Here is an old essay I had posted on a previous blog. I wanted to repost it here to ensure that the text was not lost.

The Notebook, originally posted on October 22, 2007:

I remember a notebook I had in high school that was filled with personal notes and drawings. Every faint imagination of a ticking or working mechanism was scribbled and doodled all over the otherwise vast empty pages. Notes and thoughts about an entire world of my own were scribbled in such poor writing no one would ever know it could be read. Cryptic, the words where, as the ink lines flowed like weightless drippings the end of a loose pen. Each corner of the notebook was as frayed as an accent rug laying threadbare in and elderly home just waiting for its turn to be retired. The thin plastic cover is warped and worn with signs of almost hourly use as the notebook provided far more entertainment then that of school work.

As the years of high school droned on, the pages of the notebook became increasingly saturated with the thoughts and ideas from my adolescent self. The more pages I filled, the more they resembled white bath towels stained with blue and black ink. Revisions after revisions of thoughts and ideas where compiled together like the archives of a library. Each carried their own edition and as the times changed, so did the ideas and drafts. From times of great happiness to times of utter shame and sadness, my notebook held all the feelings I held inside. Years of endless boredom were chronicled page by page, each with miniscule notes of the half-amusing thoughts my teachers had rendered with only but the most interesting remaining inside my head like little silver pin pricks in my mind. Many of the diligent students took avid notes in their classes, but I myself could not obsess over such droll topics; I had more important concepts to dream over in my notebook.

With the power I wielded in my pen I could make anything happen. The drawings spawned from that book featured numerous ideas and improvements I could make to the world. Some later realized by others but many still unfounded in the vast world of ours. Wild abstractions from my innermost mind could be laid out and designed with utter methodology as I sketched the designs. I could see everything I would have needed to build some of my most interesting projects, mechanical and electrical workings being my center-most masterpieces. I could use the pages of my notebook to scribble the new gear or gizmo that I had imagined that day. Everyday with my notebook was a day of invention and progression.

The outside cover of the notebook bore no label or identification marks of any kind; only on inside the front cover could anyone have identified the owner of such a saturated text. The binding, made by two larger folded sheets of paper that were glued into place, was rough and in shreds.  Near the end of its life, the notebook was held together with elastic bands and carefully placed strips of transparent packing tape. The covers of the notebook were a dull brown earth tone, a mud-like color that was modest and somewhat unnatural-looking to have been suspended in plastic. On the front cover, there was a glimpse of the name of the notebook’s manufacturer. The text was stamped on the cover it like so many thousands of other notebooks just like it. The name of its maker was outlined in a square border that contained smaller, lesser boxes along with stars. These stars where as dull as the rest of the lettering, and bore no shimmer of that in which they represent. Dull, as if they were along the side of an old and weathered army truck that had just been retired from battle.

Even though the notebook was withered and dilapidated, it served a noble purpose. For years under my arm and in my backpack my faithful subject stayed true to me. Never did it spill its secrets it held within despite it being crammed to the brink of death with my inner most thoughts. The ink inside was so overwhelming to it’s battered pages it may as well have been a filled water balloon swimming like an orb of ideas ready to pop. The notebook’s resolve to keep my ideas inside was only matched by my own. Together we kept the worn and tattered pages hidden from the preying eyes of the world. The inconspicuous vault that become the notebook sat in is normality on top of a stack of books or within the confines of my backpack. No key was needed to open the notebook but in is genius was its simplicity. No one suspected the deep contents from such a small shallow object. The notebook held the world within it’s tiny grasp.

I know very few (if anyone) will understand why this is important but the second to the last entry of this traceroute is a long time coming:

[root@status ~]# traceroute 74.81.xx.xx
traceroute to 74.81.xx.xx (74.81.xx.xx), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1  67.130.81.2 (67.130.81.2)  0.533 ms  0.497 ms  0.466 ms
2  67.211.160.65 (67.211.160.65)  137.160 ms  202.141 ms  1.264 ms
3  po6-0.ca02.tol01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.104.148.1)  0.720 ms  0.722 ms  0.621 ms
4  gi1-1.core01.tol01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.45)  0.770 ms  0.719 ms  1.681 ms
5  po10-1.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.153)  7.915 ms  6.731 ms  6.709 ms
6  te7-7.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.98)  7.897 ms * *
7  te3-4.mpd01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.6.206)  6.932 ms  6.957 ms  7.069 ms
8  telia.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.11.66)  40.361 ms  31.419 ms  49.974 ms
9  dls-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.209)  40.312 ms  39.706 ms dls-bb1-link.telia.net (213.248.80.149)  37.049 ms
10  atl-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.214)  41.086 ms atl-bb1-link.telia.net (213.248.80.145)  36.562 ms  37.017 ms
11  globalnet-113073-atl-bb1.c.telia.net (213.248.91.14)  41.485 ms  37.062 ms  40.079 ms
12  atl-core-f-p2.gnax.net (207.210.95.254)  40.044 ms  38.571 ms  40.179 ms
13  core-a.atl.openreaction.net (207.210.95.82)  37.287 ms *  41.445 ms
14 *******

I have removed the customer’s IP I used for the trace just in case someone wanted to get ahold of it. All of the rest are publicly available so there is no point in hiding those.