Elf Sternberg

Omaha gets hacked. The day started off on a sour note. I'd woken up, made coffee, and decided to sit down and hack on a small personal project. I'd gotten an email from the boss about making sure our branding was consistent across outlets going forward, and after nodding my head and making a mark in my to-do I put it aside. I was about to get head-first into my project when Omaha started to notice very odd things about her numbers at iGameRadio.

We discovered she'd been hacked. After much research I was able to find the keyword that revealed the hack location: in the wp-config.php file the hacker had inserted a nasty little chunk of code wrapped in an eval(base64_decode()). The wrapper makes it hard to grep for; fortunately, "base64_decode" is itself pretty rare inside wordpress code and easy to grep for.

Library run. It was about 9:30 when we'd finished, and the girls and I all had library books that had to go back, so I took the two of them up into town. When we arrived we discovered that the library didn't open until 10. They tried to visit the pet store, but it was also closed, so we ended up in a coffee shop. Kouryou-chan learned that she wasn't fond of caramel macchiatos.

I was annoyed to discover that someone has already vandalized the library. It's a hell of a brazen act, as this has to be one of the busiest rooms in the city, the entrance hallway that leads to the library-cum-city hall, with elevator access only to the city administration centers on the third floor. Lots of people walk through here constantly.

Meeting over coffee.After we got home, I had to run Omaha up to a meeting at yet another coffeeshop. It was a pretty busy day for coffeeshops, but at least none of them were Starbucks [NSFW!]. It was supposed to be a short meeting, so I spent most of my time with a sketchbook writing out some quick proposed Javascript experimental sites that I might get to in my copious spare time. Some of them are adaptations of the current IndieFlix site-- better film details, better filmmaker management, that kind of thing.

Off to get plants. The third run of the day was out to the big local plant nursery for our annual garden run. We picked up eight tomato plants, because we love fresh tomatoes. (Tomatoes are rightly called "the gateway drug" of gardening; once you've had tomatoes out of a garden you never quite enjoy store-bought, nitrogen-gassed tomatoes again.) We also picked out some experiments: watermelon, sugar pumpkins, butternut squash. The girls really wanted some blueberry bushes, but they were quite pricey and not very hardy, according to the leaflets.

On our return, we had lunch. I've been eating a lot of salmon lately; today was a simple salmon sandwich with mayo, sliced red onion, and sweet relish. Kouryou-chan sliced her own apples today, although I can think of a better way than how she's doing it. I'll have to show her.

Lots of yard work. I applied some moisturizer with SPF 15, because I knew I was going to spend the next six hours outdoors. And sure enough, I did. I tilled the raised beds on the west side of the property, weeded them, then planted the tomatoes in staggered rows about fifteen inches apart, mixing our poor soil with some really good compost. While I was doing that, Yamaraashi-chan noticed a horde of baby spiders climbing up the ruined shed I mentioned in a dream a few days ago. I had to take pictures.

About this time, the neighborhood kids came out. We've got a new one, a young lady a year younger than Kouryou-chan who identifies herself as "Pinoy" (Filipino). She's sassy and smart-mouthed, but she seems to fit in okay. All the kids were out, including both boys, so there was a lot of tussling and arguing. I got hit in the head with a frisbee.

My second big task of the day was to clean up the damn compost bins. One of them was a waste of space, one had fallen over, and the other hadn't been touched since October. I righted and dug out the fallen one, only to discover it had composted well anyway, and got about 20 gallons of compost out of it. That's a messy job, running the mass over a chickenwire grate to separate the compost from the digest, and then tossing the digest back into the newly-repaired bin.

I took on all three. The neighbor's kids had a pitchfork, which helped. (I gotta get me one of those.) I'd been worried that we were running out of compost-- by the end of the day, I had 60 gallons of the stuff and a fresh starter for another 60 gallons.

Omaha, meanwhile, weeded out the front flower beds and trimmed back the bushes that line the side of the driveway. It feels like we did a ton of work, and there's still a ton left to do. At least the moss and weeds seem to be losing the battle.

Omaha and I took a shower together. That's always nice.

Manshopping. Only, not. After we were clean, we went out to a local chowderhouse for dinner. Yamaraashi-chan, to my amazement, ordered a salad with diced chicken. She didn't care for the blue cheese dressing.

Then we went shopping. For me. I shop rarely, and often in large doses. This time it was underthings-- t-shirts, socks, shorts-- and jeans. 501's, only. That's no place for a zipper. Omaha made me try on every pair, and I appreciated it; despite all of them claiming to fit, one pair most certainly did not. They all need to be re-hemmed; I know there's a local seamstress, but I don't know what she charges.

Then, finally, home for the last time. I'm exhausted. I dug and buried and pitched and cleaned and hacked and chauffeured, and now I'm ready for sleep.

The real point of all this cooking and buying and mixing and whipping is that the groaning plate of food for the Seasonal Feast has come and gone. I made cookies in the shape of cats and tried to decorate them to look like something from Erin Hunter's Warrior series; it came off okay, but the darkened cookie and pale frosting made it look more like a photographic negative than the actual illustration.

Omaha cooked six pounds of Dead Pig, very yummy in the final result (and the next day, mixed with said home-made mayonnaise, perfect in sandwiches with beefsteak tomatoes, red onions, and lettuce), along with pan-sautee'd potatoes and parsely, steamed broccoli, a blackberry-and-mustard sauce for the meat, and finishing it off with pumpkin pie and the aforementioned whiskey-kissed whipped cream.

Lisakit's mother came over, ate dinner and watched Star Wars (a family tradition!) with us. She's a charming woman, and she made us all feel quite at ease with a somewhat stranger in the house.

Gifts were handed out. Given our dire economic straits, not much was exchanged, but Kouryou-chan got a ton of clothes from her grandmother, books, and stuff. Lisakit made everyone something crocheted; I got the most amazing fingerless gloves just perfect for late-night hacking. Where anyone finds the time and skill to make something like that, I have no idea. I'm very happy with them all, though. Omaha and Kouryou-chan got gorgeous scarves.

( Lots more pictures )

We awoke to the sound of hammers and chainsaws. The bathroom in the "B" loop, where we were, was being rebuilt, and the rustic, log-cabin look required a lot of archaic machine tools.

I spoke to one of the construction workers there and it turns out that this is all they do. They're all Federal employees, and it turns out that the kind of log cabin construction that goes on in Rainier is so specialized that only about two dozen men are trained to do it, and this is what they do: go around repairing bathrooms and the "historic buildings" made from logs cut with saws and fitted with chisels.

I was pleased to note that my back doesn't hurt nearly as much as I feared it would. Omaha made a great fire and we all enjoyed a morning breakfast of warm cereal. The items that I listed as missing, I ran into the nearby town of Packwood to pick up, and then returned to get ready for our first hike of the day. We made tuna sandwiches and packed trail mix and then we were ready to be on our way. I caught a glimpse of myself in a bathroom mirror before we actually hit the trail: ack, with my Ironman glasses and REI overnight pack, I'm a stereotype: Pacific NW Hiker, Bulky Athletic Type.

We walked up the Silver Falls trail (about 3½ miles) to the falls (the big panorama in my previous post is at 46°45'18.86"N, 121°33'36.10"W and, p.s., Google Earth now runs fabulous in Linux!), which are huge, beautiful, churning, and then up the west side of the falls to the road, across the road to a picnic area set aside for day trippers. We stopped to picnic. Our sandwiches and water contrasted well with the family next to us, who downed huge sandwiches along with buckets of potato salad and even an open tub of Cool Whip-- what it was meant to accompany, I know not.

Then another ½ miles in to the Grove of the Patriarchs. The ground was so packed we walked it barefoot, except for Yamaraashi-chan, and that was delightful. Along the way the girls stopped and played in the river along with a couple of other families. Omaha was disappointed to see that all of the elk activity she'd seen earlier in the grove was gone.

Along the way we became aware of a relatively new phenomenon: agressive panhandling by the local "wild"life. In the past, we'd visited mostly remote areas (obscure corners of Mt. Baker, or the eastern face of the Olympic Range), but here, where there was lots of human activity, the wildlife was much more confident in approaching humans and expecting to get something out of us. This was especially true at the Grove of the Patriarchs, as it's a very short hike and thousands of people walk through it every day.

After the grove and it's massive, beautiful trees, some of the largest on Mt. Rainier, we walked back, taking the eastern loop. Along the way we saw that dark-furred chipmunk it the bottom image, crooning a very eerie song that faded away as we approached, but never quite disappeared entirely.

Dinner was hot dogs and s'mores for dessert. We tried to play Set, but we have to face reality: Yamaraashi-chan is so skilled at it that nobody else was scoring anything at all, and eventually we had to call it quits and play something else. Give Me The Brain made for a better game.

At bedtime, Omaha read to us aloud from a chapter of the children's classic, Heidi.

Today was the Burien 4th of July Festival, when our whole little city gets together and celebrates, well, being a city and surviving yet another year not succumbing either to the forces of chaos that is South King County, nor being swallowed whole by the behemoth that sits across the northern border, Seattle. Omaha, being cat herderchairwoman for the 33rd District Democrats, was obliged to go stand out in the hot sun with a sign and wave to crowds that, surprisingly, waved and cheered back.

Of course, Kouryou-chan was there. And it's traditional at the Burien parade to throw candy at the crowd, which sometimes squirts back with water guns (a welcome blessing, believe me!), so that was her incentive to walk-- one for the crowd and one for her. She had fun until we ran out of candy, but she toughed it out and walked the entire two-mile parade route.

( Lots and lots of photographs. First: Democrats! )

( And now, scenes from the parade itself. There were no Republicans. )

Omaha and I were having a long and involved talk with Yamaraashi-chan about "family." I won't go into the details here; let's just say that sometimes, when she's moody and difficult, she retreats into her own little world and it's hard for us to feel like we're all a family together, especially since both she and Omaha can get on each other's nerves quite effectively. The talk was good; Omaha, Yamaraashi-chan, and I agreed that I needed to do more of the parenting for Yamaraashi-chan and Omaha less, and we'd all need to remind ourselves, regularly, of how to be a family. Stepfamily takes work.

But as we were doing so, Yamaraashi-chan started playing with her cell phone. At first, her excuse was that she'd been lying on it and had taken it out of her pocket, but now she was stealing glances at some IM feed on it. Omaha pointed it out to me and I said, "Give it to me, kid."

She reluctantly handed it over, and as I took it I noticed that the wrap she keeps on it was missing. "Where's the condom?" I blurted.

"The what!?" she said, her eyes getting wide.

"The condom. You know, the rubber protective thing that goes on the outside."

"Do people really call it that?" She was outraged.

"Of course. It's a rubber protective device. What else would you call it?"

"Ewwwwww!" she whined. "I am never using that thing again. That's gross!"

It was a mixed bag weekend. Saturday, Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I did the monthly groundskeeping shift at Kouryou-chan's school. We're getting a little fed up that there are parents who come to do the big, dramatic things, like installing a new tiled walkway between the elementary school and the gymnasium, or building a new crawl-through tunnel in the toddler playground, but nobody shows up for the basic maintenence like weeding, cleaning gutters, or raking the parking lot, yet those are the things that make the school keep running. (The economist has an article on the broken windows theory with experimental results demonstrating that "a disordered state encourages the violation of norms.")

We had exactly one extra volunteer show up this time. He did great, even pulled the stump on an ivy that was murdering the fence. We cut that ivy back in mid-summer, and already it had grown another 24 feet or so up the fenceline.

Kouryou-chan had rehearsals, and when she got home she showed us the dance moves they were teaching her in ballet. It was lovely. I spent the evening being a lazy bum, playing video games and letting Kouryou-chan kibitz over my shoulder.

Sunday, I made waffles with a new (used) waffle maker I'd picked up from the Salvation Army for $2.50. It made great Belgian waffles, huge things, each of which was more than any one of us could eat. I think next time I'm going to have to break them up into quarters or something. After that I had a ton of chores to take care of, like four loads of laundry and cleaning the kitchen and so forth. Ordinary stuff.

I did it all in rapid order because I was supposed to go hiking that afternoon with a friend along Nebo Trail. That's the same trail that Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I biked on earlier this year, and as we walked we went by the Midway Wastewater Treatment Plant, where she noticed something odd. The way the barbed wire on the top of the fence is arranged, it points inward. It's not trying to keep people out, it's trying to keep something in. That with the blocky, almost Half-Life-like layout of buildings and the constant, burning methane-control flame at one end makes it seem surreal, even spooky.

We ended up back at a park where we watched the sun go down. You'd think sunset would be relaxing, but no, every fifteen minutes before sunset a guy with a bullhorn stands on the beach and shouts, "We're locking the gates in 15 minutes," or whatever time it is. And they do; they lock the gates at sunset, and according to one older gentleman who warned me to take the announcement seriously, you'll be charged $50 per car to get out afterward. That's ridiculous.

After dropping my friend off at her home, I went home to find Omaha a little frazzled. Kouryou-chan had been a disaster; Yamaraashi-chan is at her mother's house, the neighbor kids don't come out much on Sundays (being Christian fundamentalist nativists at all). A bored nine-year-old is a dangerous thing. They'd gone shopping for clothes and then had the worst experience at a Jack in the Box. Omaha may blog about it on her blog later, but basically it came down to the crew not caring at all and the person behind the counter knowing only enough English for her script.

I made comfort food: grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Point Reyes Blue Cheese is just not strong enough to be prominent in a grilled cheese sandwich, although it is absolutely delicious by itself. Maybe the heating squelches the flavor or something.

Oy. Who knew that back-to-school shopping could be so damn exhausting? Omaha and I drove out to the local shopping center, hitting Target and Office Depot, to pick up four pairs of pants and a new pair of shoes for Kouryou-chan, as well as a ton of paper, pencils, notebooks, and miscellaneous school supplies for Yamaraashi-chan. Target was a wreck; they just didn't have the manpower to keep the place cleaned up.

After all that, we went over to the evil mall and hit a restaurant on the periphery. Although it wasn't as bad or frenetic as the mall itself, the music was still too loud. You know what that mall needs? A family-friendly restaurant with no music and sound-baffling ceilings.

Afterward, we ran back to Target because we had forgotten one thing, a backpack for Yamaraashi-chan. Omaha took Kouryou-chan over to a little park while Yamaraashi-chan and I went into Target. "What are we here for?" she asked.

"Didn't you hear what Omaha and I were talking about in the car? We forgot something for you."

"What?"

I rolled my eyes. "A backpack, kid. You weren't paying attention, were you?"

"I was listening."

"No you weren't. If you were listening, you'd know why we were here."

"There's a difference between listening and paying attention." Now there's a slogan for an eleven-year-old.

It took five hours to do all that.

Anyway, after that, we went over to lisakit's place for dinner and socializing. She fed us wonderful steaks and grilled corn and zucchini, and we were comfortably full when we got home.

Breakfast was granola, and I boiled some eggs to prepare for lunch. Kouryou-chan tried to wear the same clothes she had worn the day before. She insisted that the pants were clean, so Omaha had me roll through the photographs to prove to Kouryou-chan that, yes indeed, she had worn those pants already. Darn photographic evidence. After the eggs had cooled in the river Omaha and the girls set up an assembly line to make the sandwiches while I washed the dishes.

We've got neighbors suddenly. Family of four, parents that have that muscled biker look to them. Rough trade.

Yamaraashi-chan insisted on wearing a tied-die bellyshirt that covered little more than a bikini top so Omaha made sure she was carrying a spare t-shirt in case it turned cool.

We drove up a narrow service forest road, the kind that really ought to be attempted only by jeeps and heavy trucks. We stopped at a vaguely wider spot in a heavily wooded area at an unmarked trail Omaha insisted was the one we wanted. I was dubious, but she insisted, and we headed off.

The hike was gorgeous. We saw all manners of flowers and madrona trees along the path. There were also these peculiar aluminum markers on trees all along the path with notes like "17+00" and "6+47". We couldn't figure out what they meant, but when they got to zero we were at an old bridge across the Elk River that had been smashed in last year's flooding and was now uncrossable. We walked on to Elk Lake, where we found two guys drinking beer fishing quietly. After we reached the west end of Elk Lake we concluded that there was no way down to the lake itself for swimming or anything like that, so we had lunch and then turned back around for home. The hike back was easy, mostly downhill, and the girls were strong troopers about it. Kouryou-chan's ankle was no longer bothering her.

We got back to the campsite and shared watermelon, then Omaha went for a nap. I sat back and finished Trial of Flowers, which was a lot slower reading than the popcorn of Hammer of Daemons. The girls ran around. Our neighbors... drank. And drank and drank and drank. The adults finished one case and started in on another. They had brought all the scrap wood from their workshop and were destroying it in a massive fire in the fire ring. It reached seven, eight feet high, which would have steamed a ranger if he'd seen it.

We made tacos for dinner, but Kouryou-chan wouldn't eat them and instead made a hot-dog. Afterward, we roasted marshmallows. Yamaraashi-chan did not set herself on fire this time. We played cards until it was too dark to tell the difference between blue and green. The neighbors played country music, but they at least turned it off promptly at ten.

I didn't sleep well last night. My back hurts and the pillow I brought is too soft and doesn't support my head well in comparison to the hard ground-pad and sleeping bag.

Kouryou-chan had washed her one pair of underwear in the river last night, but it was so humid and cool last night that the cloth wasn't dry. Omaha tried to speed up the process by gently frying the underwear over low heat to drive the moisture out and it mostly worked.

Breakfast was a nutrition bar and milk, not filling but quick, which was good because we were getting out at our typically late rate and we needed to get out to the Lena Lake trail-head as early as possible. It was the longest hike of our trip so far, almost six miles total, and much of it promised to be uphill heading inward.

The map lies about the number of switchbacks it takes to get up to the main ridge: it shows only five, but there are more like thirteen, all uphill, all interminably dull. I mean, sure, there are chipmunks and birds and it's beautiful forest country, but it's still just switchbacks, walking back and forth up a steep hillside, slow ridge by ridge, until you reach the one high enough to get through the gap that holds in Lena Lake.

The lake itself was very beautiful, and we walked all the way around to the north end, crossing over the creek that feeds it on your typical scary fallen-log bridge, until we stopped at a little unoccupied campsite on the far side with some relatively still water. The campsite was packed full of driftwood and the girls found great joy in pushing themselves out onto the lake on these huge, fallen logs like lumberjacks, only to have the wind blow them back to us. We ate PB&J sandwiches and trail mix and enjoyed the stillness.

While I was watching the girls, this little chipmunk broke into my bag and stole my trail mix. He's cute, but he's a thief.

We headed back while the girls chatted incessantly, making up stories based on the books they'd brought with them. It's cute, but really there's only so much parents can take at one time.

I have no idea what Omaha and Yamaraashi-chan are talking about in this picture, but it's a lovely picture of the two of them and I could hear the giggling from fifty yards away.

We stopped at a little wooden bridge crossing a dry creek and I spotted this rock shaped like a dog's head. The girls agreed, but Omaha thought it looked more like a pig.

When we got back to my car, we found a nasty surprise. Kouryou-chan was so happy to see the forest road after all those darned switchbacks, even going downhill, that she ran out to the car, then came running back shouting, "Daddy! Someone broke into our car!" And yeah, some punk kid smashed one of my windows and stole Omaha's iPod. They left everything else: two wallets, two cellphones (including Omaha's iPhone), Omaha's PDA, all the credit cards were still there. (They left my copy of Iain M. Banks's Matter! Don't they realize the book hasn't been released in the US yet? There are fans on this side of the ocean who'd give their right arm to have a copy!) We figured that had to be kids. One of the other people parked near the trail said that a window on their RV had been opened and whatever was in reach rifled through, but nothing was missing. Oh, and his windows were all turned. Damned kids. And I had worried about the chipmunk.

We called the sheriff and left a message. We also spoke with a park ranger who expressed surprise, since that was the first incident this year, and it wasn't supposed to be a problem area anymore. I did not point out that the weather had been less than helpful since Memorial Day and the season had started late.

Omaha spent much of the day in a funk, berating herself for leaving her iPod and pack in plain view to tempt the thieves.

We went home and made hamburgers, and then as the darkness fell we made s'mores. Yamaraashi-chan may have brought fourteen pairs of pants, but she didn't bring a single sweater. I loaned her one of my three warm shirts that evening, which was beneficial as it protected her when she set fire to a marshmallow and then immediately dropped it into her lap while trying to blow it out. She put it out fast enough and without injury. So my shirt earned a small patch of charred melted marshmallowy goodness, and she became cold again. She put on three layers of t-shirt instead.

Deep in the night, it began to rain, so Omaha and I had to do a quick toss of the rain-fly over the tent in the cold and the wet, but it worked well enough and we were dry until morning.

( More pictures... )