucks are not my thing). So by incorporating best of breed reliability, pretty good fuel economy (compared to their competitors), and now design, Toyota will be #1 for some time to come.

I’ve had the misfortune to hire a few Chevy Malibu’s recently. They suck. I had one with 270 miles on the clock and it still had the new car smell. It had a gargantuan turning circle – like a first generation front drive, and then wandered around the road a bit under torque steer, and even minor inputs. It drank like a thirsty pig and wasn’t particularly fast. I had the hatch as I like hatches, but GM missed the point of hatches – lots of room. The Malibu hatch is a fast back. All the disadvantages of a sedan – limited cargo space, plus incredibly hot if left in the sun. GM is not going to win the war with this car. They need to scrap it and pick up their Euro cars and Americanize them. Which means make a sedan version which is not fugly. And that’s hard. May be it is time to wean Americans off sedans. Nah, not going to happen whilst those 55+ folks are considered and the lowest common denominator focus groups exist.

For the next 10 or so years, GM has lost the crown to Toyota. At least. Unless they start calling their design group “Art and Design” again and let the designers release cars which have NOT been through millions of consumer focus groups, but allow the designers to have their way, GM will continue to release cars few want.

If the lowest common denominator wins, everyone loses. There’s enough brands, designs and cars to suit every taste. There’s no reason to say “well, the Mini only sold 700,000 thus was a failure”. The Mini stands out like dog’s balls. And that’s fantastic. Would I have one? Yes. Would Tanya’s parents? Unlikely, but not all the cars need to be a Mini.

GM also has to stop producing fuel hungry crappy cars like the Malibu and pretty much the rest of their range. Toyota has not ever bothered to make a fuel hungry car and called it a “feature”. Although we think fuel supplies are expensive now, this will probably be nothing compared to 20 or 30 year’s time. Not thinking ahead to those times will kill GM. There should be a concerted effort to move to cars which move with adequate pace but use a lot less fuel. Not even a V8 owning monster truck driver likes paying ze big bucks to the oil companies. It’s time GM started to wean their cars off the juice, whilst not overly reducing performance, or even enhancing it.

Car Magazines will continue to sell dreams, but they have to fix their game too. They are responsible for ignoring the consumer and letting them buy any old crap through the absence of any real information on the majority of models on the market today. Luckily, despite this, consumers ended up buying well. Typically not dynamically enjoyable cars – but how would the consumer know? The magazines and web sites never told them as they’re too precious to dilute their “hard” wannabe race driver image sullied by reviewing a normal car. Now, imagine if Toyota made a car which was reliable, cheap to buy and run, safe, good looking AND dynamically capable? No other car maker would be able to compete. That is the car journalists’ collective fault and they will continue to suck whilst they forget their first and foremost duty – to their customers. No other media form is as narrow minded as a BMW-loving wannabe race driver.

A car should be something *worth* owning. A car is either the most expensive or second most expensive thing most folks have, and it should reflect them and honor their choice. This is why buying a soulless car is soul destroying – you’d never buy a house which is not you. You’d never wear clothes that don’t suit you. Why do folks feel they have no real reason to buy a car which reflects them? As Barney would say “SUIT UP!” If you’re going to do this thing, do it right. Don’t buy that slab sided monstrosity. Buy the Hugo Boss of cars, tailored for you.

Gary predicted I wouldn’t last three months, and yet here I am. However, my health has taken a bit of a beating and Tanya hasn’t been the most healthy.

The funny thing is that when you live elsewhere you have the impression from the meejia that all Americans are fat. I’ve been to Cleveland, OH, Pittsburgh, PA, Miami, FL, a little place about 30 miles outside of Philadelphia, Washington DC, and obviously here in Columbia. There are very few fat Americans. I am usually the largest sphere of influence at geek meetings. In fact, most of the folks in my company are fitness freaks and play a game called 3 coin to make the “winner” do flights of stairs as a reward/punishment. So much for the usual stereotypes of fat slothful folks. I was sort of hoping that I would be able to find clothes that better fit me as more folks needed them, but I’m still having to buy from big and tall shops. Luckily, one of my bosses is a gentle giant from the sky, and he put me onto where I can find the bigger stuff at one of the local malls.

The lack of fat folks is a miracle as the food is totally yummy, totally huge, and so, so wrong. I’ve gained 4 kg and high blood pressure, taking me to a new category of bad overweight. I don’t know how folks maintain their svelte appearance if they eat like me, and most seem to. One thing I have noticed is that they have great salads. Maybe I should eat those instead of the double heart attack on a plate.

My doctor sort of yelled at me for being so unhealthy and so we agreed that I would try to lose some of the weight. The problem is that Tanya is so unwell most of the time, and what she can keep down, is not necessarily good for me. Plus, when I come home from a long day at work, if Tanya is too unwell to cook, I really don’t feel like doing it. We have to break the pattern soon, or else my doctor will yet at me some more. I was referred to a ENT specialist to deal with the dizzy spells I’ve been having, and luckily, the beta blocker heart pills (I call them my “dried frog pills”) seem to have capped that sucker. However, I was worried about hearing loss and so they tested me. I was really surprised to find that I still have all of my hearing. I don’t think I do; I find it really amazingly hard to understand folks in noisy environments, and it was made worse by the dizziness spells. However, the hearing test was nothing if not thorough and they basically declared me to have “perfect” hearing, which is extremely unusual for adults over 25. Damn my perfect hearing.

The USA is an intriguing mix of up to the minute technology and ancient conservatism. The banking system is in the dark ages. We had to get a cheque book. I’ve never really had one before. We had to ask what to fill in the blanks as we simply didn’t know. Online banking is a joke. It’s like they heard about it from someone who went on a trip overseas, and then forgot all the important details. Not only can our Internet Banking not see what transactions are in play at the moment, most of the transactions take days or sometimes a week or more to resolve themselves. Yet if you go to an ATM and get a mini-statement, it is mostly accurate. The anti-phishing controls are like it was like in 1999 in Australia – i.e. none. There’s no real security – the URL changes to somewhere completely different than you typed and the lack of features would have made a small cash strapped bush credit union back in the mid 1990’s blush. Our bank? Citibank. Most folks are completely wary of electronic transfers, and it’s no wonder. The online banking system is crap and needs a good competitor to come in and shake up the moribund bankers here with a few modern features like, ooh I don’t know, electronic bill payment. Yes, we’re paying our electricity bill by cheque because they complain when we ring up to pay via credit card, and we can’t do it from the online banking system.

Many places are able to take credit cards now, but we cannot pay the rent by credit card or electronic means. Don’t even bother trying to get in a cab with a credit card – they only take cash. Even the ones who say they take visa on the window. They’re lying. It’s a total crapshoot if the place is totally modern taking contactless payments or if they are still in the dark ages requiring cash on the barrel. Even places with EFTPOS don’t always take debit cards. I was in a hotel suite not long ago that would have refused my good money if I didn’t already have a standing authorization from work. And yet, we order our pizza and Indian food online and pay via credit card.

Winter was fun. Never really had much to do with seasons before, and so going outside when it was well below freezing (say -20 C) took my breath away. Literally. Snow was fun for about the first three days… until we got stuck in 20-30 cm of snow and had to spend the day at home chilling out until they plowed and salted the roads. Then spring came with a bang. One day it was like snowing and around zero. Then the very next week it’s like 25 C and the snow is melting. We had one little storm which dumped a bit more snow, but now it’s pretty mild. Most days are high teens low 20’s and it’s starting to get humid. I hope it’s not too humid here during summer. I hear it is. We’ll see – maybe like a frog in increasingly hot water I’ll get used to it.

I am starting to get a bit jaded by the tipping. For those who don’t know, in Australia we pay our serving staff reasonable living wages, so tipping is entirely voluntary and is usually only given for superlative service, particularly in the posher restaurants. Here, because they pay absolutely appalling wages (one serving lady told me $2.95 per hour at our favorite diner), they live on the tips. So why isn’t the food cheaper at most places? They’re not paying their staff, which has to be one of the biggest costs. I’ve come to expect $30-$40 bills (About $50-60 AUD) for simple lunch for me and Tanya, something that will cost in Australia no more than $AUD20-25 for a much higher quality meal.

However, saying that, serving staff are generally extremely polite and helpful. Australians do not make good serving staff as we expect to be treated like humans no matter what. I like that. However, getting stuff I want is also nice.

Driving on the roads here is a load of fun. There’s no speed cameras (yet), and although the surface of the roads make some of Sydney’s roads look like F1 race tracks, everyone speeds here. Usually 10-15 mph (a good 20-30 km/h) above the speed limit. The local freeways are 55 mph (88 km/h). If you don’t do 65, you’re going to get nailed by big ass trucks. The cars usually do 65-70, and a bit more in the left lane. I don’t mind speeding, but sometimes these folks are nuts. It was hailing cats and dogs the other day, and I was still tailgated by a moron in a large SUV.

The SUV is king here. And they’re bigger and more numerous than you’d expect. The lady next door has a truck which could fit in an entire kindergarten of kids in its massive flatbed, but she only has a small Chihuahua (which suffers from insane tiny barky dog syndrome), and as far as I can tell, she doesn’t garden or go off the road. This is pretty typical. I’m glad we bought something that weighs nearly 1400 kg as if we’d gone with the 1200 kg Jazz/Fit, we’d probably be flattened by now.

Our car is going well, even if it’s drinking like a V8 and putting out like a lethargic 4 cylinder. The old VW 2.0 was derisively called 2.slow by many folks. VW made this I5 engine specifically for the US market and it’s crap. My old 1.8t NB would have caned this engine’s arse. The engine just doesn’t feel like 110 kW or one half the engine of a Gallardo’s (to which is apparently related). I would have preferred the current 2.0 TDI found in Australia and Europe, but it’s not coming to the USA until next year, and may be not at all for the Golf/Rabbit. The 2.0 TDI absolutely canes this engine. It’s faster, quieter, much more economical (easily 40 mpg instead the 15 or 16 mpg (about 15 l/100km) we’re getting now) and it cruises the highway with authority due to its immense torque. The I5 just has a fabulous noise when you press the loud pedal. Oh well. This is the car we have, and we’ll have to live with it.

We’re going for our driver’s license soon. One thing we have noticed is just how long it can take to do basic things. It took us three trips and over four hours to open a bank account. Beyond providing additional paperwork, this is unbelievable. Laura took nearly 6 and a half hours to get her license. I’ll let you all know how we went soon.

We’re suffering from a series of break-ins at the moment. Some thieves are targeting this complex, stealing car parts to order. Last night, all the Civics lost their airbags. Last week, it was SUVs and tires. They stole all four wheels from the SUV right outside our window, leaving it on Pepsi crates. The Pepsi crates couldn’t hold up so much truck, and so by the end of the first day, the truck was resting its weight on the disk brakes. The bastards doing this had better watch out – most of the folks who live here are military types and are pretty buff. I personally wouldn’t want to cross paths with them. We’re pretty spooked at the moment, and we’re taking photos of suspicious activities. Hopefully, the police will catch them before some of my neighbors do.

On the positive side, work is great. The guys are a cut above anyone I’ve worked with before in terms of web app security. For the first time, I’m not the only one who knows what they’re talking about and in fact, I may not be at the top end of the curve. They’re also really understanding of our little health crises. Jeff’s wife, Jen, is encouraging Tanya to get pregnant. Jeff – you need to watch out man, Jen wants another one. 🙂

We looked after Jeff and Jen’s elderly dog, Daisy for a month whilst they were on holidays. Daisy is such a cutie; she wasn’t a burden to look after her at all and I know Tanya loved the company. I know I miss her snuffling and snoring, and the way she lies on our feet when we were watching TV. I know Daisy made Tanya pine for her boys back in Australia. Tanya is looking into volunteering at the animal shelters. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up as a temporary adoption center ourselves, particularly if the rescued dogs look white and fluffy.

Lastly, the travel to all these great places has been wonderful. Next week, I’m in Miami again, and after that I’m in NYC for a day. Awesome. More photos will appear shortly.

JUNE!!!! Why June!

Looks as if I’ll be an AT&T customer come June. Buy AT&T stock now!