Life has been non-stop busy the last couple of weeks. That is the reason I haven't been able to get to writing what I have been up to. Sorry about that.
So the fun began with the beginning of August. I was spending most all of my time preparing for DefCon in Vegas that week. Because everyone was so paranoid about having our laptops hacked there I setup the lab’s laptop to take with me. It was fun trying to get everything setup. I am slowly getting used to the Mac, but I must admit it just makes me want my PC again =p
On Wednesday I drove down to Vegas. The drive actually went pretty well. We had rented a pretty large car, and so everyone was pretty comfortable the whole way there. The hotel room we had was also pretty nice, though it was in a casino, which wasn’t the cleanest place.
We though that DefCon was starting on Thursday, but it turned out it didn’t really start till Saturday. Because of this we just kind of chilled the day away. On Friday we started the real hacking competition. At first things went pretty slowly. We had problems figuring out how to get our network setup. We successfully attacked a computer that would allow us to get to the various challenges, but we were stuck on how to go from there. Luckily it wasn’t just us that was stuck, but the rest of the teams as well.
The second day went a lot better. It still took us quite a bit of time before we got any points, but eventually we were able to get a couple. When we finished the day we were in fifth place. This is actually pretty good for us have only done this a couple of weeks now. I personally helped solve half of the problems. None of them were too hard once you knew the trick, but some of the tricks were pretty hard to see.
On Sunday we went to church and headed back. I almost managed to drive the whole way by myself, but towards the end I had to switch out. When I got home everyone was pretty happy to see me. I guess it was pretty conspicuous that I was gone for several days.
After DefCon was over things kept just as busy. While I was at DefCon, Dr. Seamons found a conference he wanted us to submit a paper to. So for the last two weeks I have been working like crazy to try and help get the paper together. It is a lot harder then I thought it would be. It wasn’t until this last Saturday that we even got the paper to look mostly like we wanted. It is finally starting to look really good, which is making me awfully happy.
Other than that the only thing of note was that FLSR move outs happened. It will be sad to see everyone move out. Hopefully we will get some really sociable new people that move into the ward. That would be just great.
Oh yea, the best thing of all is that Drew and Cassi are back in town. I missed them so much when they went to Hangzhou and I came back to America. We still live in different cities now, but at least we are in the same country. They came by to visit a week ago Saturday. It was really awesome to see them. We just chatted for a while, and it made my day.
Well that is what I have been up to. Things have been busy but they have all been pretty simple. I can’t wait for school to start up again. I have some really great classes I am signed up for, and this semester should be just wonderful!
