Ants on the Melon
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After spending the holiday week with our families, Sandy and I met up in New York for a few days to see friends and celebrate the New Year.

We arrived in the City Friday evening to meet up with some of Sandy’s friends for dinner. We ended up hanging out at really great bubble tea place for a while, and eventually meeting up for a nice dinner later. I can’t remember the names of these places, or find websites for them, but they were both in Chinatown and were really good. Afterwards we headed up to Rockefeller Center to see the famous Christmas tree.

Saturday we took our time and walked around the city, which included my Pilgrimage to the 5th Avenue Apple Store. Later that night we met up with Sandy’s cousin and her husband for dinner at Yakitori Taisho, an amazing little restaurant that was packed full. We got there early, and were able to get a great table in the back. You know the food has to be good when a place that is this tiny has a huge line out the door in the winter. After dinner we walked around and ended up at Veniero’s Pastry for dessert and coffee.

On Sunday we decided to see the American Museum of Natural History, which is where we spent most of the afternoon. This is a really cool museum with lots of different types of exhibits. I spent a lot of time at the physics/space exhibits, but there were also some really interesting displays with animals, primates and such.

Afterwards we headed down to meet up with some of Sandy’s other friends for our New Year’s Eve dinner at Guantanamera, a Cuban restaurant on 8th Avenue. We had a great meal (at least I did) and dessert, before heading out to a friends apartment to hang out until midnight got a little closer. Around 10:30 Sandy and I left for Central Park to find a nice place to watch the fireworks. We ended up at a terrific spot with a perfectly clear view of the sky. When the fireworks started at midnight, they went on for 10 minutes and were some of the most spectacular fireworks I have ever seen. Everyone makes a big deal about Times Square for New Year’s, but I cant imagine a better place to be on New Year’s than in Central Park.

Overall, it was a great trip and reminded me how much I love New York City (especially the smells of the food from the street vendors).

Thursday morning I drove over to Covington, Louisiana to spend Thanksgiving with the Taurman family. In addition to a wonderful meal, they had also planned a fishing trip for us to go on the following day. Friday evening 5 of us piled into Chad’s truck and headed down to Cocodrie, Louisiana.

We had a room reserved at Boudreaux’s Marina, a nice little place operated by Andre Boudreaux and his family. After getting a little sleep Friday night we woke up before 6 am and had a nice breakfast at the marina. As soon as breakfast was gone we piled in the boat to head out into the marsh and start fishing. Normally there are several different fishing guides who can take groups out, but as it turned out, all of Andre’s guides had taken the week off to go hunting, so he took us out himself.

It didn’t take long before Choose was reeling in the first fish, a speckled trout, and pretty soon we were all pulling them in. We caught lots of trout, red fish, and black drum and by the time we went in around 1pm we had caught enough food for everyone to have dinner. We also couldn’t have asked for better weather for the trip (I took this video while we were fishing, its 22 secs, 21 MB).

Andre Boudreaux is the real deal, no question about it (with a last name like “Boudreaux”, how could he not be?). He also gives guided tours for those who want to catch alligators, and his stories about those trips are pretty funny as well.

This trip reminded me of how much I enjoy fishing. Sadly, I haven’t gone much since I moved away from Virginia.

Thanks to the Taurman family for a great time!

This weekend I drove up to the capital city for the 2006 Austin City Limits Music Festival.

After last years festival I had decided that I did not want to spent another weekend under the blazing Sun and try to enjoy music. It was just too hot. But when I saw that both Ween and Willie Nelson would be performing, I went ahead and bought two 3-day passes. As it turns out, I had a pretty good time this year.

Friday I was there alone, and I just walked around from stage to stage. I spent more time getting to and from the festival than I did at the festival, but it was fun anyway (although really, really hot). I managed to see Gnarls Barkley and a few other shows.

On Saturday Sandy was able to come with me and we saw String Cheese Incident, the South Austin Jug Band, Brazilian Girls, and of course, Willie Nelson, as well as several other smaller bands.

Sunday morning we met up with Jason at Kerby Lane Cafe for a late Breakfast. Afterwards we went up to the 360 Bridge and chilled for a while, before picking up Katie and heading to the festival. We caught parts of performances from Ween, Matisyahu, Sun Volt, The Flaming Lips, The Greencards and Ben Harper.

At the gates of the festival there were people giving away iTunes music cards that said they were worth $30 towards music from bands performing at the festival. At first I thought this meant that I could pick $30 worth of music, but as it turns out they have a preselected playlist of 31 songs from artists at the festival. So now I have 5 extra cards, if anyone would like one.

After delays from the firemarshall, Defcon finally got started around noon on Friday. We saw several talks, including magstripe hacking, wireless insanity, and even eXtreme Programming, all of which were very interesting.

Eliot joined us for a trip to In-N-Out Burger, where a massive number of beef patties were consumed by the 5 of us. Mmmm good.

At this point I am up $5 on the blackjack tables, woo hoo!

2005 was the year that I decided to give the whole blogging thing a try, and so I thought it would be a good idea to put together this list so that I will be able to remember some of the things that I did over the course of the year.

The Places I Visited in 2005

• Atlanta (4 trips)
• Baltimore/DC
• Boston/Cambridge
• Las Vegas (3 trips)
• Los Angeles
• New Orleans (for Jazz Fest, before Katrina)
• New York
• Reno
• San Francisco
• Virginia (3 trips)

Along with lots of trips to Austin and a couple visits to Houston, I did a reasonable amount of traveling this year.

Musicians I Saw in 2005

• The Hot Club of Cowtown (2x)
• Two Tons of Steel (many times)
• Widespread Panic (Jazz Fest)
• Dave Matthews Band (Jazz Fest)
• Trey Anastasio (Jazz Fest)
• Randy Newman (Jazz Fest)
• The Derailers (2x)
• Eleven Hundred Springs (3x)
• The Gourds (3x)
• Mingo Fishtrap
• Neko Case (blogged)
• Drew Kennedy (blogged)
• Matt Powell (blogged)
• Hank Williams III (blogged)
• JB Beverly and the Wayward Drifters (blogged)
• The Greencards (blogged)
• Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez (blogged)
• Slaid Cleaves (blogged)
• Susan Gibson
• The High Flyers (blogged)
• Mickey and the Motorcars
• Guy Forsyth
• Jason Boland and the Stragglers (blogged)
• Dale Watson (blogged)
• Terry Allen (blogged)
• Robert Earl Keen (ACL Festival)
• Lyle Lovett (ACL Festival)
• Grupo Fantasma (ACL Festival)
• John Prine (ACL Festival)
• Wayne Hancock (ACL Festival)
• Lucinda Williams (ACL Festival)
• Big Sandy and His Fly Rite Boys
• The California Guitar Trio (blogged)
• Asleep at the Wheel (2x)

This year The Hot Club of Cowtown broke up, which was a major bummer. But Elana has a few things going on, and Whit and Jake are performing with some others as Whit Smith’s Hot Jazz Caravan. At Jazz Fest and ACL Fest I saw a lot of other little bands, but I can’t remember the names.

The Books I Read in 2005

• Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Being There by Jerry Kosinski
• Radical Leap by Steve Farber
• “1984” by George Orwell
• The Fuckup by Arthur Nersesian
• Entanglement by Amir Aczel

As usual, my interests over the past year are reflected in the books I read. I almost always cycle through 4 topics: physics, economics, sociology and literature. In 2006 I want to finally finish reading Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Random Stuff in 2005

• Participated in Cornyation during San Antonio’s Fiesta (blogged here and here)
• Met up with some friends in New Orleans for Jazz Fest
• Switched to a new job within Rackspace
• Enjoyed many Wednesday Night Dinners
• Attended DefCon (blogged here, here, here and here)
• Worked on the SafeList project
• Saw some great music at the Austin City Limits Music Festival
• Attended Paul Graham’s Startup School
• Saw two Cirque Du Soleil shows - Varekai and Mystere
• Almost finished paying off my hefty college loan
• Sold the Ford F-150 and bought another white Nissan
• And, for what its worth (not much), got an RHCE

Overall, it was a pretty good year. Made some new friends, spent time with old friends and had a lot of fun.

Happy New Year!

After 3 days of talks and general craziness, DefCon 13 came to a close yesterday. After the closing ceremonies we headed over to In-N-Out Burger for dinner. I had never eaten there before, but I must say it was pretty good. Richard has a picture of my first bite of the burger. We spent the next half hour in the blistering sun trying to get a cab, and wishing we had skipped the milkshakes.

Next, my gracious tour guides took me to downtown Vegas where I was able to see The Golden Nugget, Binions, and eat a deep fried Twinkie. After watching for a while, I got in on a couple games of blackjack and ended up $40 ahead, which made it $80 for the trip, so I was happy. We saw some more sights and headed back to the strip, specifically to Mandalay Bay and The Luxor. The engineering and wow-factor of all these places is amazing, everything is enormous!

I’m heading back to the airport in about 4 hours, so the trip is almost over, but it has been a lot of fun. I will be back out here in 2 weeks to meet up with some friends from college and I can’t wait!

Yesterday at DefCon there were a few interesting sessions, but the my favorite of the day was the Introduction to Lockpicking and Physical Security. It was interesting to see how insanely easy it is for someone to unlock a lock within seconds. The only other session I thought was really interesting was the Be Your Own Telephone Company…With Asterisk talk. I’d like to try setting up an Asterisk PBX sometime soon.

Yesterday I ended up hanging out with Dirk and Richard for most of the day. We met up with some friends of theirs for dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s Bar and Grill at the MGM Grand. I had the Mustard Glazed Salmon with Warm Potato, Granny Smith Apples, and Watercress, and it was excellent. I ate to the point of discomfort, which is not something I often say. After dinner we walked around for a while and saw the sites. Dirk and Richard taught me a lot about blackjack during the night and after several hours of watching and asking questions, I finally decided I was ready to give it a try. I decided that $20 was all I was willing to put on the line, so at a $5 table I got $20 worth of chips and began playing. I was never down, and after about 30 or 45 minutes I had $60 worth of chips. At this point I decided it would be a good idea to cash out and quit while I was ahead.

Las Vegas reminds me a lot of New Orleans because it is very easy to loose track of time if you are not paying attention. I made it back to my room around 5:30, and I didn’t even feel tired. I think I like this town.

So yesterday was the first day of DefCon 13, and I arrived at the conference with some friends a little before 10, in time to get into the tent to see Phil Zimmermann’s talk. Well, he arrived an hour late and when he finally gave his presentation on secure VOIP, he couldn’t get the software to work. It was a little disappointing, but what are ya gonna do. We attended a few more sessions, including a talk by Paul Vixie, and then met up with some more friends and generally had a good time.

The best session I saw yesterday was the Bypassing Authenticated Wireless Networks, where the presenters released a tool call PickupLine. Basically, PickupLine makes it really easy to scan wireless networks that require authentication via some webpage; products like NoCat provide this functionality. PickupLine is only available for Linux at this point, but I’m sure someone will port it to Mac OS X real soon.

In the evening we headed over to the Hard Rock Hotel for the iDefense party. We met up with some friends and talked for a while. After the party on the patio ended everyone moved to a party upstairs, where we ended up meeting a lot of interesting people in the Internet security world. Around 2 we decided it was time to end the night, so we hopped on the monorail and went back to our hotels. All in all, a great day.

I flew in to Atlanta today to work for a few days, but first there was fun to be had.

As it turns out, my old college roommate Ty was in town, so Brian and I met up with him and headed over to the Funny Farm Comedy Club to see Bob Saget’s comedy skit.

Most people remember Bob Saget from Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos, but that was not the same person who performed tonight. Not even close. If you are into crass humor, then you should go see Bob Saget. During the show he mentioned how he googled himself and came across a fan site called Bob Saget is God. Well, as it turns, the guy who runs the site was in the audience, so Bob told him how freaked out he was about the site. Anyway, the show was absolutely hilarious, and Bob is a comic genius, really.

Last night I headed over to the Wednesday Night Dinner, bearing Beignet’s for cajun night. I got there around 9, after spending a couple hours making a mess in my kitchen with flour, beignet mix and powdered sugar.

Andy grilled up these amazing bacon wrapped jalapeno shrimp that had me sweating for at least an hour. There was a pretty good turnout and among the other things that people brought were fried alligator, crawfish pie, red beans and rice, jambalaya, and fried pickles. Mmmm, good eatin!

After everyone finished eating, we sat around the picnic table and talked for a couple hours, until around 11:00 when Issac, Steve and I started playing music. Our main guitarist, the Professor, was not able to make it this week, so the band consisted of Issac on guitar, Steve singing, and me on mandolin. We played 3 or 4 songs and decided it was too hot, so we headed back to the picnic table and resumed socializing. I left shortly after midnight so I could get ready for my trip to Atlanta. Another great Wednesday night.