Anyway, I was thinking about this trip with particular reference to the USA’s apparent new policy of having border guards copy data on laptops people bring across the border. I consulted the office, and apparently they were unworried about the potential for confidential work IP being copied.

I, however, also keep my personal email on my laptop. I, paranoid tinfoil-hat type that I am, was much more concerned about this data than work was about theirs. No, there’s nothing in there that would get me in trouble, but it’s just nobody else’s business, you know?

Anyway, the solution was obvious. It was time for me to start using Truecrypt. Truecrypt is awesome, free, open source software for we tinfoil types. It does a lot of things, but the most simple thing it does is let you create a file that contains an encrypted filesystem. In other words, you can treat this file like a new hard drive, with everything that you put in there becoming encrypted. And if the file isn’t “mounted” as a drive, with your password, then it’s just a block of encrypted data–just another file on the drive.

So, if you wanted to reserve a few Gb of space for files that need to be protected, you create a large file, and when it’s mounted Truecrypt lets you treat it like a drive the size of the file. If you make a really big file, you have lots of ways to make it inconspicuous, like making it look like a swap file or hibernation file, or like a large temporary internet download file, or even doing something really tricky like using alternative data streams to make it look like a not very big file. (Of course, if you really need a big encrypted volume, Truecrypt has much smarter, and better hidden, ways of doing that, but they’re not as a simple as the “filesystem hidden in a file” approach.)

Anyway, I created my hidden filesystem, and moved all my Outlook data files in there. This isn’t NSA grade protection, since it’s obvious that Truecrypt is on my system, and further it’s obvious from looking at Outlook that it expects there to be a volume around that isn’t apparent. Of course they can’t tell what file it might be hidden in… but if they were trying hard they could probably figure it out. I’m not trying to stop them if they’re trying hard. I’m just keeping snoopy border guards out of my business. (Although the idea of some poor NSA flack spending time and effort to crack my encrypted filesystem just to find an email archive that includes the bad poetry I wrote in my late teens, and some really terrible fiction I wrote in my early 20s, does kind of crack me up.)

So, that’s been working great for me for a couple of months. It was ridiculously easy to set up, with no perceptible performance drag, and it’s been quite reliable over the intervening months.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed that when I closed Outlook the window would close, but that I couldn’t “unmount” my Truecrypt volumes–the system would claim that programs still had handles open on the encrypted volume.

Using Process Explorer, I could see that the Outlook process was still running–it had no windows, and the stack traces on most of the threads showed it was trying to shutdown, but seemed to be in some kind of deadlock state waiting for some event. No matter how long I waited the process never seemed to end, to actually complete shutting down. And, obviously, since the process had handles on the email storage files, which were on the encrypted volume, that would prevent the volume from being “unmounted”. I had to manually kill the process before I could “unmount”.

I thought this was weird, but honestly it didn’t bother me too much–I rarely mount/unmount the drives, and I generally have Outlook running all the time.

However, it became apparent that this behaviour was now consistent. It happened every time.

This was starting to bother me. But I put it off for a while. I kind of assumed that this was a Truecrypt related problem, since I had never seen it before, and it didn’t seem unreasonable that Outlook was having a problem releasing a handle to the encrypted files or something…

During this trip, though, I was unmounting the volumes each morning before going to the office, and mounting them again each night, and it really started to be annoying.

So I did some research, and to make an already long story shorter, I eventually discovered that Outlook has a common problem with COM Add-ins that aren’t perfectly written, where the Add-ins keep the Outlook process from shutting down. This seemed to match the symptoms I was seeing, but I was skeptical–primarily because I had never installed any COM Add-ins.

Turns out though, that iTunes secretly installs one. And I recently put iTunes on the laptop.

So, I disabled this Add-in, and suddenly everything worked right again. Yay!

Then I grabbed some scripts I found during my Googling for the problem, and set them up, so that I have icons to click to mount the volume (prompting for my password, of course) and automatically start Outlook, and to unmount the volumes.

I got the scripts working, and then rewrote parts of them to do just what I wanted them to do.

Everything was working fine. This was some time on the weekend.

Then, last night, iTunes updated.

And guess what I noticed today. Yup, the Outlook problem was back. And sure enough, the iTunes update had turned the COM Add-In back on. So not only does Apple sneak in an Add-in without telling you, and not only does that Add-in break Outlook, but they even turn it on if you have explicitly turned it off in the past. Good one, guys.

So, it’s off again, and everything is happy on my machine. And yes, I am that big of a nerd.

Beesley’s paper is definitely worth the time it will take you to read it, if you have any interest in the history of that time period at all, and especially if you’ve ever been interested in the idea of a “hobo”. Mike Drake, I am looking at you.

Beesley also includes a hobo jargon glossary toward the end of the paper (which I’ve reproduced below), which triggered another of my special fascinations: jargons, slangs, cants, etc. Someday I’m going to do a massive post or series of posts on that subject, and I’ve queued up the hobo jargon for inclusion in that.

The paper also got me thinking about hobo signs again–you know the things I mean: those little symbols that hobos used to scratch in charcoal or chalk to send messages to each other about various places. (Something that I suspect is probably rooted in the patrin of the Roma, but that’s a whole other post.)

You might also recall that this kind of old school tagging had a bit of a resurgence earlier this decade in the form of “warchalking“.

Doing a bit of a search for “hobo signs” turned up a ton of examples, and also turned up an exhibit at the NSA of all places (well, the NSA’s museum, but still).

A couple of interesting notes from the writeup accompanying that exhibit:

In some places, hobos who drifted into town were not always welcome. In other places, they found those who were friendly and willing to help. Knowing where to go or whom to avoid was important to these travelers. However, hobos’ paths crossed infrequently, so the hobo community developed a written communication system of signs. Mysterious and temporary, these signs helped hobos move more safely around the country looking for work. A symbol on a mailbox, fence post, signpost, or tree told other hobos what to expect in the town or from the homeowner.

What’s interesting to note, as Liungman points out, is that the system developed at all. Hobos, in general, travel alone and enjoy their independence. And yet, they still congregate in hobo jungles or travel with an occasional partner only to split when they decide to go a different way. Despite this preference for solitude, they still feel a certain camaraderie with their fellow hobos, an obligation to assist their brethren – thus, the creation of the signs and symbols.

The signs were intentionally temporary. Hobos used chalk or charcoal to mark an immediate location. The signs wore off in time. This may have been because situations were frequently in flux. A farmer may initially be helpful, but later, as resources or work diminished, he may order the hobo away. A woman who first took pity from a hobo’s sad tale may become hardened after hearing too many.

Interestingly not mentioned in the piece is the essentially dynamic nature of the code–as “locals” discover what signs mean, they would start to tamper with the communication channel, either erasing them or putting up misleading ones, so the “current” code had to constantly change. And to keep up with the latest code you would need to meet up with group of other hobos. So not only is the fact that the system arose interesting, but there’s a weird dynamic where its existence keeps powering the need for hobos to meet up regularly in order to “keep current”, and that ties into the whole altruistic-and-yet-self-interested currents that would power this kind of system. The romantic in my does love the idea of the “current” codes passing hand-to-hand, although I love it even more in its perfect science fiction form.

I usually travel with some tire chalk², so I should totally learn some of these signs and leave them on my travels. Someone else might come along and recognize them. You never know. And maybe I’ll meet up with someone who will whisper the new codes to me.

After the jump: the glossary, and a table defining some common hobo signs.

Glossary

Ballast

The gravel used for rail beds.

Bay Horse

Brand name of rubbing liniment for horses. Similar to bay rum.

Bindle

A bedroll.

Blind

Front End of a baggage car.

Bridge and plank gang

A railroad maintenance crew.

Bridger

A hobo who rode both steam-powered and diesel powered trains.

Bull

A policeman.

Canned heat

Strained Sterno consumed for the alcohol content.

Catch the westbound

Die.

Cinder bull

A railroad policeman.

Consist

All the cars that make up a particular train.

Couplers

Fixtures at the ends of train cars used to connect one car to the other.

Courtesy call

A night’s stay in the town jail without being arrested. An opportunity to get in out of the cold and to eat a meal.

Crummy

Caboose.

Dick

A detective.

Drag

A slow freight train.

Dumpster diving

Rummaging through dumpsters for food or other needed items.

Freddy

Flashing rear-end device on the train. It has taken the place of the caboose.

Gay cat

A person on the road who, when the going gets tough, can afford to purchase a ticket (Irwin 84).

Go in the hole

To pull onto a siding to allow another train of higher priority to pass by.

Gondola

A train car with low walls and no roof.

Gun boat

An empty can used for cooking. Usually a coffee can.

Harness bull

A policeman in uniform.

Helper

An extra engine added temporarily to a train to assist in pulling it up a steep grade.

High iron

The track in a railroad yard that serves as the main line or through line.

Hooverville

Shantytowns built of junk and cardboard by the poor. Named after Herbert Hoover, the 31^st president of the United States of America (1929-1933).

Hotshot

A fast train.

Jackrollers

Thieves who often targeted a hobo who had just received his pay.

Jocker

A man who travels the road with an underage boy.

Jungle

An encampment where hobos stayed for brief periods before moving on. “To jungle up” is to stay in a jungle.

Jungle buzzard

Someone in a hobo jungle who tries to avoid sharing in the work and expense.

Knee-shaker

A handout on a plate at the back door of a house. Eaten on the back steps while balancing the plate on one’s knees.

Knuckle

A movable joint in the coupler.

Live train

A consist of railcars with engines hooked to it. A train that could move at any time.

Local

A train that makes many stops and does much work in a short distance.

Lump

A handout which is packaged to be taken along on the road.

Mission stiff

A bum that spends much time in missions.

Mixed freight

A train consisting of a variety of cars.

“P” farms

Farms where prisoners worked.

Pearl diver

A dishwasher.

Punk

A young boy travelling on the road with a younger man.

Rattler

A long train rattling along the tracks, resembling a rattlesnake.

Red cards

A membership card of the International Workers of the World (IWW).

Reefer

A refrigerated freight car.

Rods

The steel structural bars that were below the old boxcars. A very dangerous and difficult place for hobos to ride.

Rule of the match

An insulting gesture of handing a match to someone. It is the same as saying. “You are not welcome around this jungle fire. Go build your own someplace else”.

Scoping the drag

Looking for a good ride on a freight train as it slows down.

Seam squirrels

Lice.

Sit-down

A meal given as a handout with the offer to eat it in the comfort at the kitchen table.

Specks

Fruit with spots beginning to form. Farmers and groceries were often willing to give it to hobos.

Stack train

A train made up of topless, low-sided cars which carry large containers sometimes stacked two high.

Streamliners

Railriders that travel with light gear and on fast freights.

Walking dandruff

Lice.

Wobblies

A short name for the International Workers of the World (IWW)

Yard dick

A railroad detective.

Hobo symbols

Symbol	Definition
	Alcohol in this town.
	Authorities here are alert.
	Bad water.
	Barking dog here.
	You can camp here.
	Courthouse.
	Crime committed here. Not safe.
	Dangerous neighbourhood.
	Be ready to defend yourself.
	Doctor here won’t charge.
	Doubtful.
	Fresh water. Safe campsite.
	Police frown on hobos here.
	Owners will give to get rid of you.
	Good road to follow.
	Go this way.
	A man with a gun lives here.
	Halt!
	Good place for a handout.
	Hit the road.
	This is a well-guarded house.
	Ill-tempered man lives here.
	This owner is in.
	Jail (or prison).
	Religious talk will get you a meal here.
	A judge lives here.
	A kind lady live here.
	A kind gentleman lives here.
	Kind woman lives here. Tell a pitiful story.
	There is nothing to be gained here.
	This is NOT a safe place.
	There’s no use going this way.
	An officer of the law lives here.
	OK.
	The owner is out.
	Free telephone.
	Keep quiet.
	These people are rich.
	The sky’s the limit.
	Road spoiled. Full of other hobos.
	There are thieves about.
	Hold your tongue.
	Good place to catch a train.
	Trolley stop.
	A vicious dog lives here.

(Canadian Geographic also has a table in a more pen-and-ink style.)

1. The paper is hosted by northbankfred.com, a site dedicated to trains and the hobo experience. Be sure to browse around and check out some of the other articles, photographs, or if you’re really hard-core, the stories!
2. For any emergency veve that needs creating. Don’t ask.

Quite often these days this means encoding information into the insignificant bits of large binary files–changing the colour the pixel at (134,651) from (168,211,10) to (169,211,10), or making similarly indetectible changes to the information in an MP3 or AVI or whatever–but that’s not all it could mean. When I’ve seen hide-the-file-in-an-image-and-post-it-to-a-newsgroup used in a network TV spy show, you know it’s old hat already. But the idea of encoding a message so that it looks like a typical spam message and then sending that from forged address? That’s the brilliantest example of hiding in plain sight I’ve seen in ages. And probably the best confidentiality-without-encryption thing I’ve read since Rivest’s chaffing and winnowing paper.

I’m sure the implementation could be improved in lots of ways, and yes, it’s really only useful for very short messages anyway, but what a clever idea.

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