CS591 ST 008

Lab 0 (due 2/4/09)

Alright, after re-reading the instructions provided by Jed, I realized that I need to write something about my experience with this CITI course.

Ok, first of all, I finished this drudgery course. I cannot for the life of me understand how learning about co-authoring applies to the Security and Privacy course. The videos provided were comical and almost worthless, but the text explanations were very well written. It did seem like they would reiterate the same thing more than needed.

Also, Peer Review and Mentoring? Really? It was good reading, since it had close ties to work I do professionally...but not sure this has much use for our class.

Some of the questions in the quizzes just seemed "off".

I think there should be a more appropriate training available.


Lab 1 (due 2/25/09) 1st week

I have taken time to study the DES structure and in detail how the F function works.
I have looked over the 8 bit DES program given to us by our instructor trying to understand exactly how it works.
I have built this program and generated my own cipher text using the plain text pdf file.
I'm really starting to appreciate the DES Feistel structure. It reminds me of the guys on the street that move the 3 cards around and ask you to pick the Ace. There is a lot of bit "shuffling", duplication and remapping.
The area I'm confused with is how do we determine a "good" choice for K3? When do you know you have a good selection? I know Jed mentioned that when we use this key with the Q value and somehow we get a 50+% parity bit of 0, then it is good? Not too sure. I'll need to come in to Jed's office hours and just do an example by hand.
NOTE: Looking at linear.cpp I realized that it wants you to run the pc.cpp file as input to it...not using a file (unless you want to "linear.out < pc_outfile.txt").
Here is the result from running the linear program using the example key of 22B8FA:
Likely candidates for subkey K3:

Subkey Deviation
-----------------
da 346
fa 346
92 258
b2 258
ea 228

NICE! FA was my key3 and it has it listed at the top.

New TV Stand

Ok....if you have been to my house in the last few months, you have probably noticed the ice chest that held my TV. I have been given grief about it from time to time with good reason. I have been looking under Craigslist and on-line. I finally decided to use my Christmas gift cards to finally buy one that I can be proud of.

This TV stand I bought from Best Buy. It was kinda expense but well designed and uses nice materials (solid wood). It also has a TV high mount that allows the TV to swivel. The nice part of this swivel is that the pivot point is protruded out far enough to prevent the edge of my TV from hitting the wall.

Here is the link if you want to read more about it.

Lucky me, MRI

I'm at Loveless hospital for an MRI For the first time in a long time I was able to play tennis with no pain. I played my chiropractor yesterday. This game was a rematch from when he beat me but when my back was at it's worst. Final score was 6-2,6-1,6-1 mine :-D.

OK. Finished with my MRI, and have to say I almost flipped out when I was in that machine. I guess I never realized just how clostophobic I really am. It took about 30 min to complete all the tests. The machine is very loud, but they give you ear plugs to use. It sounded like a video game. I can't describe what it looked like inside, as I kept my eyes closed trying to get myself to stay calm...didn't work too good, I was breathing very fast.

Lucky me, MRI

I'm at Loveless hospital for an MRI For the first time in a long time I was able to play tennis with no pain. I played my chiropractor yesterday. This game was a rematch from when he beat me but when my back was at it's worst. Final score was 6-2,6-1,6-1 mine :-D.

I'm at Loveless hospital waiting to get an MRI done. This is due to the problems I have been having with my lower back. Actually, my back has been feeling much better lately, but my doctor thinks this would be good to have in case it starts hurting again.

OK. Finished with my MRI, and have to say I almost flipped out when I was in that machine. I guess I never realized just how clostophobic I really am. It took about 30 min to complete all the tests. The machine is very loud, but they give you ear plugs to use. It sounded like a video game. I can't describe what it looked like inside, as I kept my eyes closed trying to get myself to stay calm...didn't work too good, I was breathing very fast.

Thanksgiving 2008

No longer in Houston, Tx. Orion had waves of reductions so I had to move back to Albuquerque, NM to work on other programs in Honeywell Inc.

Today I'm at my parent's newly built house spending my vacation/holiday here to eat lots of turkey.

I brought my HP dv9207 and gave this to my parents. They really wanted to use a computer while sitting in the living room....hmmm...this is a nice laptop...I hope they don't drop and break it anytime soon. My mom, niece, nephew and myself went to Best Buy yesterday to find a wireless router. My parents have...broadband? Thy have a directional antenna on top of their roof and get less than 1Mb download speed. We got the Linksys WRT54g2 router. They don't have N network cards, and I figured all they want was to just browse wireless.

When hooking up the router, I first changed the router name, SSId, password and tried to get on-line. The laptop got an internal ip number, but it was not able to ping an outside url. damn! We went to a hockey game, so I had to put this project on hold till then. The entire trip to the rink and back, all I could think about was the wi-fi issue.

We got back in the house and I reset the router back to factory settings. Still no outside connection. I then thought that maybe the Internet service provider might be using the original computer's mac number as a verification. So, I cloned the mac address on the router. BOOYAA! It worked. I turned on WPA2/TKIP security. Changed the SSID and admin password. There is a new firmware for this router, but I figured this is good enough for now.

I'm staying here for another day and will be back to Albuquerque, NM on Saturday. Not much to do out here; I ended up washing and waxing both my parents cars. OMG, they were dirty.

I'm way too stuffed to continue....so keep blogging.

Thanksgiving

No longer in Houston, Tx. Orion had waves of reductions so I had to move back to Albuquerque, NM to work on other programs in Honeywell Inc.

Moved to Houston

I'm a little late in posting this, but I just moved from Albuquerque, NM to humid Houston, TX. This move was with my job at Honeywell. I applied to work for the new Orion NASA project. Houston is one of many locations Honeywell is working the Orion project. I was assigned to work with the System Management group; more precisely the Command Sequence Automation group in System Management.

The transfer was a last minute move. I was notified officially around March 14, 2008 and started work on March 24, 2008. I had a house full of stuff that had to be packed and delivered. I decided to drive my truck with my motorcycle in the bed. That is 1100 miles! I had the pleasure of seeing my aunt and uncle on the way, which gave me a chance to say "bye" also. I tried to get clothing from NMSU, but the campus was closed up.

The weather is muggy and seems to rain every other day. My motorcycle seems to have 30+ more horsepower now that I'm closer to sea level. Not sure why, but my motorycle's battery seems to need to be replaced now. Oh, and the chain rusted out in about 2 days in H town.

One thing I love about this city is the abundance of things to do. Great parks, disc golf courses (Jack Brooks park is awsome), museums, etc.

I'll try to post pictures up soon.