Yellowstone National Park Trip

Sat, Sep 05; 4:30 AM

It was the recreational vehicle (RV) we had hired out to spend the long Labor Day long weekend. The destination- Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, about 470 miles west of Rapid City. We had a RV campground booked at the Park for Saturday and Sunday. The very idea of going in an RV was fun! It’s a huge vehicle, the ideal American family recreational vehicle. It is a complete house inside- couches, bedroom, kitchen, washroom- all powered by this 4.7 L Ford engine. Our route: 350 mi on the I 90 west, then the rest on the US 14/ US 14A highway. This is not my first trip to the YNP, but with 10 people on board, it is a huge trip. We had beer, played blackjack and had lots of fun during the 10-hour-long drive.

Sun, Sep 05; 2.42 PM

We are driving through the Park roads, the one leading to our next stop, the famous Old Faithful geyser. The route is scenic, the weather is great, and the RV is all cleaned up after last night’s beer-burger-drumstick party at the campground. The Old Faithful geyser erupts every 45 minutes. The next eruption is predicted at 3.17 PM.

4.46 PM

The Old Faithful was absolutely awesome. The eruption rose to almost 100-120 ft. The scene was spectacular. Hundreds of tourists gathered the site to view the geyser go off. We’re now headed to Yellowstone Grand Canyon after a brief stop at the Yellowstone Lake. The lake is spread over 21 sq mi. The view is breathtaking. I cannot describe how beautiful is the park and the park routes. Tall, thin trees are partially green and brown. The roads are like forest highways. The Yellowstone Lake is accompanying us since the last 21 mi. The landscape is unending and breathtaking. From rains in the last few weeks, the mountains are covered with a blanket of greenery. The bisons are all over. The hot springs present a colorful picture with algae and other organisms growing all over. At one spring, the temperature was mentioned as 75 C/ 160 F. No wonder, the Yellowstone National Park is the world’s biggest, naturally preserved, geyser-basin.

Bear Sighting

Luckily for us, while we were on our way back from the Park, we saw this huge crowd of people hastily clicking pictures of a baby grizzly bear few feet away from the shoulder. There were Park Rangers with pepper spray handy, in case of any eventualities. It was a fitting end to our trip, as we were just talking about citing a bear in the Park. But when it was finally in front of us, it was a treat to our eyes. The bear was happily grazing on the green twigs and grass; not very bothered by the crowd.

Our journey back home was as exciting as it was while going. We had lunch, dinner, played cards and stopped at scenic spots to enjoy the most of nature. Overall, it was a memorable trip with a hell ‘o a vehicle, and the company of friends!

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5000 visits

It's an achievement; it's a milestone. My blog has received 5000 hits since August 27, 2007 (although I started blogging from February 2006)! That's a good figure. Maybe I must work on making my blog more popular; maybe I must write more frequently. I am so glad to see many new people start blogging, and I am still encouraging some friends to start their own blog.

This just gives me some motivation to keep blogging, nevertheless, my very purpose of writing would be defeated if I didn't do justice to my blog.

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You Me & The Bourgeoisie

I heard this song on the Apple iPhone 3G-S TV ad on the Apple website. And guess what, I instantly loved it. Here it is. Enjoy!


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Phil Collins: "In the air tonight"

Now they can guess your Social Security Number

From Yahoo Tech Blog:

By now we've had it beaten into our thick skulls: Protect your Social Security Number at all costs, because those nine magic digits are the gateway to your entire life. Financial history, medical records... just about everything hinges on your SSN remaining private.

As such, large-scale thefts of SSN and other private information continue to make headlines, but this piece of news takes the cake: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have now figured out a way to roughly reverse engineer the way in which Social Security Numbers are assigned. Armed with your date of birth and the state in which you were born, it's now possible to generate a quite small set of digits that are likely to contain your actual SSN.

How is this possible? Mainly because SSNs aren't just randomly generated. The first three digits are tied to your state of birth, and the next two digits (the "group number") are used sequentially as SSNs are handed out over time. The final four digits are supposedly random, but using a public database called the Death Master File, which lists SSNs that were held by the deceased, patterns emerged in those digits, as well.

The result is that, depending on the state and year of birth (the older you are and the larger your state of birth, the harder it is to guess your SSN), the researchers could guess a Social Security Number's first five digits with up to 90 percent accuracy, and the last four digits with up to 5 percent accuracy. Considering the odds of getting a SSN right by random guess really ought to be 1 in a billion, that's a phenomenal success rate.

And if those numbers seem small, consider that with the use of commonly-available botnets, computers could correctly guess dozens of SSNs every minute by simple brute force as they apply for bogus credit cards en masse. The Ars Technica story linked above also notes that many credit card verification services allow for a couple of digits in an SSN to be wrong, as a convenience for forgetful applicants, opening the door a little wider for hackers.

What happens now? It's hard to imagine an organization as venerable and bureaucratic as the Social Security Administration to change the way it works, but it's hard not to think that the nine-digit SSN may have at last outlived its utility, and its security. Still, just try to imagine the upheaval should the country attempt to move to longer numbers...

The Rules of the Car

The rules of the car:

Rule number 1: Respect a man's car.

Rule number 2: Greet the man.

Rule number 3: Wear your seat belt.
Rule number 4: Never make a promise you cannot keep.


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Numbers from iWork '09

Apple has made Mac products keeping in mind that most Mac users have moved from a Windows PC experience. That is a very good thing about Mac and it's products. Numbers from iWork 09 is extremely streamlined and brilliant in appearance. I have been using Microsoft Office Excel for the past 5 years, and switching over to iWork Numbers was initially more of a comparison. I used to look for all the features of Excel in Numbers and found a few glitches. Foremost, it was a little inconvenient to select a box with the mouse. Sometimes you have to concentrate hard if you need to move a box. Excel was easier to use and selecting boxes with the mouse and moving it around was easier. Other than this, I found Numbers very streamlined and productive tool.

The 'templates' feature is good, and easier for the 'not-so-technical' user to create specific spreadsheets with ease. I bought iWork for $79 while I could have got a $10 discount with the 'Apple student store'. Numbers is nice, I use it for my homework at School and for planning road trips and organizing events. I love the 'export-to-PDF' feature on iWork which helps me create an instant PDF out of the entire document or even part of it.

Numbers '09 also can export the document in the format you want, including Office Excel. I would sure recommend Numbers to my friends!

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All images from apple.com.