Security Stuff
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Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine
This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Christmas Story, one of my favorite Christmas movies ever made. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here since this runs 24 hours a day on a ton of stations in December, but if I am, go watch it first. One scene is especially interesting to folks interested…
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What is my password?
THAT WAY YOU CAN’T SAY IT SUCKS I’ll make more blogs again. Forgot.
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Profiling LMC Assembly Code
What is Profiling? Profiling is measuring the performance of code, whether it is a small function or an entire application. You can determine how quickly the code will execute various requests and tune them to meet your needs. Cycle Counts The Little Man Computer is easy to do math on, it is 1:1 — one…
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Little Man Computer – Execution
So far, we’ve learned about the Little Man Computer architecture and how to write a simple program and assemble it into machine code. You likely already know how the code is executed due to the high quality comments I’ve included in that blog. Regardless, I built a simulator and spent quite a bit of time…
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Little Man Computer — Assembly Code
Cover photo isn’t related, but it’s almost as interesting as my post. Machine Code vs. Assembly Code You’ll often hear these two terms used interchangeably, but they are not the same. People will often state that machine code is the actual “0’s” and “1’s” a machine executes, and that’s pretty close to being correct. People…
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Little Man Computer – Architecture
Around a year ago, I built and threw a Little Man Computer (“LMC”) simulator, assembler, and a really crappy disassembler and put them up on GitHub. There’s another version in C++ up there as well, but it isn’t as fully built out or stable. “Computer Science” in my high school days consisted of keyboarding and…
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More Locks = More Security?
This morning, I went for a walk and came upon this rather formidable cell tower enclosure. Usually these things are behind a chain link fence — this one is behind a block wall and has a stout gate. After the 2022 substation attack, I can appreciate seeing stronger protection to critical infrastructure. In this case,…
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Ford Bronco EV Solar Mod
Hi owners of Ford Broncos! This is for the kids ride-on bronco. Sorry! Last Christmas, Santa brought my children something I always wanted — a ride on car! (People call these Power Wheels, but it isn’t a Power Wheels). Around the same time, I was into 3D Printing, and had designed an entire hitch system…
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Why I won’t buy the 2032 Dodge RAM
It might seem weird to talk about a truck that’s nearly a decade away. But here’s my history with Dodge RAM: (I know some of you drop the word “Dodge”, but no) My 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 My 2012 Ram 1500 Big Horn, looking squatted with that fat trailer My 2022 Ram 2500 Tradesman So,…
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A Story: Vending Machine Business
This is a long-winded story of failure. I’m hoping to share some misconceptions I had about starting a business as well as “analysis paralysis”. Back in October of 2018, I was doing what I do best: Trolling Facebook Garage Sale sites. Some of my better items for sale were: But, I came across a post…
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Verizon Wireless: Bait and Switch
This one isn’t a security blog. If you want deep, technical reading this one isn’t it. A Year Ago… I was at the park with my son when he fell and got hurt, I called my wife to come and pick us up as that was much faster than walking his bike home. As we…
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Restoring Old Disks
The first line of code I wrote was back in 1992, 31 years ago. That must make me an old man, and perhaps I am, but back then I was only seven — and my first program I wrote? I used QBASIC to output ASCII Art (it was just called “Graphics” back then) to output…