Lock Picking with a soda can - Fail

I've always wanted to try to open a padlock with a soda can. These guys did, whilst inebriated...

Granted, the guy's hair is ridiculous, but the idea is interesting. I've heard about it from many sources, many times, so I've always wanted to give it a go.

In case you're totally confused, my job involves security. Knowing how locks work and how to get around them is part of my job. Legally! If you're curious, this is where I work.

The other day we were given some chain that had a few padlocks on them that they had lost the keys too. Perfect opportunity to show off my lock picking skills!!! Yeah, my hubby totally showed me up by picking his lock in a few minutes (he got the easy one, in my defense) and I couldn't get mine.

The simple solution would be to grab the bolt cutters and just snip off the chain, but where's the fun in that?

So this is what happened.

Here's my empty can, the evil lock, my pile of lock picks who ALL failed me and the lock that my boy opened way to fast! 

I basically just followed the instructions on the video. Cut open the can with regular scissors, make the shim, etc. We put it in, like they said, and tried rotating it. 

Nothing. So I tried again. 

Nope.

FOUR TRIES LATER.... I asked my man to try. Cuz he's that guy who can do anything. And he's so humble about it too. I felt totally justified when he couldn't get it either. He even sliced his thumb open trying to get out a piece of can that ripped off inside the lock. 

So obviously, we were doing something wrong. The solution?

We did what real thieves do. No fancy skills with lock picks or spiffy home made by-pass techniques. We busted out the bolt cutters and snipped open the chain. Done.

This got the lock off the chain, but this felt like such a defeat!! Stubbornness reared up its ugly head of defiance and I sat down with the rebellious lock and my favorite pick. A few minutes of patient and focused attention and the thing succumbed to my will. With that oh so satisfying click, the lock plug twisted and the shackle opened up. VICTORY!!

My conclusions are thus.

1. The Spam School guy has ridiculous hair.
2. Either we were doing something wrong (requires more research/attempts) or its a myth. 
3. I like my favorite hook pick. 

If you're curious about lock-picking as a hobby, there are lots of tutorial videos on YouTube to get you started. I also recommend finding a lock picking group or TOOL group near you. They'll have great advice and are generally fascinating people to be around. Or you can just shoot me a comment and I'll answer as best as I can.

Necessary Disclaimer: I am in no way encouraging any illegal activities!! What you do with knowledge you may gain here is completely and totally your responsibility. Lock picking is an interesting hobby and should never, NEVER be practiced on a lock you don't have permission to pick, or on a lock that is important to you. (like your front door) Incorrect picking can permanently damage a lock.

How we made a Photo Booth

So church asked us to make a photo booth. If you don't know what one is, it's so you can do this:

We're theater people, so naturally we looked at this like a set. We could make it like a theater flat, and then cut windows into the front and put frames on it. A little more complicated than that, but that was the general idea.

We started with the size: 7 feet tall by 8 feet wide. There was a lot of discussion about how to build it, using pvc piping or whatnot. We finally landed on traditional theater construction. If you're using this so you can build your own, you can learn more about that type of building here. I would recommend a 'hard' flat, but a soft flat would work too if you want to save a buck. You can make two flats and attach them so it will fold and store smaller.

Disclaimer - making one of these takes basic carpentry and basic sewing skills! But I believe in you.

We dug around in the drama dept. bin at church and found two flats we could sacrifice. One was 4' by 8', the other 3' by 8'. Perfect! Once we tied them together, we would have a 7' by 8' flat. We also found an 8' long piece of molding to use for a chair rail. Painted it white.

The next step was to figure out some frames. Garage sale time! I would have liked some round ones, but you make do with what you have. We ended up with 4 frames. The rule of thumb is variety is king! We removed the innards (some god-awful 'art' from the 70s) and spray painted the frames flat white. You could use a matte white also, but I prefer the look of flat. I'd stay away from gloss, but that's my personal preference.

The trick with getting a good paint job with spray paint is to do lots of thin coats. Too thick at once and it will drip! Also, watch out for leaves, like the one that's attacking my frame. Remember good ventilation and all that... 

So we had our giant flat, our frames and I went to the fabric store with one of the pastor to pick out the fabric. That was fun, haha. I don't know if he'd ever been in a fabric store before! Anywho, this is what he picked. 

Fun summery colors for the summer event this is for! So I did iron it, (you can iron on your table if you throw down a few towels first) but I now think that I wasted my time. It probably helped get out the big creases though. 

I got 3 yards of the yellow for the top (60" wide material) and 1.5 yards of the stripey stuff. I needed the stripey to be 3' wide and 8 feet long, so I cut my piece in half, long ways to get two long strips 3' wide. Then I sewed them together to get a single strip that was 3' wide and 3 yards (9 feet) long. You'll need to do the math to make sure you get enough material to cover what you want, and pay attention to where your seams hit!! I've found that it helps me to do little drawings of how things will work out. 

So you should have two long pieces, one 5ft x 9ft, and another 3ft x 9ft. Sew em together! Now you have one ginormous piece 8ft x 9ft. ps- you can totally do this with the same type of fabric so it all matches. Just keep in mind that if it has a pattern, you'll need to buy extra so you can match the patterns up.

Ok, next step! Once we had the flats built and tied together (we screws a long 1/2" x 1" piece of wood along the side and added small pieces of wood to tie the two together in the middle) we needed to figure out where to put the pictures! We just places the frames around until we had a layout we liked. Pay attention to how high they are, unless you're intending on having boxes available. 

Then, on the back of the flat, we cut and places wood 1x3s so that we'd have something to staple the frames to. We used the same techniques for building the flats to get the 1x3s in place. Make sure it's squared up! It ended up looking like this when we were done. You can see the top part is much more divided up from the bottom. 

Our already has the fabric on it because we're recycling old flats. Don't worry if your doesn't at this point.

K. Now flip it up and cut Xs in your window openings. Go right to the corners. (skip this step for new flats. If you have made 'hard' flats, now would be when you'd cut open holes in the plywood)

Next, roll back the triangles from your X, so you have several layers thick and staple the fabric back onto they 1x3s. We're using a pneumatic stapler, but a regular hardware stapler would work too. An office stapler won't. Sorry! 

Now flip it around an put it on some tables or sawhorses. You'll want to be able to access it from all sides. It should be face up. Lay out your big, beautiful fabric!! We knew we wanted our chair-rail to be 30" high, so we marked that distance on the flat, on both edges. Then we lined up the seam between the two different types of fabric on those marks. We folded it several times, so the staples would have something to bite into and stapled first at that seam. Then, using the artist method for stretching a canvas, we worked our way around and stapled the whole sha-bang down, pulling it tight as we went. (that's my man!) 

Our line was a little wonky, but we covered it up with the chair rail, making sure we got it level when we nailed it down to the sides and the one wood cross piece in the center. We used finishing nails that wouldn't leave big marks. 

Now flip it upright again, and cut out your holes, stapling the fabric back like we had to do earlier. 

Next, flip it around to the front side and nail your frames down! Make sure to use a level. 

We're going to paint the fabric that shows inside the frames white. We're also going to use traditional theater bracejacks to keep it upright. (there's info at the bottom of that link) These normally need to be sandbagged.

The last step is to set it up in front of some black drapery so there's a good background and then take a bunch of pics!!! Don't forget to get lots of fun and silly props for people to use. I'll post pictures from the event. I hope everyone will like it!

Got any suggestions for how to make this better? Let me know. Or if you have something you're not sure how to make, ask away!! I love a challenge. ;)

Due Diligence, whatever that means

So the other day, quite randomly, I found this:

5 acres only 15 minutes away from town. The land is completely undeveloped which is exciting on the one hand, but ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING at the same time.

Tomorrow we are talking to the realtor and making an offer on it, PROVIDED we have a good way to escape if something gets to scary in escrow!!

There is enough flat-ish land to put a house and a parking area. The rest is pretty steep, which is why its cheap! Ha! ...Poetry.

And because I'm obsessive, I've found a house plan I like.

I can get lost for days at that website. But I really like the lay out of this house. Big common room. Bedrooms and master suite on opposite ends. GIANT garage. I like garages... Oh! And see it has a spiffy spiral staircase? Anything with a spiral staircase is automatically cool. 

Who knows if we'll actually be able to afford to build this particular house, but if we do get to build, it will be along similar lines.

So, again, because I obsess on projects and I have no restraint... I did this:

Its an unfinished 3D mock up of the building, on the actual property, complete with topography, pulled from Google Maps. (the 3D model is a mirror image of the above plans, if you're wondering) No, I did NOT use crazy expensive programs to do this. You can get this 3D modeling program for free from these guys. It's called SketchUp and I love it!! Whenever I have a really complicated design that I need to communicate, SketchUp always saves the day! Ok. Enough with the product placement. ;)

Back to the property. I figure I'll just post as we go along this process. There's so much to learn!! Our first step was to befriend a General Contractor. We found two at church and got to enjoy watching them argue about how to put in a septic tank properly. The strangest things can be entertaining...

We went and walked the property with one of them, that's when I took the video. He was very encouraging and was interested in the dirt himself if we don't get it! That's a good sign, right? But they kept saying that we needed to do our 'due diligence' during escrow so we don't get screwed. Great. What does that mean!?

According to Google - 

due dil·i·gence

Noun Reasonable steps taken by a person in order to satisfy a legal requirement, esp. in buying or selling something.

Ooook.... Not at all helpful. So we asked them for a list. Its long. If you're curious, message me and I'll email it to you. It should apply to any property. It was just way too long, technical and boring to post!

But I'm grateful for the list, because the last thing we want is to get stuck with an unusable piece of land because we didn't do our homework!! See kids? Stay in school! It teaches important things, like following through and research! And grammar, which somehow escaped me... Spelling too. Oh well. 

Now for the spiritual part. There is that verse in Proverbs 31 about "she inspects a field and buys it," and that's really what I'm doing here. The hubby is at his job, so I get to do the leg work. It is quite empowering because so often I look to him to just make the big decisions as the Biblically mandated leader of the family. Yet here I am, driving this thing! Don't get me wrong, he's on board for this. I wouldn't be moving forward if he wasn't ok with it. But it's my baby. 

Hopefully, this baby doesn't destroy us financially... Risks are fun!! (we need a sarcasm emoticon) 

The plan is to go sllllooooooooowwwllly. Carefully. And hopefully wisely. Once we're in escrow I shall do my due diligence and may God's will be done. Amen. 

And last, for your viewing enjoyment: 

A staged picture of models and actors pretending to be architects and business people. Do you really think they're in a construction zone requiring hard hats? Why don't they all have hard hats? Maybe the two girls have metal plates in their heads so they don't need hard hats. It could happen. Twice. I wonder what shoes they're wearing... Betcha $5 none of 'em are wearing steel-toed boots. 

Have a great day. 

How to clean a rubber watch band

I got this great white Fossil watch, but there's the problem. Its white. I have a love-hate relationship with white. I love it,  but I'm so bad at it!

Anyway, this is how I've cleaned my rubber band.

Remove the band if you're worried about water damaging the watch.

Soap it. 

Get a potato scrubber (mine's from the $1 store) or a cup scrubber. Anything with long, soft bristles.

Scrub! If you bend the band while you scrub, you can really get in the cracks.

Tada!

I've done this 3 or 4 times to my band,  and there's no sign of damage. If you know of a better way,  comment below and I'll try it! My watch will be dirty again in like..  5 minutes.

Learning Linux and Hacking!

I know this isn't very Biblical sounding.... but I'm learning how to hack. I actually do have a reason for this that's not totally shady!! I work for a company that does Penetration Testing, where they go and test the security of a computer or business by staging an attack. So yeah, we get to pretend to be bad guys and do the fun bad guy stuff, but not get in trouble. AND get paid. Well... that's the goal anyway.

Right now I'm attempting to make myself more valuable to the company and that means learning. Learning and making money ties in with the whole P31 thing, and I think its fun. Thus this post.

If you don't like tech stuff, stop reading right now and wait for another crafty blog!! Don't worry, I totally get it! I won't be offended. Much.

So. Linux.

Here's the secret to Linux............. Google it. 

That's all. That's the massive secret to using Linux. If you willing to learn and do your homework, you can have the most stable and virus free operating system on the planet for free. Yes, FREE. 

Some basics for the baby-techies out there: Linux is an operating system, just like Windows 7/8 or Mac OS (insert some fierce big cat here). The big difference is that it takes more work to set up and you don't have to pay for it. The reason you don't have to pay for it is that nerds made it so they could tweak it. Cuz that's what nerds do. They wanted to be able to play with an OS (operating system) and to be able to let their friends play with it too.

"But nothing's free," you may say. "Where's the catch?"

There is one, but it probably won't effect you much. Because Linux is so stable (it won't crash), businesses like it. And Linux people know that. So they do charge for business who want to buy multiple versions of their spiffy business server versions. Yeah, didn't think that would be a problem.

Oh, did I mention there are multiple versions of Linux? There are. Don't worry about it. 

Enough twaddle. So you want to start? OK!

1. Get a computer you don't care about. No, really. Don't install Linux on your primary computer if you have no idea how to use it. You're just going to get pissed off. The learning curve is a bit steep.
2. Get another computer (this can be your main computer) and have Google standing by. 
3. Look up http://www.ubuntu.com/ This is a pretty user friendly version of Linux. Wander around a bit. Read. Read some more. 
4. This is the easiest way to install it. It's a windows installer, but if you want to be extra nerdy, you can install it from a USB stick. Look around for instructions on how to install it from USB. Or just click here.
5. If you have questions, GOOGLE IT! Seriously. Read the error message and just type that in the search bar. If you ask me, that's all I'd be doing. I'm not a Linux guru, but I know how to use Google and it's almost the same thing. Ok, not really. 
6. Have fun! There's lots of fun things Linux can do that the regular OSs can't. Look around on YouTube for tutorials on how to use it. Install stuff. Check out spiffy toys like CompizFusion to make it look cool and light your desktop on fire. There's even tutorials on how to make Linux work/look like Windows or Mac
7. Don't be afraid to break it. It was free, right? Just install it again and start over!! I've done that multiple times, believe me. You learn more when you fail than when you succeed.

Ok, so I totally wasn't expecting this to be a Linux install tutorial. But whatever. I have had Linux running on my laptop for one or two years now. It works fine. No problems. Installing stuff is annoying sometimes, but that's why Al Gore invented the interwebs.

I just finished installing a different version of Linux called Kali Linux. It is a version designed specifically for hacking and I have no idea what that means yet. But its up and running and I'm about to find out. I had trouble installing it, so I wouldn't start with Kali. Ubuntu is great and if I can't handle Kali, I'm going back to Ubuntu.

Check out this video on Linux (and his other videos too!) if you want to know more about Linux in general. He has a whole bunch of computer videos and quite a few on Linux. Good stuff. Beware - tis long.

If you have a question, or an idea for a blog post, or something you have no idea how to make but want to see if I can do it... Comment below! Have a wonderful night!