Lily is going to be a big sister!
The digital indicator says “Pregnant,” and yes, we are – as this test (and two others, just for good measure) confirmed today!
Photo © Chip Bennett, all rights reserved.
We quite literally just found out today, and are incredibly excited and overjoyed! More news as we have it, but in the meantime, please keep Steph in your prayers.
At this weekend’s church service, the pastor started a new series on stress relief. This week’s message was titled “Breathing Room” and focused on identifying, establishing, and maintaining healthy boundaries in our relationships. The message borrowed heavily from Cloud and Townsend’s Boundaries series, including some video messages available on their website.
The message covered a lot of ground, but initially addressed the concept of boundaries and having a compliant or controlling nature – that is, those who have a compliant nature tend to allow their boundaries to be tresspassed by others and those who have a controlling nature tend to tresspass others’ boundaries. As the pastor began discussing these concepts, I was reminded of Steven Covey’s principle of our Circles of Influence Concern. I thought that concept analogous to what the pastor was explaining, with influence and concern on one hand, and responsibility and authority on the other.
Here’s what I mean:
Each one of us has some amount of responsibility, which can be envisioned much like Covey’s Circle of Concern. For this example, we can treat this Circle of Responsibility as a fixed area – that is to say, at any given point in time, our area or amount of responsibility is a fixed, or unchanging, quantity.
Each of us also exerts some amount of authority, which can be envisioned much like Covey’s Circle of Influence. Unlike our Circle of Responsibility, our Circle of Authority is variable. We choose the extent to which we exert our authority.
Consider the following diagrams:
It is important to realize that these boundaries do not exist in a vacuum. A controlling character cannot exert authority outside of his area of responsibility in the absence of a compliant character into whose area of responsibility he can exert that authority – and vice versa. In other words, these concepts are meaningless outside of the context of relationship. Likewise, it is the relationship between two people that experiences stress as a result of such a trespass of boundaries:
The stress exists in the overlap of the controlling character’s authority and the compliant character’s area of responsibility.
Herein lies the point, for those experiencing stress induced by lack of healthy relational boundaries: identify either compliant or controlling character – or both – in your relationships, and then make the necessary changes to ensure that you are exerting your authority in balance with your responsibility.
As Pastor Ron emphasized in the sermon this morning, learning to exert authority is often as simple as learning when to say “yes” and when to say “no” with respect to the expenditure of your time, effort, and resources. Discipline yourself to establish healthy boundaries in your relationships by balancing your area of responsibility with the exertion of your authority, and you will find that those relationships will be come much less stressful, and much healthier themselves.
We have been looking for quite some time, to find a church home suitable for Stephanie, Lily, and me – somewhere that we can get involved in the church ministries, outreaches, and service as well as somewhere that can meet our needs: worship service with which we can relate and be both fed and challenged, an excellent children’s program, and small-group ministry to facilitate building relationships and friendships with other people our age and in similar life circumstances.
We have tried several churches, trying to keep an open mind about non-essential things such as membership size and style of worship, while at the same time looking for unity in the things we consider essential: namely, doctrinal matters. For the past couple months, we have been attending Grace Church of St. Louis, and have connected well enough that we have decided to go through the four-week membership class to determine how well this church might fit for us.
We will be considering several things, including the details of the church’s doctrine, the dynamics of a smaller group (our class has about 70 people, which is considered “small” for a church the size of Grace), the ministry/small group/service opportunities, and the emphasis/mission of the church (missions, evangelism, discipleship, etc.).
If we have one concern thus far, it is the somewhat overwhelming size of the church. While I would be perfectly comfortable, provided that we can find smaller groups with which to get involved, Stephanie is not quite so comfortable. That is why the nature and dynamics of the church’s small group ministries will be critical to our decision.
Please be praying for us in our search for a church home – that God will show us where He would have us to be, and especially that He will enlighten us with respect to Grace Church through this membership class.
Sorry for the infrequent posting, but things have been really busy here.
My most recent project is the basement. When we moved in, I had basically everything that we didn’t know what to do with, put into the basement workshop/storage room. So, now that we’ve got the main level and upstairs essentially in shape (except for the breakfast room), I’ve been concentrating on organizing the basement and storage room. Here’s what it looks like now:
Cleanup and organization of the basement living areas.
Photo © Chip Bennett, all rights reserved.
Of course, I had to make some special additions:
The basement would not be complete without a Colts shrine.
Photo © Chip Bennett, all rights reserved.
And then there’s the workshop/storage room. Without having seen the before pictures, you really won’t get the transformation – so these pics are mainly for my dad:
The area now resembles a workshop and storage area, rather than an overflowing dumping ground.
Photo © Chip Bennett, all rights reserved.
I also uploaded a bunch more Lily photos, to her Nine Month and Ten Month sets. She’s been as adorable as ever, learning new things such as clapping, drinking through a straw, and trying to climb the stairs. But of all the photos, this one has to be the best:
Lily gives such sweet kisses. Also, note mommy’s cute new hairdo!
Photo © Chip Bennett, all rights reserved.
WordPress 2.5 has been released. I have installed it, and everything seems to be working fine – especially on the front end (though I’m still exploring the new admin interface).
Let me know if you notice any issues, and if you use WordPress, go install Version 2.5 now!
Head-to-head-to-head, Vista vs. MacOS vs. GNU/Linux in the PWN 2 OWN contest at CanSecWest 2008:
Three targets, all patched. All in typical client configurations with typical user configurations. You hack it, you get to keep it…
Each has a file on them and it contains the instructions and how to claim the prize.
Targets (typical road-warrior clients):
- VAIO VGN-TZ37CN running Ubuntu 7.10
- Fujitsu U810 running Vista Ultimate SP1
MacBook Air running OSX 10.5.2
…Once you extract your claim ticket file from a laptop (note that doing so will involve executing code on the box, simple directory traversal style bugs are inadequate), you get to keep it.
The contest took place over three days, the challenge – and the cash prize – diminishing each day:
Day 1: March 26th: Remote pre-auth
All laptops will be open only for Remotely exploitable Pre-Auth vulnerabilities which require no user interaction. First one to pwn it, receives the laptop and a $20,000 cash prize.
The pwned machine(s) will be taken out of the contest at that time.
Day 2: March 27th: Default client-side apps
The attack surfaces increases to also include any default installed client-side applications which can be exploited by following a link through email, vendor supplied IM client or visiting a malicious website. First one to pwn it receives the laptop and a $10,000 cash prize.
The pwned machine(s) will be taken out of the contest at that time.
Day 3: March 28th: Third Party apps
Assuming the laptops are still standing, we will finally add some popular 3rd party client applications to the scope. That list will be made available at CanSecWest, and will be also posted here on the blog. First to pwn it receives the laptop and a $5,000 cash prize.
All three laptops survived the first day, as none of the contestants attempted any hacks.
However, day two brought the first successful attack: the MacBook Air was compromised in a matter of minutes. The attack vector was the Safari web browser. The contestant instructed the MacBook Air user to navigate to a specially designed web page using Safari. The attack reportedly took less than two minutes:
Charlie Miller, who was the first security researcher to remotely exploit the iPhone, felled the Mac by tapping a security bug in Safari. The exploit involved getting an end user to click on a link, which opened up a port that he was then able to telnet into. Once connected, he was able to remotely run code of his choosing.
And finally, day three saw the second successful attack, as the Vista laptop was compromised. This time, the attack exploited a reportedly cross-platform vulnerability in Java:
“The flaw is in something else, but the inherent nature of Java allowed us to get around the protections that Microsoft had in place,” he said in an interview shortly after he claimed his prize Friday. “This could affect Linux or Mac OS X.”
That means that in the end, only the GNU/Linux laptop (running Ubuntu) was left standing.
What is the moral of the story here? Well, in my opinion, there are two:
So, as a user, what can you do to protect yourself? Many things – and these apply regardless of which Operating System you choose:
There is, as always, more (avoiding phishing, etc.); but the above list should provide the bulk of protection. Learn to modify your computer-use behavior, bearing in mind that you cannot place ultimate trust in your operating system to protect you.
Just a quick congratulations to the Brownsburg Bulldogs for winning the Indiana Class 4A boys basketball state championship last night, beating Marion 40-39.
(According to the article, the game was the lowest-scoring state championship since Milan beat Muncie Central 32-30 in 1954 – which most people would recognize as the inspiration for the best basketball movie ever made: Hoosiers.
While I graduated from Shelbyville High School, several of my cousins went to Brownsburg, which is where many of my relatives live – including my parents, who moved to nearby Pittsboro after retiring. My aunt and uncle have stayed involved with athletic and other activities in the school system, so I am especially happy for them that they get to enjoy the Bulldogs’ run to the state championship.
So, congrats, Brownsburg Bulldogs!
Imagine, if you will, a blogger who decides to focus his work on exposing the inaccuracy of the mainstream media’s photojournalism. In order to do so, this blogger would need to post the photos to be discussed (be that discussion editorial, critical, or corrective in nature). Certainly, any rational person would understand that such action would constitute fair use of copyrighted works.
Such a blogger exists, and his blog is Snapped Shot.
The AP apparently disagreed with his fair use of their photos, and sent him a cease-and-desist letter. (The fair-use defense in this instance is pretty cut-and-dry. Snapped Shot has a run-down of the blogosphere’s reaction, so there’s no need for me to re-hash it all here.) After some consultation, Snapped Shot decided to comply rather than to place his family in jeopardy. After all, who can afford to fight the AP’s legal department?
Here’s the irony, though: the AP, who disputes Snapped Shot’s fair-use right to their own copyrighted photos for the purpose of discussing the very photos themselves, apparently finds a fair-use right to others’ copyrighted photos, even though the photos used were in no way related to the story (unless the AP can prove some link to a photo of a bikini-clad Ashley Alexandra Dupre in the Caribbean to a story about Eliot Spitzer’s use of her call-girl services in New York).
Oh, but the irony gets even thicker: CNN is in on the copyright violations, too.
Hypocrisy: good for me, but not for thee.