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Lolo Pass

On this trip, I joked that Jesus must hate me for being an atheist. Things did not go exactly as planned...

When it's a bit below 0 outside, a fire can be nice

Laura and I rented a cabin in Lochsa Lodge, a cozy little 200 square foot ordeal with a nice wood-burning stove for about $40 a night (more expensive due to the holidays). The lodge is about an hour and change west of Missoula, Montana, and only about fifteen minutes away from Lolo Pass, a wonderful little backcountry skiing area. What an hour it can be where Missoula is concerned...

Looking out on Lolo Pass

We headed up on Christmas Day, and went straight to the Pass to do a little skiing. We arrived with not a whole lot of sunlight left. After getting the heart going and doing a few turns, it was time to check in to our cabin.

When we arrived at the Lodge, I got out to hear a very definite leaking sound from one of my rear tires. "No problem," I thought, "I have a full-sized spare." Some story from my mom's boyfriend, Jack, came to mind almost immediately. When I first drove home with the Volkswagen (back in 2006 I guess), he said, "Oh man, I hated my Audi. One time, I got a flat tire, and the wheel had this stupid special bolt on it that I couldn't get off."

You could imagine where this is going. It turns out that my VW also has a "security nut" on the wheel, which requires a special adapter to remove. Unfortunately, while moving, I mistook said special adapter for a bicycle tool and put it in my bicycle repair box. Doubly unfortunately, I don't bring my bicycle repair box with me when I go skiing very often.

Without the tool, it was impossible to remove the wheel. The friendly folks at Lochsa Lodge loaned me a portable air compressor. With it, I was able to drive to Missoula on Saturday. I was greeted in Montana by a nice piece of gravel hitting the windshield, putting a good-sized crack squarely in the center.

The VW dealer in Missoula could not locate the special tool that I needed, two auto parts store and a tire store said they were unable to remove the wheel as well. Eventually, I talked Les Schwabe Tire into trying, and they were, at least, able to get it off and patch my tire.

Another unfortunate event was noticed on the ride home. My other rear tire had developed a leak. This one wasn't as quick (a few hours from fully inflated until flat, I supposed), so I decided to worry about it later.

Saturday was more or less shot for skiing. We opted to go to Jerry Johnson hot springs instead. Jerry Johnson is without a doubt the finest spring I have visited. The pools are deep, hot, silt-free, and not so backcountry that you freeze on the way back to the car. This last bit has one sad side-effect -- bathing suits are more-or-less required.

And then...

Sadly this trip was just not going to go my way. I managed to jump onto an ice-covered rock while navigating the springs by moonlight, and landed squarely on my chin. It is my reward to nurse a nice gash for the week. Mayhaps I'll gain a nice scar from it. I hear women love those...

I managed to squeak back on my bad tire. It had perhaps 2 pounds of air left when I rolled into Pullman (and my what a drag that makes on the old fuel economy). I guess I'll take this as the same sort of sign that I treat flats on my bicycles -- time to get new tires all around. It's sad, as they have tread left. They're just dry-rotted from lack of use...

Snow Falling on Tamarack Pine

We're in the middle of our first real snowfall of the season. In town, we might get three or four inches. Moscow Mountain is just a 20 mile drive from here, and goes up about 2500 feet above the town's elevation. That short distance makes all the difference in the world where winter weather is concerned.

Laura, Jeff (a caving/rock climbing/mountain biking/backpacking all-star, and professor at the U. of I.) hiked up Moscow Mountain. It started as a stroll up a fire road near Cabin Trail, where I often mountain bike. A ways up, the snow started getting deeper, the wind started howling, and the snow started dumping. We walked across the "main face" of the mountain (it can often be seen as a big white field from Moscow and Pullman) where the snow was 2-3 feet deep in most places, the wind blowing ice pellets in our eyes at 20-30mph. We took a little respite from the wind in an abandoned mine, maybe 30 feet below the very top of the mountain.

The mine entrance, with mostly white-out outside

The top was pretty snazzy, with some tattered and torn mountain flags. I'm told it would have a hell of a view, except that we couldn't see much more than 30 feet in front of us. The way down was also fairly harsh -- easier to hike without glasses on then with them (my glasses kept fogging, and then icing up, making it pretty hard to see). I can't say that I've done such a fun hike in a while. Soon, I've promised myself a set of backcountry skis, so I can hike up this local mountain and have a ball coming down it on something besides a mountain bike.

The Land of Real Beer

A couple of weeks ago, a brewery opened up in Pullman. When I first moved to this town, I would argue that what it really needed was a Brewery. I had not yet learned an important fact: all retail on the Palouse sucks.

The beer isn't terrible, it's just formulaic. It's hard to be so critical of a brand new brewery, but I did get a chance to talk with the owners. Neither of them are 'into' beer. They just thought a brewery would be a good business. Jeff admitted that he doesn't homebrew as a hobby and never did. Linda struggled to pour a good glass, and had the kegs set to 20psi (far too high for pouring beer unless you like a glass full of head). It felt odd. I've only brewed four batches of homemade beer and felt like I had a better mastery of the craft.

Rogue Smoke Ale and a wood-fired pizza

Nate and I decided to head to Portland, which is home to somewhere around 35 breweries. Portland knows it beer, and has convenient public transportation all over the downtown area for tourists to stumble around on. Every brewery has the standards, sure, but most also have 20 or so 'whacky' beers on tap. We had a six mile run in the morning and were starved by the time we hit our first brewery (not to mention drunk after our first beer). I sort of wish that this area had the population to sustain such activities...

Vegan Cupcakes

I bought Laura the greatest book ever some time ago. It is called "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World."

You can imagine what it's about

Tonight, we dined on coconut-lime cupcakes. They are both vegan and delicious...

Joel Scambray

Work, somewhere along my career, became a confusing and convoluted series of cool discoveries non-disclosure agreements that have left me a bit frustrated lately. I love my job, but I can't say much about it.

It did give me a fun opportunity recently. Joel Scambray (yeah, that Joel Scambray) came to our ISSA group to give a presentation. I somehow got voted to be the Vice President of our ISSA chapter (this, in spite of not having a CISSP). I'm apparently not very good at introducing famous people. Alas.

Joel: The man, the legend

Joel gave a great talk on the future of infosec-stuffs. I have spent a fair amount of time in my life as a vulnerability analyzer/pen tester (not a very great one, or you would have heard of me), and I was interested to hear what a guy who has had a successful career doing that sort of work had to say about it. "We have to stop admiring the problem," apparently.

He's a pretty smart guy, and he has been saying things that I have been thinking lately. I was, for a long time, too heavy-handed with security stuff. "That ain't the right way to do it, it sucks and it will get p0wn3d. Here's why," was my usual assessment. It still is sometimes, though I've been trying to temper such analyses with more practical advice. I guess the profession is succumbing to the Almighty Metric. This isn't a bad thing, although I will miss the Wild, Wild West. Oh, and I do lament the fact that I will probably be doing math in base 10 more often...

I still disagree with Linus' assessment of security testing and discovery. Security is a pretty different ballgame than normal bugs. A bug that affects security means that someone can turn my coffee cup into a missile and use it to blow up my car and kill my dog (and maybe even kill me). Any other kind of bug will probably just give me cold coffee, or maybe make my cup leak so I can't have any caffeine this morning. And this paragraph sums up why I hate physical-world analogies when it comes to security...if in the physical world my coffee cup could be turned into a missile by a kid in Ukraine, then maybe the analogies would make sense.