I find myself at work, but achieving actual work seems rather difficult.

I don't really have anything to say, so I'll leave you with this sentence from today's Penny Arcade, which for some reason makes me chuckle:

"I summoned additional Sarsaparillas and craggy, mountainous desserts."

Update: wait, I do have something to say. Last night I watched Farce of the Penguins. If you like Samuel L. Jackson, brash vulgarianism, fart jokes, and stock footage of animals, then this movie is for you.

^* note: no built-in holds here, my reality is a somewhat more sensible one.

My deputy group leader wrote a great letter to the mortgage lender in which he used very strong language to get the point across that they will be hiring me as quickly as possible. It included the phrase, "approval is certain." Within minutes of the lender receiving it, my mortgage was approved and I am now cleared to close. T-2 days, 49 minutes.

Turns out Andreas Naive's modified attack on the CPS-2 encryption was able to deliver keys for two of the three versions of SPF2T, just not the "Asia" release, which isn't in English. The one I play works just fine. Whew.

As for my mortgage (you thought I wasn't going to mention that in this post, didn't you? Well, two posts in a row with no house crap is just out of the question, I'm sorry), it looks like my broker spammed the offer out to a few lenders and at least one more bit, meaning that they are willing to give me the money. They also still have to call LANL and verify my employment, but this time the broker listed my group leader instead of LANL HR, so the same problem shouldn't materialize. It's kind of coming down to the wire, since I close at noon on Wednesday... but I'm a lot less worried than I was.

Minesh and I took a hike down to the Rio Grande today, via White Rock. On the way we stopped at my home-to-be and I showed him around via peering through the windows (don't worry; it's vacant; the current owners live in Indiana now). Everything looks great, though I did notice that the lawn mower that was in the shed is now mysteriously gone... hrmmm. Oh, and for the first time I got to see what the back yard really looked like, since during all of my previous visits it was entirely covered in snow. It looks good, if somewhat smaller than my current yard.

Some interesting cryptanalysis has been going on over in Italy. I'm referring, of course, to the ROM opcode encryption used by Capcom Play System 2 (CPS-2) arcade games. The founder of the MAME emulation project, Nicola Salmoria, and his friend Andreas Naive (this link in Spanish only, sorry), successfully reverse engineered the encryption method used by CPS-2 over the past few months. Nicola's blog goes into great technical detail of the encryption system (it's a double 16-bit Feistel network with a 64-bit key) and how they went about figuring it out.

A bit of background: the arcade game industry is rife with bootleg hardware which cuts into the profits of arcade game manufacturers, so a lot of effort has been put into making the games difficult to clone. The CPS-2 system is especially devious at protecting its game data because the decryption key and the decryption code are stored in a battery-powered SRAM and programmable logic device that loses its contents once power is removed. The battery is applied to the circuit board, then a JTAG connector is used to program the SRAM and PLD with the necessary information needed to decrypt the ROM contents, and the game works fine. But any attempt to remove either the SRAM or PLD to examine its contents means that the board dies. Coincidentally, this also means that once the battery dies, the game is dead... but arcade games don't generally have much of a shelf life, so this is OK from the arcade manufacturer's point of view.

In 2001, a group dedicated to reverse-engineering CPS-2 arcade game hardware developed a hardware hack that would allow them to pull unencrypted game opcodes off of a data bus running between two logic controllers. They published a series of "XOR files" which were the XOR combination of the encrypted ROM and the plaintext. This allowed emulators to reconstruct the decrypted information if they had the original ROM contents. The legality of these XOR files was highly disputed, particularly by Capcom, who was still making CPS-2 games as late as December of 2003.

For the MAME project, which prides itself on accurate emulation of original game hardware, the XOR system was seen as an ungraceful kludge. Nicola and Andreas set out to reverse engineer the actual encryption algorithm, which would allow them to emulate the game with nothing other than the original ROM contents. Reading Nicola's blog is a fascinating look into this process. Various brute force attacks were devised, statistics were examined, optimizations made, etc. until finally, just last month, the breakthrough was made and the 64-bit keys for the games started to reveal themselves.

Each game has a different key, and the difficulty of backing it out with brute force varies from game to game as well. With the latest round of optimized attacks on CPS-2, Nicola and Andreas have been able to retrieve the keys for every CPS-2 game ever made.... except Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, my favorite game in MAME. Because the new system is so much more elegant than the XOR system used up to now, they decided to do away with the XORs entirely and implement the decryption algorithm using the known keys. This means that SPF2T has been relegated to "non-working" status as of the current version of MAME. Boo!!

If you're interested in reading through Nicola's notes on breaking the CPS-2 encryption, start at the December 17, 2006 entry in his blog, entitled "CPS2 notes, part 1." It's about two-thirds of the way down this archive page.

In the past, when postdocs at the lab have purchased houses, the mortgage lender hasl called HR and gotten a verbal confirmation of employment. The conversation goes something like this:

LENDER: Can you verify the employment of John Q. Smith at LANL?
LANL HR: Yes, he is a postdoc here.

And this is sufficent to convince the lender that the lendee is gainfully employed for the forseeable future. For some reason, when Wells Fargo called LANL to confirm my employment, the conversation went like this:

LENDER: Can you verify the employment of Mouser Q. Branwallis at LANL?
LANL HR: Yes, he is a postdoc here whose contract expires on May 1st.

Great. It is important to point out that all postdoc appointments at the lab (and everywhere else) are limited term, and are generally not longer than a couple of years. I think it is only because mortgage lenders don't really understand how the postdoc system works that they accept postdoc status as a sign of gainful employement. In my case, however, they are convinced that I am some sort of special case postdoc with a limited-term contract and they want proof that I'll still have a job after May 1. Why HR decided to disclose my contract expiration date to Wells Fargo, I'll never know. But for the time being my loan is in limbo and I'm not sure what the outcome will be. My broker assures me that this is not a problem and it'll get resolved before the next-wednesday deadline. I'm less confident.

On the other hand, I did get a call today from someone in HR requesting a CV to include with my conversion package which would then be shipped up to the lab director's office for final approval. There is still no one who will give me anything short of hot air when I ask for a timeline on conversion, but it sounds to me like its in its final stages.

I guess the "good" news is that if my mortgage falls through, I'll probably be converted before I can get another one set up, and that might qualify me for a lower rate or something.

If you eat raw lemons, you'll damage your enamel.

I promise that the next post to this journal will have nothing to do with buying, selling, or renovating houses.

One of the first things I'm going to do to the new house is, of course, rip the walls up.

OK, that's a bit dramatic. But I am going to tear out a lot of the baseboard, install cable conduit behind it, and wire the place for networking, surround sound, and assorted other nerdery. In preparation for this, I ordered a bunch of conduit, wall plates, cable, etc. and the first large shipment of it arrived today. The only person home when the UPS man showed up was Bob's friend Bill, who is visiting from Philly.

Bill asked the UPS man if he should sign for the package and was told, "Naw, that's OK. I know you guys." ...which is odd, considering that he has certainly never seen Bill in his life.

I guess this explains why, on UPS's packing tracking website, it said that the package had been delivered and signed for by "Customer Man."

Everyone's been asking for pictures of the house I'm buying, but I didn't really take any during my three visits there... so I drove by the place today and snapped a few pictures of the front, just to satiate you people.

There you have it. I must stress that the exterior appearance is not what sold me on the house, so wait for a more detailed photo walk-through once I can actually legally enter the premises.

The seller and I have completed our negotiations and signed the purchase agreement for the house. We are now under contract to actually undertake the transaction, i.e. the house is basically mine. All of the major events have taken place: mortgage loan approved, inspection completed, repair work negotiation completed, pest inspection completed, appraisal completed, etc. I think the only thing that hasn't happened yet is the land survey, which is next week. So I'm basically on autopilot until closing, which is on the 28th. Eleven days.

The packing up of my apartment is proceeding well. It's starting to get a little sparse and boring around here. Most of the posters and other decor have come down, the books and DVDs are all packed away... I'm down to a single cookbook and whatever Netflix tosses my way.

The evil geniuses that run the server on which mouser.org lives have declared that having our MTA and associated spam filter software eat up the vast majority of our processor time is inappropriate. They have therefore decreed that thou shalt let Google deal with all that crap. Today I transferred all MTA activities from mouser.org to Google, and through the magic of MX records, the whole thing is invisible to you. You can still mail me at <anything>@mouser.org, and my mail will still come from mouser@mouser.org, fear not.

The big change here is that I'll have to stop using pine as my mail client and instead use Google's webmail incarnation (which is way better, by the way). Should have done this ages ago... I'm just weird that way.

Rumor has it that the very same evil geniuses are working on a fix for the lack of comments here on this journal. You may have noticed that I shut them off awhile back. At that time, it was MovableType's comment spam filter that was the primary processor hog on the box. A replacement has been beta-tested and is said to be "good." Start thinking up some inconceivably witty comments to post here when I enable it.

And to all the people who profit off spam at the expense of the entire world, eat my ass.

click to embiggen

My dad makes a good point: this is probably a check for the mythical 0.002 dollarcent.

Well that was fast...

It took about a week to see all of the houses in White Rock and Los Alamos in my price range. There were about 20 in total. Of these, one stood out head and shoulders above the rest, so choosing a place wasn't a difficult decision at all. The challenge was my finances, which I thought was going to be an issue since my conversion paperwork is still off in administrative limbo somewhere. It turned out that I was able to negotiate the price of the house down far enough that I could get basically the mortgage I wanted with my current salary, so the conversion bottleneck evaporated instantly.

Anyway, I now have a signed sales agreement with the seller. I had the place inspected this weekend and the report came back last night. There are a bunch of minor issues, as I assume there always are, but most of the major stuff is in good shape. There are a couple of issues that need to be fixed up front, and I imagine I'll spend most of this week negotiating for these repairs with the seller.

Closing is scheduled for the end of the month. It feels weird that I went from looking at my first home to having a signed agreement in about a week and a half... but that's just how the market is here. There aren't all that many places to choose from, and everyone is anxious to sell.

Nina came up this weekend and stopped by the house during the inspection. She approves, so that's good. And she started her roll as the Art Department™ (I'm apparently the Technical Services Department™), helping me pick out some colors that made sense for the walls. The mint hint that is in the living room has to go.

The lens successfully traversed a full week on eBay without being hindered by a single bid. Looking at the company's other auctions, I see that most of them have no bids. I think its safe to say that this company sucks, or at least doesn't have its act together yet. Maybe I'll give them another shot sometime down the road, but for now I'm going to stay clear.

Well I am now officially in the situation I was worried might arise if I started looking for houses before I got converted:

I have found a gem of a house that I absolutely adore, and can't afford it until I get converted. And I have no idea when that will happen. I feel like anyone else in my price range will immediately snap this house up, as it is infinitely better than everything else I looked at.

The bad news is that I asked my deputy group leader today what the status was with my conversion and he said that it had come back from HR for revision. The group leader has been sitting on it for some time now, apparently, because he's "swamped." And now I desperately need to get converted ASAP. The DGL also indicated that it would take "a couple months" once HR took the revised document, which conflicts with the "one week" I had heard earlier. I don't know who to believe, but I have a hard time believing that this house will stay on the market for another two months, especially considering that they dropped the price by $10k this weekend.

Today at lunch, my realtor and I went out and looked at four houses for sale in Los Alamos proper (as opposed to White Rock, which is technically part of Los Alamos though it is separated by about 10 miles). There were only four houses in all of Los Alamos that were for sale in my price range and required feature set. And after today's visits, I can basically say with certainty that they all suck. Small, old, poorly maintained, or some combination of the above. That pretty much rules out living in town. So White Rock it'll be.

Tommorrow at lunch I start looking at places in White Rock. There are 12 places in my range there and they all look infinitely better than what is available up in town. The median price per square foot in White Rock is about $40 lower. For the same money, you get a larger—and generally higher quality—house, and usually in a better neighborhood.

Today was day two of my search for a house. My real estate agent was having an open house at one of her properties, so Nina and I went there—mostly to talk to her, not really to see the place. The place was a lot nicer than the one I looked at yesterday, though it only has two bedrooms. I think it still moves to the top of the list.

I discussed my inability to perform simple arithmetic and my new-found capability to shop for more expensive homes. We made a list of about a dozen homes to look at over the next couple weeks. I'm going to see a bunch of them over lunch on Wednesday.

We also discussed the timeline for for the process. Since the house I saw today is sufficiently good that I would move into it if it was the best house I could find, it appears that I will not find myself in a position of being ready to buy but not being able to find a place that I'm comfortable buying. So it's just a question of looking at everything in the range of possibility and making an offer on the best one. My agent tells me that everyone is having a terrible time trying to sell property here right now, largely because of the recent lab management change and the fact that there is a hiring freeze that has been in effect for over a year. This is great for buyers, because it means that some owners are getting desperate to sell their homes and will accept lower bids. It also means there is a large selection available. It's going to take me at least a couple of weeks to see everything I want to see, then I'll probably do a second visit to three or four places to make the final call. It takes about a day to construct the offer, then anywhere from a day to four days of negotiation with the seller, then about a month for inspection, title search, and what-not... and then closing. So I expect to be able to close in about two months.

I'm hoping I can time it so that I close at the end of March, minimizing my interest pre-payment on the mortgage. I'll probably pay to rent the apartment for April, giving me plenty of time to leisurely move. This is important, since I have a major meeting to prepare for and present at in the middle of April.

All signs point to my conversion to staff being imminent, so I took some tentative steps towards the purchase of my first home today. Actually, it all started last night, when Minesh told me I should go to an open house at his mortgage broker's office. I show up to find all the employees in cocktail dresses; turns out it was a wine and cheese tasting party, but formal dress was not required and only the employees got dressed up anyway. I ate lots of cheese. Minesh introduced me to his real estate agent and the owner of the brokerage, both of whom were great.

So today, being my Friday off, I spent meeting with both of these women and getting my affairs in order for starting the long process of finding a home. I have now been pre-approved to borrow enough money to buy Jupiter.

I calculated how much money I could afford to spend per month on a mortgage, making some assumptions on what my post-conversion salary will be, and from that back-calculated what a upper limit on selling price for a home would be. I gave that number to the real estate agent and she gave me print outs of every house in town that was selling for less than that. I drove down to White Rock and did some drive-bys, and was shocked at how little my money will get me here. Every house on my list was very very small. I'm sure some of them are nice inside, but I sort of felt like I might be better off buying a yurt.

Then, when I got home, I re-did my calculations and realized that I had made a big math error in my buget and would actually be able to afford quite a bit more than I had originally thought. And angels sang...

There seem to be two thresholds in housing quality in the Los Alamos area. Below one threshold, the only single-family homes are of the pre-manufactured and on-wheels variety. Between that and the upper threshold are the tiny one-roomers I drove by today. And above the upper threshold are normal homes for full-sized people. Luckily, once my math error was rectified, my financial capabilities fall just above the upper threshold and the houses available to me look infinitely more attractive. Aaah. Now I just have to schedule a dozen or so walk-arounds and actually see these places.

I'm excited.

Just watched Code 46, a sci-fi film from 2003 that somehow passed entirely under my radar until Netflix randomly recommended it. It's like Gattaca meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets oedipus rex. I seem to be on a dystopian kick lately. Liked this a lot.

[once again, the soundtrack is amazing and my favorite piece doesn't appear on the CD]

Here's a breakdown of the movies that were released during 2006 that I've seen. First, movies that I watched in the theater on opening night: Snakes on a Plane. That's the only one? That's embarrassing...

Movies I saw in the theater after opening night: Inside Man, The Da Vinci Code, X-Men: The Last Stand, Talladega Nights, The Departed, The Prestige, The Fountain, and Children of Men.

Movies I rented via Netflix: V For Vendetta, Brick, Mission Impossible 3, Clerks II, and Poseidon.

Movie's that friends rented or owned: Little Miss Sunshine and Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Movies stolen off the internet: Rocky Balboa.

Of these films, I would say that my three favorites, in order, were Children of Men, The Departed, and The Fountain. The worst, hands down, was Poseidon—which is saying a lot, considering that Snakes on a Plane is on the list of candidates.