Yes the business trip to St. Louis was yet another success in my cache of work experience. So here's a summary.

Wednesday morning pack a bag, take Sebastian to the babysitters and head in to work. Work about 5 or 6 hours assisting in the assembly of 50 training notebooks (about 150 sheets of documentation in 5 sections, a burned labeled CD, all in a 3 hole binder) and pile into a 12 passenger van. It was only 5 of us in the van, but good thing we had it. We left for St. Louis around 2:00. Around 2:56 I got a call. The number wasn't recognized by my cell phone, so I wasn't certain who it was. Then I heard the voice, and I distinctly remember hearing the same voice back around New Year's. Yup, it's my boss. Not just my boss, the CEO of the company. We don't talk that often together so I knew this must be a "special occasion." He goes on to tell me about what was happening in St. Louis. Apparently at the event someone tried to stick it to Arxan. Essentially it went something like this, a member of the audience posed the question: If "this technology" is so good, why do we need Arxan? Then the presenter went on to say: It is my belief we don't.

Yeah that can kinda make a CEO edgey. You know when a room full of people are told by a fairly respected presenter, your stuff is crap. Needless to say the CEO was conveying this agitation. After about five minutes the whole van triaged to counter this falsehood of "our stuff is crap." The "technology" that was "better" than ours had a severe limitation. You had to use custom hardware. Furthermore the presenter was making the technology out to be the holy grail of security. This is perhaps a good presentation, but not the full truth. Security needs to be at all levels, for it to be effective. Anyhow, our technology doesn't require specialized hardware. After about an hour (now 4:00) we were able to calm ourselves down, and be ready for our presentation.

Then we hit the storm. We drove through hours rain and heavy wind. Fortunately just as we were on the outskirts of St. Louis the storm was over.

At 7:00 we get to the hotel, check-in, meet another fellow employee, and are off to a casino for dinner. It was a really tasty meal. I had a salad to start, and then for the entree filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Very good. Once dinner was over it was around 9:00. Time for bed eh? We got back to the hotel, reviewed the presentation and slept.

Thursday 7:00a breakfast. Got to the customer's location around 8:00a. Setup 25 laptops and put out the 50 training notebooks. People starting filing in around 8:30 - 9:00. Soon everyone was there and we were presenting. We drove home the point that we like the other technology are but one piece in the puzzle. Once again we were able to captivate the audience, everyone loves to learn how to hack. Unfortunately some were expecting something else from the presentation. Originally we were going to train the group on our product.

In the past, Mike and I trained 6 students together, each student had their own laptop. For us to be able to train the 50 proposed students would have meant we needed 16 trainers and 25 more laptops, not going to happen. Anyhow, the training went well. We got alot of positive feedback and some negative feedback, not without constructive criticism though. By 3:00 we were all packed. But before we left we got to tour their facility. It was indeed impressive. By 4:00 we were back on the road. Got back to my car around 9:00p, and was in bed by 9:15p.

Today was monumental. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but todays accomplishments were tremendous. We finally got the software working on the hardware!!! The odd thing was that we were able to get the software to work on other hardware but not the hardware the customer supplied. There are quite a few more details, but thats the main gist.

Basically what the problem boiled down to was this:

: free space : code : data :

Now what was supposed to happen is the data was supposed to move into the free space, but since we chose a memory address that we thought would be empty this it what happened:

: free space : data : data :

Now this is a problem the data has overwritten the code, and the hardware didn't know what to do. Furthermore the crude diagram is only half true because the code only ran so long before it clobbered itself. *sigh* After much investigation we discovered that the address whe chose to put the data was the exact address our code was loaded into... this is bad. After some tinkering the resolution became:

: free space and a little more : code : data :

So that after the code ran we had:

: free space : the cooked data : code : data :

And there was much rejoicing.

Today was my wife's first day at work. She's recently graduated with her Master's Degree in Speech Language Pathology and is now working for a staffing agency. Her current placement is in two retirement homes, one closeby and one about thirty minutes away. Unfortunately the current attitude towards SLPs in the placements is that her work is unnecessary. This is far from the truth. Over the past two years I've learned a couple things about the field. And its a really big field, from swallowing to language, from throat cancer to articulation, from cranial facial anomalies to stuttering. How can this be disregarded??? If the patients can't talk to the other therapists, or eat for that matter, how can they be properly administered?

Hopefully she can change some minds.

As you may or may not know, I participated this past weekend in the Hunger Hike fundraiser. While waiting for the hike to begin I was interviewed. Kinda neat eh?

The Hunger Hike met the goal of $50,000 which is good news for the hungry of West Lafayette. It's good to see that even admist other disasters, local charities are still strong.

It was a fun day. We got there around 12:30pm, turned in our donations and got free t-shirts and water bottles. There were some door prizes and then while we were standing there a gentleman from WLFI came by and interviewed me about the hike. We sat and listened to the hub-bub and watched Sebastian find new canine friends. Then the Purdue Crew was off to carry their boat the 2-mile distance, preceded by jogger's taking on the 4.5 mile track. We trailed along with the rest of the families. Along the way we met up with Nick who Kristen met at RCIA. He's another sponsor-to-be like Kristen, waiting for someone to help along the way of becoming Catholic.

My current past-time project has been capturing images from the publicly available Purdue Webcams . Specifically the Neil Armstrong Engineering Hall that is being built. Last night we had a pretty significant storm roll through and I was hoping to be able to capture an image of lightning.

That didn't take too long.

My lovely wife Kristen took me home and now here I am.

Details:

So left work early. Got home changed into my recommended short sleeve shirt. Was a bit worried, the Toyota had no gas in it. --- gause change --- Where was I. So got to the doctor's office a tinge late.

An aside, this morning I had misplaced my referral slip. I have now talked to each ot the listed Oral Facial and MaxilloFacial surgeons. Anywho I finally found doc I was going to .

Now I'm at the office and I fill out the mandatory personal inforamation, as well as the myrriad of yes no questions. NO, I'm not allergic to anything, NO i'm not chemically delpendent, NO I don't smoke...etc.

After that it was time to head back, Sebastian was ready to go. We decided it might be a bit too early for him to need any teeth pulled.

A quick X-ray and then a eval later, and I was strapped to the vital signs monitor. Kinda neat, I could play with the hearbeat monitor, and breath rate. Then the IV, and the drugs .. heh. Doc said I'd begin to feel wierd. He was right I don't remember awhole lot more after that. I think he may have asked what I do. I hope I was intelligible. Pretty cool experience. Anyway I seem to recall getting in a wheelchair. Then it was in the car, a transfer from the wheelchair to the car. And I was off. I have no recollection of the car ride. I'm still a bit loopy right now.. but it appears as though my jaw is infact intact. Yay they didn't break it ... phew.

Well loopy is strong.. I'm just sleepy.

i guess thats it.

Can't wait to proof read. It looks coherent... sorta. Maybe I should write a statement of purpose... hehe

Cheers!

Yup, as they should, the fellas at work have been giving me hell about the impending operation:

"They might have to break your jaw"

"You'll be black and blue"

"Don't use a straw"

"It's fun seeing the bone of your jaw"

Bah, it'll be great fun. When it's over, it'll be over!

Cheers!

Edit: 11:41am
"We should have brought in a hammer and chisel..."

So, you have this thing. You want it to be great. But you want it to be great in many ways. Which way should be the greatest? Lets say this thing is a software package. (didn't see that one coming) Should it be uber useful, generating gobs of data for one user? Or should it be sorta useful, but allow tons of users to access it?

The solution it seems, I should be able to both right. I want it to be great, and useful, (and fast, and robust).

*sigh*

Things are going well at home. I'm gearing up for grad school applications. Anywho, back to work.

From FIPS 197:

Cipher	Key Length (Nk words)	Block Size (Nb words)	Number Rounds (Nr)
AES-128	4	4	10
AES-192	6	4	12
AES-256	8	4	14

You might notice that the block size is 4 always.

No matter the Key Length.

*sigh*

My assumption was that if you double the key, for instance moving from AES-128 to AES-256 that you should also double the block size. This is not the case. The key scheduling changes but NOT the block size.

This, much to my chagrin, cause me about 4 hours of headaches where I debugged my code looking for a part where I hadn't doubled the block size. I determined that I had successfully doubled my block size and couldn't figure out what was wrong. I investigated the implementation of the cipher and was aghast! They were using 4 word blocks!! What were they thinking. So I open FIPS 197 (the spec for AES) and lo and behold ... block size is 4 words.. independent of the key size. Grrr...

My code now works.

Hurray! Sebastian is all better. The rash is gone and he's back to his ol' self. It's nice to be in a room with him and he not scream and cry for hours on end! One more parental milestone. Now we're prepared for the terrible twos.. I think. Yikes.

Child development is pretty amazing. This little helpless ball of humanity rapidly develops to perform activities I've grown to take for granted. For example he's getting really good at finger feeding. Pears are no match for him, nor is macaroni, pineapple, peaches, green beans, carrots, crackers, etc. His ability to pick-up new sounds is also getting better, which means I need to be careful what I say. He's able to mooo and almost say fishy, He's started to "dance". Well when he hears a song he likes he'll walk around in circles and bob his head. He'll pick up a toy phone and say hi. He's a pretty quick study.

Furthermore parental development is also pretty amazing. I went from a bachelor who couldn't match belt and shoes, to a married parent in a little over two years. In that time I've learned quite a bit, and also become rather emotionally attached. At first, I'll admit, I wasn't that taken by the little guy. But over time, his smile, giggle, and spastic walking has really grown on me. Especiallly the da-da. I know he's just throwing it out right now, but when I'm holding a banana-nut muffin and he's smacking his lips and then looks in my eyes and says dada, I've got to give him a bit, even though he'd already had an entire muffin, and a yogurt cup.

Along with the bachelor who couldn't match belt and shoes, I have a lot of life-learning to owe to my wife. It didn't take her too long, but suddenly I could see the light, brown shoe, brown belt. It's a tricky rule, really. She's taught me alot about how dustpans shoudln't be put on food preparation surfaces. I've learned what love is. Now I know that sounds sappy, but it's true. I never knew love like I do now. I mean sure my parent's loved me, just like I do Sebastian, but this is that other love. The love that many seek and (hopefully) many find. I've gotten some criticism concerning being married so young, but I prefer the life I've chosen. I'm so glad that when I go home I have my wife to greet me. Some might say, but what about the thrill of a relationship or finding someone new. Finding Kristen was one of the most thrilling times of my life. The amazing amount of attraction, physically and emotionally I felt towards her I knew I would never feel again. I won't lie and say everyday is thrilling, I won't lie and say that we are perfect for each other. Of course not, that is a farce. Perfection is an unobtainable goal, that is its nature. But I will say that there are days of great thrill, days of great love and happiness, and much like a roller coaster there a times where I get frightened and have to deal with the lows. That's life. So what's my point. To have what I have is a privelege. I see my friends searching for their significant other. I feel for them. I got lucky. I knew I liked Kristen when I first met her, but amazingly we fell in love and now we have Sebastian a great outward symbol of our love. It's amazing what can happen in two years.

In other news...

Thursday September 15 I'll say farewell to 4 of my molars. Yup wisdom teeth are getting the old heave ho. *sigh* Clearly I'm excited about the operation. I'd rather have my wis..dom uh teeth .... pulled. Er.

Sebastian was recently immunized for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Poor little guy is the 1in 6 to get a fever. He's fine, but just a little bit off. The plus side is that since he's pretty tired he's really cuddly.

Last night though he woke up around midnight and was not a happy camper. I'm still getting used to the ear thermometer. The first reading was 106 F. The next were 103.4 F and 104 F. Needless to say we called the doctor. They said that every thing was fine and that acetimenophin would be sufficient, but to call back if his fever gets worse.

This morning he was 99-101 F, and very receptive to the banana nut muffin. Hopefully the little trooper has broken his fever.

In other news, Racquetball was very nice today. I won a game and lost the next.

Racquetball is probably the best game known to man.

Well, Sebastian turned one, Kristen graduated with her Master's Degree, and we're celebrating our second anniversary today.

Oh and there were about 11-30 people in the house.

If you ever need a piece of hardware, be sure to ask for the cables as well.

Today at work we got a box, and power supply but no connecting cables. I suppose its... wireless.

Okay bad joke, but sometimes what you want is not all that you need.

If you are ever summoned for jury duty and they give you a number to call to see if you are needed.

Call the number.

You might find out that you don't have to go.

I did, but I didn't call the number. I went to the courthouse, the nice ladies in there asked me if I'd called the number. I told them I hadn't.

Call the number.

TOMORROW??!?!

Sheeesh. I thought when I had re-registered to vote that that would notify the court of my new address. As it is it didn't. The post mark was July 28th for and August 4th summons. I suppose I won't be playing racquetball tomorrow.

Wow, time to be a citizen.

The house is a mess. It's not quite that bad, but the area I've habitated in has gotten piled up pretty fast.

Anyway, my immediate family, inlaws, and my family will be here tomorrow.

Hopefully I won't need any help.

Tomorrow I leave for vegas!
Yay!

Wow,

So far this has proven to be a good read. I won't go in to any detail, but I would like to add a word of caution. This is not the children's book that came out 6 years ago. Rather this book is intended for those readers that started 6 years ago.

What I mean is that this book is really not intended for 11 year olds. Of course I'm reminded that 11 year olds play Grand Theft Auto these days. Regardless, I plan to let my child get through each book when he is of age.

Of course there's nothing truly horrible in the book, rather it could be best enjoyed by a 16 year old as that is the age of the main characters. I'm sure this is what J.K. Rowling intended, that the books grow with the children. However I wonder how many parents of young kiddos purchased the book for their kids. *sigh*

Anywho I still give the book two thumbs up, though I haven't finished. I have about 100 pages left and my wife and I plan to finish those tonight.

G' morning!

I don't know about you. But I'm pretty excited.

Apparently others are as well.

My weekend will be consumed.

The more I deal with this concept, the more it puzzles me.

What is trust? According to Dictionary.com :
Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

So how do we establish trust? Typically it is granted, and then maintained until something violates that trust. At which point it may never be fully restored. Once the integrity is violated, can it ever be totally restored? Ideally, yes one's integrity could be restored*. At least this is how it seems to be in human interactions. The quote:"Trust takes a second to lose but a lifetime to regain" embodies that idea.

Trust is founded upon the initial presence of another person. The ever important first impression becomes the framework for that persons perceived integrity. Therefore after the first impression, the initial steps toward trusting that person are involuntarily taken. It is only after further confirmation of that person's integrity/character that trust can be fully established. That works well enough for humans but what about communication where only one human is present?

Now we get into some sticky problems in computer science. What happens when that human interaction is relayed through computer programming? For instance, a web server implicitly trusts all connections to be valid connections. Of course in the event of a malformed request** the web server code should catch those errors and respond as necessary. But since the web server allows for unauthenticated access, we run into alot of potential problems. For example the buffer overflow is a classic example. Sending a specially formed request to the web server that is a bit longer than it can handle (with some special bits appended to the end) can cause the server to become under control of the requestor.

This is also where email becomes broken, not only from buffer overflows. It is susceptible to phishing. Email is great, you don't have to know the person, just their email address and for pennies*** you can contact virtually anyone in the world. This great convenience comes at a cost. The email protocol is wide open. With relative ease, I can construct an email that appears to be from Mickey Mouse or <choose your favorite>. And this is what is causing folks across the world problems. Oh this email must be from paypal.. sure I'll update my account.. oh you need my username, pass, ssn, DOB, etc... here you go!

Of course there are safeguards for these threats.. but perhaps a new trusted email protocol or needs to be written. Let's say that does happen, just to entertain the idea, how long before it gets implemented. Bah... Course even if you do create this Titanic**** protocol, what happens when you leave your desk and your email client open and Joe Hacker types an email to the president. The protocol is trusted so it must have come from you... And back to the problem.

How can one trust? How can one be trusted?

It seems that trust and perception begin to walk hand in hand. Trust is a reliance on integrity. Integrity is:
Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code

The reliance of trust is base on a perceived adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.

Perception and reality, perhaps that is my next rambling.

*(but not quickly!)
**(something could have legitimately gone wrong..)
***(the price for the bytes [probably fractions of a penny])
****(meaning on its maiden voyage it'd probably sink)

Wednesday night our family and all of Arxan Labs went over to my boss' house for a pool-side catered dinner. Sebastian was the only baby there. Arxan is very much a family oriented company and all the executive staff members that were also attending the dinner were very interested in the little guy. The CEO even commented on Thursday that he was a cute kid. Ah Sebastian, only 11 months old, and already networking.

Phase II of the Nemesis Project was reviewed on Friday! We had a blast (pun intended) by launching model rockets. The model rocket was the kind with the camera in the nose cone so whenever it reaches apogee it takes a shot. Can't wait to get those developed.

Today was really good. Started off the morning with a couple Caramel Macchiatos and finished with pasta and homemade spaghetti sauce. Took Sebastian for a bike ride this morning to pick up some milk and doughnuts. He was a pretty happy camper. Cleaned house a little bit. Helped Mehlberg with his landscaping. Took another bike ride around the neighborhood with Kristen and Sebastian. Not sure what else is planned but its been a pretty good day.

I was able to flex my AV skills again by creating a movie of Sebastian, about his quest to learn how walk. You can find it here.

Wow, I've meant to comment on this but haven't had the time. But now I do so I am..

Last weekend was amazing.

Taste of Chicago was Saturday.

Sunday after church Kristen and I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a bike trailer for Sebastian and a bike for Kristen. That day we took a nice ride around town and visited a co-worker of mine. Then we had Terry over for mongolian beef which was tasty.

Monday (the Fourth of July) was equally enjoyable. In the morning, we rode our bikes to the grocery store (avoided cars, saved gas!). Charcoal grilled for lunch and dinner. Collectively spent $120 on fireworks, and just had a great day.

So for not having planned the weekend it sure turned out nice.

Yesterday was an unbelievably fantastic day.

Yeah! Went to the Taste of Chicago, didn't plan the trip just kinda went. It all worked out perfectly. We left at 9:30a so Sebastian was able to nap in the car. We got to the windy city around noon. Although the parking was expensive ($17), the festival had free admission! We enjoyed a selection of foods from local eateries. We had Dolmeh (stuffed grape leaves), a chicken taco, two bratwursts with the works, fried dough (elephant ears), chocolate covered frozen bananas, seasoned fries, and a Cheesecake Smoosh ( chocolate chip cheesecake with oreo topping a scoop, of vanilla ice cream AND chocolate syrup to boot!) Food coma was imminent.

Along with the smorgasboard of food stuffs, there was live entertainment everywhere. There were amazing Caribbean acrobats. The would stack themselves in different configurations and jump over one another. They also had an interesting sense of humor. Jokes were made about Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, and San Francisco. Here's one joke I can reproduce told by a guy who calls him self "Sugar Daddy":

Sugar Daddy: Little girl how old are you?

Little girl: six

Sugar Daddy: When I was your age, I was six.

Heh. You probably had to be there, but regardless thats pretty funny. There was a Fisher Price playpen, which Sebastian (and I) duly enjoyed. After playing with an assortment of child safe toys, we mosied to the Power Wheels section. There we found a "Grave Digger" monster truck Power Wheels. I let Sebastian sit in it until some staff told us that it was dangerous to have him in there seeing as how it wasn't completely assembled. After we left the Power Wheels section we found some fully assembled toys. There were mini power wheels with a handle that a parent can hold. The parent can steer with the handle and activate the motor with the push of a button. Pretty neat concept but doesn't seem terribly practical. The highlight of course was the free concert by Los Lonely Boys, Santana, and El Salvador Band. We could only stay thru Los Lonely Boys set, but as we were making our way back we heard Santane performing Maria.

It was truly a great fun-filled day. Can't wait for Sebastian to get older so that he can enjoy more of the fun that is in store!

Well this was supposed to be my weekend project. But I suppose it can still be.

I decided today to pick up a copy of FIPS 180-2, or Secure Hash Standard. I figured it would be an interesting exercise to implement a crypto algorithm from a standard. It turns out this document is REALLY well written. The author(s) go into great detail of implementation. Fortunately (?) they stayed away from talking about the theory of why SHA is a good choice.

I haven't implemented all the breeds of SHA-2, or really cleaned up the code. I chose SHA256 because I'll be able to get the most benefit from it. Using AES in Cire, I was left with choosing MD5 for the key generation. Worse still this left me with having to use AES 128 bit. Of course the diaries are ridiculously protected with this. Ever "vigilant" I wanted stronger keys. I thought maybe transform the users password and MD5 again, but this could be more trouble than its worth. So I figured SHA256 would be best. Perhaps OpenSSL includes an implementati... NOPE. (unless its undocumented). Regardless I picked up FIPS 180-2 and began pounding out the code at around 8:30p. So now here I am at 11ish and for the string:

abc

I generate:

00: BA 78 16 BF 8F 01 CF EA 41 41 40 DE 5D AE 22 23
10: B0 03 61 A3 96 17 7A 9C B4 10 FF 61 F2 00 15 AD

and for the string:

abcdbcdecdefdefgefghfghighijhijkijkljklmklmnlmnomnopnopq

I generate:

00: 24 8D 6A 61 D2 06 38 B8 E5 C0 26 93 0C 3E 60 39
10: A3 3C E4 59 64 FF 21 67 F6 EC ED D4 19 DB 06 C1

So now I can use AES 256 yay!!! ridiculously strong diaries!

Next steps are code cleanup and modularizing the "api". Then I can integrate with Cire.

G' night!