The thing that gets me, is that some people actually **like** it here!?

Resident puppy of the week at the chateau kobi.

I finally made it down to see the Atlanta kids this weekend. It was, as usual, a great time. We ate food, hung out, and talked in the usually geek banter I am so accostumed to.
I am posting this story because Ryan and Kerry have become numbers 4 and 5 in the “You never post to your site” complainers group, so here I am.
Saturday was particularly notable as Kerry and I went to check out breaklanta 5. It was a great time. There were MC battles, B-Boy Crew battles, “popping” dance competitions, graffiti art, and good times to be had. The moves some of the B-Boys were throwing down were ridiculous, but at the same time, I feel like I could do many of them already because of Capoeira. I should spend some time learning the dancing steps as thats all I would need to be able to at least jump in and have fun with some breakers.
One other note of interest from the event: I was watching a crew battle when this guy started busting some nice moves. I looked closer and realized that I knew him and his crew. They were representing Nashville so I had to scream for them.
Other random thought: I am thinking of switching my home (faster) linux box with the one here at school. When I migrate it will be a pain to bring all of the services back up. Since it will be a big hassle anyway, I am considering switching to movable type. It’s much more light weight and serves what I am looking for. We will see, I have far too much to do right now as it is.
That is all for now. I have homework to do and sleep to enjoy, and all that jazz.

I finally got motivated to post some more content on my site. I had to give a talk on wireless hacking for a secure networks class. Check it out in my technology section (Here).

Yes, PN7 has come to a close and I am still recovering. There was so much that happened at the con that I couldn’t even begin to record even part of it so I’ll just do a quick summary and move on. I would like to start by thanking Dolemite for organizing the con and putting up with all of the attendee’s bullshit. Skydog also deserves recognition for being the lead security monger for a hotel full of drunk geeks. Props to you both.

So what happened this weekend? In my mind the most important thing that happened was peer bonding. Of course this won’t be the popular opinion that most of the “kiddies” at the con will hold, but I deem them “kiddies” for a reason. This weekend I found myself in the company of many of the most technologically intelligent people I have ever known. In no particular order, I’d like to briefly say a word about each of them. Lets start with Abaddon aka Mike. Mike know’s so much about wireless connections and software its ludicrous. We are talking about the guy who wrote AirJack and impressed the shit out of everyone at blackhat. Then there was Elonka. Elonka is probably the closest thing you will ever meet to a natural code breaker. She gave an amazing talk and was cool to hang out with. She has to be pretty cool she cracks code with freaking MS Word for the love of god! Next was Acidus. This kid is hella cool. He is known by many as one of the kids that got sued by blackboard for trying to make the system better. I’m really happy that I got to hang out with him more this weekend as he is a fellow hardware enthusiast. Then there is nanochick aka Marie. Marie is a really awesome girl who is dating Abaddon. She is a graduate student at Emory in the field of nanotechnology and is, like all the others mentioned above, smarter than you (and I) are. The next person that comes to mind is Marie’s brother Decius. I can’t say that I know too much about Decius other than that he started memestreams.net and is well respected by just about everyone I talk to. Lastly but not least, is Inignoct aka Kerry. Kerry is a former Vanderbilt student and fellow ex-McGillite. He has a sharp wit and is always a blast to hang out with. These are just a few of the many, many people that I had the chance to hang out with. I look forward to meeting up with them all next year and at Interz0ne in Atlanta.

As for the events of Phreaknic, drunken coding never got off the ground because everyone was too drunk to compete. I don’t feel bad about that because everyone was having such a good time that no one wanted to take a break to try to code. The “Why you suck” panel went off without a hitch thanks to Apple Computers and iMovie. Abaddon, Noxfu (aka Timball 2.0) and I mixed 2 days worth of video and photos down to a presentation in 2 hours. Let me say this, everyone agreed that it would not have been even remotely possible if it weren’t for how badass Apple hardware and software is. Abaddon couldn’t even get a program to do a raw transfer to work on windows. To get it to work on my powerbook we just plugged it in. And it worked. None of us could believe it, but it just worked. I know that I have become an Apple zealot recently, but this kind of shit that makes me really believe in Apple.

That’s all I have to say about this weekend for the moment. There are many pictures of the con up at http://www.phreaknic.info/ as well as in my gallery in the assorted parties section.

Cheers,

Baudburn

It has been awhile since my last posting. I have been sidetracked with midterms and all sorts of other goodies, so I will try to bring closure to this story before I move on to other topics.

We walked up to our hotel room to find that it only had one bed! Roxie thought she had asked for a room with 2 beds, but apparently her Spanish language skills leave a little to be desired. My first indication that this was a good group to travel with came at this moment. Rather than complaining or even batting an eye, everyone had a good laugh and we just decided that we were going to all sleep in it. After settling down for a few minutes we decided that despite the rain, we were going to go out to find something interesting to do. We didn’t make it too far when we came across a pool hall and figured that we could play it chill there and get ready for the next days adventure. A good time was had by all while we proceeded to embarrass ourselves with our horribly unskilled games of pool and drink margaritas. When the hall closed, we headed back to the room. Despite the size of the bed, it was somewhat of a challenge to fit 3 guys and two girls into the bed, but the mission was accomplished and it makes for an interesting story if nothing else .

We were all very lazy and slept in as long as possible the next day. After everyone had showered we headed out to see more of the sites. Nothing of particular interest happened during this time. We found some total hole in the wall and had some dinner. The food was great, and very inexpensive. That night we were driving around when Pablo decided we should try to drive up this mountain to see what was at the top. The road was at a 45+ degree incline and it was raining hard outside so we weren’t surprised when we got stuck spinning tires in the middle of a Mexican neighborhood. A Mexican gentleman in his late 20s saw us and ran out into the rain to push our car up the hill. We all got out and started pushing and made it up the hill. I can’t believe that this guy whom we don’t even know would be so nice as to help out the stupid Americans who were stuck. If it were America, I don’t know if we would be as kind. I feel like we would just sit around laughing at the idiot who was trying to do something stupid, and that makes me feel bad. This is a topic best left to another day so I will continue.

That night we went out to the clubs and had a good time. I won’t go into the details because there isn’t many. We had drinks that were strong, and ran around in the rain.

The next day we drove into the country more and saw mother nature at her finest. We drove up some roads that were so broken that the car barely made it through. At one point there was a raging waterfall that was going directly through the road and off of a cliff on the other side. After watching a small old school beetle go right through it despite the risk of death, we couldn’t be showed up like that. We hit the gas and made it through. We have some great pictures of that that I will post when they get developed. We drove up this mountain for an hour till we were above the clouds and took in the beautiful view. On the way back down we had almost run out of gas. Pablo stopped to talk to a guy on the side of the road who laughed at us for not having enough gas and then sold us some for a fair price. After getting to a gas station and filling up we headed back home contented in mind, body, and spirit.

Ok, I made it back to Nashville in one piece so its about time I continue my story. After an uneventful trip from the border to Monterey we drove all around town checking out the scenes, the people, and the wet roads with poor drainage. That took us about 2 hours and then started looking for food. We found this little hole in the wall restaurant on some random street and decided to stop. It was on the corner of some small road and another small back road and had enough chairs to fit the five of us and maybe one other couple. At any rate, Pablo ordered a pile of food and we feasted. There was a bean soup, that had meat and what appeared to be pork skin, though I’m not exactly sure, tacos, taquitos, and countless other things that I don’t remember. We all ate till we were completely satisfied and then they wanted to know if we wanted coffee. Barbara wanted some and asked if they had any “pan dulces” or sweet breads. They are much like donuts, but less sugar and more dough. There is no good reason why they might have any at all, since it was a dinner shop and they are usually made in the morning, but something that absolutely blew my mind happened next. The guy said that he did not have any, and he wasn’t sure if the store was open but he would go check. The owner then proceeded to rather swiftly leave his store (his wife was still there) and go try to buy us pan dulce. He came back successful and gave us the bread and coffee. The coffee was amazing. Usually I don’t like coffee that much, but this was so flavorful and tasty. It was time to pay up and so we asked for the check. Would you believe that the guy went though all that trouble on top of giving us piles of food, and the bill for all five of us to eat was 22 US dollars? This absolutely blew my freaking mind. The guy ran out of his store to go get us food, on top of the drinks and piles of food, and it only cost us 22 dollars. I need to move to Mexico. With full bellies, we began looking for a hotel. This took us another 1-2 hours. It’s amazing how hard it is to find a hotel in such a large city. We were looking for a cheap local place, but ended up stumbling on a days inn that was only 60 US dollars per night and decided that considering its location it was good enough.

I am going to stop here again. I’ll post more of my story tomorrow. Good night.

I have too much of a story to tell to get it all down in one post, but I will try my best.  Barbara just finished her psych. rotation this weekend so it was about time for me to take a trip down and visit her.  I arrived in Houstin around noon to discover that they had overbooked the flight to Harlingen and consequently were offering $200 plus the value of the ticket.  They would get me on a flight that left 1 hour later.  I took the offer and walked off with my $300 credit that I will use o­n my next trip down.  This is the second time this has happened, and as far as I'm concerned, it can just keep o­n going.  Upon landing I couldn't believe what I saw:  It was downpouring in Harlingen.  This would become a theme as the rain was destined to follow us for the remainder of the trip, but it certainly came as a shock to me since it doesn't happen very often there.  Barbara picked me up promptly at the airport and we met up with Pablo, Caeser, and Roxie at Barbara's apartment.  We all piled into the rental car and were o­n our way to Mexico.There was little or no trouble going across the border into Mexico.  The only point of interest was that we were required to make copies of certain documents to register our car in Mexico, and of course, we had to pay to make the copies.  I know this is obvious, but on the other side of the border it really is a different country.  That doesn't necessairly mean that I like it any less, but nonetheless it is very different.  We saw live chickens on the side of the road and hoards of people getting onto buses to shuttle them home.  The roads and buildings were certainly less well kept, but there was a certain charm to the simplicity of everything that I saw.  It took about 2.5 hours to get to Monterey, one of Mexico's largest industrial cities, whoops, time to catch my plane back to Nashville. Gotta run, be back later

Today was my first day back to school and it was a good time. The only class I had today was an audit class in Chinese. The teachers seem very nice and I am excited to learn a new language. It is certainly going to be difficult, but it should be a great time.

Tommorow starts the “real” classes. I have a Circuits class in the morning and a device physics class in the afternoon. Sad as it may sound, I am excited to get some homework and get back into that whole routine. Strange as it sounds, I really enjoy the sense of accomplishment you get after completing a homework assignment.

Well I guess thats all for the moment. I will post impressions on the classes tommorow.

A few days ago I realized that I have not updated the site in a while. I think it is about time I put something on here, even if a great deal of what I have been doing is lost. Two weekends ago I went to visit Barbara and we had a wonderful time. The most memorable part happened on Saturday night when we camped out on the beach. We took the WRX there and parked it such that the hatch was facing the ocean. We put blankets down and watched a movie on my laptop with the ocean in the background. Certainly not an experience I will soon forget.

As for last weekend I went to Atlanta to visit the ATL crew. It was a good time that was spent mostly geeking out.

Today I am working on some inline assembly in C. I was considering making it work on both the PPC and x86, but as it stands I am keeping it intel only. PPC is supposed to be Reduced Instruction Set, but I don’t have the patience to learn the million variants of each instruction.

Other than that, nothing much is going on. I am hoping to get around to posting more technology related things soon. I just have so many things I want to do, that the website gets pushed down in priority. Many appologies for that.