Brunch at Crepe du Jour: My Nutella & Banana, mimosa for me, Juicy Juice for Cianna, and having the heated back deck with French pop music all to ourselves.

- mike lee - baltimore

Wife Amy's twin sisters' Birthday Bowling Party was tonight at the historic duck pin Patterson Bowling Center. There were about a dozen people there mostly from the DC and Baltimore offices Gensler, the architectural firm where Kate and Mary work.

We were surprised to see neighbors of ours Mark and Mary Ellen there. It turns out Mary Ellen joined Gensler Baltimore about a year ago. Though they are neighbors, we really know them for their creative work: Mark was in the local band Love Riot, and Mary Ellen designed the cool interior of the harborside offices of e.magination, where I used to work.

We didn't stay too late as we had to get Cianna home for a reasonable bedtime. She enjoyed watching her first bowling games, but smiling at everyone took a lot of energy. She fell quickly to sleep when we got home. The rest of the guests no doubt continued knocking down pins and munching on cupcakes late into the night.

- mike lee - baltimore

A sign at a private residence on Falls Road at W. 38th near Service Photo and across the street from Sirkis Hardware. There's also a "No Loitering" sign on the steps of the porch, but I guess that wasn't clear enough.

- mike lee - baltimore

This is the first photo of the surface Saturn's moon Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury. Big chunks of ice are visible in the foreground, and aerial images from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent show channels cut by flowing liquid.

More images are being posted at the JPL web site.

- mike lee - baltimore

Snips from SecurityFocus News, January 11, 2005:

A sophisticated computer hacker had access to servers at wireless giant T-Mobile for at least a year, which he used to monitor U.S. Secret Service e-mail, obtain customers' passwords and Social Security numbers, and download candid photos taken by Sidekick users, including Hollywood celebrities, SecurityFocus has learned.

Twenty-one year-old Nicolas Jacobsen was quietly charged with the intrusions last October, after a Secret Service informant helped investigators link him to sensitive agency documents that were circulating in underground IRC chat rooms. The informant also produced evidence that Jacobsen was behind an offer to provide T-Mobile customers' personal information to identity thieves through an Internet bulletin board, according to court records.

[Me: the articles goes on to say the T-mobile never notified any customers of the breach.]

... and agents watched as the hacker surfed to "My T-Mobile," and entered a username and password belonging to Peter Cavicchia, a Secret Service cyber crime agent in New York.

Cavicchia was the agent who last year spearheaded the investigation of Jason Smathers, a former AOL employee accused of stealing 92 million customer e-mail addresses from the company to sell to a spammer. The agent was also an adopter of mobile technology, and he did a lot of work through his T-Mobile Sidekick -- an all-in-one cellphone, camera, digital organizer and e-mail terminal. The Sidekick uses T-Mobile servers for e-mail and file storage, and the stolen documents had all been lifted from Cavicchia's T-Mobile account, according to the affidavit.

[Me: um, so now we know a secret service agent used his unsecured Sidekick for classified work ... nice work Barney.]

... The hacker's access to the T-Mobile gave him more than just Secret Service documents. A friend of Jacobsen's says that prior to his arrest, Jacobsen provided him with digital photos that he claimed celebrities had snapped with their cell phone cameras. "He basically just said there was flaw in the way the cell phone servers were set up," says William Genovese, a 27-year-old hacker facing unrelated charges for allegedly selling a copy of Microsoft's leaked source code for $20.00. Genovese provided SecurityFocus with an address on his website featuring what appears to be grainy candid shots of Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Nicole Richie, and Paris Hilton.

[Me: well, no spicy photos I guess, or they would have all over the internet in milliseconds.]

Read the full article...

- mike lee - baltimore

Torrential rain is falling on us today as I ride in a taxi to an appointment north of town. Thank goodness it's unseasonably warm and not too windy. This afternoon, we'll see a 30 degree temperature drop back to normal weather.

- mike lee - nasty cold finally vacating my head - baltimore, md

Amy and I grabbed sandwiches for lunch today from the cafe at the Great Hall of the National Building Museum. I made a mobile mosaic of this impressive space a couple years ago.

As is typical on weekdays when school is in session, there were groups of kids on field trips gathered in clumps on the expansive carpeted floor. The laughter of children enhances the soothing sound of the water fountain in the center of the hall.

While it's free for everyone to access the building today (with an optional $5 donation), in a week, it will cost $795 each for those walking this same carpet to attend the "Commander 'n Chief's" Inaugural Ball--one of 17 around the city.

The Big W will likely step between two of the massive italian renniassance columns (pics 1-4), across the tiled mosaic of the 1901 presidential seal (pic 5), and into a cheering crowd who have paid handsomely in many ways for the privledge.

I would like to one day see what a privately-funded $40 million-dollar party like this looks like, but even with televised coverage, I think I'll be off enjoying the sweet sound of a child laughing.

- mike lee - washington, dc

I got a few 200 pc. bulk packs of PixelBlocks today by UPS. Shown at right is a full pack. At left is the contents of another bulk pack assembled as a 5" square of 196 clear PixelBlocks with 4 left over stacked. At $5.50 a pack it gets expensive fast just to attempt a medium-sized sculpture.

- mike lee - langley park, md

I found out a couple days ago that Ashley (1) and Kathy (4) at work both got Nintendo DSs, so I brought mine in today test out the wireless multi-player features for the first time. We tried out the built-in picture chat utility PictoChat (2 & 3) and the head-to-head VS mode of Super Mario Brothers. Inside the office, the wireless range seems to be about 15 feet through walls, so the chat won't be useful since the three of us are on separate floors and buildings. But the VS game mode looks very fun. We're going to meet up again soon for some lunchtime gold star chasing.

- mike lee - washington, dc