Dan’s Musings

I had a weird dream last night. It wasn’t weird in the sense that weird things happened, things that were out of the ordinary, unusual, or impossible. In fact, it was weird in the fact that it didn’t have any of that stuff. You see, usually I remember dreams when something strange/frightening/unusual/fantastic happens in them. This dream had none of that. It was just a little slice-of-life soft of dream. I wasn’t aware that I could have those types of dreams, because, as far as I can remember, they’ve never happened before.

This dream took place in Chicago. I was working for a local television station (W-something-something-something). My job wasn’t anything special. I worked with the local news, but I never got to be on camera. I was responsible for fact-checking, or something plain and ordinary like that. The only interesting thing about the dream was that two of the characters from The Office (Kelly and Stanley) were in the dream, but they didn’t do anything interesting.

So, I’m confused. I really can’t ever recall having had such a boring dream. Whatever happened to the dreams where I was a cartoon character, or a super-hero, or dated a super-model? I hope this is just a fluke, or I just won’t want to go to sleep anymore.

Thursday afternoon, I was in a class at the Institute. The class was “The Gospel and the Productive Life,” taught by Bishop Simmons. The lesson was mainly about The Word of Wisdom, but one of the quotes that was read mentioned the benefits of wholeseome recreation as well. Bishop Simmons told us that the root of the word recreation is re-create, and that if recreation doesn’t help us re-create ourself, it’s not really recreation. I liked that a lot. Generally when someone explains something to me using etymology, it helps me understand a lot better. This was a concept that had never really occurred to me.

Fast forward to last night. The Institute hosted a “formal” dance: sort of like a mini-prom. I don’t really like dressing up, but I wanted to go to the dance. They were also providing dinner, and who’s gonna pass up free food? Not me, that’s for sure.

So, I went to the dance. I had a beautiful date, who’s also great company. The food was pretty good. The music was mostly good. And I danced up a storm. At one point, some fast dance song (maybe it was techno) started playing, and I was dancing pretty fast, and couldn’t really tell much of what was going on around me because I was moving too fast. I heard something like, “Go, Dan, go,” and I became aware that a circle was forming around me. So I kicked it up a notch, and when I slowed down to move to the edge of the circle to let someone else have a chance, I realized the circle was WAY bigger than I thought.

By the time I got home, I was sore from my hips down to my toes. I was also tired. I also felt really good. Throughout most of this semester, I’ve been a bit depressed for various reasons, but after that dance, I felt really good. Not just that I had had a good time, but my outlook seemed a little clearer, and some of my problems not so serious. I thought maybe it was just endorphins. I had expended a lot of energy, and I’m sure I was producing a lot of endorphins, which make you feel good. It was probably just a chemical thing.

This morning, however, I still feel really good. Somehow, going out and partying with good friends just changed my perspective. Which brings me back to the Institute class. This is what Bishop Simmons was teaching us. Thursday afternoon I understood the principle, but Friday night, I truly learned it. We all need some time from the daily grind to re-create ourselves. I guess I hadn’t really had that in a while, but last night I got it in a big way. I’m so glad I went to that dance, and so glad I learned that principle.

So, last week, I was trying to think of new ways to spread the word about our entry into the Insomnia Film Festival. As I was thinking of ways to spread the word, the student directory at my school came to my mind. It lists all the students, faculty, and staff at the university who haven’t specifically restricted their listing. All in all, that comes to about 70,000 people. I thought that if I could search that directory, and send an email off to everyone in it asking them to vote for our entry, surely at least 1% of them would vote. That would send our rating through the roof! Yeah, I knew this was spam, but it was for a good cause so it seemed like a good idea to me.

So I looked into the directory and found out that I didn’t even need to use the web interface to access it. I was planning on writing a program that would send queries to through the web site, and parsing the results. Not easy, but not that awful. But I didn’t even need to do that. There’s a little program on my computer called “finger” that could query the server, and send back the results in a nice, easy to parse format. One caveat though: it would only return the first 50 matches to each query. So, I would have to try many different permutations to get a good number of results. So, I typed out a few commands that would loop through the number 0-999, two letter permutations (aa, ab, ac … zz), and three letter permutations. It would write the results to a file, sort the file alphabetically, and remove duplicate entries. When that loop finished (after a little more than a day), I had 53,380 unique email addresses for University of Texas students, faculty, and staff. I actually never showed up in the list, but with such a common name, that wasn’t too surprising.

Ok, so I had the addresses, the next step was to write a good email and send them out. Here’s what the email said:

Dear {name},

How would you like to support a group of UT filmmakers? We’re a small group of UT students who
recently produced a film for the Insomnia Film Festival sponsored by Apple. For this festival,
we, and other college and high school students across the nation, shot, edited, and scored a
three-minute film in only 24 hours. Now we’d like your help.

This festival is a vote-based contest. Those in the top 25 get their film featured in Apple
Stores across the nation. Our film, “Crosswalk,” can be seen at Apple’s website. For instructions on how to register to vote, you can go here.

We’d love it if you would view our film, and if you like it, give it a four-star rating.

So, now that I had this great email, the next step was to send it off. Now comes the problem. The mail server on my computer is a little buggy. It sends emails off pretty slowly, and while it’s fine for everyday use, sending off 50,000 emails would take forever, and bottleneck any other email I want to send off while it’s sending the others. So, in my excitement, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. Being in the Computer Science Department, I had access to the CS Department’s computers, and I could even log in remotely. And I knew that their mail server wouldn’t be buggy like mine, since I’m sure it transmits well over 50,000 emails on any given day. I was sure that if I sent mine off from UT, it would just be drop in the bucket, and nobody would mind. So, I logged in to one of the headless machines (i.e., computer without a monitor) from my home computer. I copied the list over, and wrote a little script to send them off. Before I started to send them, I checked to see if anyone else was logged in to the same machine. Nobody was, so I started sending them off, and it seemed to be working fine. After about 2/3 of them were sent off, I noticed that I started getting back a weird error. They weren’t sending properly. Then I noticed an email in my inbox from, apparently, one of the lab admins. It read thusly:

Do you know that you have 37,000+ messages queued up on olympus {the name of the computer} to addresses all over the Internet? Is this intentional? Can you convince me it is not spam? i.e., do all these recipients know you and did they solicit your email? Or is this unsolicited email?

Did it ever occur to you to ask before doing this?

I have disabled email on olympus.

Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask beforehand. I didn’t even think anyone would mind. Clearly, I hadn’t thought through this properly.

A little while later, I received another email from one of the higher-ups in the department. It wasn’t actually addressed to me, just CCed to me. It was addressed to the guys who administer the CS user accounts. It read:

If we don’t see a reply by tomorrow morning, please turn this account off.

Oh crap! This was more serious than I thought. So, I immediately sent a reply to the first email I got.

Yes, these were unsolicited emails. However, they weren’t commercial.
They were sent to UT students/faculty/staff informing them about a
contest in which a few UT students were competing, encouraging them to
vote in the contest.

I realize now I probably should have asked before I sent out such a
large volume of email, but I guessed that several thousand were probably
not much when one considers how many emails are sent through the email
server everyday.

I also checked olympus before I started sending them out to see if
anyone else was logged in to the computer beforehand, so that I wouldn’t
be hogging resources from somebody else on the same machine.

I apologize for my actions, and in the future, I will not use University
machines for my own personal projects.

Apologetically,

Dan Jones

I hoped that would fix it. About half an hour later, however, I noticed I had been booted off of olympus. It could have just been a timeout. I logged back on, but it wouldn’t let me. I tried my CS department email, and it still worked, but I couldn’t log in to the computers. Not a huge deal, but a thought occurred to me. The CS department has a website you log into to turn in homework assignments. You have to use your computer account to login. I tried it, and couldn’t log in! This was not good. I decided to send a response to the second email, to the higher-up in the department.

I have responded to the mail (my response is attached),
and I am very sorry for what I have done.

My account seems to be disabled. I fully accept the consequences of my
actions, and feel it is fully justifiable to deny me access to the CS
computers, however, disabling my account also restricts my access to
Turnin. I do still have assignments I need to turn in there, and it
seems too harsh to not allow me to do my assignments.

I promise I will never use University computers for my own projects
again. I just ask that I be able to still use Turnin so I can continue
to do my coursework.

Sincerely,

Dan Jones

I received no response. So, I decided to forward this to the guys responsible for administrating the accounts, telling them that while I could still check my email, I had no access otherwise. Remember that the email telling them to cut my account said to do so by the next morning if I didn’t respond. I did respond, and they cut it immediately after my response. I wasn’t sure what to do. I waited, and less than half an hour later, I couldn’t get my department email anymore. I decided there was nothing else I could do right then, so I forgot about it until the next day.

The next day, I still had no access to my account, but I did have a new email in my main UT email account inbox.

The Information Security Office at The University of Texas at Austin has
received a report that you have used UT Austin’s mail system
inappropriately. The report specifically alleges you, or someone using an
account that you are responsible for, used the mail system to send
unsolicited email (spam).

While you certainly have a right to distribute information to those who
have indicated a desire to receive it, sending the information to large
groups of recipients who may not have requested it is a violation of
University policies and can result in a suspension of network privileges,
disciplinary action, or both. I’ve attached a copy of the message attributed
to you which is the subject of the complaint and which, on it’s face, does
appear to violate University policies.

 

The complete policy regarding acceptable use and your responsibilities
as a user can be found at:

http://www.utexas.edu/its/policies/responsible.php

The rules for acceptable use provide:

Section IV:

7. Use resources appropriately. Do not interfere with the activities
of others or use a disproportionate share of resources. Send messages
only to those who may be interested in the content. Examples of
inappropriate use of resources are shown below. These actions frequently
result in complaints and subsequent disciplinary action.

• Sending a message at random to a large number of newsgroups
  or recipients (known as “spamming the network”).
• Attempting to inconvenience someone by sending a large number of
  messages (commonly referred to as a “mail bomb”).
• Deliberately causing any denial of service, including flooding
  or ICMP attacks (”ping attacks”).
• Excessively controlling a chat channel by such actions as kicking
  off or blocking other users.

Student Judicial Services will be informed if there is a second complaint.
If you have any questions please contact SJS at:

http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/

Wow! This was getting pretty serious, but it was just a warning. So, I used the same finger program I used to get the emails to see if my CS account was still active. It showed up, so they hadn’t deleted it, just disabled it. I decided to send another email from my main UT email account to the guys in charge of CS accounts.

I am the owner of the CS account with the username drj.

I was recently involved in an issue where my account was disabled due to
innapporpriate behavior. I have received a warning from the Student
Judicial Services, and have already stated multiple times that I realize
my actions were innappropriate, and it will not happen again.

I remain unable to access my account, and without my account, I am
unable to use the Turnin program to turn in my school assignments.

I can see (through finger) that my account has not been deleted, and I
would like to know if I am going to be given access to my account once
again. I can accept not being able to use departmental computers again,
but I cannot do my schoolwork without access to Turnin.

Since I have no way to access my cs email account, I would appreciate a
response to this email address.

Thank you,

Daniel Jones

Later that day, I received a response to that email from the same higher-up initially involved.

Dear Mr. Jones,

Please come see me tomorrow to discuss what happened. I am available
from 10-11:30.

I went to see her the next morning. I arrived just after 10. I knocked on her office door, and she called me into the office. She was in a meeting. “I’m Dan Jones.”

“Oh, you’re the bad guy. Could you give me five minutes?”

I’m the bad guy apparently. I wait until the meeting ends and everyone leaves. She calls me in. I don’t remember the exact conversation, so I’ll paraphrase.

“Because of the enormity of what you did, we had to disable your account. I just want to know what you were thinking.”

“Well, I wasn’t really. Did you actually read the email itself?”

“Yeah, something about a film contest.”

“Yeah, well, I really just wanted to help a friend. I knew this was a way I could help get votes for his film. I was just so excited to help him I didn’t use my common sense and think through what I was doing. Looking back on it, I realize that it was a bad idea, and not clearly thought out. I’m really very sorry for it.”

“Well, you know, this doesn’t just affect you, it affects the whole department. ITS found out about this, and now we look like we have no control over our students. They start asking questions like, ‘Why do you let your students do these sorts of things?’ It makes the whole department look bad.”

“I understand.”

“What you do on your home computer is completely your own business, but once you use our computers, it becomes our business.”

“Right”

“Normally, we’d delete your account right off, and you’d have to deal with the consequences. You tell me it was a stupid mistake. We’re all allowed to make stupid mistakes. I’m going to tell them to reactivate your account. But I want you to read every single department and university policy. Because if you violate even the smallest one, your account is gone, and if that affects your academics, you’ll have to deal with it.”

“Ok, I will.”

“Alright. I don’t want to see your name again until you graduate.”

“Ok, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

And so, all has return back to normality. I’ve certainly learned a few lessons about shared resources and proper computer use that I won’t soon forget. And that is the story of my week as a spammer.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I helped create a three minute film for Apple’s Insomnia Film Contest.

Well, the time to vote has finally arrived! Apple took a little while longer than they expected because they were just overwhelmed with entries this year. Their website is still a little shaky, but you can still vote for our entry.

Now, voting is a little confusing. First, you have to get an Apple ID. iTunes and .Mac users can use their account. For the rest of us, we have to get one first. Once you have your Apple ID, you can go to our video page. However, the registration to vote is not yet done. Apple wants to make sure you really want to vote for this! So, click on login on the right side of the page under where it says “rate this project.” It’s going to bring you to a page that asks you to register for the contest. Put information in all the starred (*) fields. For “Captain” put your name. Under “School/University,” put whatever you want (University of Texas is a good idea).

Now that this is done, you can go back to our video page, and vote (4 stars would be a good vote).

If you have a website, and would like to help promote our video, we have a banner add you can put up to get others to vote. Simply add the following code somewhere on your site/blog:

<a href="http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=1839" title="Vote for Crosswalk"><img style="margin:0px;" src="http://www.zanecochran.com/hosted_sites/oogafilms/uploaded_images/crosswalk_banner3-753832.png" /></a>

It will look like this:

If you want it centered on a line by itself, try this code:

<div style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=1839" title="Vote for Crosswalk"><img style="margin:0px;" src="http://www.zanecochran.com/hosted_sites/oogafilms/uploaded_images/crosswalk_banner3-753832.png" /></a></div>

It looks like this:

Last Saturday, oogaFilms created a three minute film for the 2007 Apple Insomnia Film Contest. This is a contest wherein college and high school students create a three minute film in 24 hours. oogaFilms’ entry is titled “Crosswalk,” and can currently be seen on YouTube, but on the 19th October will be available for viewing and voting on Apple’s website. I encourage all to go and vote this Friday.

The film centers around a young man (played by Gavin Gee), and his romantic endeavors to capture the interest of a young woman (played by Rachel Lawson), whom he met at a crosswalk. Like all of oogaFilms’ romantic comedies, this one is sure to amuse and entertain. (Really, this thing is great! I promise you you’ll like it.)

The film was written and directed by oogaFilms founder Geoff Yano. The music was done by Ryan Gee. Other behind-the-scenes tech stuff was done by Arthur Kendrick, Rodd Simonsen (of Ironrodd Productions), myself, and Mark Sanderson. Supporting roles were performed by myself, and Noelene Clark.

Again, come Friday, I encourage everyone to go to Apple’s website and vote for “Crosswalk” by Team oogaFilms, and tell all of your friends and family to do the same.

My friend Tom recently started a new website: Tom’s Super-Cool Wright Webpage. It’s hosted on the server of my other friend, Abinadi. Tom thought he must be incredibly clever because he issued a challenge to me to find his web page, if I could. Of course, he didn’t tell me the name of the website, where it was hosted, or any other information besides that it had a collection of quotes, and that it linked to (although was not linked from) the website of our friend, Abinadi, called Rant Fever.

He seemed to be proud of the fact that I couldn’t find it through Google. He felt some sense of accomplishment for having a site so pitiful that not even GoogleBot bothered to read it.

I actually found it quite easily once I discovered that it was linked from the blog of our other friend, Gavin Gee, which is called UtiliGee. I figured I would throw Tom a bone, and link to it from my blog, so that his site can piggy-back off the popularity of mine. I hope it helps, Tom.

I also wanted to mention that I’m writing this blog entry from the built-in Blog Editor of the Flock web browser. It’s a derivative of Firefox, so it can use most Firefox extensions (as long as they aren’t written to tie too much into the Firefox chrome). It’s a browser designed to enhance social networking. The next version will actually include some very nice Facebook integration, but it currently features integration with Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, Mag.nolia, and others. I’m not sure if I’m completely ready to leave Firefox yet, but maybe I am.

I should probably keep a lid on this until it’s ready, but I can’t. I’m too excited.

On Saturday, we filmed the pilot episode for our new webshow: Joe Stryker.

Joe Stryker is an action hero of the old school. Imagine taking Chuck Norris, Knight Rider, the A-Team, and McGyver, putting them all in a blender, adding in an extra heaping spoonful of manliness, top it off with one awesome 80’s mullet, and serving that atop an awesome motorcycle. You would have a generous serving of Joe Stryker.

This was a concept I came up with my friend Geoff Yano (of oogaFilms). Although, it was really mostly his idea. Of course, yours truly is playing the man himself. Geoff and I enlisted the help of other friends to fill in our production team of writers, composers, directors, and crew. Each webisode will be about 5 minutes long, and we’ll probably release a new one about once a month.

Our pilot episode seemed to turn out really well. In addition to myself, it features the acting stylings of Bryant Moscon, William Moyes, Mark Sanderson (who is also one of our main production crew members), and Kurstin Raposa.

Once the episode is done being edited, and our theme song is composed (being done by a great composer and friend: Ryan Gee), we’ll release it into the wild (on YouTube).

Joe Stryker does not yet have a home on the web, but I will be heading up the website effort, and hope to have it up in a couple months.

I’m really excited about this project, and hope you all enjoy it. Stay tuned for our pilot episode in the coming weeks.

On Friday, I was giving a ride home to my friend, Tina. I never let anyone ride my bike (including myself), without a helmet, so she was wearing my extra one, which, after I dropped her off, I strapped to the back of my bike. I pulled out of her apartment complex on Riverside Dr, and as I was crossing the next intersection (Wickersham Ln), a car heading the opposite direction turned left right in front of me, causing me to have to slam on my brakes. I don’t know if it’s because my brakes are not great, or because my front wheel is not properly aligned with my handlebars (I think both), but braking suddenly caused the bike to slide off to one side. So me and Jenny (that’s my bike’s name) slid side by side down the road right into the intersection. As I was sliding down the road, the thought came into my head, “I sure am glad this happened after I dropped off Tina, and not while she was still on the bike.” When we both came to a rest, and I regained my composure, I got up and walked over to Jenny, a couple feet away from me, and another guy ran into the intersection to help me. I hit her engine cut-off switch, and we pulled her off to the side of the road.

The guy asked me if I was okay. I felt alright and told him so. He then told me he couldn’t believe that guy cut out in front of me, and what an idiot he was, and so on. I asked if the guy was still here. “No, he just kept going.” I choose to assume that he for some reason, his mind was very occupied at the time, and he never even knew I was there. I have to assume that, because the other option is that he’s a horrible careless person, and I prefer to think the best of people until I have evidence to the contrary.

So the guy that was helping me then asks if my bike is okay, so I try to turn her on. She doesn’t start right away, but after a couple tries, she turns right on. “Thank goodness she still works!,” I thought. I begin to inspect the damage and see some scratches along the right side of the bike, but nothing serious. As I’m looking at the damage, a fire truck pulls up, followed by the police. I’m guessing someone looked out their window and saw someone sliding across the road and decided to call 911. If that person is reading this, thank you very much.

The guy in the firetruck gets out and starts asking about how I’m feeling. Does my neck hurt. “No, I’ve got a couple scrapes, but nothing serious.” Did I lose consciousness? “Not at all.” Do I want to be taken to the hospital? “No, I don’t think that’s necessary.” And so on. The cop that gets out asks me about what happened. When the other cop gets out he tells him I “fell avoiding a collision.” In a little while the ambulance shows up. The EMT wants to take my blood pressure and pulse. We step into the ambulance so she can. She asks me all the same questions as the fireman, and writes my answers down. She asks me two more times if I want to be taken to the hospital, and I have to sign a form confirming that I refused transport. When I get out of the ambulance, the cop gives me a card with my case number on it for the insurance company. He asks if I’m okay to get home. “Yeah, it’s no problem.”

So the emergency vehicles all start to head off. I put my helmet and jacket back on, and see some more damage. My jacket has quite a few rips in it. My helmet is scratched along the right side so badly that it completely impairs my right peripheral vision. I imagine how it would be if that had been my face instead of my helmet. As I pull away, at the next intersection I realize another problem with my bike. The front brake lever has become bent backwards. I could only grab it with two fingers instead of all four. But it still works, so I’m fine.

All in all, the experience was more reassuring than anything, in many ways. Emergency services were incredibly responsive, so if it had been worse than it was, at least I know I would have been in good hands. Also, it’s reassuring how well my gear protected me from injury. Other people on the road have a nice steel cage to protect them, but I have to rely on my helmet, jacket, and jeans. And when they were put to the test on Friday, they passed with flying colors. In a few days, I intend to post to flickr pictures of some of the damage, so keep an eye on it.

I had another interesting experience on my motorcycle the next day (one that didn’t involve endangering my safety). I was heading west on Highway 71 (aka Ben White Blvd), and I was pulling up to the light at Riverside Dr. There were about five cars stopped at the light directly in front of me, and as I’m pulling up behind the line, I noticed something float to the ground a couple feet in front of me. It caught my eye, so I stopped to look at it. I’m about one car-length behind the car in front of me, but the light’s red, so I don’t think it’s a big deal to stop where I was. As I look down, I see that it was a butterfly that had floated down to the ground. I thought, This butterfly doesn’t realize what a bad situation into which it’s put itself. There are cars all around, and it decides to sit in the middle of the road. I was really starting to worry. “This butterfly will get squashed by this SUV behind me if I don’t do something to help it.” As I was trying to think of what I could do to ameliorate its situation, the light turned green, and I had no choice but to go. As I pulled away, a wave of guilt passed over me as I realized what I should have done. I could have put Jenny in neutral, bent over and picked up the butterfly. Maybe coaxed it to rest on my shirt inside my jacket, and then as soon as I could, pull over to the side and let it off in the grass. I felt really sad that this poor butterfly was probably now squashed under someone’s tires, making this not a very Goodyear for the butterfly. (I apologize for that last pun when discussing morbidity. Bad taste, I know.)

I don’t know what it says about me when I worry about a single, little butterfly, but thinking about still makes me a little sad.

Photo by Jessie Barber

So, around the beginning of the summer, I began to work on a Facebook application called Photos With Friends. The idea was that it would be really cool to see which of your friends are in the most photos with you. Well, it took me a few days to get it up and working and have a decent feature set. Not only could you look at your “photos with friends,” but you could also check other people’s, and you could add a top-6 list to your profile.

Then I left it.

There were a couple cosmetic changes that I needed to make, including finding that great photo for it that you see above. So, I forgot about it for a while. It was left in developer mode, which meant I was the only person who could install it on my facebook profile, and no one else would see the top-6 box on my profile. So for a couple months, it became just an extra thing on my profile that I shifted around once in a while when I added more stuff. Then one day, Facebook get a new thing to parse the code on profile pages. It broke my app. Not entirely broke, but it caused some problems. The problems were entirely Facebook’s fault, and it didn’t take them long to fix it (a few hours), but during those hours, I was trying to fix it myself. And once I started working on it, I couldn’t stop.

So I finally finished the last one or two things that I needed to do on it, and brought it out of developer mode. I then msged all my friends (I’m sure some were annoyed), telling them about my new app, hoping some would install it. Several did, and then I submitted the app for approval into the Facebook Application Directory. The only way more people would use it is if it was in there. That was last Saturday.

It would seem Facebook employees don’t work on weekends or Labor Day (makes sense), so my application didn’t get handled until today. But today, when I got back from class, I checked, and saw these glorious words: “Application Approved!” I quickly pulled open the directory to find my app. It had only been on there a few hours, I suppose, as it was still on the first page of the “Newest” apps. You can see a screenshot of it here. By the time I found it on the directory, over half a dozen new people had already added the app!

This may seem like a small accomplishment, but I am really excited. I worked on something I enjoy, and people recognized it. It’s great!

Some of you may think, “But wait! You’re an actor. People recognize your work all the time.” Well, yes, that’s true. But this is really the first time I’ve worked on something computer-related and someone other than my family and friends have acknowledged it. It’s a good feeling.

zombie ‘07 by Misteriddles

I came across an article on how to kill a zombie. It’s really a top ten list. It got me thinking. Being a zombie would be a horrible thing. So I implore you of my friends and family: if I ever become a zombie, please kill me.

This is no joke. I would hate to live a life of eating brains, without a functioning one of my own. So, in the event that I ever become an unwilling soldier in the army of the undead, please put a bullet straight in my head. Other methods of disposal are welcome, just so long as you put me out of my (and everyone else’s) misery.

Of course, this isn’t simply a one-sided request. I want each of you, my loved ones, to know that if you were to become a zombie, I would do the same for you. After all, that’s what friends are for.