Random Bits

  After spending about $1,200.00 on medical bills, I decided to indulge myself a little. First up, on 4/15/16, I placed an order with The Cabil for the latest editions of Hol and Buttery Wholesomeness. I'm still waiting for them to arrive and my email inquiries regarding the status of my order have gone unanswered. If something doesn't happen soon, I'm going to inform PayPal about this order and see if they can get a response. Second up, I've ordered a ballhood on eBay. Since it's a custom order, it will take a while to get here but it will be worth the wait. Now I realize that this wasn't the smartest move. Why order something like this when I have no sex life? It seems pointless and wasteful. Still I want to see what it's like to wear one and I had some extra money.

  A second CT scan has revealed that the lymph node has gotten bigger. This is both good and bad news. It's bad because it means whatever caused it to enlarge is still present. It's good because the doctor feels that they can retry the ultrasound technique that failed last time they tried to biopsy it. I'll be undergoing said procedure on 5/31/16. My biggest fear is that the biopsy will reveal that I have another form of cancer and I'll have to undergo more chemotherapy.
  Plans for this year's GenCon are progressing. The hotel room has been reserved and event tickets purchased. Despite my planning, things didn't work out as I'd hoped they would. I had to wait almost 4 hours before I could make my hotel reservation. As a result, I'm several miles outside the convention area and I'll have to drive to it everyday and pay for parking. It's either that or find a bus or shuttle service to and from the area. When it came time to register for events, I logged onto my account before registration went live, picked 7 events that I wanted to play and put them on my wish list. The second registration went live, I submitted my wish list for processing. The problem was I ended up 5,744th in line for processing. 5 of the 7 events filled up before my list was processed. I couldn't add any replacement events until my list was processed and then I had to get back in line. When all was said and done, I ended up with 4 events, Wraith, Doctor Who, The One Ring and Luchador. I've been paying on my credit card bill and I want to eventually shift some money to my Serve and Simple card accounts so I'll have some spending money for the convention.

Murder Gun for Sale

George Zimmerman is back in the news again. This time, he's trying to sell the gun he used to murder  Trayvon Martin. He's like a malignant hemorrhoid on the ass of society and no amount of Prepation H can rid us of his presence. He thinks that murdering an unarmed 17 year old kid makes him some kind of American icon. This miserable prick and his deluded followers are part of the reason why no meaningful gun legislation ever gets passed. Right wing fucktards like Geraldo Rivera would rather ban wearing hoodies than deal with the gun problem in this country. Gun zealots in the NRA and other organizations oppose a variety of laws that would help keep guns out if the hands of criminals. Straw purchases, which are illegal, still happen with astonishing regularity. They also oppose the use of smart guns which use biometrics to render the gun useless to anyone except the registered owner. They even oppose letting the CDC do research on gun violence. They feel that something like this will eventually lead to the government confiscating their guns. Of course, they feel that any attempt to regulate firearms is an attempt to confiscate their guns.
  I think the main reason why the gun zealots are so opposed to keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is that it would ruin their chances of fulfilling their Dirty Harry fantasies. These are the fantasies they have while they're sitting in their bunkers, surrounded by weapons, desperately rubbing  the grips of their pistols against their cocks while reading Guns & Ammo. They want to be the hero in a big old fashioned Western style shootout.

The Encryption Debate

  As most of you know by now, an outside party has shown the FBI how to crack Syed Farook's iPhone 5c without Apple's help. The FBI claims that this crack will only work on the iPhone 5c but one has to wonder whether this is true or not. Now just because the FBI has dropped its case against Apple in this instance doesn't mean that the battle over encryption will be ending anytime soon.
  Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein have proposed legislation that would give federal judges clearer authority to order technology companies to help law enforcement crack encrypted data. So far, the White House isn't backing this legislation. There are many reasons why backdoor mandates are a bad idea. A list of some of those reasons can be found here.
  The federal government has tried to create an encryption device with a built in backdoor when it created the Clipper chip. As the Wikipedia article details, the Clipper chip was a massive failure. The Clipper used a key escrow system in which a copy of the cryptographic key would be held by the government. Information about key disclosure law can be found here.
  Given all the information stored on peoples' smartphones, encrypting them should be a no brainer. In fact, all iPhones, iPads and iPods running iOS 8 or greater are encrypted by default. Sadly the same can't be said about Android devices. It's estimated that roughly 10% of the world's 1.4 billion Android phones are encrypted. Compare that to the 95% encryption rate of iPhones. This is a sad state of affairs. The problem stems from the fact that many smartphone manufacturers use Android's source code and tweak it to suit their needs. It's this lack of uniformity that's the biggest of Google's problems when it comes to security. There's way too many companies involved in the process. This article details the problems Google has implementing security updates.
  Both my Android phone and the SD card installed in it are encrypted. The same goes for my Mom's phone. If you own an Android phone, you should seriously consider encrypting it and any memory cards that are in it. I'm ending this blog post with a clip from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver regarding both the FBI vs. Apple showdown and encryption. Enjoy.

The Only Guarantee in Life

  Life doesn't guarantee you health. It doesn't guarantee you wealth. It doesn't guarantee you happiness or sadness. Life guarantees one thing and one thing only, death. That's it. Deal with it.

Apple vs. the FBI

  There has been an ongoing court battle between Apple and the FBI regarding San Bernadino shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone. The FBI wants access to the iPhone's contents but can't get it due to the encryption software embedded in the iOS. Ten wrong password entries and the contents of the phone will be erased. Thus the FBI has been pressuring Apple to create a workaround or backdoor in order to bypass the iPhone's security features. Apple refuses to do this because they say it would compromise the security of their customers' iPhones and iPads. The FBI has also threatened to compel Apple to hand over its iOS source code and signature so they can create their own security compromised iOS software.
  I agree with Apple on this issue. The government has demonstrated an almost obsessive desire to collect information and they hate any form of encryption they can't crack like PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). A recent Journal Times article cites examples of how the government, when granted extended powers, can quickly use those powers to trample upon our basic rights. The government wants the inch so they can eventually take the mile.

News Bits

  The right radical orchiectomy went well. The incisions are healing and there has been little in the way of pain. I have to set up an appointment with Dr. Matkov so he can tell me what was wrong with my right testicle. Update: My oncologist, Dr. Jefferies, gave me the orchiectomy results this past Tuesday. It's official, I had stage 1 seminoma (testicular cancer). Since it was confined to my right testicle, it's pretty much gone. My tumor markers are going to have to monitored every three months to make sure there's no recurrence. This fucking sucks. I undergo a colectomy and chemotherapy in order to rid myself of colon cancer only to end up with seminoma. Then I undergo an orchiectomy to get rid of the seminoma. The enlarged lymph node has yet to be analyzed. For all I know, a third form of cancer is fucking up some other part of my body.

  My erectile dysfunction appears to have worsened. I no longer get anything even approaching a decent erection anymore. I'm less of a man now than I've ever been. Not that I've ever been much of a man even when my penis worked and I had two functioning testicles. Women ignored me then. They have even more reason to ignore me now.

  My life has been little more than a shining example of mediocrity. I've made little, if any, impact on anything. Nothing I've done has amounted to anything significant. I used to think that I was smart and that said intellect would land me a decent job and lead to a decent life. I couldn't have been more wrong. Despite having health insurance and living with my parents, I'm barely making ends meet. One major financial crisis and I'm screwed. I have virtually no social life. The only time I usually see my friends is when we get together for gaming. And dating is out of the question. No woman wants what I have to offer. While any one particular flaw might not be enough to scare them away, all of them together will easily do the trick. The total, in this case, is far greater than the sum of the parts.

  That being the case, it means that the later years of my life are going to be lonely ones. After Mom and Dad die, I'll probably have to sell the house. Since I'm their executor, I'll be the one settling their estate. Jeff and I are the primary beneficiaries for now. With them gone, it will just be me. 

More Health News

  The Jan.19th biopsy attempt was a failure. There were too many organs and blood vessels in the way for them to use a needle to obtain a sample via my throat. I have a consultation with Dr. Needle, who performed my colectomy, on Feb. 9th to determine the next course of action.
  I had a consultation today with Dr. Matkov, a urologist, regarding the ultrasound of my scrotum. The end result is I'm having a right radical orchiectomy on Feb. 12th. In layman's terms, my right testicle is being removed because it's enlarged, unusually firm and covered with nodules. Once it's gone, I'll hopefully find out how it wound up that way. I don't believe I have testicular cancer but it's in the realm of possibility.
  All this, of course, could lead to more medical bills. I already have another $1,300.00 added from the PET and CT scans. Despite this setback, I still believe that I can put enough money aside for Gen Con.