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