2011 – Page 10 – If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Not cool, Dentist.

April 25, 2011 11:38 am

Kyle and I had dentist appointments on Friday. Well, I've been very good at flossing for the last several months, so I figured I would be okay. And I was...sort of. The dentist said everything looks good and there was really very little buildup on my teeth. Awesome. And yet, that cleaning was so painful! I am told this can be blamed on the baby. When you're pregnant, your gums get inflamed and bleed easily (and it hurts to have things poked all around them!). But it's also super important to take care of your gums during pregnancy because gum disease can lead to things like preterm labor and low birth weight. So I get to go back in 4 months and do it again! And it's going to hurt even worse! Argh.

In other news, Kyle's teeth are "fantastic." He's rather proud of this.

San Diego day 2: the Zoo

April 20, 2011 9:32 am

Saturday was slotted for a visit to the San Diego Zoo. We were all exhausted from Friday, though, so we slept in and didn't leave until about 10:30 am. Things to know about the San Diego Zoo: it's (1) massive and (2) very very hilly. Also, it was again very warm and sunny. Fortunately, my family was very patient with my need to sit down and rest...or go to the bathroom...fairly frequently. And we had sunscreen and water again (plus snacks this time!), so it worked out. Oh, and thanks, Kyle, for making me get new tennis shoes before we went. That also helped a lot.

The first thing we did was to ride the Skyfari out to the other end of the zoo. It was super nice and breezy and cool up there, and there was a great view!

And now, a bunch of my favorite animals (with comments as I see fit):

Colton and me with the statue of an extinct (and very large) bird:

Okay, the panda baby was super cute! He was just laying back, half covered by this huge pile of bamboo, chowing down. Adorable.

This orangutan was just sitting there, calmly pulling up grass and eating it. Nom nom nom.

This peacock wasn't in an exhibit, just up a tree. And making quite a racket!

Koala bears are [adjective that doesn't include "super cute" or "adorable," since that's how I described the panda baby]! Look at the sleeping one! How does that look so comfy? Awwww...

This kangaroo was so sad. He didn't hop at all, just leaned forward onto his hands, then hunched his tail and rear end up behind him to slide his feet along. We don't know if he was arthritic or old or just tired, but it looked sad. But who knows; all the others were asleep, so mebbe this is normal?

I really liked the giraffes. And this baby was [other "cute" adjective]!

That was basically our day. It was really long and sunny, but we had a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, we went to In-N-Out for dinner because Colton had heard good things and wanted to try it. That was the end of our day. Mom, Dad, and Colton flew back to Dallas on Sunday, and we drove back up here. The end.

San Diego day 1: Boot Camp Graduation

April 18, 2011 4:11 pm

Kyle and I drove down to San Diego for my younger brother Colton's graduation from boot camp (he's going into the Marine reserves). Mom and Dad flew out from Frisco, too. It was awesome fun, and we're totally exhausted.

Thursday afternoon, Kyle took off work and we drove down, stopping in LA to see Josh and have dinner with him. Thanks again, Josh, for the best hamburger of my life! It was great to catch up with Josh (which was also a nice break in the 8-hour drive).

Friday morning, we were told to be ready to leave the hotel at6:30 am, which was an even bigger deal since we didn't get into the hotel until 11:30 Thursday night. We actually did manage to get down to breakfast at 6:30, and Mom and Dad were late, so it worked out alright. We headed over to the Marine Corps Recruit Depo (MCRD) in time to see the colors ceremony at 7:30. It was neat, and we got to hear the band!

Uhhh...not pictured: the band.

Then we had an hour or so to knock around the base and its museum before the graduation ceremony. I will just mention this once that it was very hot and we were in full sun the entire time. In good news, though, we had sunscreen. The recruits looked pretty impressive:

There was a lot of marching, by both the band and the recruits. Also a lot of flags, music, and ceremony. But they were eventually declared graduates and released!

I'm so proud of Colton and what he's accomplished already. I also really enjoyed hearing him call other people "sir." Heehee.

Lessee, after that we headed over to the PX so Colton could do some errandy-type things before leaving the base. (Apparently, the boy cannot pass a store of any kind without going in and looking around, though he rarely buys anything. Go figure.) For a little while I thought I would die, but Kyle and I got some food—right before everyone was ready for lunch. Oh well. We were both still able to eat lunch (we went to the Yard House, the same restaurant Josh had introduced Kyle and me to the night before (only in San Diego, not LA, obviously)) and it was way tasty. I had my second barbecue bacon cheeseburger in 24 hours. This was also when we started to realize how much food Colton can put away. I'm pretty sure he ate 2-3 times as much food as me at every single meal (and more on some occasions!).

After lunch, we went to see the USS Midway aircraft carrier—they've museumed it and it's super cool. My favorite was reading things sailors had said about their experiences (working in the galley or engine room, for example), but it was just really neat to be able to walk all throughout the ship and see how people lived and worked there. They also had a lot of planes in the hangar and on the flight deck that were pretty neat. Colton and I climbed inside a helicopter:

This is a shot of the top of the ship:

Mercifully, this was almost all indoors, giving us all a break from the sun.

Next we went back to the hotel so Colton could change out of his uniform (we all got free admission to the Midway if he kept his uniform on, so he did) and then headed over to see the Mormon Battalion museum. This was a lot of fun because we learned a lot about the Mormon Battalion (surprise surprise), and I just hadn't known much about it beforehand. And look! We even joined up:

After that it was dinner time, so we found a restaurant there in Old Town (the Old Town Mining Co.) and got some grub. Colton again ate a massive amount of food, and when we were all full, we decided we needed dessert, too. So I got cheesecake, Colton got an ice cream sundae thing, and Kyle ordered a slice of chocolate cake that proved to be the largest piece of cake I've ever seen (even bigger than the Great Wall of Chocolate at P.F. Chang's!). It was four layers thick, and each layer was a real layer of cake! OK, that sounds dumb, but just picture a round cake with four full layers. It was an absurd amount of cake, but Kyle managed to finish half of it. Colton, of course, polished off most of the rest.

All that was left that day was an early bedtime. Phew!

And so it begins...

April 12, 2011 7:53 pm

My head is throbbing, my nose is stuffy, and I'm exhausted. Guess I must be pregnant!

Well, I don't think the stuffy nose has anything to do with the pregnancy--pretty sure I'm just coming down with a cold. And I suppose you could argue that my head is given to throbbing, regardless of pregnancy (though this is slightly different). But I really am pregnant! I'm 12 weeks along, the baby is due October 21st, and we're both very excited. We had an ultrasound yesterday, and it was so fun to see the li'l thing moving around, kicking, and swallowing. It actually looks like a baby now, instead of the peanut it was a month ago.

You can see the baby's head to the left, and its hand up by its nose:

This one is more a full-body shot, head on the left, foot out there on the right (that's the umbilical cord coming down from above):

I really don't know what else to say at this point. I'll probably have more to blog when I feel better--goodness knows I spend a lot of time thinking about this baby, so you'd think I'd have more to say. This cold is just really starting to hit me, so I feel pretty lousy. Oh, but I haven't been super sick the past three months. I've been very tired, and frequently nauseous, but I haven't been throwing up, so that's fabulous. There have been a lot of headaches, but I think it's just that I can no longer take my meds, not that they're actually any more frequent than before.

It's been fun to start telling people finally. I had an awful time keeping this a secret, especially when people asked what's new with us, and we just had to keep saying "Nothing, really." Hooray for being through the first trimester!

Check forgery protection using public-key cryptography

April 11, 2011 8:31 pm

Mom forwarded an email that was attempting to scam her in response to a Craigslist ad she placed for some furniture.

While I was thinking about this I realized we have the ability to essentially stop check forgery, specifically cashier's checks and money orders, but the principle would also apply to personal checks if we could develop a trusted lookup source for public keys.

Public-key cryptography allows you to publish a public key that can be used to either verify that you digitally signed something with your private key or to encrypt something which can only be decrypted with your private key.

The application would be as follows.

First, the banks put together a trusted database of public keys. This part is essential, as it must be possible to lookup a public key for any bank and you need to have a trusted source where at you do the lookup. A central database is mainly a convenience factor, you could simply have each bank publish their public key on their own site, but a more integrated solution is more likely to be used. This is not an insurmountable hurdle.

Second, when a bank creates a cashier's check it uses the data on the check (name, amount, date, etc.) and their private key to produce a digitally signed digital copy (or digitally signed hash) of the data which could be printed directly on the check as a QR code (or set of QR codes depending on size) [QR codes are those square barcodes].

Third, when someone attempts to cash the check the cashing bank scans the QR code(s) and verifies that the data matches what's printed on the check and also looks up the public key of the issuing bank and verifies that the signature is legitimate. In fact the actual printed data would be unnecessary at this point if it was encoded in the QR code, but I imagine we'd want to leave it on for the sake of the humans handling the check.

That's it. If implemented correctly and securely it would guarantee the authenticity of cashier's checks. The same system could be used for money orders as well. The other great thing about it is that individuals could verify a check the same way. They could scan the QR codes themselves with their fancy phones and then lookup the bank's public key (either from a trusted central repository or from the individual bank) and verify the authenticity of the check without any risk.

The biggest hurdles would really be getting a trusted repository set up and having banks securely store their private keys. There are easy extensions making this process even more feasible. You can use a master key to create sub-keys which could be used by individual branches. That would limit the risk if any individual branch's private key were compromised. With a central repository a compromised bank would revoke the published public key and flag it as compromised. Any outstanding checks would need to be brought back to the issuing bank to be reissued using a new key. A hassle, but it should be a world-shattering occurrence for a private key to be compromised.

This system is totally possible with today's technology. It would just be a matter of setting it up and getting banks to participate. Maybe I should go talk to some venture capitalists...