MIA

So I have been missing for quite a while now. Sorry about that, life has been busy, and I really have not had time on Sunday to update people on what has been going on. I’ll try to give a brief overview to catch up everyone.

One of the biggest things that happened was getting finished with this semester. At times it felt like I could never get everything I wanted finished. In the end it all came together great. My finals went well. It looks like I will finish this semester with a 4.0, which makes me just ecstatic, especially since I am taking the hardest CS class BYU offers this semester. I am sad that I am running out of math classes though.

One of the other cool things that has happened is that the Chinese house has finally started purchasing movies. It is really fun to watch the various Chinese movies. It is ridiculously hard to understand a 100% of them, but overall I still think that they are great. I have enjoyed watching them with my roommates.

We also had a really good dumpling activity with the Chinese house. We must have wrapped five or six hundred dumplings. There are still frozen dumplings in the fridge a full month later. It was so much fun though, and I just enjoyed myself. I love how close the apartment is becoming. At first the girls didn’t seem to want anything to do with us, but now we are really coming together well.

 

Thanksgiving week was wonderful. On Tuesday of that week Serena, the Chinese house girl’s RF, was baptized. It was so wonderful. I am so happy for her. She really is a perfect match for the church.

Also that week I got henna on my arm. For those that don’t know, henna is a temporary body art that they do in India. My friend Kelsey is really good at doing henna, and drew a Chinese style dragon on my arm. I did have to wrap the entire arm afterwards while the henna dried. It made it a lot of fun to do everything ;) Luckily I had Emily and Karen of the Chinese house to help me do everything that night.

Lastly that week was Thanksgiving itself. For thanksgiving I went up with my family to our family cabin. It was great to just get up there and relax. While up there quite a few of my family freaked out about the henna, which was hilarious. I also submitted like four thousand applications for internships. Hopefully at least one of them will pan our.

 

After that pretty much everything I have done has centered around Emily Stewart, the girl that I am now dating. She is really amazing. We have so much of the same interests. We make each other laugh all the time. People think we look pretty ridiculous together because we are always so happy ;) Their just jealous =p

We have done a host of things though. Two stand out though. First just over two weeks ago we went to SLC together with Ben and Serena from the Chinese house. There we went to the temple to do baptisms. It was the first for Serena to go and do baptisms.

After the baptisms we went around and looked at the lights. It was so beautiful. They really were gorgeous. Afterwards we went and ate pizza at The Pie. I really wish there was a The Pie in Provo. Oh well. It was really a great time we had together.

The second one was a date we had to the river woods. Once again it was too see the lights (something Emily really enjoys doing.) It was beautiful, and there was someone playing the violin and it just sounded great. It was fun to snuggle up around the open fires and listen to him play.

After we were done looking at the lights we went back to my house (my family’s house) in Provo. There we made hot chocolate and watched “500 Days of Summer”. This is Emily’s favorite movie. It was a pretty cute movie. It was a really fun time! Here are some pictures from that night:

 

And that is what I have been up to these last several weeks. It really has been a wonderful time, I couldn’t have asked for a better month. Hopefully I will be able to find time to keep this blog better up to date, but we will just have to see.

Well, I hope that everyone else is enjoying this Christmas season so. I hope that we all remember the multitude of blessings that the Lord has given us. In this time of year when we are grateful for the birth of the Son of God, it is also the perfect time for us to recognize the hand of the Lord in all parts of our lives. We truly all are blessed of the Lord! I hope that we can all remember that in this season.

Quite Life, Busy Papers

Not much has actually happened these last two weeks, so there isn’t much for me to talk about. Heck, if I didn’t know my parents like reading this blog, I might not even post

 

One of the few interesting things was last Saturday, I was able to go to a middle eastern dance performance. It was very interesting. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting, but I certainly enjoyed it. That is one of the benefits in living in Provo, there is always something to do!

For Halloween I didn’t do to much. At night I dressed up as a math test by pasting math problems all over me. It was pretty lame, but I haven’t been that into Halloween in the last couple years. I then went out with a bunch of my friends to go and get something to eat. It was just fun to get to hang out with everyone over Halloween.

This weekend I had a pretty good Saturday. In the afternoon Drew and Ryan, my old roommate, came over and we had Hotpot. It was so much fun, and it tasted wonderful. It has been quite a while since I had gotten to eat hotpot, and it is just as wonderful as I remember. What is even better was that I got to catch up with my old friends. I just wish more of my flagship friends were in Utah and we could hang like that.

Saturday night I went a celebration of the Indian Festival of Lights. It was really quite a lot of fun. The actual MCing was rather terrible, but I think that is part of what made it so enjoyable. It wasn’t the most cultural experience, but who cares if you get to spend time with your friends!

 

And that was pretty much my week. Still working on getting published, but other than that nothing much is new. Hope everyone else is having fun adventures!

Cabin Pics

So the only thing of note that I did this week was to go with a friend to watch Harry Potter in the dollar theatre.  It was great, especially since she, like me, likes to comment on movies.  It made everything just a bit more fun.

 

Other than that, nothing much happened, so instead of writing this week, I am just going to post the pictures I took while up at the cabin last week.

Cabin Trip

Well this week ended well, namely with a cabin trip.  Unfortunately it didn’t start well.  The only real problem during the week was that I had to get my car fixed.  There were some problems with the engine and overall the repairs cost me about 440 dollars.  The most annoying part was about 140 or those were not really that necessary, but the mechanic didn’t make that clear.  I probably won’t use the same place in the future because of this.

To make up for that though, the car was ready and I was able to spend Friday and Saturday at the cabin.  I really have to thank Brittany for arranging the trip.  It was a lot of fun.  Friday night involved hitting the town of Evanston (which trust me, at 10PM is fairly dead).  The next day involved Ping Pong, Hiking, BYU football, and good food.

The Hiking was a lot of fun, especially at the end when Pasha, Sean, and I took a different way back to the trail head.  We trudged through the snow (still not melted from last year I believe), climbed rocks, and just generally had a really great time.  It was so much fun.

The BYU football game was also a lot of fun.  We watched the re-broadcast at 8:00 PM since we were hiking at 2.  Since no one knew the score it was just as intense as the real thing.  I am really glad that we won.

 

Well, that has been what is new in the last two weeks.  School continues to go well.  I’ll make sure to post some pictures from the cabin soon.  Until then I hope everyone else is having great adventures!

Conference Week

Well, at the beginning of the week I finally got caught up with school.  It actually turned out ok.  It really does feel good to be caught up.  The real excitement in the week wasn’t until the weekend.  The football game this week was incredibly intense.  It was wonderful to see us move the football down the field so consistently when Riley came in.  It was great.

 

Other than that my next adventure was conference weekend.  Saturday afternoon I went with Pasha to SLC to attend conference.  We went to the standby line for the Saturday afternoon session.  Unfortunately we didn’t get in and had to go the tabernacle.  It was so terribly hot.  I nearly killed over.  It made it really hard to pay attention.

After the session I went with Pasha and Bonnie to lunch.  I then went to get in standby for Priesthood session, but the line was so large that I just went home instead.  I attended conference with my dad which was great.  I am glad I got to do that.

After priesthood I went to pick up Pasha.  After picking up Pasha, which was its own adventure, we then went to Drew’s house.  It was great seeing everyone again.  That was probably the best part of Saturday, was getting to spend time with so many of my friends.

 

On Sunday I went to my aunts house.  We went to the canyon between sessions, and it was beautiful.  After conference we went to my cousin-once-removed’s birthday party.  It was good to chill with my family.  After that I just came home and rested.

 

Overall, everything was great this weekend.  I am so grateful that I could hear the word of the Lord with so much of my friends and family.  Nothing better than that!

Orlando Conference

The biggest event in the last two weeks was the (ISC)² conference I attended in Orlando this week.  Pretty much all of the week before led up to it.  I worked like crazy to do my homework, and I still didn’t get nearly as much as I was expecting done.  It really has been rather crazy.  I did manage to get caught up, all in time for a terrible game that I will not mention again…

We had to wake up at 4AM to go to the conference.  When we got our tickets I saw the worst sight possible.  The security line was wrapped all the way around the baggage caracals and back.  Even though they were moving people through at the fastest rate I had ever seen them move people at we still ended missing our flight. 

Luckily we got re-routed, unluckily that involved first going to LA to catch a plane to Orlando.  It meant that we spent eight hours on a plane.  Not as bad as going to China, but still not the most fun ever.

Well eventually we got there, and then just went home and rested.  We were bushed.  Because of the re-route we didn’t even get to attend any of Monday’s part of the conference.  So instead we went on Tuesday.  The sessions were only so-so interesting, but I really enjoyed the networking luncheon.  It was great to talk about the projects I was working on and see real interest for people.  It is nice to know that people care about usable security.

The most exciting part of the conference was a awards Gala Wednesday night.  Really good food, and even better networking.  The guy from MITRE was falling over trying to give me and my team-mates internships.  It was actually pretty awesome.  It was great to be recognized for our victory as well.

After all that we headed home, and once again I pounded the books.  I am mostly caught up but not quite there yet.  Luckily I was able to see BYU win another football game, which is exactly what my soul need .

Well, that is all for now.  I will let you know how next week goes, and if I manage to survive my 19 credits hours of homework I missed for a week .

How can I be so busy…

I thought being a graduate student would mean that I just had oodles of time.  It probably would mean that except that I have decided to start learning Russian.  Not only did I pick a hard language, I picked one that I have absolutely no experience with.  That means I have a about 15 less hours a week of time because of the language.  It is hard to keep doing it, but I do enjoy it, and I plan to stick with it.  As long as I can get my other work done that is.

 

So, I must say getting home teaching setup is killer.  I spent about seven hours on Sunday getting everything setup, printed, and handed out.  It may have taken forever, but it is most certainly worth it, as now everyone knows who their home teacher is.  It is good, and I am glad that it can all be done, and not linger on any longer.

 

So interesting things this week… Well I did setup a mini computer lab inside of my lab, for use by the penetration testing students that would come.  I also got the chance to start playing on an intramural team.  This is my first time being on such a team.  I think that it will turn out to be a lot of fun, so I am actually pretty excited to be able to participate.  We did lose our first game, but I think we have real potential.

The sad thing of the week was BYU losing.  It was fun at first since I was with friends, and while not looking too amazing, BYU was still doing well enough.  Unfortunately in the second half Texas was really able to take advantage of the wholes in our team.  I was so sad that we lost, but that is how the cookie crumbles.

 

As for me, I am currently running around like crazy trying to get ready for the Conference I am attending in Orlando next week.  I need to talk to my teachers and figure out what to do with my homework during that time.  Hopefully it all works out without killing me.