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.

A happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Kouryou-chan, Yamaraashi-chan and I all gave Omaha hugs and cards and stuff, I called my mother, Omaha called all of her relations that are mothers. Omaha asked for pancakes for breakfast and that's what she got; they were a little dry this time, but Kouryou-chan made hers disappear just as readily as everyone else.

Yamaraashi-chan was at her mother's all day, but I remembered to send her phone an IM making sure she remembered to give her mom the card I'd asked her to pick out yesterday.

Lisa took Omaha down to Des Moines for some kind of plant and gardening show, I never did get the story straight on exactly what they were going for, leaving me to do some actual gardening. I mowed the back lawn at the highest setting, and will have to mow again in a few days at a lower setting, once the grass has recovered from the trauma. I raked the grass and mixed it in with some leaves and starter compost from the oldest of the compost bins, and I settled this into a pair of 45 gallon trash bins-- light enough I can turn them over and shake them at will, so they should compost nicely and quickly, if I remember to actually do the mixing.

But the best fun was gridding out the garden space and then planting: basil, stupice tomatoes, grape tomatoes, zucchini and strawberry vines. There's more to be done tomorrow: four of the plants didn't get planted. But I did water them all, and the ones in the dirt now have broken root bulbs and are planted in a healthy mix of really good compost and the local dirt.

I think I spent about four hours outside. The neighbor girl, who's about Kouryou-chan's age, is suddenly into talking about God a lot, and I'll have to disappoint PZ Meyers by saying that I didn't say anything to disabuse her of the notions her church feeds into her.

Omaha and Lisa arrived shortly after I'd put the tools away, and Omaha came bearing a bag full of clams. We boiled the clams, roasted potatoes, onions and carrots in a aluminum foil bag, grilled some salmon and made Italian sodas, and our mother's day dinner was delicious for all involved. Lisa brought some really good cheese and watermelon.

Now that was a productive day. The oregano is spreading though, and I have to weed out the space by the house's western wall where grass and blackberries are choking the life out of the old strawberry vines and the mint.

Well, this afternoon I arrived home early enough to make a meatloaf, toss it into the oven, then go outside and do a solid hour of weeding. And believe me, it needed it. I must have hauled a full forty gallon bag of weeds out of there, and it all still looks crappy, but it's less crappy than it was before. Afterwards, I felt like I needed a shower because I was covered in pollen.

The meatloaf was straightforward, although I put in an egg and some softened breadcrumbs. Given how hot it's suddenly become and just how little I was in the mood for something heavy like beer, I decided to try an experiment and mixed three parts Late Harvest Rheisling with five parts ginger ale, over ice, to fake up a wine cooler. Actually, it was very good! Even Omaha liked it.

And I wrote three thousand words today. They weren't on the story I was planning on writing, but they were three thousand words that I don't feel guilty about not having written.