14:02:38 Wednesday February 01 2006
Things are getting very busy at work. I have new responsibilities and what not.

Two interesting pieces of news that have been forgotten.

1. Westboro Baptist was in town and no one invited me to the counter rally
2. You can no longer send a telegram via western union. It's true.

My project at work continues to absorb large blocks of time; hence the infrequency of updates. Last weekend Sara and I got to spend some time with Ohler and Wanke on the occasion of Wanke's birthday. Castor also ran a very successful game of TFtSC.

I had to mail my grandparents a new hard drive. I wish I had known those computers contained IBM DeathStars before I purchased them. Oh well, buyer beware. I replaced it with a shiny new Western Digital so all should be well with theirs from here on out. My sisters failed as well so I don't like these odds so far.

I fixed my GameCube controllers recently.

There is now a TAB energy drink?!?! (Yes, I am the kind of dork that takes his camera to the grocery store)

I am bound for the RSA Conference next week. This is big time, a whole bunch of big crypto and security guys will be in attendance. I am kind of honored that Arxan was willing to shell out the 1500 USD for my pass. Just thinking about that makes my head spin, 14,000 attendees times 1,500 USD each equals 21 million USD for the event. Scary. As always stalkers can find me using this:

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Monday, February 13, 2006



Frontier Airlines # 615

Indianapolis International (IND) to Denver International (DEN)

Departure (IND): February 13, 7:00 AM EST

Arrival (DEN): February 13, 7:50 AM MST



Frontier Airlines # 169 

Denver International (DEN) to San Jose International (SJC)

Departure (DEN): February 13, 8:30 AM MST 

Arrival (SJC): February 13, 10:05 AM PST 



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Monday 13th - Thursday the 16th, 2006



Clarion Inn Silicon Valley (CA913)

3200 Monterey Road

San Jose, CA 95111

Phone: (408) 972-2200



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Thursday, February 16, 2006



America West # 208

San Jose International (SJC) to Phoenix Sky Harbor Intl (PHX)

Departure (SJC): February 16, 3:40 PM PST

Arrival (PHX): February 16, 6:28 PM MST



America West # 467

Phoenix Sky Harbor Intl (PHX) to Indianapolis International (IND)

Departure (PHX): February 16, 7:22 PM MST

Arrival (IND): February 17, 12:45 AM EST



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Concerning the San Jose trip:

I worked late Sunday night on some design issues and instead of sleeping I decided to stay up all night and leave at 04:30 to catch our 07:00 flight out of Indy. We stopped in Denver briefly where the altimeter on the plane did indeed indicate that we were about a mile high. Upon arriving in San Jose at about 10:15 we took a long cab ride out to our hotel. We waited until the last minute to arrange things, and as such we ended up quite a ways from the center of town.

We decided to explore a bit and after a very long walk we stumbled across Aqui a nice Cal-Mex place. Despite being tired we roused ourselves from our hotel room later in the evening and went to explore down town San Jose. I got my conference badge and we wandered the streets for a bit. We were not too hungry after our late lunch so we had appetizers and beer at Gordon Biersch.

On Tuesday E.B. and I grabbed the last CalTrain from Capitol to Diridon and walked the mile or so to the conference. I passed the badge to E.B. and he went and watched Bill Gates give his keynote. I got my exhibitor badge and went in to help Krinsky man the TriCipher/Arxan booth. Around noon E.B., Sara, and I got together for lunch at Bella Mia. In the afternoon sessions I had the pleasure of hearing Xiaoyun Wang discuss her groups findings on collisions in major cryptographic hash functions. While her English was halting and her work very technical it was still interesting to see how she has optimized the collision path against SHA-1. At dinner time Sara took me to Sino for a lovely Saint Valentine's Day dinner. In addition to a very nice modern Chinese atmosphere and good food we also consumed a bottle of 2004 St. Supery Sauvignon Blanc.

On Wednesday our trip to the CalTrain station was partially blocked by police tape. As it turns out someone was killed with a machete at the hotel adjacent to ours. We were both able to watch the keynotes including one on Indian Mathematics. For lunch we ate at The E&O Trading Company. E.B. and I continued to trade the pass back and forth through the afternoon. Although the quality of the talks on Wednesday seemed somewhat worse than Tuesday's. We all had dinner at Blake's Steakhouse. We didn't do much else because after so many late nights we all decided to turn in early.

Thursday was our last half day at the conference. The keynotes were not interesting, but we watched a few of them. We met up with E.B. at 11:30 or so, had lunch at Il Fornaio, and headed to the airport. Our flight was delayed and we nearly missed our connecting flight in Phoenix. They piled us on the electric cart as soon as we exited the plane and rushed us to our next plane. At 00:45 on Friday we touched down in Indianapolis. And despite exhaustion I managed to drive home safely in terrible weather.

Photos from the RSA conference have been uploaded here.

Quickly set up a simple website for the Glenwood Heights neighborhood. A mailing list is in the works.

I am busy at work as always. I took a brief break from the office this evening to hear Jorge Cham of PhD Comics speak. It was not all that enlightening, but it was a fun and humorous talk. He spoke to a full house in FRNY G140. There was concern about fire code violations.

I discovered PhD when researching my graduate school options. While many of his comics proved strangely prophetic the only way to understand life as a grad student is to experience it.