It’s Been a Long Time Coming

I got to disclose the SNSLocker ransomware fully to the FBI last Friday. I caught a late break in research when someone pointed me to a software package that could decompile the virus, reversing it back to source code. So I was able to give them the attacker’s name, age, email address, IP address, password, and the source code to the virus, website, and database. They were quite impressed, and now I’ve got a point of contact there where I can quickly disclose just about anything going forward, and said agent will also be able to quickly acquire warrants to put us on the right side of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I meet with them again in three weeks, and in the meantime I’m going to do a partial disclosure on bluesoul.me going over the tactics used.

One thing I was not factoring in while becoming more active: Becoming more tired, which leads to sleeping later, which leads to missing the train. I missed it for quite nearly two solid weeks. It’s cost me one badly cracked windshield from being on the interstate so much more. Sorry about that.

On the health front, things are going quite well. If I wasn’t drinking quite so much water, I might have a better idea of what I actually weigh right now. I got below 170 quickly, but since then I’ve hovered right around it. However, with logging food on the Fitbit app I can get a rough idea of how much fat has burned off. And I can feel a difference physically; squishy parts are becoming less so, my calves have put on a lot of muscle mass. That thing I said about hitting 10,000 steps for three out of three days, when I’d only hit it once in the prior six months? Since then, it’s gone up to fifteen out of the last seventeen days.

In the past, I’ve always tracked only one half of the weight loss equation. I would set a calorie limit on the day without the context of how many calories I’ve burned in the day. I’d used the FitDay software which had an activity tracker, but it was required to be all manually input, and was based on averages. Now with the Fitbit that can track calories burned in real-time, I’m able to get that critical second half of the story without really having to do anything. It thought it over and came up with a number of calories to burn in a day, which it set at 2,722. How many I should consume in a day is just a matter of how quickly I want to lose weight. If I’m fine with losing a pound a week, the number to eat would just be 500 calories less than what I burned. Some days I’m burning 3100+ calories, and I’m not really interested in eating 2600. All good, I’m just losing a bit more fat that day.

Diana may well have a new job starting next week or the week after. The new job may well be with my agency, about a hundred feet from my desk. The new job may well be a 50% pay raise. Needless to say, we’re both pretty excited about this. She and I have worked together in the past and we work well together. This also has the chance to be a big step forward for her professionally, she’ll be able to learn from some very intelligent, successful women. It’s also going to significantly kill the cost-savings of staying in Albuquerque. I get a discounted train ticket. But both of us together would be $200 a month. Then it becomes a question of about $300 a month for three hours of commuting a day. I value my time above a dollar an hour, personally. One of my coworkers let me know about a really nice apartment on the north end of Santa Fe, the price is about where all the apartments are, which is high. But the pay raise will help with that too, and start to make the business of commuting more than a little foolish.