UDP packets

ok, so all those strange packets are UDP packets. UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol, which really means nothing to me. anyways, UDP can be used for broadcasting information across a network, and from reading a bit about it i get the impression that its generally kind of messy when compared with TCP. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is what is used to build a precise, static file, like a webpage or a file that you save on your computer. so, maybe what i'm seeing on my computer is just content that is broadcasted across the entire local network. still, i don't know why that is done, or why it would be done from far away places, but i'll figure it out.

promiscuous mode

was reading about 'promiscuous mode' the other night, but don't remember much about it. might explain some of the mystery traffic, but i think probably not. apparently you can tell your computer to go ahead and accept whatever traffic happens to wash over it, which i totally don't understand, and use this mode to monitor activity that isn't meant for you. but, i don't think my computer is normally promiscuous, so that may not be relevant. my laptop is probably a zombie, receiving secret orders from another zombie in bulgaria. wow! i'll figure it all out later. anyways, drove to connecticut this weekend with jingping, first time ever out of the City into the "new england". it was alright i guess.

hm..

looking at traffic again last night with the MNM, with the explicit internet applications all turned off. over something like a 20 minute period, there were conversations between my computer and maybe ten others from around the world. i checked a few of these addresses; one in bulgaria, one in italy, one in china. each was only a few packets. i didn't save the recording, which i think i'll do from now on, so maybe eventually i can figure out what these things are. is my computer a zombie? are these just scans or searches from computers in faraway places? i must know.

ports and NAT

ok, so i've been kind of curious as to what a port is. i still don't really know, but i think it's kind of like an address for a specific function within a computer. a computer has lots of ports. they're not physical things, more like indices for input and output.

anyway, i was reading about network address translation (NAT), and a part of understanding it requires the concept of ports. NAT is where a computer locally has one IP address, but to the rest of the internet it appears to have a different IP address, and possibly the same address as lots of other computers that are on the same local network. this happens because they're all on a private network, say, and they're all using a router to send info out into the internet, and get info back out of it. the router knows all of the computers on the private network by their private IP addresses, and it assigns each of these to a specific port number for its own IP address (the router being just another computer in the network).

so, when a computer on the private network sends a message out into the internet, its private IP address gets changed ('translated') into the IP address of the router plus a specific port number. incoming messages meant for that computer must have the correct port number; basically, for the router, port numbers refer to computers on the private network.

but that's not enough, because each of those computers is using different ports to do different jobs with different targets on the network: one port keeps in touch with the Skype supernode, one port is getting data for a file i'm downloading, and another port is sending the info that i'm typing into this blogger.com window right now. so, actually, the router has to assign a different port number to each port on each computer on the private network; so, for the router, a specific port number will refer to a specific port on a specific computer on the private network.

i'm pretty sure this is all true for the protocols that have to do with sending and receiving files. i still need to learn about protocols, but i think there are also protocols for sending packets to all computers on a network, so maybe you wouldn't need to know their port numbers exactly to do that. not sure.

anyways, there's some stuff about ports.

microsoft network monitor

oh, this is even better. i figured there must be programs for watching network activity in real time. i just googled "network monitor", and this was the first thing on the list: "microsoft network monitor". hey! i thought i'd see what it did.

what it does is exactly what i thought it did, and more. it keeps track of all the packets going in and out of the computer over a period of time. it also automatically bins these packets according to 'conversation', which is the set of [origin destination] that describes all of them. so, all the packets i send to jingping through skype fall in one bin, and all the ones she sends to me fall in another bin, for example.

last night i saw a couple of strange addresses communicating with my computer. i had turned off the browser, skype, and the chinese dictionary (which has some sort of homing beacon to beijing in it), but i still saw those packets arriving. where were they coming from? i don't know, except that one origin was in china (ningbo; 'zooz.org') and the other in australia (forgot the city). maybe my computer is a zombie! i will solve this mystery..

now, i need to learn more about packets and protocols.

netstat

okay, netstat is neat. it shows you a list of all the IP addresses to which your computer is connected by a port. i haven't figured out what exactly a port is yet, but i think it's just like some sort of i/o index for the computer. what's more neat is that if you type netstat -b, it will show you the list along with the applications associated with each. for me, this basically means firefox (chrome boo) or skype.

so, from this i have learned something interesting about skype. if you're just connected to it, you'll see some foreign address that's unfamiliar - i guess it's just like a neutral relay node or something, which you use to connect to other people. if you're currently talking with someone, in chat or phone, you can actually see their address directly. this is why skype is a 'peer-to-peer' service: you connect directly with the other person.

about IP addresses

so i've been reading about how the internet works, since i know absolutely nothing about it. one thing i learned today was that the IP address i see for my computer may not be, or probably isn't, the IP address that the internet sees, since it may just be an address within a private network. specifically, if an address starts with 192.168., it's definitely a local network address, and it doesn't make sense to look for it from across the internet.

so, i know slightly more than nothing now.

生活是婊子（命运多舛），original by Lemmy

不知你是谁
不知你的名
可你若想活
你得学竞争

你为何这里
没看见你脸
你若不想败
你得藏疤痕

让可怜人哭
你生活的路
让可怜人笑
你生活的路

离开时间到
你最好上路
别尖叫
别呼喊
三振就出局
我知很遗憾
没机会看秀
又害怕上司
杀掉告密者
只记住生活是婊子

Mr G's

Ben Gemel was hungry. He stalked past darkened storefronts, stared down a dazed hobo, and stood starkly at the corner of 5th and Elm. Ben Gemel had never been here before. He had only been in this city for a few hours. He looked south down 5th, east on Elm, north up 5th, and west on Elm, looking for some glow that might call out 'food sold here'. It was just after four in the morning. Ben Gemel saw a yellow glow, on a corner two blocks west. He read the letters on the sign, block letters arranged in two lines. "MR G'S DINE IN". A sign in the window said Mr G's opened at 4am. The menu looked reasonable. Ben Gemel started walking.

Ben Gemel had superior visual acuity. When he entered the Service, he was immediately singled out. The staff optometrician determined that his acuity was on the order of 20/2. He could get by fine without binoculars. At night, Ben Gemel could read a menu in a diner window from a thousand feet away. He could recognize a face at 5000 feet. He could do better when both eyes were good.

Approaching Mr G's, Ben Gemel noticed that the sky had cleared. He could see stars, and the approach of sunlight. Venus was over the horizon. Ben Gemel thought of Dalen Rutger. Was he angry? He probably was. It would be hard to keep one's composure, after such a humilation. When Ben Gemel reached Mr G's entrance, he paused. He looked through the round window at the top of the door, and imagined that he saw Dalen Rutger sitting at the counter, staring into his cup of coffee.

Sunk

"Station eight. In the field."

"I don't understand," said Dalen. He yawned, and asked "What do you mean?"

"The field," gasped Vic Hoyle. "Field." Vic's eyes rolled back, and he choked on his last breath. Images, remembered voices, and fragmented thoughts flowed through Vic Hoyle's mind. He made a final effort to piece together what had happened. Dalen's face was still in shadow, and Vic struggled to recognize it. His grip on Dalen's collar relaxed, and released, and his hand fell to his side, arm across his belly. Dalen sighed, and he waited for Vic Hoyle's last paroxysms of thought to dissipate.

"The field," said Dalen. With enormous effort he stood, and looked at the envelope he still held in both hands. He folded it once, along the shorter meridian, pulled open his jacket, and tucked the envelope into a pocket. For a moment he paused, his hand still in the pocket, still gripping the envelope.

From the same pocket he produced a tiny bottle, smaller than any of his fingertips, stopped with an even tinier cork. Inside was a miniscule seed, like a miniature cumin seed, brown with black striations from end to end. Dalen Rutger gazed at the seed, momentarily forgot where he was, that he was on the deck of a sinking ship, in a freezing harbor under a starry sky. Behind him there was a crash, of a crane or some other massive thing toppling into the water, and his reverie was broken.

Dalen placed the bottle back in the pocket with the envelope. He looked at the sky, looked for a familiar star or constellation. He thought about Ben Gemel, and about how he would make him pay for this disaster. He would pay in blood, and in tiny seeds.

From the shore Ben Gemel watched the flames rise from the sinking container ship. He knew that Dalen Rutger would survive, and that they would meet again.

A Train Ride!

(i never published this one for some reason; it's 3-26-12 now, here it goes, dated retroactively)

Vic arrived at work an hour late. He had been watching a stranger in the alley, from what he thought was a safe distance, through unusually heavy morning fog. He had missed his train, and had to wait on the platform with the front-end of the morning rush hour.

During his twenty minute wait, the platform had accumulated between fifty and sixty commuters, people who worked in the city in tall buildings. Most of them were supposed to be at their desks by eight o' clock. Vic was supposed to be at his post, selling tickets to travelers beneath the street at 9th Avenue Station, at seven o' clock.

As he boarded the 7:15 West Blue Regional to 9th Street, he glanced down the platform at all the commuters. Staring back at him from the same distance as he had been staring at the strange fellow in the alley a half hour earlier was the strange fellow himself. Ben Gemel caught Vic's glance and then quickly broke it, and boarded the train. As this is a common experience in public, and as he could not recognize the placid and anonymous face of Ben Gemel, Vic noticed nothing out of the ordinary, and boarded his own train car.

Ben Gemel took a seat in the nearly empty car. Lenape Station was the end of the line for the West Blue Regional, first and last stop. For the next twenty minutes, through six stops across the expanse of West City, the car was filled to capacity. Throughout his trip, Ben Gemel alternated between studying the attire of his fellow travelers and studying the smooth gray spot in the center of the palm of his right hand. At last, when the train came to 9th Street Station, Ben Gemel stood, thrust his hands into his pockets, and flowed out of the train with a third of the other riders.

Vic exited the train at the same moment as Ben Gemel, unknowing, and dodged across the station until he came to a door marked "MTA Personnel Only". He pressed his palm against a flat, black panel mounted next to the door, and pulled the door open. Inside, he was stopped at the security station, presented his credentials, and then rushed to his locker to retrieve his uniform.

Return

Ben Gemel was the figure in the alleyway, the one Vic Hoyle had seen in the morning. Through the fog, Vic could see someone pacing back and forth behind the church. Vic had stopped to watch. He met others in the alleyway sometimes, but when they were nearby, near enough to make eye contact, he never stopped to watch. It would be asking for trouble. But this morning Ben Gemel was far enough from Vic Hoyle that Vic felt safe stopping and watching. The mist added distance, made Vic feel as if he were further from Ben Gemel than he really was. He didn't realize this at the time.

Ben Gemel was looking for something he had thrown out of a window a half hour earlier. He had been meeting with a deacon, had brought something to sell him, and had noticed something interesting on the deacon's desk. A little brass disk, the size of a dime, with a loop on one side as if it were meant to hang on a necklace.

As the deacon rambled on about some righteous thing or another, trying to convince Ben Gemel to lower his price, Ben had concentrated all his mental energies on the brass disk. It was as if there was nothing else in the room! When the deacon stopped talking, Ben Gemel named a price. The deacon paused, smiled, and nodded. Ben Gemel stretched out his arm and opened his hand, palm up, in the space between himself and the deacon. In his palm there was a seed, tiny, tinier than a fennel seed, and heavier than the shoes Ben Gemel was wearing. Ben Gemel smiled a toothy smile at the deacon, and repeated his price.

The deacon crept forward, seemingly repelled by the miniscule object in Ben Gemel's upturned palm. He spoke one word: "Paid". He licked the tip of his index finger with a dry tongue, and pressed the fingertip into Ben Gemel's palm. There was a flash of light and a loud pop, and the deacon was replaced in the room by a pile of green ashes and an aromatic mist. Ben Gemel went to the deacon's desk, to the brass disk, and picked it up. He went to the window, pried it open, and tossed the disk into the alleyway.

Ben Gemel paced in the alleyway, searching for the disk. Vic Hoyle watched him from a smaller distance than was in fact safe or advisable. Ben Gemel knew he was being watched. He saw a glint of metal in a tuft of grimy gray grass, and knelt to have a look. It was his treasure. He picked it up, held it up to his one good eye, and smiled. It was a toothy smile.

Andrew,

I am wondering, how many lectures have you prepared?

How many pages of dissertation have you written lately?

Do you have a job yet?

Are you hungry?

Mystery of the Numerous Forks

Ah..

I hadn't washed dishes in a couple of days, so there was a pile of them in the sink. For one person, I use a lot of dishes every day. There was also a bit of extra silverware left over from the last time I dishwashed, I must have given up before finishing.

Anyways, I noticed what I had noticed last time I washed a pile of leftover dishes at once, that there were a bunch of forks in the sink. This was strange, because I absolutely never eat with a fork. That last time, and this time, I stood there wondering, where are these forks coming from? I thought about everything I ate, at different times of day, weekdays or weekends, and none of them involve a fork. I use spoons or chopsticks. Never forks.

So, I gave up thinking about it, just couldn't figure it out. I even fantasized that maybe it was a signal from someone, someone who had been sneaking into my apartment when I wasn't there, or when I was asleep. They might be trying to frighten me by doing otherwise unexplainable things. But, I figured that now I was sensitized to fork use, and the next time one came up, I would be sure to notice, and the problem would be solved.

This morning I go to pack my lunch, getting covered bowls of leftovers from the refrigerator and scraping selections into my lunch container. Sure enough, I used a fork, and then I tossed it into the sink.

Problem solved, life can continue now.

Not locking my bike, and letting it get stolen

Man. So, I go to China, and before I go I put my bike in the stairwell, inside my building, where you need a key to get inside. I've already locked the wheel on Jingping's bike, and so naturally I tell myself to lock my bike, but apparently I forget. I get back from China 18 days later, and my bicycle is gone.

Now, it is my fault, and I am an idiot, for not putting the lock on the bicycle wheel. I know this. But I also blame one of my neighbors, though I don't know which one. Either 1) someone propped the outside door open so they could move something, or because they were too dumb to take their key with them, allowing one of the wandering neighborhood thieves to wander by, walk in an open door, and find my unprotected bike, or 2) one of my neighbors is himself a thief, or closely associates with thieves.

Muggings, break-ins, car windows smashed in, stuff stolen, bike seat taken. I am an idiot for living through all of these things and still not locking my bicycle.

幺典黑桃！ （the ace of spades)

如果你想赌，我说我是你人
你有时获，有时输，为我都是一样-
（吧吧吧吧吧，吧吧吧吧吧）
那愉快是游戏，你的说没有影响
（吧吧吧吧吧，吧吧吧吧吧）
我没有你贪欲，单独一牌我需
幺点黑桃，幺点黑桃！

你猜我就要输，也堵就是为愚
但那道我就喜欢，猴子，我不要成不朽的！
也不忘那王牌！

Getting my bike seat stolen, and buying an inadequate replacement

Oh gosh! Someone stole the seat right off my bicycle last week while it was locked up outside the building where I work every day. This brings us to the first point at which I am an idiot. At some point late in the afternoon I walked over to the music building to play the piano for a little while. The bicycle seat thief was probably at that very moment stealing the seat off my bicycle, and all I would have had to do was turn my head to the left, to see the spot beside the building where I had locked said bicycle, thereby catching the thief red-handed and giving myself an opportunity to interrupt him and given him a good talking to. So, I am an idiot for not casually checking on the status of my bicycle seat a good hour or so before I noticed it stolen, since I would have had some tiny chance of saving it.

Next, I waited a week to buy a new one, punishing myself by riding everyday to and from school without a seat, which is both dangerous and very difficult, since you basically have to stand the whole time, raising your center of gravity and making your legs do more work than usual. It also makes it impossible to pedal constantly, so you have to pedal in short bursts, which makes it even more difficult.

Anyway, I waited a week to buy a new one, and when I did, I bought a twenty dollar one at a bike shop, and it seemed comparable to the original, which was a pretty good seat for a $100 Walmart bike. Only when I got home with it did I explicitly realize that I couldn't attach this new seat, since the post connecting seat and bike had also been stolen. I went back to the bike shop, and asked about this, and they said I should bring the bike in since the post is measured in millimeters, and there are 18 different sizes, and it would be pretty tough for me to get that precision with an old wooden yardstick. At this point, I got a parking ticket for not paying the meter, and the guy was in the process of calling in a tow truck at the moment I came out of the shop, so that was close.

So, I return to the bike shop a third time with my bike, and they tell me it's $16 for the post thingie. I think to myself, at this rate replacing all the parts in my bike would cost probably $1000 dollars, so this is already an imprudent course of action, spending $36 for a new seat. So I get all cheap all of a sudden (yeah, right), and ask to exchange the $20 seat I previously bought for the cheapest one they had, which was just $10 and is basically a piece of hard plastic. So there's the second part: I am an idiot for thinking a comfortable bike seat is not worth $10, though my idiocy may be vindicated if someone also steals this new seat. Maybe they would have been more likely to steal the nicer one. I'm still an idiot. Idiot.

My New Look

Unfortunately, I promised to divert any visitors to see what I look like now:
http://retort27.blogspot.com/2008/03/mybf.html

Luckily, I don't get any visitors!

Post of the apocalyptic future to the future from the man of the past.

100th post!

I am writing this only out of the general hope that future generations might, in excavations of the ruins of this tomb, happen upon it and read it. Hello there, future generations! How did you make it through the War? How did you make it past the giant rats? I am certain that society has been rebuilt, and that your devices and contrivances are far more contrived than were those of my society, the one which brought such disaster upon itself. Oh dear... since my oxygen is clearly running out, I must be quick.

When you find this message, undoubtedly through the use of some seemingly magical gadget which can simply read information out of a decayed data-bank, I hope you are not too dismayed at my primitive, though surprisingly forward-looking, outlook. No, we in my time did not believe in magic, though we certainly found entertaining those who trained to perform outstanding feats of illusion and trickery. Still, even with all your high technology, you must be surprised to find yourself being addressed by one such as I, a man dead for more years than he lived. We were the same as you, we men and women of the past! We yearned to know the future, to know of the world which would follow us! People of the future, humanity, hear the call of the past, of one who has been crushed by the mistakes of his society! Be good to one another, and treat your fellows as if they too were men of the future, looking out on a world which you will never see or can never fathom.

Now, if, on the other hand, you are not the future of humanity, and are in fact a giant rat whose successive generations have through atomic mutation developed faculties of higher cognition and technological prowess, may I curse you with and bestow upon you a world of infinite troubles, wonders, and terrors. Beware, giant rat of the future! The world you have inherited is not all you think it is. Unless of course your cognitive skills are far beyond those of we extinct, or perhaps perpetually enslaved, humans, enabling you to comprehend matters far beyond the ken of a mortal man... Farewell giant rat of the future, or human of the future, and good luck to you in all that you do.

Gasp!

important message

Post:

I hereby call a meeting of all party members, 4 am Wednesday at the fish counter. There has been an accident, and some duties need to be redistributed in the usual fashion.

This morning, as I was mixing up a new recipe for the newsletter I suddenly was struck by the coldest of chills. Winter, my abdomen was telling me, had at last arrived, and the heat had not yet been turned on. I rushed outside in one stocking and a bare foot, calling to my neighbors to shake out their flags and get ready for a parade, when the small toe on my bare foot caught between two sides of a narrow crack in the streetside masonry. In an instant, I was twisted, turned, and thrown flat on the side of my head.

So, a fire will need to be built, and an effigy burnt, and posters printed, all without my direct supervision. I will be there for the meeting but you will see for yourselves the degree to which the pain of my injuries has very nearly incapacitated me. As general secretary, it falls to me to appoint a standing supervisory secretary, as per party guidelines, and you all know what that means. I am sorry, but everyone is to bring a cat and a coffee tin to the meeting.

Also, when the next garbage cycle comes around, someone needs to remember to post blanket men at the dropoff on the corner of 5th and Main, seeing as how otherwise someone is going to get hit with something heavy, since that's usually where heavy appliances and old lab equipment get tossed out. If I could send a message up the spire, I would, and I hope that my previous message to this effect has been distributed by leaflet as I instructed in the last post. For whatever reason, the spirecrats are backlogged beyond their normal late-autumn backlog, and we have no choice but to wait until our complaints can be considered by the central committee.

Now, as for the winter parade, I only ask that if you feel a need to call on your neighbors to dust off their flags and put on their shiniest boots, you do so with shoes on and during a reasonable hour when someone might be expected to come to your aid should your understandable fervor and excitement bring you to some unfortunate accident.

Onward, fellow revolutionaries!