I plan to get back to work as soon as possible with web development and design as well as finishing up some story ideas, getting Ouroboros updated, and fleshing out a new story Idea I have for Christmas. Stay tuned for all that fun stuff.

What benefit could they possibly be gaining from disallowing me to choose a more secure password? Or maybe it’s just the programmers, but then the question becomes: Why on earth would they hire programmers dumb enough to limit the security of a client’s account? Then again, maybe it’s just me; perhaps I just have really bad choice in banks.

Is this some sort of bank conspiracy to make identity theft and theft of our funds easier? They would certainly have something to gain in the case that they offered some protection. Reminds me of the second Dragonheart movie where the guy gets paid by the townspeople to slay the dragon that is working with him.

I see insecurities like this in various different forms on all sorts of websites. Once I found a bug on a major retail site that let anyone view any and all invoices, which includes the customers’ personal information. I’ve sent e-mails to everyone in these companies I can get a hold of, complained in person, bounced up through the ranks over the phone, etc. All of this in an attempt to help these companies fix their issues and protect their customers’ (which may be you) information. I get the run around and they never fix the bugs.

I see this as a serious problem, and in this case I see absolutely no valid reason for the limitation of a user’s password. Don’t let this one go unfixed! Check if your bank has this issue, and if so, make them fix it!

I used to think that the world owed me something
The only things that mattered were the things in my head
I used to be a child, but now I’m a man
But there’s still somethings that I don’t understand

How many words make up a memory?
How many notes are in a melody?
How many people are lonely today?
Tell me, why must I feel this way?

I used to take for granted the way that you’d feel me
Now I only feel that you don’t know who I am
You used to tell me that you knew that you loved me
But now I don’t even feel like we’re friends

I remember when we first made love
And I know just what I was thinking of
I want to be with you for all of my life
But I’ve got questions for you, my wife

How many lies add up to misery?
How can I hide it when it’s easy to see?
How can I trust in anything that you say?
Tell me, why must I feel this way?

I know I’ve made mistakes but can you forgive me?
You know, they say that the best things in life are free
But I will spend my time devoted to you
Baby, tell me what you want me to do

How many moments make up true romance?
How will you know if you don’t give us a chance?
Oh, I don’t feel like a man today
Tell me, why must I feel this way?

The light was too bright to see. It slowly dimmed to reveal beautiful, lush, green trees all around him. Ben stopped short as he noticed a gaping hole in front of him. There seemed to be someone in the hole, but his attention was grabbed by a voice heard in the distance.

He looked up to see an armchair in the clearing. The voices lingered closer as he examined the floral pattern on the chair from afar. The voice’s words were unintelligible and he looked down for a moment into the well.

There was a boy looking up at him with no facial features at all, save a mouth. The boy whispered, but the sound echoed through Ben’s mind: “Please…”

Suddenly the voices in the distance were close and clear as day. He heard the words “father” and “accident”. Ben jerked his head up to find his aunt sitting in the chair talking to someone. A shadowy figure sat on a couch next to her. He looked directly at Ben and as he finished “…but we don’t want to rule out any possibilities.”

Ben woke up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He began flapping the front of his shirt back and forth to dry the sweat pouring from his torso. He heard voices in the other room, slowly got out of bed, and walked to his bedroom door. He stopped for a moment for a creaking board and continued when he was certain he wasn’t noticed. He slipped out his bedroom door and peeked his head out into the living room from the hallway.

Betty was speaking with Detective Marr. Ben hadn’t recognized the man’s name at first, but his face was a sure reminder.

The detective sat on the sofa with a glass of lemonade in clasped hands sitting in his lap. He wore a long, dark brown–almost red–trench coat, black loafers with white socks, and what looked like a fifty dollar suit.

Ben was overwhelmed with confusion over the events of the previous day and burst out into the living room. “What happened to my mother? How could this happen again? Why couldn’t I change it?” It seems Ben was making a habit of releasing a flood of questions at once.

The detective looked in Ben’s direction, but couldn’t bring himself to look into his eyes. He looked back at Betty and announced “Perhaps it’s time that I should go.”

“Wait,” Ben begged. Marr looked him in the eyes now. “What has this got to do with my father?”

“I see that you’ve already overheard some of what I said.” Marr hesitated and looked out into the den. “Son… You’re mother has been killed in a car accident. We believe that someone may have…” He looked down at his glass and set it on the table in front of him. He stood up and gathered his coat in his hands. He looked at Betty and continued as if he were never really speaking to Ben. “We’re still working on the case. I’ve already said too much… I thank you very much for your hospitality.”

Ben stood there with his mouth wide open and watched his aunt escort the detective out through the den.

“May have what?” Ben thought to himself. He wrestled with the idea that someone could have murdered his mother, but he simply couldn’t justify anyone wanting to kill her. She had no enemies. He rolled over all that he knew in his head, but nothing came to him. It was all an overwhelming blur of seemingly unrelated ideas.

Ben stood in the same spot he remembered, staring at the clock. He stood in the train station for almost an hour. Looking around he could see so many different kind of people coming from all different parts of the country, all with different stories to tell. There was one thing that bothered Ben about them; they were moving. They wouldn’t stop. Always moving, and circulating like molecules of oxygen floating on a breeze.

Ben looked up at the clock once more before giving up and walking out the door towards his train.

Aunt Betty had excused him from school today given the circumstances. He decided to try to make sense of things. To find the dark stranger and make him explain why he had to relive such a horrible event in his life. To find answers to why he should be put through this nightmare without the ability to change the outcome of the events. He headed home to lay in his bed and contemplate the strangeness of the universe.

Ben had to wait a while for his train, since he missed one waiting for something to happen in the train station. He had about an hour on the train to think about the events that took place over the past week, but his thoughts were a haze and he just stared blankly out the window, noting the difference in the speed of the ground below and the trees in the distance.

He stood in the middle of the road in front of his house. It was the first time he had really looked over the outside of his childhood home in a very long time. The effect of the image on his emotional state was astounding. He felt as if he had never left.

He walked up to the front door and used his key. He looked around inside for a moment and locked his eyes on the door leading into the garage from the kitchen. He walked slowly over to the door and turned the knob, but put his forehead on the door instead and began to cry. He slumped down with his back against the door and put his head between his knees.

A few minutes later he was startled by a sound in the other room. He got up to see what the noise was as he wiped the tears from his face. He found a stray cat licking himself by the back door. Someone had left the door open.

Ben looked around , but nothing seemed out of place. He shooed the cat out the door and locked it. He looked out the window in the door to see the cat meowing up at him from outside.

For some reason he walked back to the garage again and opened the door. There was a station wagon parked on one side of the garage and an empty space where a sedan was once parked.

“She took dad’s car” Ben spoke aloud to himself.

His brain went into overdrive and pieces began fitting together. “If there was something wrong with dad’s car and she only drove it to come out to Aunt Betty’s then that would explain why having her arrive a week earlier couldn’t save her. Perhaps I could save her… If I had another chance.”

He walked over to the empty space and touched a liquid on the floor of the garage. He smelled it and suddenly he was hit with another revelation. “Why would someone want to kill my dad?”

His mother’s death being called an “accident”, his father mysteriously dying shortly before a plot is discovered to kill him, the way all this seems to have been swept under the rug in his previous life; Perhaps there was more for Ben to do here than just save his mother from a tragic accident.

Ben was certain know that he could make things right given this new information. He was certain he could find out what was going on behind all of this.

He began to feel dizzy and desperately grabbed for the wall in front of him to catch his balance as the color went out of his world. His vision returned immediately as his hand touched the wall, but there was no concrete beneath his fingers.

As his mind cleared he could see that he was holding a bed sheet and that he was already horizontal. New questions rolled around in his head: Had he passed out? Had someone carried him to his room?

Looking closer at his surroundings he noticed some of the items were moved. “Is someone there?” he called out.

His door opened a moment later and a head popped in.

“Hey sport. You wanna go hit some baseballs with your dad this fine Sunday morning?”

Ben began to tear up. “You’re…”

“Are you feeling ok kiddo?” His dad interupted.

“Yeah… Yeah, I think I’m gonna be fine.”

Read the next part of the story, coming soon.

An example of 5 icons with 3 states (e.g. normal, hover, selected) would require 15 different rules as follows:

.icon {
  background: url('images/icons.png') 0 0 no-repeat;
  width: 16px;
  height: 16px;
}
.icon1:hover {
  background-position: 0 -16px;
}
.icon1.selected {
  background-position: 0 -32px;
}
.icon2 {
  background-position: -16px 0;
}
.icon2:hover {
  background-position: -16px -16px;
}
.icon2.selected {
  background-position: -16px -32px;
}
.icon3 {
  background-position: -32px 0;
}
.icon3:hover {
  background-position: -32px -16px;
}
.icon3.selected {
  background-position: -32px -32px;
}
.icon4 {
  background-position: -48px 0;
}
.icon4:hover {
  background-position: -48px -16px;
}
.icon4.selected {
  background-position: -48px -32px;
}
.icon5 {
  background-position: -64px 0;
}
.icon5:hover {
  background-position: -64px -16px;
}
.icon5.selected {
  background-position: -64px -32px;
}

Whereas with the background-position-x/-y properties it would only need the following 7 rules:

.icon {
  background: url('images/icons.png') 0 0 no-repeat;
  width: 16px;
  height: 16px;
}
.icon2 {
  background-position-x: -16px;
}
.icon3 {
  background-position-x: -32px;
}
.icon4 {
  background-position-x: -48px;
}
.icon5 {
  background-position-x: -64px;
}
.icon:hover {
  background-position-y: -16px;
}
.icon.selected {
  background-position-y: -32px;
}

Of course, the more sprites used the more redundancy is needed without the use of a background-position-x/-y. Without separate X and Y properties it takes i*s rules, where i represents the number of icons and s represents the number of states. With them it would only take i+s-1. The benefits are obvious.

The problem? They were broken and I didn’t even know it! That is until I started fiddling with them and hit the volume down button. I quickly found my volume at the lowest setting. Cool, nice feature, but wait, where’s the volume up button? I took them off and sure enough I was hitting the right button. Nothing is happening! Now they are stuck at the lowest volume setting and its the volume on the headset not on the phone.

So, I tossed them into a box for a while until I finally sat down and took out a handy soldering iron and started to strip a few wires and make some connections. I’m no electronics genious or anything, but I guessed right that black is always ground and found that the red wire is for the voice dial initialization. After accidentally ripping that wire out (no matter, since I planned to cut the activation strip off the earpiece so that this wouldn’t happen again) I found the yellow wire on my second attempt. The yellow wire was indeed the volume up!

I then soldered a hole right through the volume up and down connectors before remembering I cut out by accident. No worries, one day I’ll get around to repairing it and the connector is still there, so it will work.

Apparently this is a common issue with these headphones. Whether it just be sweat interfering and/or frying connections or, in my case, the circuit was just torn to bits when I got them. I didn’t check all the wires since I got it on my second try, but maybe I will later. Nonetheless, anyone that has these now has a partial pinout! Black is ground, red is voice, yellow is volume up. Comment with more if you’ve got them

Ben plopped himself down on the bed from his upright position. He stared at the ceiling for answers. “Could it have been a dream?” He found it just about as difficult to believe that as he did that the experience was real. Having had the same dream for the past fifteen years, he was slow to accept the possibility, but what else could it have been. “Things like that just don’t happen in reality,” he thought. He made a mental note to discuss it with his therapist. The ordeal slipped from his mind entirely as he looked around.

His room was covered in obsolete movie posters from the theater that his mother worked at. There were model cars lined up on his dresser and a recently raided jar of mostly pennies setting on its side beside them. The room was well lit by the eastern morning sun through faded beige curtains. The bright sun revealed little in the small room, but papers strewn about the floor and a backpack leaning against a wall in the corner. Ben thought for a moment that the room looked pretty empty.

Everything in the house had a putrid yellow-beige color to it, but the color was deepened the closer you looked towards the ceiling. Ben’s father was quite the smoker, and the smell and look of the place had slowly taken a downward spiral since they moved in, but nobody ever noticed. There were streaks running down some walls in the living area where the nicotine had condensed together and dripped slower than the eye could perceive. Despite the appearance, the walls were dry to the touch.

Without thinking, Ben dragged his hands across the walls of the hallway on his way to the bathroom. He headed for the toilet, but did a double take at his image in the mirror. He spoke to himself “Darn, I got a pimple. I’m not supposed to get those yet!”

“Ben! Time for school!” His mom had to yell for him every morning, since he was typically a slow start to get out of bed.

“I’m up!”

“OK, well breakfast will be ready in five minutes!”

“OK mom! I’m in the bathroom!” he shouted with what his mother called “a tone” in his voice. He muttered under his breath “Sheesh, can’t a guy pee?”

When he finished brushing his teeth he stood and stared in the mirror at himself. A shiver went through him as he imagined that there was someone else looking back at him. Someone not unlike himself, but for age. For a moment he saw himself fifteen years older. “At least you don’t have to go to stupid school anymore. Huh?” he posed the question to his older self, but there was no reply. He stood there for a moment before slamming the mirror closed on the medicine cabinet and running back to his room to get dressed.

He was still pulling the collared shirt over his head with one arm in when he reached the kitchen table. “Mom, why do I have to go to school? You didn’t go to school. Right?”

“I was home schooled, but it was still school.” She took a deep breath and bent down to look at Ben from below. “You’re not going to go to school today Ben.”

“Why do I have the feeling I’m not gonna like why?” His tone was skeptical, but quickly turned to a whine as he jumped from his chair and headed to the refrigerator to drink orange juice from the carton. “Awww, I don’t have to go to the dentist or something do I?

His mother grabbed the container from his hands just as he was tipping it up and knelt down to meet him face to face now. “Ben, you’re not going to the dentist. You’ll be staying with your aunt and uncle for a few days in the city—”

“But mom, you know—”

“Just hush for a second!” She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. She hadn’t meant to yell at him. “Listen, your father…” the words were right there, but she choked on them like holding back vomit. “Ben, your father… died… last night.” She had more to say, but realized that Ben simply wouldn’t hear it after that bomb.

Ben stood there silent, staring straight ahead. His mother’s crouching figure appeared as nothing more than a blur in the foreground. Everything around him became white and black all at once and only one thing was clear. He had heard what his mother said, and under normal circumstances it would have sent him into immediate tears, but he was focused on something more profound than death: the clock on the wall.

“Ben… Say something.”

He shifted his gaze to his mothers face and it slowly came to it’s natural coloring. He closed his mouth which had been gaping open. His face became austere and determined as if he knew what he had to do, though he wasn’t sure he did. “I understand.”

“What?” The response was a bit of a shock for her.

“Dad died. I was sad. It took me a long time to get over it and to understand, but I understand now.”

Her face turned confused and concerned. She looked down and bit her lip. Ben touched his hand under her chin and softly guided her to look at him. Her expression changed to one of surprise.

“I understand. You have to make your peace with dad. You have to go to him and pour your heart out and tell him all of the things that you wanted to say when he was alive, but were afraid to say for fear of breaking the silence.” He glanced up at the clock again as if he could gather words from it. “Just do me one favor…”

She was lost for words now. “I…” She paused for a moment trying to remember what should come after that, but nothing came to her. Instead she simply acknowledged him. “Yes?”

“I want you to spend some time alone. Give yourself some time to let this set in. It will take a while for you to truly get over dad’s death, and perhaps you never really will, but you have to promise me… Next week you pack some things and come stay with me at Aunt Betty and Uncle Frank’s.” Ben knew exactly what he was to do now. “Promise me.”

“I…”

“Promise.” he ushered.

“I Promise.”

The dreams had stopped, and the memory of what happened in the train station had returned. It was clear as ever now, and though he had no idea how or why it had happened, it was clear what had happened and where and when he was now. He sat now, a week later, in the den of his aunt’s home waiting for his mother to pull up the driveway. Somehow he had been sent back to relive this moment in his life. If he could save his mother from her impending death, of which only he was aware, his life would be changed forever. He didn’t know why this was happening, but he knew that this was his chance to set things right.

The phone rang. Betty was sitting on the couch in the living room, watching her “stories” on the television. She was so enthralled in the show that she barely ever heard the phone at that time of day.

“Jennifer, you’re pregnant.”

Ring…

“But doctor, I don’t know who father is.”

Ring…

“I’m the father.”

“Jonny!”

Half a ring… The machine picks up. Dramatic music starts and the show goes to commercial.

“Yes, this is Detective Marr from…” The message is cut short as Betty picks up the phone.

Ben heard the start of the message from the den. “Where do I know that name from?” he thought to himself. He walked over to the screen door and by time he opened it she was off the phone looking up at him. A pale expression washed over his face.

“Ben, there’s… been an accident.”

Read the next part of the story, Ouroboros: 3.

Once I learn Drupal pretty well I may be using it in all of my projects. The first theme I made for Drupal was certainly less complex than my first WordPress theme. If that says anything at all for Drupal then I’m all for it.

Note to self: write another story or an update to Ouroboros.

Ben didn’t believe in free will. His philosophy was that even if he made a conscious decision, it was the decision that he was always destined to make. Not that there was an explicit plan for his or any one’s life, but that all of his actions were governed by cause and effect. All of the thoughts in his brain were simply a larger overview of billions of atoms bouncing around like billiard balls in some universal game of pool. And like the elements of his imagined game, he and everyone and everything in the universe had a predetermined course and destination, reliant on simple causality.

When the dreams started, Ben thought right away that his unconscious mind was trying to tell him something. He had shared his experience in his repetitive nightmare with doctors and friends and family, but everyone had a different idea of what they meant. “Maybe it will come to me today,” he thought.

He arrived at the train station that morning just as he had done so many times before. He even wore the same suit. It was the only one he owned. He looked up at signs as if looking for direction, though he knew exactly where to go. This day was so familiar to him, because he had taken this trip on the same day every year since his father died.

When his father passed, Ben had moved away from the countryside and into the big city. His mother sent him to be raised by his aunt and uncle, because the loss of her husband was devastating to the effect of great depression. She was fearful of the things she might do to her son as insanity slowly took hold of her. Everyone thought she was taking it too far, sending Ben away like that, but a few weeks later she died in a fatal car accident. The accident was later determined to be no fault, but nobody in the family questioned her motives again.

Today was the day Ben had set aside for honoring his mother and father. Every year on his birthday he had taken the train back to the place he grew up; the place that his parents were buried. This day was like every other day that he had made the same trip, but Ben was skeptical nonetheless. “Something is different,” he thought to himself, looking around as if expecting it to notice him and introduce itself.

Reliving the moment again, in the train station, suddenly reminded him of the dream he relived every night since his parents’ deaths. Ben had always woken up with adrenaline pumping and sweat pouring from his body. The doctors couldn’t diagnose it and no medications seemed to help. Though he became used to the dream, he had never gotten used to the fear he felt in the dream. “There was something different about it this last time,” he thought. There was something that frightened him more than usual.

In his nightmare, Ben walks in complete brightness. The ground is so white that nothing describes that there is a ground at all, other than the apparent support under his feet. He hears a voice say “Please, help me.” The voice is calm and clear as day, yet he cannot place its source. Slowly the light dims and Ben can see that he is in a field surrounded by trees.

He only notices the hole in the ground in front of him as he looks down at the sound of grass rustling under his feet. At first he is shocked at his brush with death; had he not noticed it and taken a step forward… As his eyes adjust to the darkness before him he sees a boy extending one hand from the top of what is now clearly a well with huge, gray stones making up its rim. The boy’s face is deformed and blank. He looks up, and as he whispers his eerie plea again from a lonely mouth on a barren face — “Please, help me.” — Ben suddenly wakes up.

Ben shuddered at the glancing thought that perhaps the boy in the well is himself. He looked around at the real world to drive the thought from his mind. His fear and confusion grew as he realized that everyone in the station had stopped. The sound of bustling feet and random chatter had simply ceased. For a moment, he feared they were all staring at him, but his shame dissipated as he became more confident that all of the people were just frozen in place. It was as if someone had hit the pause button.

He let out a desperate laugh after a moment, but regretted it immediately. His laughter echoed back at him as if the entire room was empty. He might have thought he was dreaming if he hadn’t had the same dream every night of his life.

The sudden feeling of being watched spun Ben around in an effort to catch a glimpse of his audience. When his eyes focused instead on the clock, he noticed that it too had stopped. And not a moment later he noticed that all of the patrons had vanished and he was indeed alone in the great, empty, main room  of the train station. Only when the other man said “Hello” did he notice him.

The man was adorned in a seamless black suit. No fasteners of any kind could be seen. He wore black gloves and a black mask over his entire face. Ben couldn’t make out a single patch of skin. The man seemed to give off a dark glow, as if his body were consuming the scenery around it. Ben might normally have convinced himself that this was merely a trick of the light, but his disbelieving nature was quickly retreating as these strange events took place.

“Hey! You there!” Ben called out.

“Yes?” the stranger replied in an inviting tone, as if to say “I’m open for business and awaiting your inquiry.”

“Who are you? What’s happened here? What have you got to do with all of this? Where did everyone go?” Ben’s thoughts all came out at once as a barrage of interrogating questions. He was surprised at himself for being so sharp with his new acquaintance.

“The travelers have gone nowhere. It is you who have gone. I have brought you here. You are to take a great journey. Who I am will be revealed in time.”

“Am I… dead? Are you God?”

“An interesting question. No… no I don’t suppose I am God and you are most certainly not dead.”

“Well, what is this all about then?” He had begun to feel a bit more at ease with the stranger and his questions had at least begun to come out one at a time now.

The shadowy stranger looked at the clock. Its hands were perfectly still, and yet he looked at it as if time was running short and he was late for an appointment.

“I’m afraid that is all the questions I can answer for you,” he said apologetically. “You have to go now. You won’t want to be late. Your family is waiting for you.”

Ben looked up at the clock. He tried to see what the other man saw there, but saw only what seemed like a broken clock. His eyes darted back when the stranger was no longer in his peripheral vision, but the stranger had gone. For a moment, he thought that the people of the station had returned. He thought that they were all staring at him, but the thought was snatched away as he awoke in that familiar sweat.

Read the next part of the story, Ouroboros: 2.

The technology required the presence of a human vessel. The traveler’s mind was forced into that of the vessel’s. What became of the original consciousness was irrelevant in the eyes of the committee, as outlined by their decreed laws.

The first was the most obvious, and protected against what we thought was the most dangerous thing that could happen: A traveler could never go into the past. Doing so would theoretically negate our own existence, and could also negate the existence of time itself. Such a paradox was something that even grade school children could warn you about. Even changing the movement of a single atom in the past would change the entire course of the history of the universe. Regardless of how minute the appearance of change, our current time line would still no longer truly exist. This was unacceptable and led to the second rule.

The current time line — our universe — was to be considered the only true and valid of any. Therefore, what was sacrificed or destroyed in another time line was to be considered no consequence to our own. Even if, in our efforts to obtain new technologies and insights into our future, we managed to destroy an entire time line, it was irrelevant, as long as it was not our own present. The reasoning was simple: as soon as the travelers returned to the present, our future would be forever changed by the information that they had brought back. The future that they had traveled to would then no longer exist.

There were other rules, but they add little to this story and nothing can be gained from knowing them, since time travel is impossible anyway.

The first twenty or so travelers went no further then a few days to a week forward in time. These initial launches were mainly for testing and calibration purposes. The scientists in charge of the project were pressured to provide significant results to justify continued funding. The technology’s unofficial maiden voyage was set for ten thousand years ahead. They were astounded when it didn’t work at all.

The machine was then run through countless diagnostic and theoretical simulations and tests to determine the flaw that prevented the launch. After a while, it was decided that research and live testing should continue. They thought that perhaps ten thousand years was simply too far to travel under our current power capabilities.

After several more trips to next week they figured that the machine was still safe. They again traveled to the distant future, but a more conservative distance. However, after setting the dial to five hundred years ahead and flipping the switch nothing happened. Normally the volunteer travelers would jerk, as if they had woken up suddenly from a dream of falling. The return of the traveler would appear instantaneous to a viewer from the present. So much so, that a skeptical on looker would quickly claim that they were being made a fool of by the fastest gun in the west routine. This time… nothing. For all intents and purposes, the traveler was dead.

After much deliberation, use of the machine was declared unsafe. All funding for the project was revoked and the machine was destroyed. It was the first wise decision that they had made, but it was too late. We were dead the moment the machine went into production.

Then the climate changed. We started to see an exponential increase in tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanic activity, and other natural disasters over the coming years. The heat is unbearable now, but ultimately it will be the moon that finishes us off they say.

Now the machine is being rebuilt, but this time the laws have been thrown out and the objective is one that was not taken on lightly. If you are reading this, then the machine has been successfully destroyed. We can only hope that this will be enough to stop the impending doom of your time line.

I still find it a bit funny that this was never written and perhaps may never be read.