Around the second week of August 2005, I sent myself a message from Futureme.org. A message that wasn’t to be delivered until 8/13/2006. I sent it and just forgot about it. It contained some warnings and advice for stuff I might be dealing with and turns out I acted on one of the statements I had written to future me.

So I sent myself a new one that I’ll get on 12/31/2007. I made it public but won’t be posting it here. Send one to your future self and let them know you have your back. And take some time to read the random public mails. Some pretty heavy and interesting stuff.

Happy 2007 everyone and thanks for reading.

Yesterday was my last day at Cingular and it was great. Most people would be freaking out that they are unemployed but this was a textbook ending for me and I couldn’t have scripted it any better. I came in, completed my project in the time allotted (extremely rare in telecom engineering) and left with having made some new friends and rekindling an old friendship. I had a great boss who I don’t think was ever wrong, not even once, good working conditions and a task that was well within my abilities. And about the task, if anything, it was a waste of my talent, but I knew that going in and I had my reasons. And you know what? It worked.

I would have liked to stay (albeit in a different role), but this tidy ending is almost just as good. My one regret is that I didn’t get to know my team as well as I would have liked but I take comfort in the knowledge that we’ll likely work together again someday (this industry is weird like that).

So what’s next for me? Who knows. And I’m totally fine with that. 2007 is going to be an interesting year, that’s for sure.

There will come a time where you are at an office or public place that blocks access to certain websites or ports. For example, at my current place of employment, they use a Websense caching proxy to block access to all sorts of sites, mainly webmail. This posed a problem on my first day because I needed some documents sent to me by my consulting firm. But a few minutes later, it wasn’t a problem. This article will show you how to set up a proxy of your own using ssh to get past any firewall out there.

Prerequisites:
1) The Firefox web browser
2) Putty SSH Client (free from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
3) An Open SSH server outside the corporate local area network
4) A connection to the internet

Assumptions:
1) Your company or public hot spot allows outgoing TCP connections on port 22 (likely).

I’m going to assume that you are running an ssh server at home or have access to one with a web hosting account. If not, they are easy to find and obtain or you can e-mail me and I might be able to hook you up.

1. Create a new PuTTY session
Run PuTTY and create a new session in PuTTY to connect to the remote host that is running OpenSSH. Fill in the hostname, the port (usually 22), make sure SSH is checked, give it a session name and hit Save:

2. Configure a secure tunnel
Click on “Tunnels� on the left and set up dynamic fowarding for a local port (e.g. 8080). Under “Add new forwarded port� type in 8080 for the source port, leave the destination blank, and check Auto and Dynamic. Then it the Add button. If you did it correctly, you’ll see D8080 listed in the Forwarded Ports box:

That’s it for tunnels, as there is no need to create more than one. Remember to save your session profile in PuTTY so you don’t have to set up the tunnel next time.

3. Connect to the remote SSH server
Double click on the connection profile and type in your username and password when prompted.

4. Configure Firefox
Go to Tools, Options, General, and then click on Connection Settings. Check Manual Proxy Configuration, leave most of the fields blank, but fill in 127.0.0.1 for the SOCKS v5 host with a port of 8080 (or whatever portyou used in Step 2):

6. There is one little problem with this. Although your communications are completely secure from your machine to the ssh host on the internet, your company or proxy operator will still be able to see the domain names you are visiting. This is because TCP/IP can be forwarded but UDP (what DNS runs on top of) cannot. So DNS lookups will be visible by your network administrator. That may not be a problem but you should be aware of this. But if are running the current version of Firefox and would like to protect that information, you can open the about:config page, and change network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true.

7. Enjoy! Though your communications are completely secure, please use responsibly. Don’t look at stuff you know you shouldn’t be looking at while on the job. I mainly use it to secure my connections to my bank (yes, your company can easily find out your bank passwords and information) and webmail but sparingly.

To prove that the your proxy is working, use ipchicken.com before and after:

Before:

And after with my new ssh tunnel:

Pretty cool huh? Traffic is totally encrypted end to end! This can also be accomplished with Linux and Mac OS X but I’m guessing that most of you are using Windows. This technique can also be used to secure your connection at a public wi-fi Hotspot like T-Mobile/Starbucks or hotels.

My latest band du jour is U.K. based Keane. I just found out this morning that they will be playing at the Paramount Theater in Downtown Seattle on Tuesday, January 30th. 2004’s Hopes and Fears is one of my top 5 all time favorite albums and the show should be excellent, especially at the Paramount.

Tickets are $30 (not including the lame ticketmaster fees and can be purchased here. See you there!

Here are some of my favorite songs of theirs:

Everybody’s Changing:

Somewhere Only We Know (you might have heard this on Gray’s Anatomy):

And my absolute favorite, This Is The Last Time:

[DISCLAIMER: As much as I hate it, there will be a hint of bragging in this entry]

As much as I like to beat myself up about sucking at this or that and not being perfect at everything I try, I know that I have one innate skill. Driving in snow and ice. Allow me to explain.

Being extremely close to finishing the project I was hired for work, I elected to stay until I was. Around 1:15 am, I stepped out into the Cingular parking lot and got into my car. It was raining rather heavily. Less than a mile later, I hit a serious wall of large snowflakes with an inch or snow on the ground. I knew this was going to be trouble, it was fairly warm out and snow when it’s this warm is wet and much slicker than powder. One more mile and I was now into 3+ inches on Route 202, a two lane country-ish road with deep enough drops off both sides. My car was going everywhere and I cursed myself for not bringing my cell phone and not balancing the weight of my car by filling up the tank (I was pretty much on empty). I knew this road like the back of my hand however and knew when to give it gas to make it up the gradual inclines and when to lay off.

It was just after Ames Lake Rd. where I lost it. The rear of my unbalanced car spun wildly to my left putting me into a 180 and then hard up against the guard rail (though I cursed its existence at the time, I thank the gods of Alpe D’Huez for placing it there). Screwed I thought. No phone and 8.1 miles (I told you I know this road) from home. But I couldn’t just leave my car here, it was on th wrong side of the road in a blind uphill corner. So I took some breaths, did my little chant and with some funky moves that any physics professor would be proud of, got my car going back towards Redmond. I resolved to go back to the Shell Station, balance my car out and try ‘er again. Filled my tank and got some compliments from some guys in trucks that witnessed my escape moves. I called Amy and told her that if she did not see me in one hour, to drive up 202 towards Redmond where she would find me walking in the middle of the road.

I had some incredibly close calls on the second try but my techniques proved useful and I took an alternate way home that had minimal stops and inclines. About 55 minutes after I called Amy, I opened the garage door and was pumped up! I must have seen 25 cars along the roadside, some of them with AWD/4×4.

Oh, so my coping mechanism, it’s none other than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s infamous developers, Developers, DEVELOPERS speech. He’s a psycho crazery bastard but for some dumb reason about 4 years ago, while driving in some treacherous snow in Colorado, I found myself chanting this instead of “keep it together, keep it together.” It’ stupid but it must work.