Europe trip

Saturday, June 27 we (Mac and I) flew out of LAX airport and went to London Heathrow by way of Chicago O'Hare on American Airlines. We got into London at about 10:00 A.M. on Monday. We had purchased BritRail passes before heading over which gave us 8 consecutive days of unlimited rail travel on the entire island of Great Britain. We spent $285 (US) per person, which we were able to charge to the department as a travel expense, because we had to use them for transit from Heathrow to the conference and when we went to Belgium. From Heathrow we got to King's Cross station by public transport, where we got a train to Leeds and then to Bradford. The first train was from a rail line called East Coast which we were very impressed with - we had free WiFi onboard and were able to use my credit card to buy lunch since I hadn't been to an ATM yet. None of the other rail lines we rode on (Northern Rail, Cross Country, and South West) had WiFi, and when we tried to buy lunch on Cross Country, we found out they only took cash.

In any case, we made it into Bradford on Sunday night and registered for the conference. We had signed up for housing provided by the conference, which was some cheap "flats" across the street. They weren't very well ventilated and didn't have air conditioning, so they were rather stuffy but livable. My shower also only had hot water (not cold!) so I had to use a different empty room to shower. Bradford itself wasn't the nicest place in England, although it did have a beautiful cathedral and city hall area. We had fish and chips the first night there, and for breakfast we bought some stuff at the Sainsbury's next door. Lunches were provided by the conference (just sandwiches) as were two of the dinners, both at nice restaurants. One dinner was at an Indian restaurant, because Asian food is popular in Bradford. The conference itself (ICESS) had some interesting speakers. Mac presented the paper that he and I had worked on, so I didn't have to give any talks at ICESS. It was also co-hosted with two other conferences, so I went to a security session which included a talk on multivariate public-key cryptography (the area I had worked on at NKU). I also had the chance to socialize with some of the other conference attendees, who were mostly European and Asian. In addition, one of the program committee members was a former student of Sanjoy Baruah (my advisor), so I got to meet him as well. Thursday afternoon we left Bradford for Edinburgh, Scotland via a Cross Country train.

We got into Edinburgh on Thursday night and stayed at the King James Thistle hotel. Friday was our day of sightseeing in Edinburgh. We started at the tourist bureau in the city center, where we purchased tickets for a bus tour during the day and a tour of the caverns at night. After the bus tour, we had lunch at a tavern and then went to the Museum on the Mound. (The advantage of traveling with nerds is that you find out you both wanted to do something like that!) Afterwards, we went to the Edinburgh Castle. When we got there, one of the tour guides was ready to start a tour, but no one had wanted one. Thus, we ended up getting a private one! At the end, we tried to tip her, and we only got her to accept one when I offered her a souvenir American $2 bill. We next climbed the Walter Scott Monument in the city center with a nice view. We had dinner at our hotel, which had a decent restaurant that was quite affordable if you ordered from the flyer they left in the room rather than the menu. Afterwards we went on a tour of the vaults under the city. The night tour was a "Ghosts and Ghouls" tour. We actually would have preferred the historical tour during the day, were it not for the limited daylight. At the beginning of the tour, I was used as an example of an Englishman getting flogged while the crowd (the rest of the tour group) cheered. When the other guy being used as an example told me that we would actually be whipped (which we were, with a soft whip that didn't do anything), I told him that since I was an American, I would just sue them. (Joking, of course.) The tour was pretty interesting and did include quite a bit of history.

The next morning we took a trip down to Bath, England on a Cross Country train. I have relatives in Bath (the Lewises) who we visited. We missed the train we had intended to catch, so we ended up getting in about an hour later than planned. We also didn't have cell phones that work in the UK, so we weren't sure how we were going to let my relatives know. The train we did catch was incredibly crowded, so for the first few stops we sat in between cars. We did eventually get seats, and Mac found a nice girl to talk to who let us use her mobile phone to call my relatives and let them know we were going to be late. The excitement for the day wasn't over yet, however. On the second train, I recognized Bath, which I had visited before a couple of times. So I told Mac, "This is our station." I then went across the train car to get my bag and leave. As soon as I left the train, I read the station name and realized it was the wrong station. Thus, I went back on and tried to find Mac to tell him we were supposed to go to the next station. He had left out of the other door, and I realized this as the doors closed for the train to leave the station. Fortunately, he saw me through the window, but we couldn't really communicate anything and I couldn't leave the train. So I got to the next stop and called the Lewises, explaining the situation. They agreed to come pick me up and then pick up Mac. Problem solved and excitement over, right? Nope! Just before getting to the bus stop where they were supposed to pick me up, I couldn't recall whether they had told me to turn right or left, so I tried turning right and promptly found a bus stop. It was actually the wrong one, so I waited about 20 minutes and was wondering where they were. I then went the other direction and found Mac. It turned out they had showed up, looked for me unsuccessfully, and then picked up Mac without me there. From Mac's perspective, some random British guy walks up to him at the train station and asks, "Are you Mac?" So, after all that drama, we did finally end up at the Lewises and had a very nice time with them.

On Sunday morning, I went to a choral matins service at the Bath Abbey while Mac went to the Roman Bath Museum. We spent a little time in the afternoon touring the city before returning for lunch with the Lewises, followed by a train to the Salisbury station where we took a bus tour to Stonehenge and spent some time at Stonehenge. That night we went into London and stayed at a Comfort Inn near King's Cross and St. Pancras.

Monday morning Mac and I did some sightseeing in London, including riding the London Eye. Afterwards we had lunch on Baker Street and then went to Regent's Park. We got our luggage at the hotel and went to St. Pancras station, where we took the Eurostar high-speed (186 MPH top speed) train through the Chunnel to Brussels, Belgium. While we were at St. Pancras, we saw Edmund Lewis, who we had just seen in Bath a couple days prior, and met his girlfriend. Once we got to Brussels, we took a train to where our hotel, the Royal Windsor, was located. We saw at the front desk that if you just walk up and book (which we didn't, of course), rooms start at €500 a night ($646 at the time of this writing). You could also buy a standard size bottle of Coke in the mini-bar in the room for €6 ($7.75 at the time of writing). We actually only had to spend €144/night ($186/night) with the conference rate. Needless to say, it was a nice hotel with an excellent continental breakfast including, of course, Belgian waffles. Tuesday was the first day of ECRTS - just the workshop day. We had dinner at a nice Belgian restaurant and I had a chicken dish the name of which I can't remember. We then went to another restaurant with televisions to watch the World Cup game.

On Tuesday morning, I had to give my talk. I had not rehearsed it for my advisor before, but I had rehearsed it to Mac several times and tried to take into account his suggestions. I was actually pretty nervous just before the talk, since ECRTS is a decent size crowd (almost 150). Fortunately, both Jim and Sanjoy thought I did very well, which I was glad to hear. Jim had used his powers as program chair to schedule me early in the conference so I could enjoy the rest, which I was grateful for. The rest of the conference also had some interesting talks. My favorites were the one right before me by Greg Levin analyzing optimal multiprocessor schedulers in a new way (easily the best talk I've ever seen at a conference, so a hard act to follow) and the keynote given by Sanjoy on why real-time scheduling theory still matters. The conference was also a good chance to meet and network with other researchers in my field, including another of Sanjoy's former students. At this conference, there were mostly Europeans with a fair number of Americans and a few Asians.

Mac and I did have some chances to go sightseeing in Belgium. We were right by the Grand Place, which is certainly a beautiful sight in and of itself. This is also right by the Manneken Pis, a statue/fountain of a boy peeing that seems to be on all the souvenirs for sale. Of course, we had our share of Belgian waffles and chocolate, as well as other Belgian food at restaurants, while we were there. We also discovered the Delhaize grocery store, which had a logo we immediately recognized. It turns out Delhaize is the company that owns the Food Lion chain of grocery stores we have in North Carolina. I bought some chocolate and handed my MVP card to the checkout lady. She asked me, "What is this?" and, when I told her, got really excited and was showing it to the other employees and explaining in French that it was from England. (Mac later corrected her in French and told her it was actually from the US.) It actually scanned and I earned points on my Delhaize account I didn't know I had. She wanted to keep it, but originally I didn't want to let her. We went back and gave it to her, since I realized I could just get another one when I get back to Chapel Hill. Then Mac had the brilliant idea of getting a Carte Plus (the Belgian equivalent) so that I could use it at Food Lion. We filled out the form and had to write in "US" in the country section (which had some options, but all countries in Europe) and use an extra digit for the postal code, but they gave us the cards. Now I intend to bring it to Food Lion with a stack of $2 bills, just to weird out the cashier.

On Saturday we flew back from Belgium on American via Chicago. It was a pretty uneventful trip back, and the longest day of my life (33 hours).

Summer, Pre-Europe

So I haven't posted on here for ages, and I'm not going to attempt to describe everything that happened last school year. Instead, I'll just talk about the summer. I was going to just e-mail some friends, but this way I can write something once. Between June 27 and July 10 I was in Europe for a couple academic conferences. This first post will be about the summer before the trip to Europe, and afterwards I will write about the Europe trip and probably a bit about the time afterwards.

At the start of the summer, I went to visit Taylor and then Peoria. I flew Southwest from Raleigh-Durham to Indianapolis by way of Orlando. I had a good time hanging out with TU friends, and we had our annual "Nerd Reunion," since my friend Nathan was in town for his sister-in-law's graduation. I happened to find another Taylor student who was going to East Peoria, so I got a convenient ride there where my dad picked me up on his way home from work. I had a good, but short, time at home with the family. That Friday night I flew United to Lexington, KY for the wedding of Ben and Hannah, two good friends from Taylor. I had a good time seeing more Taylor friends that weekend and finished it up with a visit to the rodeo. The next morning (Sunday) I flew American out to Los Angeles, where I started work on Tuesday.

I'm living in El Segundo, CA at an extended-stay hotel and working for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. I have to keep the details very light on a public blog since this is national defense work. I will say there were some hangups at the beginning of the summer related to getting my security clearance. I work in an office where people are required to have a security clearance, but I was able to work there as long as I was constantly escorted, had a flashing light with me at all times, and yelled (or had my escort yell) "Uncleared!" while walking through the hallway. We would sometimes jokingly just say "Unclean!" instead, since it was pretty much the leper yell. Fortunately, my clearance came through within the first few weeks and I don't have to deal with that any more.

After my first week of work, I got a Friday night red-eye on Delta to Columbus, OH. I had a frequent flier free trip as a result of going to Korea last December, so I only paid $10 in fees for the airfare. In Columbus I rented a car and drove to Kenton, OH for the wedding of Jesse and Jessica, another couple of friends from Taylor. I again enjoyed seeing Taylor friends. That night Jessica's parents were kind enough to let me stay with them, and I got to shoot rifles with her brother. Sunday afternoon I flew back to LA and started work again on Monday.

As a result of flying all these airlines, I can tell you that I prefer the Southwest experience over any of the others. You can check bags for free, which means that there is less chaos with the overhead bins when you board and everything goes faster. I would probably fly them more if our group didn't get most of its frequent flier miles through American, which I will do since Southwest doesn't fly international.

Life outside of work was decently busy at the beginning of the summer, because I had to prepare a presentation for ECRTS in Brussels, Belgium. I did have some opportunities to attend church with my cousin Karen who lives out here, and to see my old Taylor roommate Randy who lives in Sherman Oaks, as well as Brianna, another Taylor friend who lives in Pasadena. I actually only made it out to the beach once, for an intern event. I have only gotten to know the other interns a bit, except for Mac (the other UNC student here and my roommate for the summer) and his friend Mariel who he knew from last summer. I've enjoyed hanging out with them. Well, that pretty much brings us to the Europe trip.

Starting UNC

It's been a while since I last posted, I know. Since then I finished the REU. We had some interesting results and ideas, and I finished a paper that we submitted to the International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology. If it gets accepted (last year they accepted about 20% of the submissions) then I may get to go to Korea in December to present it, depending on how the travel budget works. That would be exciting.

On the way home from the REU I visited some friends back in Upland. Then I was at home for a week before heading out to UNC. On the way out we stopped at Justin and Amanda's wedding in Decatur (my fifth wedding of the summer), as well as Nashville/Nolensville, TN and Knoxville, TN to visit relatives. (My Aunt Gwen and Uncle Steve, as well as my cousin Megan in the Nashville area, and my grandfather and his wife in Knoxville.) It was a good trip and I enjoyed seeing everyone.

Tuesday August 18 we arrived in Chapel Hill and started moving into the apartment. It is a basement apartment. It's not particularly nice, but for $600/month (actually only $300/month since I split it with an apartment mate) within walking distance of Sitterson/Brooks (the computer science building) it's a good deal. We spent some time setting things up. On Wednesday I made the mistake of trying to go to the Carrboro drivers' license office, which is apparently always insanely busy. There were people there when we arrived at 3 P.M. who had been waiting since 10 A.M. and hadn't gotten to take the test yet. I heard that if you show up an hour before they open in the morning, you can be the fourth or fifth person in line. So that didn't work. I did end up getting my license at the Hillsborough office (which only had a two and a half hour wait) the next Monday.

Classes started on Tuesday. I attended several different classes before deciding on two. Originally I tried Computational Geometry, which I would like to take eventually, but it is offered fairly frequently. I also tried Network Security, but my background in networking is a bit weak from not taking Data Comm at Taylor compared to what was expected, so I would have had to do a lot of extra reading outside of class and would have been busy. I may take that one at a later semester, too. I am going to take Algorithm Analysis and Parallel Computing. I am also doing a "991" (Reading and Research) on the same topic as my research assistantship. I started with a paper "A 3/2-approximation algorithm for rate-monotonic multiprocessor scheduling of implicit deadline tasks." Now when you Google that, my blog should be one of the hits. The first order of business was learning what all those terms mean. I knew "3/2-approximation algorithm" and "multiprocessor scheduling" but not "rate-monotonic" or "implicit deadline." I am still working on learning all the real-time lingo and learning the background stuff I need, so I haven't started on an actual research project yet.

Real-time scheduling theory looks like a good fit for me. It's a lot of mathematically analyzing algorithms. The bulk of it is proofs. I've even seen old friends like epsilon and lim sup in the papers I've read. I've already been labelled "a mathematician disguised as a computer scientist" by one of the members of my research group, which is probably a good description for me.

I've been enjoying rooming with Kevin, my apartment mate. I've been attending his church (Christ Community Church) on Sunday mornings, as well as a Thursday night Bible study with him. I've also had several chances to get together with the Cuany Jrs., my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Apex, as well as my cousins Amy and Laura in Clayton and their apartment mate Naomi. So I've been keeping very busy, but having a lot of fun.

California Trip, NKU

Since my last entry, I had the entire road trip to California and back with Noah and Chris. We started out our trip with the wedding of Peter and Charity, two friends from Taylor. Their wedding was on the afternoon of Saturday, May 30 in Indianapolis. We then headed to Chesterfield, MO where Noah lives, to pack the car and nap until our departure around 3 A.M. for San Francisco. On the way there we took I-70 into Utah (including a beautiful stretch in the Rockies in western Colorado), with a hotel stop in Grand Junction, CO. We then took US-50 to I-15 (which had a stretch with an experimental speed limit of 80 MPH) to I-80 for the rest of the way in. Other than a short nap stop at a rest area in California, we drove through the night and arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday morning.

We spent our time in San Francisco with Nathan and Michelle, the Taylor grads from last year who we actually came to visit. Seth, another CS major friend from Taylor who also lived on the floor with the rest of us, was also living with them during the summer for an internship. Weekdays we were mostly on our own, because Seth and Nathan both had work at Arxan, a company that works on making it more difficult for people to illegally copy software. Several of the days Michelle cared for a girl whose single mother needed help with childcare. One of the days we had lunch with Seth and Nathan down by where they work and then explored the mall. We also spent some time at Fisherman's Wharf and had the opportunity to see Chelsea, another friend from Taylor who was in Berkeley visiting her twin sister. Throughout the trip we had the opportunity to eat a lot of authentic Asian food, as there are many such restaraunts. At some you even have to order by pointing at pictures, because the staff do not speak English well. Nathan and Michelle live in Nob Hill near the cable car museum, which we also did visit.

Saturday we got to spend some good time with Nathan, Seth, and Chelsea. We rented bikes (including two tandems as well as two regular bikes) and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge to Tiburon, taking the ferry back. Sunday we went to church at City Church, the reformed church where Nathan and Michelle go. We then had a nice lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant and went to Twin Peaks, the highest point in San Francisco. From there the view is great, although it is incredibly windy. We made our way to Ghirardelli Square, and the guys topped off the 8-scoop Earthquake sundae.

On Monday we spent the morning visiting Berkeley with Chelsea, and then went down to San Jose where we spent the night with my Uncle Roger and Aunt Pam. My cousin David and his wife Brandi came with the quadruplets they were babysitting. The next day we met up with Seth and Nathan in an attempt to visit the Computer History Museum, but it ended up being closed. We still ended up having a nice lunch at a sushi restaurant and got some ice cream afterwards. In the evening we all went to the house of Alicia, another Taylor friend who lives there. She was about to be baptized (right after we left), so some friends (Elizabeth and Rachel) had flown in for that. Monica who lives in Modesto also showed up. We all had a nice dinner with them before heading back to San Francisco.

The next day we left after lunch and drove I-80 through the night, reaching Ft. Collins the next afternoon. Ft. Collins is where my aunt Heather and uncle Jim live, along with my cousins. My cousin Tyler showed us around Horsetooth Reservoir, and then we headed back to their place for a nice dinner. We spent the night and were sent off properly with Swedish pancakes in the morning. That evening we had some unexpected excitement when Noah discovered as it was getting dark that the low beams were not working. We ended up getting a motel in northwestern Missouri and driving the rest of the way to St. Louis in the morning. Pretty much as soon as we got back we visited cousin of mine, Jess, and her husband Omar for lunch and spent the afternoon with them. I then drove back with Chris to Peoria, where we spent the night before leaving for Cincinnati the next morning. I dropped Chris off at his place in Mahomet on my way.


Northern Kentucky University looks like it's going to be a fun summer. I did research there last summer, but my role is different now. I am working on finishing up a publication on SMS4 that I worked on last summer as well as at Taylor this past school year, and I will also be working with this year's students on some of their projects. Jintai Ding, our advisor from the University of Cincinnati, wants us to be careful what we say about the project due to competition with other researchers. What I will say is that last year we worked more on modelling ciphers with equations in an attempt to break them, whereas this year we are working more on the solvers themselves.

Update: Noah posted pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/nlshep/NerdReunion2K9

First Post!

After graduating from Taylor, I have quite a few people who would like to keep up on what I'm doing.  Being that I'm an algorithms guy, I realized that the most efficient method would be to start a blog and give people the address.  Thus, here it is.

I have a full summer ahead of me.  This Sunday was Robert's wedding in Winona Lake, IN.  I am back in Peoria for a few days now.  On Saturday I will be going to the wedding of two friends from Gerig Hall at Taylor, namely Peter and Charity.  Then I will be heading out with two friends, Noah and Chris, to visit our friend Nathan McCauley and his wife Michelle as well as a few other people.  The trip will last about two weeks.  On June 14 I will be heading back to Northern Kentucky University for another summer of cryptology research.  After that ends on August 7, I will be heading back to Peoria for just a week, and then heading out to UNC before graduate school orientation on the 20th.  On the way we will visit some relatives in Tennessee.

Hopefully I'll keep this blog updated as stuff happens.  I'm not going to make any particular promises, though.