So my sister has requested I write something other than technical blogs from time to time. This becomes a bit of a problem when I live, breathe, and eat code. It turns out if I buy the right kind of cereal, I can get some decent pseudocode going in the morning. Though, I will say it is difficult to find cereal with semi-colons and curly braces. For those wondering what I have been up to this summer, I currently have four websites on the table with negotiations still wrapping up for one of them. That does not count any of my personal projects such as this one. To make matters worse, I have come across the blogs of Jeremiah Grossman and RSnake, two elite web security specialists. The results of this has been me spending a portion of my time tonight reading some web security talks online as well as tinkering with Fierce and Nessus. Remember how I started this post by talking about how my sister wants me to talk a little less about geeky stuff? That does not mean I remembered it while writing this. Actually, I just meant this to be an update on what I have been up to lately and a lot of it is technology oriented. Call me a geek if you must.
What else have I done? A week ago I participated in my first United States Tennis Association tournament. I walked into the whole thing very tentatively. I have not played competitively since high school four years ago unless you count the poorly organized intramurals at college. I started to play semi-regularly last fall along with playing some this spring. However, I had not hit in a solid two months when I decided to register for the tournament. As a result, I chose the easiest skill level since I was not sure what I would be getting myself into, and I figured winning easily would be more fun than getting crushed. It turned out only one other person registered for my division and it was quite easy. I had gotten in a couple hours of hitting with an old friend on Wednesday. Still, I was hitting even better come the time of the tournament on Saturday. I managed to get a cool t-shirt, a nice plaque, and an instructor’s phone number to call about hitting sometime. All said, the tournament was pretty fun, and I am looking to go to another in Cedar Rapids this weekend. I will make sure to step up a skill level this time around.
This past weekend was a lot of fun. I drove up to Cedar Falls to spend some time with my girlfriend along with attend a wedding of a previous roommate further on down the road. Taking time to relax and watch movies with Jess was great and the wedding was a blast. We also got to watch some of The Open, Tour de France, and PBR on tv on Sunday. For those who dont know, The Open is the equivalent of the golf US Open but in Britain, Tour de France is bicycling, and PBR is Professional Bull Riding. To top the weekend off, we went out golfing on an amazing day. Needless to say, the weekend was over in no time, and I was back dabbling with computers in my apartment.
Tonight has been another moment of relaxation. I started with taking care of some apartment errands early on. Then I proceeded to dabbling in web security reading and tinkering. That was followed up with watching the Chicago Cubs look terrible again along with some light web development. In case you have not noticed, I have implemented a couple new themes and a theme changer to account for different reader preferences. Hopefully, I will continue to improve on this feature over time. I was able to catch up to July on Wallingford’s blog as well. Now I am finishing off the night with a little Sportscent on ESPN and writing this. With that said, good night!