I just wrapped up the followup work I mentioned on making sure existing notifications in the system go away when someone gains or loses access to a lock, or the lock is removed, or the locks of a post are updated.

I need to be realistic about this: I'm one guy, alas, and there will be issues. These were minor in terms of people affected and likelihood of impacting someone. I think I've designed well to avoid more serious problems. I could be mistaken.

So the best I can do is try to be proactive, be responsive when things are pointed out, and oh yeah, be straight with y'all that I'm one guy.

So yeah: I'm not the entire Internet security department of Amazon. Consider yourself reminded. (:

If OPW were to grow, making sure there is a second engineer involved regularly and a code review process in place would be a priority for me. It's not intended as a high-wire act.

(Edited to add: Sean made many large contributions to OPW, including tons of code. Grateful for that! I'm thinking more of what would happen if we had a real budget in terms of best practices for review.)

So how big is OPW anyway, and will it grow? Well: it's tiny. There are about 25 posts per week.

And: it's constant. There have been about 25 posts a week since things settled down in 2015.

But everybody who's here really likes it here. So!

We'll see if little changes like the new Network posts indicator help bring the occasional newcomer more successfully into the fold. But if not... hey. It works for us.

I am saddened to report the loss of 1 of our 7 tubs of fermenting pickles to -- probably -- moldy garlic, as the cloves were shot through blue. I check them every day to see how they're doing and this tub smelled awful.

​​​​​​​Hoping the other garlic wasn't contaminated, but a little concerned as they look a little bluish. All we can do is watch.

I tasted a pickle from a tub that smelled okay and it has a good flavour and a decent crispness. It's young. It has promise. These will be good pickles if they survive.

Just got back from NJ. 

Sadly, they postponed Mom's surgery again... when they were prepping her for the surgery at the hospital on Wednesday morning at 6AM (*gulp!*), she had a mini-heart attack (her AFib went nuts and her heart rate shot to 170) so they stopped what they were doing immediately.  They had only gotten as far as inserting her IV and she has no fear of needles or anything, so they don't know what caused it (plus she was totally chill going into surgery), but we suspect it was because they told her not to take ANYTHING (not even meds) by mouth the morning of surgery, so she didn't take her heart medication. 

This is now the 3rd time her knee surgery was canceled. So we're really disappointed... but better safe than sorry. Per the hospital's orders, we went to her cardiologist immediately from the hospital who gave her a monitor to wear and also did a meds adjustment, hopefully she can try for a 4th time soon.  Man. 

Her cardiologist was really irritated that she wasn't allowed to take her heart medication that morning with a tiny sip of water, but that's what you get when you only see one doctor at a time, I guess.

I don't think she realizes how unhealthy she is... rampant diabetes, emphysema, COPD, congestive heart failure, AFib, blah blah blah... an anesthesiologist would be crazy to try to put her out.  Hell, when she had her hysterectomy they gave her an epidural because they knew it was too dangerous to knock her out, and that was 6 years ago when she was healthier. 

Anyhoo, we wound up staying in NJ for the full duration even though she didn't get chopped up... I could tell my dad just kinda needed us there.  

When we were in the waiting room on the morning of surgery and the nurse came out to tell us there were complications, Dad was pretty much trying to wrap his head around Mom dying. It was awful. 

(I'm too tired now as it's 2:54am, but remind me to tell you about Jerry.)

Art is my illicit drug of choice. The more I create, the more I need to make to get off.

Okay, so I put it that way to be a touch provocative, but it's also kinda true. I've been doing more illustration work pretty much every chance I get and I'm still getting further behind. What's more, I want to do more. That's kinda crazy.

ETA: Okay, I think I was going to go deeper into this and then change the post to public, but I've lost the train of thought and figure I should just let folks see it as is for now. I can always comment more later if I get that thought back.

I don't bike to work much in the summer--too hot, too crowded. This year (on top of the heat and crowds) both the path and the roads between my office and home were under construction.

But the schools are all back in session (so the crowds are less) and it's finally cool and the construction near my office on the path is complete, so I took Linus to work today.

Only to discover the construction no longer covers the last two miles of my commute, but the first one mile.

I hope it's done by the time the good winter weather sets in.

Hi!

We are back from Burning Man and had a lovely time and are very excited to go again next year.  Lots to report, and a full writeup will likely be coming soonish.

But in the meantime... I have not had a chance to read OPW since right before we left... Say August 24th or so.  I will start reading what y'all wrote and getting caught up... but if I missed anything huge while we were gone, please lemme know!  :)

We are en route to my folks' house today where we'll be until Saturday morning. My mom is having knee surgery tomorrow-- she was supposed to have it done before Burning Man but when she showed up to the surgi-center the morning of her surgery, the anesthesiologist said, "I had no idea you had emphysema and AFib and COPD and all these other risk factors... I don't have the equipment to keep you alive here. We have to reschedule you so we can operate in a real hospital and not an outpatient surgi-center like this."  So tomorrow's the day. I'm praying she gets the relief she's been needing, poor thing.

We then have a wedding to attend Saturday afternoon back here in DE.  We fly to Arizona a few days later on Wednesday the 19th for a week to help my friend Jeff figure his life and house out since his wife (and my good friend) Debbie passed away last month... man. 

I've got a bunch of work travel scheduled between now and early December, so when it rains, it pours travel-wise.

Ok, imma get crackin'.

Hope everyone's rockin' in the free-ish world.

We bought half a bushel of pickling cucumbers Saturday. I was determined to make fermented a.k.a. barrel pickles. Since we don't have a canner any more. I read up on the theory behind the process, studied recipes and synthesised my own. I've got seven small tubs with about 3l of pickles in each.

At this point, all seven pickle tubs seem to be full of happy bacteria turning cucumber carbohydrates into gas and hopefully lactic acid, which is the whole idea behind fermented (barrel) pickles.

The tubs I got have snap lids and they are too air tight and the foam was rising up and seeping out the edges and pouring liquid on the floor. That sucked. I drilled holes in the tops, that should stop the pressure build up.

One should skim the foam off the liquid each day, and yes there's a bit of white foamy stuff as the air bubbles up through the water which is very alive with bacteria.

If I wasn't afraid of a batch going bad, i'd just dump all the tubs out into a kitchen garbage can because it would be SO MUCH EASIER to deal with one big, non-spilling container rather than seven small ones. But, first time, etc and all that. We must see this through for science.

Recipe I concocted:

For each 3.3l capacity tub:

• 5-7 cloves of garlic, halved crosswise
• 3-4 fat dill flower heads
• 3-5 star aniseed pods
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 6-10 black peppercorns
• 2-3 bay leaves for crispness
• enough #2 cukes to come close to the top, both ends cropped
• brine to cover (2tbsp salt per quart of water)

Put a weight on the pickles so they don't break the surface of the water. Cover the tubs to keep out dust and critters, but not an airtight seal as the fermentation produces gas.  

Supposedly they'll be half-sour in a week and full sour in several weeks, and fermentation will slow down/stop at some point so they don't need to be refrigerated if one is willing to have very sour pickles. I hope so. Our fridge isn't very big.

---

This isn't much of an update about moving and stuff. But it's what I wanted to write about.

I made two security fixes just now:

1. Previously, if you knew the id of a post and were a mutual follower of the poster, you could comment on it, even if you did not have the keys to the post. Note that this did not mean you could see the post. However, see below.

2. If you had commented on a post, you would continue to receive notifications of later comments on that post, even if your own access to it had been revoked. Notifications contain roughly 100 characters or so of each comment.

Both issues have been fixed. I apologize for these mistakes in my code.

At no point was it possible to read an actual post you should not have been able to read. But, security issues are never good.

Many thanks to the user who brought issue #2 to my attention, which led me to discover issue #1.

Edited to add: notifications already in the system are still there. I will be working to purge those, and also to purge notifications as needed whenever the privacy settings of a post change. Of course an email sent is an email sent, but I should do what I can do.

Sadly, I don't remember much of my dream last night, but I do recall a single scene. I was in someone's house, and there were at least two other people there. I don't think any of us were the owners / renters of the place.

One of the people had to leave but they were terrified of the massive bulldog that lived in the house. So, I approached the animal and coaxed it onto its back for belly rubs. The person who had to leave did so slowly and cautiously, and the dog occassionally gave them the side eye, but overall was happy to have me rubbing its belly.

A fairly unimportant moment of a fairly unimportant dream, but I found it interesting because [warning - potential GoT spoilers for Season 6 ahead] I just watched the episode where one character unshackles two dragons. They did the scene well, and the body language for the dragons is really fantastic. The creators of GoT have done a fantastic job of getting across "wild but very intelligent creature". So much so that I found myself watching for 'tells' in the body language of the creatures as they were being unshackled.

Clearly, the scene had an impact on me because my dream was all about understanding the body language of the bulldog since I only knew them peripherally. 

ETA: Also, this is fantastic.

I have SO many questions. I'll start at the top:

• As Seen on TV - Really? Someone paid good money to put this on television? Ever? This was clearly a rack toy - just hanging from a pegboard somewhere. For $0.79. Even when this was in stores, that couldn't have been a big profit margin.
• Who is the Woman? - I don't recognize the character at all. Now, I know that there are many out there who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel universe, but I've got a little geek cred. I don't think I've ever seen her before. Is she a villain? Is she working with Cap? Is she at least wearing a bikini bottom that is conveniently covered by the bill of that plastic duck?
• Pink / Blue Ducks - The only reason to have your targets colored pink and blue that I can come up with is to make them masculine / feminine. That's pretty sexist of me, but "it was a different time" and I can't seem to come up with anything else. Which begs the question: Why in all the holy REDACTED would you care what sex your plastic duck targets are?!
• 3 4 3 - Why would you 'weight' the targets like this? 1, 2, 3 I could understand. 10, 15, 20 - sure. But 3, 4, 3? Pretty sure these folks were on something, or they're sending a message from the past to a sleeper cell that...
• Larami Corp of Hong Kong - Larami Corp is familiar. Didn't know they were right here in PHL. Of course, the toy itself was made in... Hong Kong? I'm trying to envision how much they would have to save on the manufacturing to still make a profit after shipping it to the other side of the planet and only charge an end price of $0.79.
• Oh So Cap or at Least American - Anyone else find it amusing that there is absolutely nothing Captain America about the gun, or the darts, or the targets. Just the cardboard backing which promptly gets thrown out when the kid opens the toy to play with it.
• 2 Darts / 3 Targets - Just noticed this. Editted the post to add it in. This seems... inefficient. It also makes me think: there are two pink targets, but only one blue. Is there a correlation? But why is the blue more valuable? Is that another sexist thing?

It really was a 'different era'...

Oh, and I originally found this here.