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Week Three
May 30th - June 5th, 2011
Here's a preview of what my desk looks like on a typical day. The desktop is the
box NetSec is lending me for the summer, named Kix. The laptop has no name :(
Now concludes the third week. I started the week feeling very very
disappointed about my progress. This had a lot to do with memorial day,
since we had it off. I know I should really be enjoying my time off,
but I just wasn't sure whether I was supposed to work that Monday or
not. So I assumed that a holiday means just that - time off. But, the
paranoid person in me decided mid-week that I will make up for lost
work time by staying late at the lab the rest of the week. It wasn't
until late Thursday that I actually started feeling better - a lot better. This was because at the weekly meeting with Dan and Jason, I asked Dan about the big
picture of this summer for me. I was really hinting at "what exactly
will I write my end of the summer paper about and what will I
present?".
Note: skip over the next paragraph, unless you want to hear my internal project concerns.
It's a huge deal to know this when I will be standing up in front of
the other people in the lab, and probably the other dreu student and
possibly people from the HPC (high-performance computing) lab. I just
really want to do a great job this summer. I have never wanted to work
so hard. The funny thing is that I don't feel
like I'm working hard - because I'm actually not. In reality I am, and
I will explain. Have you ever heard the saying that goes something
along the lines of "find your passion and you will never work a day in
your life"? Well, I think that's the situation here at CSU. I know this
because, though I haven't kept strict time records of how many hours I
work a week. It's, at a minimum, the amount of a full-time job. These
past three weeks I've genuinely been very interested and very excited
about all the work I've been doing. The hard part comes when I try and
evaluate my progress.
Back to the meeting with Dan and Jason. Dan revealed that Jason is
working on a project called 6Watch that deals with various problems
facing IPv6 and its current implementation (and lack of implementation)
on the Internet. We started talking about the current deployment
differences between IPv4 and IPv6 (internet protocols versions 4 and
6). There were lots of data online that Dan was pulling up for mainly
me to see. He then mentioned a previous study that was done here
recently in the NetSec lab that dealt with unreachable IPv4 addresses.
So, the new project that I got assigned that day is going to apply a
similar approach and methodology to unreachable IPv6 addresses. This
has great potential. And now I have a better idea about what my final
paper and presentation will contain because I will actually be able to
use BGPmon for data and analysis of the actual Internet! This feels
AMAZING right now. While I have been super excited about everything so
far. This feeling just puts my state of mind over the top. I almost
don't know how to feel right now.
Something that really made me feel better about this week was that Dan and I had
quite a long informal meeting late Friday. I usually stay later than
everyone else and had no idea anyone else was here, but when I passed
in front of Dan's office, it was open! This was at about 6pm. I was
hesitant at first, but I went in and asked for his help configuring the
new BGPmon that's on the new server I installed last week. As always,
he was extremely helpful. Especially because he didn't just tell
me the
solution, he taught me in a way that it felt like we both learned it
together. He was very thorough. Each time he goes to teaching mode, I
am amazed at his teaching ability. Especially for such a busy person.
We spent about half an hour solving and learning the solution. About
another hour was spent just talking about research and graduate school.
I learned a lot that I had no idea about. It was probably one of the
best mentoring meetings I've had with anyone, even though it happened
in an unplanned way.
On the weekend, I did nothing special. I played catch-up with all the
chores I had been putting off, especially organizing my room since I
hadn't really fully moved into the room. For now, I'm excited about
next week and trying to get as much done as I can before I go visit
Texas again and get married! I think it's awesome that this program is
flexible enough to allow a 2 week vacation in the middle of the
research experience, but then still let me have the full 10 week
experience. I am soooo grateful that I get the best of both worlds. I
get to do this awesome dreu AND hang out with family before the wedding
AND get married AND have a honeymoon. The best part is that the dreu
doesn't interfere with the wedding and vice versa. I'll admit that I
felt guilty at first about the 2 weeks off. But as I started the
research, I realized that the 2 weeks off have no negative impact
whatsoever on this summer research. It turned out to be: 4 weeks of
research, 2 weeks off, then 6 more weeks of the dreu. So the 2 weeks might actually
have a positive impact on this research experience.
Overall, I think this was a kind of slow, but very motivational week. We'll see what the 4th week brings.
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