Setup Day in Cleveland

Today was setup day in Cleveland. I have a class on Linux Administration on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week. So today we had to set up the hardware that I spent all weekend getting ready. Things actually worked rather well. We had a few surprises, like the monitor that sounded like a nuclear reactor getting ready to blow. And a dead Compaq that needed it's processor re-seated. I sware, I should send Nintendo a thank-you note every time I get a Pentium II processor working again, using the same method I learned to get dirty 8-bit games going. It's the old spit and blow technique. You know the one.

So now I am driving back to Columbus with Karen at the wheel. Which is nice. Gives me some blog time, and some general tuning out time. I am tired. And I have a class to teach as soon as I walk back inside in Columbus. I will welcome sleep tonight.

It's been a ROUGH week. Not just on me, but on everybody. Rotary got some bad news earlier this week about her health. Her medication for arthritis might be partly to blame. But she has now also been diagnosed with high blood pressure. And to help raise her blood pressure, I am leaving for several days out of town.

The timing on this course could not have been worse. It would be nice to have one of those slow weeks where I have some down time. Instead, I will be hours away camped out in a hotel. It's going to be really rough. We have certainly never been away from each other this long since we've been dating, let alone married. I will definitely not be sleeping well. And I suspect Rotary will not either.

I am going to be SO homesick by the time Friday rolls around. And I can't believe that this is supposed to be a 3 day class. I had thought originally that this was a one day class, with two sets of 20 students. I will be lucky to make this last two days. I think I will want to time this so that we are done around lunchtime on Friday. Then I can pack up while my students eat.

I would love to express more of what is on my mind right now about my wife. But nobody reads my Blog for what is actually on my mind. You all are probably looking to read about my latest wardriving adventures. So allow me to say this to get it out. I love my wife, a lot. And the emotions are running pretty deep with me this week.

Okay, enough with the sappy stuff, right?

So I was expecting more access points out here. This part of Cleveland Ohio is a mud pit. I am just half a mile from the Eerie Canal. And there is nothing out here. I was expecting *some* civilization out here. But I have to drive a mile or two to find a McDonalds, let alone an access point. This is going to make WarDriving pretty dull. I am not really going to want to venture *too far* away from where I will be teaching, but I do want to get online. If I have to spend my evenings alone in a hotel with no one to talk to and no internet, I will lose my fucking mind. I guess I could always call my wife after 9:00PM and talk as long as I want (free minutes). :-) Anyway, here is a look at some points I found a mile or two away from where I will be.



I trimmed the log for something I will explain later as the "Cisco Trap".

Y2K DISASTER

We went out to the China Buffet tonight. We needed to blow about half an hour so that we could meet up with Discount Man once he left work. So we went on into a thrift store next door. I found this book titled "The Milenium Bug". It's a book to help prepare you for the horrors that awaited you on January 1st, 2000. Inside the front cover was a few stickie notes from the previous book owner. Aside from getting a great book for 90 cents, I got to keep this very personal list of items to be purchased. A coffee pot, a gun? Hrm.

Like A Rock

I had a HUGE dent in my mail folder at the office today. It was packed full of junkmail. I got a new Certification magazine (I haven't read anything from the past three issues), a new Transcender flyer (I threw it away because Transcender makes awful testing sims, and they put scary looking people on their advertisements), a copy of eWeek (not a bad read) and lastly ... Information Security Magazine.

I really like this magazine. It's free (you can sign up on their website), and their articles are actually worth reading. On the cover was a bunch of people who work for Prudential (the Insurance people). They had a large piece on how Prudential takes security very seriously, and what they have done to improve it. I can tell you what they HAVEN'T done. Close their damned WiFi Access Points. Ah well, nobody's perfect right?

"There's a reality that has to be accepted and understood that bad people do bad things," says BSO Freddo.

What am I a bad guy? I didn't take any data from these people, I wouldn't dare. It's none of my business. But for the record, they had open shares. SHAME ON YOU PRUDENTIAL! And also, thanks for the free WiFi access in my time of wireless need.

So, bad news good news for today in general.

Bad News

• The Mail server has a dead drive
  
• My wife asked me to take her to a Christian Rock concert
  
• There was ANOTHER major accident on the highway this morning
  
• My shirt smells funny like mildew

Good News

• The drive in the mail server is rebuilding from a spare
  
• My wife gave away the tickets (we're seeing a movie instead)
  
• I took the backroads to work and got to work on time
  
• I can wash my shirt
  
• NO night class tonight

Didya' catch that last part? NO night class. I am thankful. They had a class lined up for me with 2 people in it. It was A+ (which I am SO sick of teaching) and I would have had to drive downtown during rush hour two nights a week. The bonus money would have been nice. But not having the class seems nicer. So it's not a bad week at all. I am teaching Security+ to a single student, and the class is going real smooth. Lots of fun labs to do with securing servers and workstations. My student and I are having a lot of fun with the class!

I really have an itchin' to go wardriving. Maybe just a quick stop on the way home to feed my need? I should just pull around the corner from my the office and grab some bounty.

On The Road Again

I dropped Rotary and the kids off to a football party today and headed out for a good time. I had to get a new tire put on the car, but I had plenty of time to war drive along the way. I didn't travel far. I found an interesting looking business park about 200 feet away and leaped right onto an access point. It was named "Cassie".

Cassie must have turned her computer off before leaving the office Friday. I hate being alone on a network. Nothing to explore, nothing to do. I could re-arrange settings on the Access Point? Nah ... next! I pulled off.



I pulled around the corner and hit about 8 access points all at once. Just my luck though. Nowhere to park! The city was digging out curbs and storm drains to re-build them. The streets were a mess. So I went up the block and found a radio station. I didn't know that was there! No access point though. Ho-hum.

So I needed to get back into my end of town to eat, and let my dogs out. Took the long ride back. I kept peering over to my lappy, who wasn't registering ANYTHING. I hate that MacStumbler picks up very little, while KisMac picks up farts in the wind. But if I run KisMac, I have to kill it before I can really connect to anything. It's a pain.

After arriving back in my neck of the woods, I explore a few dead areas, find that one of my favorite old Access Points is no longer connected to a WAN (guess he didn't pay his bill) and so I decided to circle teh parking lot and split. That's when I found an access point called "hotnjuicy". In the middle of a bunch of fast food and sit down joints. Check out the picture.



Why would Wendys have an access point? It has to be something for store inventories. I couldn't find anything on that network. I couldn't ping the gateway, yet it was forwarding packets to a seperate 10.x.x.x network. Very odd. I don't get it. After wasting about 1 minutes on it, I went out and got a tire put on, then headed home to let the dogs out.

Later Rotary called me to come get the kids from the party. After I picked them up I thought I might stop by Discount Mans crib. But he was not answering his phone. So I pulled over to a hot-spot I had just found that was sponsered by an Insurance company. Thanks Prudential! DM wasn't online, naturally. So I messaged my buddy Gethsemane. What's up!



I later found out DM was jogging. Loser. Trying not to be fat. Whatever.

So the kids and I went home and ate, and played and stuff. Then we went back out to get Rotary from the football party. I took a snapshot of some of my findings.



Later Discount Man calls me and says he has Chuck on the phone. This is our camera-man, and he's available! Naturally, we are ready to film our segment on attaching a cantenna to a network card that has no external connector. I think the segment came out well. We're not sure what will happen with it. It may be released as part of "the broken", or it may carry the Gloop label! Either way, it ought to come out good. We had a lot of fun filming it.

I should be in bed. Why am I still up? Shit.

Bore-Driving

So far I have found some pretty exciting stuff to dig through while wardriving. Not today. It was a major let-down.

A few days ago I discovered an open access point near work that was not WEP encrypted. After connecting to it, I was able to geuss their administrator password on my second try (it was the name of their domain). Once in I found a few shares of work related stuff. Lot's of it. But I couldn't get a strong enough signal to download any of it. So today, I got in my car and pulled into the street to do the dirty deed. I was most interested in a backed up Outlook database floating around in an "admin files" folder. It was well over 30 megs. So it took a few minutes to copy it. Then I moved along.

Once home, I opened the .pst file with Outlook which I had installed to mty XP box. This is probably one of the most uninteresting mail files I have ever found. Looks like this guy is an architect for golf courses. Yawn. There were a few juicy tidbits about how his boss is dumb and how he "runs everything". And it also looks like he is looking for another job. Wonder if the boss knows?



Other than the usual work stuff there was the ocassional "ha ha" kind of message between him and his wife, or rude remarks to otehr co-workers like this one.



Since it didn't take me long to rob those files, I thought I would take a quick run through some condos closer to home. Found a pretty strong access point that allowed me to park out of view and grab a few files. Although the access point had a male name, it appeared to have a female using it. Aside from a bunch of boring college papers, there were a few images like this one. SMILE!



I found another picture named "pink1.jpg". Don't get excited, she is a fan of the singer Pink. And I also found some of my first war-driving nudity! Oh yeah.



Check out those hot bitches!

Now I am off to the Pumpkin show with the wife, kids, and my mom. If she ever gets here. She is five minutes late. I had better wait upstairs so we can jet. I'll fill you all in later on the Pumpkin Show details!

Audrey, You Devil

I like my iBook. She's nice to me most of the time. But I had a bad experience the other day with her. Did you know her name is Audrey? She is actually Audrey II. I got a 3-Com Audrey back in February that was my favorite toy for several months. Now, this iBook is my favorite toy. Hence, she has been named Audrey II. The "hidden punchline" is that this is the name of the big bad plant from outer space in the broadway show (and hit film) Little Shop Of Horrors.

Anyway, I had heard about a horrible accident on the highway that involved my route home. So I took the LONG way home. A long winding road that stretches about 14 miles in the right direction, going through the middle of a few suburbs. It wasn't a bad ride to take, and with Audrey at my side, she was bleeping like crazy as she struck up access points. Ding Ding Ding! I was trying to keep from driving into curbs, and still see what was popping up on her display but the access points were apearing in an odd order. So I see that I could click the little headers at the top of KisMac to re-arrange the list of discovered access points. Naturally, I want to see them sorted by the time they were found, with new ones at the top!

So I do a double click ... and I get the "pizza wheel of death". Some call it a beach ball. It's kind of like getting the hour glass in windows ... and then it never goes away. So I reboot, try it again, and lock up again. Maybe I found a bug in this software. Argh!

But climbing into bed, chatting, Blogging. I forgive her. She is so good to me. *petting the lid* I think I will get her a new hard drive afterall. And a battery too. Would you like that baby? Yes you will!

Lazy Sunday Wardriving

It was a really nice day outside. Sunshine, cool breeze. Rotary and the kids went with aunt Tanya to go see a kids movie. Something called Good Dog? It was supposed to rain, and Rotary didn't really want to drive. So I offered to be the driver. This also gave me a chance to have about an hour and a half in an end of town with endless access points to explore.



Going up and down a few blocks within the theater, I had a lot of bells going off for access points. Maybe a little more than half of them were secured. Which is good, since I was looking at mostly businesses. Some had a hidden SSID (that won't stop me!) and MAC address filtering (not worth fucking with).

Perched behind a Dairy Queen I ran into an open access point, and a computer with open shares. I love it when people actually use that "Shared Docs" folder that comes with XP. That tells me two things. First, that anything in that folder is up for grabs to a username of guest and a password of guest. Secondly, those files were shared for a reason. There is at least one other computer or laptop in the household to explore. The first picture I came across was a little asian man standing in front of the chemistry department at OSU. It was dated from this past summer. And digging a little deeper I found several different folders stuffed with un-marked digital photos. Nothing too exciting, just a lot of asians having a good time. I know what you are thinking. "Is this Jacobs Ladder? What the hell is up with their faces?". I am respecting the privacy of these nameless people. That is all.



Then I came across this photo which was seperate from the others. I am leaving this one un-touched because I doubt she would ever be recognized here in the states. Maybe a girlfriend back home? Maybe just some chick he met on the Internet and thought was cute. Who knows. But she kind of looks like an asian version of Phoebbe Cates. Don't you think? Asian chick on the left, Phoebbe on the right.


Okay, enough asians. I messaged a few people, "Hi! I'm wardriving", and moved on. The next thing I hit really made me curious. It was an easy network to hop onto, and I got an address ending in 36. That tells me that there is at least 5 other people (or has been recently) on this network. What a random number?


So I start looking for other signs of life by browsing for network shares and come up with nothing. Seems odd. The name of the access point indicates that this may be associated with the local University. Although, looking around my location all I see is an old neighborhood, an apartment complex, and an abandoned gas station. So I start randomly pinging IP addresses and find three or four. Then I attach via a web browser to two of them. One demands that I enter a username and a password. I can't guess it trying the usual stuff, so I have to give up on that. But the second one I connect to fires right up. Looks like statistical stuff for this network. Neat, neat, neat. I am in some kind of wireless network, that is part of a much larger wireless network. All of the IP's are Internet routable too. not the usual "reserved address" that most routers hide you behind.


I now have anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes left before the movie lets out, so I hop onto an open Linksys AP without even having to move my car. Seeing that I was granted an address ending in .1 I all ready know I am alone in this universe. Which means, no open shares to browse. Bummer. So I connected to the router, putting in "admin" as both username and password (duh) and started re-arranging things. First of all, I HATE Linksys products. So I renamed the access point for them. I think "rape me" is pretty appropriate, completed with the )( symbol (it marks an open access point).



Then just to amuse myself, I run MacStumbler and check it out. Yup! It's now broadcasting under a new name. Very fitting.

No calls yet, and I still had about 15 minutes left, so I decided to try something else. Wouldn't it be nice to connect to this access point later when there were files to browse and someone else connected to it? Of course! So for my next trick, I changed around a few settings which allowed a connection to the access point from the WAN side of things. I also took note of the WAN address. This address was taken from a DHCP server. So it could change later in the day. But most likely, it will be the same for weeks.


Content with what I had done, I decided to take one more crack on an un-named Access Point located somewhere in a mini-mall by the movie theater. That's about the time the phone rang to go get everyone from the theater. "Good Dog" was a good movie I guess. Although it was said that my daughter slept through the entire thing, and my son laughed insanely at all the "sad" parts. That's my boy.

Later back at home, I brought up the snapshot I had taken of the access point admin screen, and fired it open in a browser. Worked nicely. I think from here on out, when I come across an access point as open as this one, I will do this same trick. Then I can connect to these anytime I want, forwarding ports on them, and making them into my digital bitches. HAR!

Isn't wardriving FUN?

Hung Over

Dude, I got a headache. I wonder what Rob feels like right about now. He drank enough to kill a small horse, and then went to a party. Probably to drink some more. I hope he got laid.

I got a nasty headache. The kind you get from drinking too much the night before. Thing is, I only drank a 40oz and maybe one other beer. Perhaps I am pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. Could be the weather changing.

The man came to get his printer today. Nice guy. I know the printer is going to a good home. He will use it to print color photo's of horses for his horse business in New Hampshire. Brought his daughter along for the ride and is teaching her how to show horses. Nice guy.

Getting ready for a late night Buckeye game party tonight. I just put some chili together, and now I should get to work on my daughters halloween costume project. I came back from the kitchen and found some pissed off kid wanted to argue with me over locking threads on thebroken.org. :-)

Check it out ...


[11:24:18] supercolton1 - AIM - ray....
[11:25:06] supercolton1 - AIM - ray....
[11:26:15] supercolton1 - AIM - FINE THEN!
[11:27:24] Ray - AIM - Hrm?
[11:34:23] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:25] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:26] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:26] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:27] supercolton1 - AIM - ra
[11:34:28] supercolton1 - AIM - y
[11:34:30] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:31] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:33] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:34] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:34:37] supercolton1 - AIM - ray
[11:56:00] supercolton1 - AIM - ray sucks
[11:56:05] supercolton1 - AIM - ray sucks
[11:56:08] supercolton1 - AIM - ray sucks
[11:56:12] supercolton1 - AIM - your such a loser
[11:56:23] supercolton1 - AIM - locking every post
[11:57:32] supercolton1 - AIM - do da
[11:57:35] supercolton1 - AIM - do da
[11:57:37] supercolton1 - AIM - your
[11:57:40] supercolton1 - AIM - such a big loser
[11:57:44] supercolton1 - AIM - respond
[13:03:05] supercolton1 - AIM - rays gay
[13:03:10] Ray - AIM - Flattery will get you nowhere.
[13:03:11] supercolton1 - AIM - like his momma
[13:03:28] supercolton1 - AIM - you lock too much threads
[13:03:48] Ray - AIM - Okay, so I lock too many threads.
[13:03:56] supercolton1 - AIM - and your a gay ass
[13:04:06] Ray - AIM - You mean "you're a gay ass".
[13:04:13] Ray - AIM - It's two words.
[13:04:16] Ray - AIM - You and are.
[13:04:25] Ray - AIM - They come together to form a contraction.
[13:04:27] Ray - AIM - Try it.
[13:04:29] Ray - AIM - You're.
[13:04:29] supercolton1 - AIM - ok...i dont care moron
[13:04:40] Ray - AIM - Suddenly the tables turn! I am the moron.
[13:04:50] Ray - AIM - Find something better to do with your time.
[13:05:04] supercolton1 - AIM - you are so gay
[13:05:57] supercolton1 - AIM - you ass wipe

Been Drinking

Went to the dentist today. They were like "OH MY GOD D00D YOUR TEEF' ARE SHITTY!". And I was all like "SHADDUP! FIX MY TEEF!". And they were like "OKAY, BUT YOU HAF' TO PAY US LOTS MONEYS!". So I will. Over the course of about 4 visits, I will bring a record amount of Novacaine into my body, and get something like 14 fillings, and one tooth pulled. FUN!!!




The TOPIC IS DRINKING tonight. Because that's what we're doing. I am killing a King Cobra very slowly. Discount Man, dun't all ready kill't his. Look at the smile on this poor son of a bitch. He drank 3 beers, a 40oz of KC, and another 1/2 a 40oz of bud. He is toasted. He's on his instant messenger saying who knows what.

And we are listening to Magic Stick. Maaaaagic Stiiiick. Fun. Oh yeah, we had a goal tonight. We were going to film our segment on adding a cantenna to an old WiFi card. Oh well. We got like 20 seconds in the can. Screw it.

I want to go wardriving. Is it against the law to drink, and drive, and war drive?

The Ohio Caverns

Today we took a family trip to go see the Ohio Caverns. Pretty impressive cave if I do say. My mom said that is we wanted to see a cave, not to waste our time on anything else.

So off we went. Stopped at the Waffle House along the way. It was the best one in Ohio (they had a sign). My waffle was good, but my waitress sucked. And they burnt all of our waffles the first time and had to remake them. Best in Ohio my ass!

We got lost along the way trying to figure out where in the hell route 245 was trying to take us. It broke into pieces and took us all through town trying to stay on it. At one point, we ended up staring at a sign that pointed directly into a house and had a little left arrow stating 245. No road, nowhere to go there. Just a sign pointing into someones living room. So we just kep driving for several miles on what was being called "Mill street". Finally, I came upon a church that had some stick on letters on the side of it's sign "int. st 245". Yay!

Almost 2 hours later we arrived! Whee! The gift shop was impressive. We stepped right up and bought our tour passes. The place was cleaned out, and noone else was waiting. So we got our own private tour. Luckily we had just missed about 3 busloads of kids. Ugh! After tooling around the gift shop for about 20 minutes, we headed into the caverns. And boy were they neat! The kids seemed to really enjoy it. Our tour guide was a grumpy old man whose jokes didn't really appeal to the youth. They still seemed in awe at some of the rock formations. Andy seemed more impressed with the fact that we were really deep underground.

Our tour guide was nice enough to take our picture in front of "THE KING". They hyped this pretty good. And when he took this picture, he kept making me move around to get the full thing in the picture. "The King" is just a really big stalagmite (or is it stalagtite?). But probably the largest in all of America (so they say).



Later on we wanted to meet with Rob for dinner. He was at school and wouldn't be getting off until 6 or so. So we decided on the China Buffet. It's about 5 minutes from the University. He was going to stop at home and be on his way. Just before he leaves he sends me a message "going to stop and home, and i will come over". Come over? Here? NO! We're going to that end of town. So I call him several times, and finally get him on the phone. He seems confused, and says "I can't be there for at least 20 minutes". And I'm thinking "Okay ... but it will take me 30 to drive there". So we all hop in the car and get about 2/3rd of the way there. Then Rob calls "where are you?", he asks. I guess he thought we meant the China Buffet by my house. So he is there waiting. Woops.

We all eventually made it to the same place. And China Buffet rules. I ate so much shit, that I honestly couldn't stomach dessert. Whoah, huh? Although, that apple pie in the fridge might have to be cut up and eaten later on. Did I mention we stopped at a farm and got pumpkins? I LOVE holloween. In fact, I just love October. We will have to do another family trip again soon. Maybe Flint Ridge?

Wasting My Vacation

When I first sat down and realized that I would be off for over a week, and we were nto going to the beach as originally planned ... I thought ... what could I accomplish with my time off? It is now Wednesday, and I am sticking to my plan. I have gotten NOTHING done.

My checklist is as follows:

• Fix the Volvo CHECK! I got it running smoothly! Took less than two hours to finish the turn signals, and pull the exhaust back into place.
  
• Study to take an exam - I have studied NOTHING. I suck.
  
• Doctors, and Dentist appointments - This has gone well. Rotary needs some x-rays and an ASSLOAD of bloodwork. We have plenty of free time to do it. Almost all of it!
  
• Create a video demonstrating external connectors on cheap WiFi cards - I really want to work on this. But getting some of Chucks free time is dificult, and he is our equipment man!
  
• Make Bellas Holloween Costume - We bought all the supplies. I got the sewing machine running really well thanks to some 3-in-one and some chopped wood (don't ask). But all I have sewn is the ears. I suck.
  
• Go Wardriving - Accomplished!!

So last night I went out on a solo mission. The Mrs's wanted to rent a movie, and so I thought I would take a short 1/2 an hour drive on my way to the video store.

After hitting a few of the same ol' access points, I thought I would head back to a spot I had been wanting to explore earlier. Behind the movie theater! It's read faces a creek bed, and on the otehr side is a large apartment/condo community. So I figured I could spend some time on a home network without drawing attention to myself.

I easily stumbled onto a network with very high strength (17). So I latched on, browsed the network, and found a few open shares. I always love it when I find a shared "My Documents" folder. Those always turn out to be juicy. Low and behold I had a bounty of documents and photos, so I drug them all to my desktop.

After seeing it would take 11 minutes longer, I disconnected with what I had grabbed and moved on. Later once I had gotten home, I started rummaging through the pictures. This guy was definitely gay.



Then I moved onto the documents. The first line of one document made my ears perk up. It read "Security Issues". It goes on to detail some "allegations" made by an employee about poor business practices and mis-handling of store income. I had obviously been browsing the movie theater itself! And BOY was this interesting.

The downstairs safe will be left open at times. It will be left on day-lock and cracked open. A lot of the floor managers do this.

Till for money that is used for all loose petty cash that is left on top of the downstairs safe and not locked up. All of the floor managers do this. It is how it is set up downstairs.

Drops not put into drop safe or they are put in and not dropped. Most of the floor managers do this. Sometimes money is left from the morning shift to be counted and signed off by the evening managers. Even though there are three managers during the day. Mostly on Mondays when there is *removed*, *removed*, and *removed* working deposits are left.

Holy cow! I found some good tidbits. Basically, I need to get a job here so I can begin robbing it blind.

When Brinks brings us money it is left out on counters in the counting office instead of begin put away right then and there. Some floor managers do this it is during the day when it comes so it would be *Name removed* that would be working. They leave it downstairs and then take it up at night. I have seen this mostly on Sat. when I work all day.

When can I start? :-)

Safe comes up short all the time. Do not know who is doing what but it will come up short and then they sell tickets are refund stubs out to make it up.

Sounds like Enron.

The alarm is never set. Did not have alarm code for months. *Name Removed* just gave me a alarm code a few months ago. Have not used it to arm or disarm the building.

Nevermind about working there. I will just go in through the back door I was parked behind.

As you can see, this is everything you do NOT want to tell people about your employer. And here it is leaking through the walls of the building into thin air. Had I been a 'bad guy' I would be returning later with a crowbar, and a good idea of where all the valuables are stored.

Isn't wardriving fun?

I think I talked Discount Man into going on a run with me in the near future. He has pussied out on going with me the past few times. I think last nights fun might have changed his mind.

Tripping On Lawnmowers

Last night Fred and Discount Man came over. The reason for the trip? Fred was buying our 1985 Toyota. It's a classic! Before they came over, I had to jump the very dead battery and take it for a road trip.

I went around the block a few times, came home, shut it off. Dead. So I tried to hit the country backroads for a longer trip. So I could really OPEN it up! Yet, I got stuck behind some fucking moron in a broken down van going 20 mph, and then a truck going about the same speed. No suprise, I still didn't charge the battery up. So I got on i270 and drove all the way to Dublin. About 16 miles. Turned around, and drove all the way back. THEN, the battery was charged. Hoo-ha!

Later when Fred and DM arrived, we all hopped into the car to ride up to the gas station for 40'z. Low and behold a headlight was out. Woops. This worried Fred ... a lot. He would have to drive this car home and he didn't want to be pulled over. No insurance. Worse, the headlight was retaining water. There was almost a solid inch of water in his headlight. Looked like a fish tank. Probably due to the bee-bee hole in it, and long exposure to rain.

Back at home, we ordered subs, and I slugged about a third of my King Cobra (ah! Snaaake!) and then headed out to the garage for some light duty auto repair. My plan was to drill a hole in the bottom of the headlight and let the water out. Unfortunately, there was no way in hell to access the bottom from under the car. Removing the headlight proved to be quite a task. Something I didn't want to get into. So the solution? Siphon it out. I grabbed a small hose from the ol slimy fish tank, washed it real good and started sucking. Once I got it running, I couldn't believe how much water was in there. Took about 5 minutes to drain it all out.

Then I sealed the headlight with some all purpose bathroom caulk. Luckily I actually had replacement bulbs from my Volvo. And they were the same fitting! How often does that happen. So in with the new bulb, along with another half a tube of bathroom caulk to seal the rear assembly. It was VERY loose, adding to the water inside I am sure. Looks like someone rewired it at some point and came up missing pieces.

Fred was pleased. He now had a fully operational car with good lights! It's driveable! After handing him over a burned copy of FreeBSD 4.8, the keys, and the title of course, he was on his way.

I ended up heading to bed in a drunken stuper, having now consumed the entire 40oz King Cobra. And my bad was all achey. Probably because I tripped over the lawnpower pull cord, and nearly fell on my ass. Ouch. It still hurts.