On September 11th, 2023 I got my PhD. I finally did it. It took me a long time. I was admitted to the program in 2015, but I actually started classes in fall of 2014, so I was in school for 9 years. It took me longer than anticipated because in 2019 I had to…
Category: School
Reasoning about Sequential Cyberattacks
My paper Reasoning about Sequential Cyberattacks was accepted for FOSINT-SI 2019. I had the opportunity to present the paper at the conference last month in Vancouver, where I was also awarded “Best Paper”. You can check out my paper here. I suffered a lot of heartbreak with this paper; it was either rejected for the…
Remembering a great teacher
1995 was a difficult year for me. I had finished the 8th grade at Indian School Muscat. However, instead of joining the 9th grade with my friends, I had to move to an entirely new school, Indian School Al-Ghubra, which was much further away and worse, was our arch-rival. My first few weeks at the…
The State of Computer Engineering
I was having a conversation with a few good friends (old college buddies, and fellow nerds) over a couple of beers a little while ago. We mainly reminisced about certain key classes we took while we were at ASU, and also about the state of CS and CSE graduates today. Indeed, the very nature of…
WLC and WTF
I’m going out of town for two weeks for WLC (Warrior Leader Course). It’s a course I’ve had to take after I got promoted to Sergeant while I was in Iraq. I never had a chance to go to it because there was a lot of confusion with the standing-down of the old artillery unit…
Graduated
I graduated today. I could have finished in 3.5 years if I hadn’t joined the Army. But that’s a decision I don’t regret in the least. Five years at ASU and I have learnt a lot. I can write assembly code, do latin dancing, and field strip an M16A2. Although I didn’t learn the last…
Elite
I got an A in CSE 521. Wooohooo!
Dr. Pheanis’ Surprise Retirement Dinner
Today we had a Surprise Retirement Dinner for Dr. Pheanis at C-Fu Gourmet. I didn’t find out about this until two or three days ago. Apparently this thing had been in place for a while. I was planning something separately for him, when Marc sent me the evite for the dinner. I sent out the…
Dr. Pheanis’ Last Class
Today was Dr. Pheanis’ last day as a professor. We were his very last class. He said he would remember us the most because we were his last class. I think it is very fitting that the CSE 521 class would be his last. We are essentially (in his view – I am not just…
Pictures from Boston and Vegas
I’ve uploaded two sets of pictures. The first one is from my Spring Break trip to Boston, where I visited Michael and Laura. The second one is from my trip to Vegas, this last weekend. The first one is titled “Chez Michael et Laura”, and the second one is titled “UNLV Dance Competition 2000”.