The desk my Taiwanese laptop is sitting on was made in China. My phone is also Taiwanese. My watch is Japanese, I suppose because I can’t afford a Swiss-made watch. My shirt was made in Haiti (although I guess that makes me a good person.) Looking around the office I see books printed in Canada and Mexico and pens from Japan. There’s not much around here that was made in the good ol’ US of A.

The news, the internet, my email – they all tell me I should be pissed about this. A true American drives an American car, watches baseball, loves their mother (how the fuck did America co-opt that?), loves them some NASCAR, and hates anything made outside of the US. Oh, they buy it, they buy every bit of it – but they hate it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be a good American.

I hear they’re building a new superhighway from Canada to Mexico. It’ll cut right through America! GASP! People tell me to be very upset about this, although I’m still waiting to hear exactly why. I don’t mean this vague bullshit, “Well… the borders!” What about them?

I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Nobody tells me to boycott things made in North Carolina. Why is it okay for my to get furniture from North Carolina (drastically more expensive furniture) but it’s just wrong to get it from China? Why am I supposed to hate people from China? Why do you?

I rarely define myself as an American. I see no value in defining myself in such terms. At least no more than I define myself as a Virginian, or a resident of Quinton, VA. Us Quintonites – we gotta watch each other’s backs or those bastards from Providence Forge are going to move in our turf! I like the hardware store in Providence 1000x better than the one in Quinton, but shopping there might imply that I hate my mother.

Or does that only apply to International borders? And is that only international borders as they are currently drawn?

I have friends from all over the world. I’m a citizen of Earth. I’m human being. I’m a citizen of the Internet.

If you’re reading this and you disagree, you’re a hypocrite. Shut off your Chinese computer and go join a militia.

Well at least now I know why my knee has been hurting so much. Apparently I tore my meniscus, basically in half. They were able to stitch it back together, which is good news long term. But in the short term it sucks. Four weeks of wearing this ridiculous brace. Four weeks of not bending my knee. Don’t be fooled by the brace – it doesn’t support my knee when I bend it, it’s completely locked so I can’t bend my knee. I’m not even sure yet how long it will be before I’m back on the mats.

Ah, First World problems…

Normally I’m all about how great T-mobile’s customer service is. But here’s an exception – their handset insurance policy.

When we bought our 3 Nexus Ones (Nexuses One? Nexi Ones? Nexus Three?) there was no insurance available. We didn’t know that because the ordering process was so terrible. At some point a few weeks later T-mobile / Google / Asurion quietly made the Premium Handset Protection Bundle available for the N1. It’s $2.60 / month with a $130 deductible. With a two year commitment to these phones all three of us must have insurance.

But there’s a catch – you have to sign up for the Premium Handset Protection Bundle within 14 days of ordering the phone.  Well that was a problem for me, since 1) it wasn’t available within the first 14 days and 2) even if it was we wouldn’t have known to ask for it. As far I can tell they still don’t mention it on google.com/phone. So if you’re ordering an N1 you need to somehow know to call T-mobile and add the PHPB (with-in 14 days).

The insurance must be added within 14 days of opening your account, upgrading a handset, or completing an account change of responsibility. Wait – what was that last one?

Me: Is there any way I can add insurance to my phone now?
T-Mo Rep: Not at this point, it has to be done within 14 days…
Me: But if I transfer my whole account to my wife I can add insurance?
T-Mo Rep: That’s correct.
Me: I would like to initiate a change of responsibility for this account.
T-Mo Rep: No problem.

About an hour and a half of phone calls later the whole account has been transferred to my wife (still billing to the same credit card), and all three N1s have insurance.

When you create an account on a website the server doesn’t store your password, it stores a hash of your password. The most basic .htaccess security uses (I believe) an MD5 hash of your password.  The hash is one-way, so if someone captures the hash they can’t calculate your password.  They can, however, find another string of text that evaluates to the same hash. This is called a collision.

You could, in theory, hash a string of any length. So there are an infinite number of inputs. Some of those strings will collide with the hash for your password. How many? Well, subset of that infinite number, but still an infinite number. A smaller infinite number, if you will.

What’s my point? Just that given an unlimited password field length you would have not one valid password, but an infinite number of valid passwords. I think.